It breathed out scorching air, opened its mouth full of pure jagged fangs, and released a roar that crushed everything around it into Shard and surged toward them as a visible wave. "Which bastard dared disturb my sleep again?!"
Belial roared in fury, and Gravity Tornado spread with his anger. Objects rose into the air, forming tornadoes that shoved the clouds back and ground the uneven land flat. Was it really that hard to sleep peacefully?
He had done nothing wrong. He had finally settled back into his bedding and fallen asleep again, only for the crater blanket to be blown apart not long after. The explosion stirred the magma and woke Belial completely, and this kind of interrupted sleep made him furious.
He decided to go all out, detonated the crystals buried in the magma, swallowed a mouthful of energy, and tore the volcano open while still burning with anger. "Let me see who dared disturb me… where are they?!"
After venting, Belial looked around. Aside from his bedding blown to pieces, there was no large intruder. There was, however, the lingering scent of the Red Dragon that had bothered him before.
He was sure it was that same foolish Red Dragon, somehow still alive after taking a crystal blast. Anyone who survived that should have fled quietly, not come back to blow up his bed again. That deserved a heavy response.
But where was the dragon? Turning his head, guided by a faint familiar scent, he noticed a small group of humans standing at the crater edge.
Humans?! Seeing humans for the first time in this new place, Belial pulled down ice from the sky and smacked his head to cool off. Could these humans have disturbed his sleep? It seemed unlikely. He had not gone around acting like an evil dragon, so why would humans bother him?
He considered it briefly, then dismissed it. "Because you are too weak."
He knew exactly how tough the crater was after being reinforced with Gravity Tornado. These humans, aside from three with some strength, were insignificant. The explosion that woke him was clearly not something they could do.
Belial believed he was a reasonable dragon. "In any case, I will grab these humans and ask them who blew up my bed!"
The massive Black Dragon crushed the volcano beneath its feet and took flight. At the same time, Lyles Edward's dragonization worsened, horns and a tail growing, joints reshaping, his body turning into a small dragon-like form. Even so, he stared at the approaching Black Dragon in disbelief.
What in the world was that thing? Normal adult dragons were only twenty to thirty meters long, and even ancient dragons stayed under forty. This one was nearly seventy meters, its body length alone twice that of a normal dragon, with at least eight times the volume.
It was far more vicious and muscular, making all the Great Dragon he had seen before look underdeveloped. The largest dragon his family had ever hunted would not even reach this one's feet. The evil, violent aura rolling toward him marked it as a peak among evil dragons.
"And just waking up caused all this?" Lyles Edward looked at the apocalyptic scene and felt despair sink in as the Great Dragon flew closer.
"Then I can only fight!" He clenched his teeth and let the bloodline surge, his mutation deepening. "I still have to go home and see my daughter, so I cannot die here!"
He roared like a true Great Dragon, a strange will flooding his mind. In his dragon eyes appeared the same color seen in a Red Dragon's gaze, something subtly changing. Unnoticed, the ancestral Dragon-Shaped Greatsword in his hands opened its once-closed carved eye.
A blood-red Red Dragon pupil appeared, almost identical to Lyles Edward's. It stared with interest at the approaching Black Dragon.
Lyles Edward's reason was slowly being eaten away by the dragon. On the outside, his body had already become a half-human, half-dragon monster, yet his presence had grown stronger than ever before. This level of dragonization brought gains far beyond simple addition, replacing human weakness with draconic power and even flooding his mind with unfamiliar knowledge.
Language was knowledge, and knowledge was power. Dragon Tongue was essentially the same thing as the chants used when casting Magic, but for dragons this knowledge was extremely complex, making any Magic released through it unusually strong. Lyles Edward shot into the sky, beating the half-dragon wing on his back, his mouth no longer able to form human sounds and instead producing complex, hard-to-understand Magic tones.
Flames rose over his body, dyeing his scales red as a vast and intricate Magic Array gathered around him. The magic compressed into a fireball like a small sun. With legs that had turned into claws, he kicked that blazing sun forward.
"Oh?" Belial showed a hint of surprise at the sight. He had planned to pin the human down with Gravity Tornado, but the scene and the faint stirring of his own bloodline made him pause. Playing around a little seemed fine.
To the Lord, that never-before-seen Magic felt oddly familiar, like an echo from his blood. The small dragon-man who looked like a leader rushing straight at him was also interesting. With a casual gesture, he used Energy Field and Gravity Tornado to seize the sun in midair and pull it back the other way.
Holding the fireball with a diameter of over ten meters, Belial noticed something unusual. "So it is not just a simple Fireball. That is interesting." Instead of weakening with distance, the fireball was absorbing heat from its surroundings and growing larger.
That heat absorption even tried to act on his body, and it would not explode on contact. Instead, it worked like a vortex, dragging enemies in, stripping away heat while crushing and burning them. In other words, those hit by it would freeze to death first, then burn.
The explanation was awkward, but it broadened Belial's view. This refined form of Magic was far more delicate than his old habit of just stacking power and smashing things flat. He probed the dense spell structure with Energy Field and found that while the foundation was somewhat familiar, most of it was completely new.
After imprinting the structure in his mind, he located the points that handled heat intake and output. A grin spread across his face. "Let me see how big this thing can get."
Under Belial's control, the remaining heat from the surrounding magma was forcibly pressed into the fireball. In an instant, it swelled to nearly thirty meters across. The enormous fireball radiated heat like flaring coronas, and even to Belial it felt close to the limit of what the structure could hold.
"Is that about enough?" he said calmly. Then he hurled the fireball straight back.
Lyles Edward watched in disbelief as the pitch-black evil dragon toyed with the Draconic Magic he had only managed to release by risking his life. In a single moment, control of the spell was almost completely stolen, and it was expanded to its theoretical maximum. The sight was so overwhelming that he instinctively checked his bloodline's feedback.
Bloodline reaction: just a mindless dragon beast, easily blown apart. Who would believe that? Lyles Edward would rather believe this was a mutated ancient dragon with its own exclusive Laws.
The next scene made even him and the eye embedded in his greatsword stare wide. That enormous sun was thrown back at him. It detonated at peak output, lighting half the dark sky red as Lyles Edward raised his greatsword to block.
Even the aftershock scorched his entire body, leaving the smell of burned flesh. Scales fell away, and the wing on his back was reduced to a charred skeleton. He was blasted backward, coughing up blackened blood.
Lyles Edward had no doubt that if he had been at the center, he would likely have died outright. Still, his goal was mostly achieved. "Just a little longer," he muttered.
Seeing the two Gold behind him already retreating with the rest of the Dragon Hunter Corps, he showed a faint smile. His wounds began to recover under the effect of dragon blood, and he gave up on using spells. If this dragon was that overwhelming in magic, then its massive body had to be clumsy, and close combat without head-on clashes should work.
He failed to notice flesh-like barbs growing from the greatsword in his hand, sinking into his palm and nearly fusing with it. Even his thoughts were quietly changing. Using floating rocks as footholds, he darted through the air and charged at the Black Dragon, which slowly turned its head toward him.
His Battle Aura erupted under his feet, boosting his speed again. He performed an almost unbelievable maneuver in midair and slipped into a blind spot. With a roar, he brought the ancestral dragon-slaying greatsword down in a brutal strike.
A teeth-grinding crash echoed out, followed by recoil strong enough to split his palm. In dragonized state, with Battle Aura and inherited techniques, the blow could have split mountains. Instead, it only made him bleed.
The Black Dragon's body did not move at all, and Lyles Edward could feel its absurd density and weight. He retreated at once without hesitation. "How can something this ridiculous exist?"