A deafening blast followed. Nearby personnel were thrown into a blockbuster explosion of flesh and steel as a spinning, cone-shaped white crystal burst from the ground. It released a massive shockwave, hurled everyone aside, and then shot through the air like a missile straight at Ludwig.
He raised a hand, his expression darkening as he sensed the energy. Threads shot from his fingers into the earth, splitting the ground with Rend as enormous, twisted metal claws emerged and closed around him like a fist. The guidance crystal shattered into Shard, affecting a hundred-meter radius.
Shards, energy, and shockwaves killed or wounded most of those present. As the primary target, Ludwig staggered, blood cracking at the corner of his mouth. "This power is that high? It actually forced me to use this."
The area was in ruins, several metal claws snapped by Rend. Ludwig stood in the crater, breathing hard and scowling. At the level of Gold, few could have endured that attack, so the loss of his troops now made sense.
"An automatic defense mechanism? Did it track me through the puppets?" The thought was absurd. He took a step, then felt the same vibration again and cursed as several more missile-like crystals burst from the ground.
Far away near Sky Island, Belial seemed to sense something and turned his head. A huge Magic hand pushed it back at once. "Pay attention. Listen to the lesson." "Ah."
Even without understanding the words, Belial understood the intent and looked back at the board. The distance was too great to know what was happening elsewhere, and there was no real worry, since those crystals had been prepared carefully.
Through the underground veins, Magic could be sent to maintain the sleeping Magic Array from afar, though something faint had been felt through that link just now. "It is fine," Belial thought, settling back. No one would seriously mess with things that explode on touch.
Belial had temporarily drained the Magic from that area, and at least until his own nest was warm again, he was still attending class. Now Lilith finally could not hold it together anymore and cut away part of the literacy lessons, replacing them with other material that included Magic. There was little left to teach anyway, since Belial had memorized almost all syllables, even if true understanding was still out of reach.
At best, he knew how some object names sounded, but anything about social relations was still a blank, and Lilith did not know how to help with that. If they wanted to communicate using a real language, it was still A Long Road Ahead. So Lilith turned to something both of them were very interested in, Magic.
Language barriers meant many theories of Magic could not be explained clearly, but demonstrations worked just fine. These were not advanced techniques, only common applications, a few specialized tricks, and basic types that mattered far more to a high-level mage like Lilith. She had seen how Belial cast spells and knew he did not need high-tier Magic, preferring to give him paints and a clean white sheet rather than finished answers.
For all his reckless behavior, many of his ideas were things she had never seen before. The kind of thinking that opened a new path was far more valuable than ordinary knowledge. "So let me see what you can come up with this time."
Over several days of lessons, Lilith managed, through abstract exchanges, to stuff most of the basics into Belial's head. Now she floated nearby with a small notebook, ready to start a pop quiz. "So let me think what kind of trick I can pull off," Belial said, clearly excited.
With the added foundation, he finally realized that his old habit of copying shapes and randomly stitching things together was extremely wasteful. One of his biggest breakthroughs was learning how to use Mental Power to guide and imprint spells. Mental Power and Computational Power were different things, the former like tendrils of the soul, the latter only a display of one's own ability.
"These Magic really are interesting," he said. "Complete spell structures can be directly imprinted into places like Mental Power, or the soul, or the brain, something like that." He also realized he had been going the wrong way with casting, since calculating every circuit node on the fly was flexible but far too costly.
Even with powerful Computational Power and multitasking, there was huge redundancy. Fixed common parts could have been reused. Before, he built spell structures in his head, ran the model, released them, and then threw everything away.
Next time he cast the same spell, he had to start from scratch again. Now he had learned copy and paste. "Those patterns inside the Crystal Ball are basically the base modules," he said. "When I need them, I just build on top."
A mage's Magic Staff worked the same way, preparing an opening so the rest became easier. It sacrificed flexibility, but that was often unnecessary. "It's like smashing ants," he said. "I don't need fancy ideas, just pick a cost-effective spell and drop it."
With knowledge from Lilith's treasured books, full of diagram-based Magic Array, and her personal demonstrations, Belial built a dedicated storage space in his mind for this material. After realizing Energy Field was far more useful than he thought, his thoughts became increasingly active. His understanding of Magic was also something Lilith admired.
To some people, Magic was just a tool for combat, another form of blade or sword. To others like Lilith, Magic was universal, capable of anything, with failure belonging only to the user. Belial had reached this understanding early, which was why even with something like Godzilla, he still cared so much about Magic, whose raw power was far below Spiral Heat Ray.
The glow of Magic appeared in his hand as Belial began constructing something familiar to modern eyes. Inside Energy Field, he shaped it as Magic, forcing elements and structure into fixed forms and skipping many material limits. Using wind, fire, and lightning as the Lord, with all of the Six Great Elements involved, a special structure formed, and raging flames burst from a release port.
"Hm?" Lilith tilted her head as she recorded the structure and guessed its function. "Just releasing concentrated flames? That cannot be all. With this range, such a strange structure must be doing more."
She noticed parts of the spell moving in a steady, accelerating pattern around a circle, nine segments in total. To her eyes, this regular motion looked less like Magic and more like the machines of Paraten Empire. She might not understand it, but if someone far away like Fei'er Li saw it, they would know exactly what it was.
That was the heart of a machine. "Flight support Magic, aviation engine, version one revised to version two, reset, version three will kill you," Belial announced proudly.
He looked at the finished product with satisfaction. With earlier ideas and his new knowledge, he had finally made something presentable. His old flight relied on gravity to lift him and storms to push him forward, later adding jet-style thrust.
This newest result could adjust thrust and angle in real time, with more power and force. Inspired by engines he had once seen and his own reactions when breathing Spiral Heat Ray, it was still, at its core, just Magic. He released two sets of these engines along his sides and powered them directly with his own energy.
"Up we go," he shouted. With an explosive launch, Mephist shot upward, breaking the sound barrier in an instant and racing into the clouds like a burning meteor.
With his body already a top-tier platform, his speed surpassed previous limits, and the heat meant nothing to him. Energy supplied by Godzilla was far stronger than fuel, flowing through Energy Field-bound channels and releasing tremendous thrust. Clouds were split apart and shredded by the storm behind him as he kept climbing, his speed nearing Mach ten.
But in his excitement, Belial failed to notice something. This was only a usable prototype, and small flaws had gone unnoticed. His own strength had masked them, and they had been bearable until now.
As his emotions surged, the Authority hidden within him stirred. Something seeped into the Magic structures on both sides, energy reactions becoming wildly violent as the structures rapidly collapsed. "Hm?" Boom.
Lilith looked up to see a fireball a kilometer wide slowly fading in midair. A familiar black figure wobbled, then quickly flew back down and landed steadily. She marked the record for this Magic as still needing improvement.
The Magic demonstration ended there. The next test was Battle Aura. "You actually learned it?" she said. "So creatures beyond humans can learn Battle Aura too. That is a nice discovery."
Teaching Battle Aura to Belial had been much harder than Magic. This energy was still a form of Magic, but it required long-term training to imprint one's will as a the Lord being. It was more destructive but lost the ability to communicate with elements for Magic, so when Belial asked to learn it, Lilith's expression had been complicated.