Most of the Magic Array nodes that gathered Magic were gone without a trace. Only about half remained, and the balance was broken, with Magic in chaos. Fixing it would take a great deal of time.
More critically, the half of the nodes that used some of her own body crystals as materials had lost her control and connection. Yet they still seemed to be functioning as nodes. It felt absurd, like a bicycle chain snapping but the bike somehow still being rideable.
To investigate, Lilith followed a large cavity of unknown origin and went deep into the underground veins. There, she discovered something unusual. "What is this…"
Clusters of white crystals, like parasites clinging to the ore veins, densely occupied every corner and emitted a faint glow. In her perception, these crystals had invaded the Magic Array circuits she had set up and the Magic-rich nodes, constantly absorbing Magic. Strangely, they could still form circuits and remain connected to one another.
They also faintly spread an area similar to a domain. Within it, not only was Magic forcibly suppressed and drained, even the mind felt pressure. This sensation was familiar because her own Mana Domain felt much the same, except these crystals were even stronger.
"These crystals… are they from that dragon?" Realizing this, Lilith's curiosity was fully ignited, and she walked deeper. According to her probing, there should be a node-like core ahead.
A towering crystal tree came into view, its branches hung with crystal clusters, reaching all the way to the top of the tunnel. Light from Magic flowed through its trunk and veins. The surrounding crystals were taller and more numerous, and as their light refracted, the scene had an oddly beautiful feel.
"It can even drain my Magic. This is ridiculous." When she placed her hand on the trunk, Lilith found that without deliberate restraint, even a great mage of her level would have her Magic forcibly extracted.
Many mages, including Lilith, could draw out Magic from others. However, when she relaxed her control slightly, she discovered that the mental imprint within her Magic was quickly worn away and directly absorbed into the crystal's internal circulation. She lost that thread of Magic permanently.
That was what made it so outrageous to her. Ordinary extraction was risky and could drive the user mad if mishandled. These crystals, however, took everything regardless of who the original the Lord was, merged it perfectly, and turned it into usable reserves with no risk at all.
Even resisting this drain required a mage of Lilith's level. If a weak Magic apprentice stayed here for a day, they would likely be drained completely. "The aura here is exactly the same as on that dragon. Does that mean the dragon itself can do this too?"
Lilith's expression changed. If she had truly fought that dragon head-on, given the nature of the crystals on her body, she might have been completely countered. "In that case, I have even more reason to find that dragon."
She moved through several more Magic nodes, but all were similarly invaded by the white crystals. They had forcibly entered the original Magic Array cycles and were violently draining Magic. Even the half she still controlled was under heavy strain, and the crystals were continuing to spread outward.
This made things far more troublesome. With half of the Magic Array compromised, she could no longer mobilize its full power to repair her barriers. As for destroying these things, the cycles had already been replaced, and any blast would hit Lilith first.
After finishing her survey, Lilith returned to the Sky Island with mixed feelings. What she saw was her island reduced to only half its former state. And beside it was the Black Dragon, which had somehow come back again.
"Hm?" "If I just ran off like that, would it be kind of bad?"
After guiltily flapping away, Belial had been blown by cold wind in the clouds and finally calmed down. Now he could properly reflect on his reckless behavior. He had failed to slow down and crashed into someone's things, and even if he did not feel it, he was sure he had broken something.
He had also spun someone's Sky Island like a top. "And that stuff in the underground mine… its aura feels a bit like that lady."
Thinking of the crystals he had eaten earlier and comparing them to the Magic Cannon fired at him, Belial broke out in even more sweat. This was not just trampling a lawn, it was smashing the venue and turning the whole island into a toy.
He had planned friendly contact with humans as his first step. Instead, he had bulldozed the entire track before even starting. On top of that, he personally despised Teddy Bear behavior, and what he had done really made him feel embarrassed.
"Looks like I need to apologize… but the problem is I cannot communicate." This huge problem had slowed his Otherworld progress until now.
Since this was his first sincere attempt to approach humans, and he had already messed it up, he needed to show some sincerity. A gift, for example. Unfortunately, his interesting little collections had already vanished along with his stomach during the fight with Rodan.
"Just bringing a couple of monsters does not seem right either. Throwing bloody corpses at her would be even ruder." That might count as sincere in nature, but the other side was human, and who knew if it would be taken as goodwill or intimidation.
A gift had to be something they could understand and probably like. The more he thought, the more tangled he became. Intelligent races thought about far more things than beasts ever did.
"Wait, intelligent races?" "Maybe I have an idea."
"So what are you trying to do?" Although she grew angrier the more she looked, seeing that the Black Dragon did not seem eager to fight, and since she was interested in what was on it, Lilith floated over calmly.
She soon ran into a small problem. She tried the common languages of Rohn Empire and Faris Empire, the tongue of Paraten Empire, Elvish, and even her half-baked Dragon Tongue. She even resorted to gestures, but only then realized that the dragon in front of her was completely illiterate in languages.
She could not understand its frantic gesturing either. The exchange stalled. Belial sighed, a little disappointed even though he had expected this.
Fortunately, he had prepared a gift that should be easy to understand. "For me?"
Lilith watched as the Black Dragon used some unknown power to summon a glittering object from afar. She was cautious at first, but when the human-sized object was placed before her, she froze.
It was a perfect one-to-one statue of herself, crafted from that same white crystal. It even depicted her in the moment of firing, complete with a carefully added background. Seeing the Black Dragon nod enthusiastically, Lilith could not help but smile slightly as she looked at the statue.
"All right." "Then I will accept it."
"Yes, move it over there."
Lilith sat on Belial's shoulder, or more precisely, floated beside it. She used the Magic Staff to give directions as piles of earth and stone weighing tens of thousands of tons were dug out by Gravity Tornado, then cut with precision into equal blocks and tossed to a group of Mud Golem nearby to sort through usable materials.
Stacks of bricks and cement flew on their own toward the space above Sky Island. The foundations slid into place, and the entire building assembled itself in reverse, orderly and neat, to the point that it looked like Disney was secretly building for the Lord. With Belial joining this massive construction effort, the building speed on half of Lilith's Sky Island had increased by a large margin.
As for the Barrier and Magic Array that had been shattered into Shard, she started with the oversized outer repair array that gathered Magic. Lilith decided to replace all of it with Belial's Crystals without hesitation. The efficiency of those crystals far exceeded her own work, gathering energy faster and more cleanly.
When the time came, she only needed to guide Belial to activate the gathering of massive amounts of Magic, compress space, and form a new Barrier. Even so, communication between the two remained a serious problem. Most ideas required repeated demonstrations and a lot of pointing before they could barely understand each other.
Later on, Belial suddenly came up with an idea. Drawings. In short, he reused the tricks he had practiced while sleeping in caves, skillfully applying light between different Magic flows and mixing elements to create colored animated images.
It did not allow for perfect understanding, but it was enough for basic communication. Lilith manipulated the Magic Staff and drew a rough Magic Circle diagram in the air, marking proportions with numbers. She then looked at this Black Dragon with a complicated expression as he casually memorized the complex Magic Array diagram, scaled it up, and embedded it into the newly built Magic Array sequence of Sky Island.
"No matter how many times I see this, it still feels absurd."
Lilith merged the old Magic Array into the new structure, sent her mental force inside, converted it into a form she could control, and let out a sigh. At first, when she roughly understood through drawings that this dragon could use Magic, she had been interested and even shocked.