Even ignoring whether it was possible, imagining Battle Aura formed by a body that size was strange enough. Basic training alone would mean he might need to uproot a mountain just to do push-ups. In reality, it was not as hard as it sounded.
"In the end, it is still just energy," Belial said. Once he understood its nature, that was enough. It was simply a variant of Magic, and he was confident he could make it work.
Lilith had cultivation manuals for Battle Aura, but none meant for such massive creatures, and reading was still a problem. As a Magic specialist, she could not demonstrate it either. In the end, she handed him an ancient ritual war dance used by a lizardfolk race to train Battle Aura, mostly pictures.
After copying a few poses, Belial felt no subtle sensation at all. Still, from earlier abstract sketches, he roughly understood that training Battle Aura required pressure. Even lions did not train like this, let alone Godzilla.
What could possibly make him feel pressure? "Myself," he answered. He used Gravity Tornado to apply mountain-moving force, enhanced within a focused Magic Array under Energy Field, and millions of tons pressed down on him.
Under increasing pressure, he carefully performed the movements. With Energy Field and physical stress at their limits, he noticed changes in the pure Magic he had set aside as samples. That should be Battle Aura, tiny, just a trace.
Even that trace gave him far greater control than normal energy and caused more physical damage than pure Magic. It could even repel or accept elements and Magic according to his will. Using it with Magic was stiff and tiring, but he did not care.
With a sample in hand, there was no need for long training. He analyzed the structure and converted energy in bulk. After casually blowing apart a few mountains, he began thinking about what else Battle Aura could do.
Was it only physical enhancement? No. Infused with his will, it sparked an idea. Since his training began with a war dance, why not adapt it?
"What are you planning?" Lilith tilted her head as the Black Dragon before her stood upright on its hind legs and leaned back. She felt an unprecedented wave of Battle Aura spread out, heavy yet thinly distributed, vibrating through the air in a clear pattern.
The vibrations reached her ears and formed a lighthearted, unfamiliar tune. It was a strong piece of music from some ancient Terra-era electronic entertainment. Then she saw the huge Black Dragon, Belial, start dancing.
It was not the given war dance but something far stranger, absurd and oddly funny. Tail upright and face stiff, he danced as Lilith stared blankly, then burst out laughing. "You did all that just for this? You use it to dance?"
Mid-laugh, her expression changed. For some reason, she dismissed Magic and placed her feet on the ground. In her shocked disbelief, her limbs stopped obeying her.
And then she started dancing too.
About twenty minutes later, because the background music was playing far too loud, Belial only stopped after failing to hear someone shouting, "Stop already." Facing the shocking spectacle he had created, Lilith felt like she had used up an entire year's worth of exercise. She twisted her sore calves, ground her teeth, and still very responsibly wrote everything down.
She originally wanted to give him a hard kick or two, but after considering that the one who would feel the pain was herself, Lilith gave up on that idea. "Dun dun dun… ugh, why am I singing again. Forget it, that feeling just now…" She was so tired she was nearly collapsing, and after kicking him twice with Magic, she began to record and analyze what had just happened.
Very quickly, she was struck by shock and disbelief. If she remembered correctly, the moment she heard that piece of music, her body started moving on its own, and her mind was completely filled by the sound. "Mental intrusion? This guy used mental intrusion through Battle Aura and got into my head, and then… it feels like it is not that simple?"
Who was she, after all? She was already at the Gold tier, had grasped Ascendant Hall-level Laws, and was only one step away from wearing the crown of honor, with extremely strong Mental Power. Her body was covered in countless automatic defensive spells, yet she had been instantly forced into control without any resistance.
"Under that ridiculous surface, there is something this terrifying hidden inside?" Lilith held her head, feeling that there was more to it than that. She had never seen dance movements like those before, and due to her physical condition she rarely exercised, yet when she heard the music, her body moved together in a strangely coordinated way with a Great Dragon.
It felt as if her body had disconnected from her will, easily twisting and stepping along with the rhythm. This was no longer ordinary mental intrusion, but something approaching the level of contamination. "Contamination… that sounds too absurd. This dragon is not some kind of Evil God, right? So does this dragon actually possess some kind of Laws that I do not understand?"
Lilith tentatively guessed that the situation was like someone unknowingly unbuttoning your collar. If they could undo a button, they could naturally do much more. If even someone at her Ascendant Hall level had almost no resistance, then lower ranks were not worth mentioning, especially when the upper limit was still unknown.
This guy only used the ability to play music and dance, but if it were used for proper mental control, the advice would be to shave your head and stamp your forehead immediately. She took a sharp breath to calm herself. Unfortunately, it was not that simple, and after testing this basic effect, Belial had of course thought about doing exactly that.
After figuring out the nature of this thing, Battle Aura and ordinary Magic were, to him, just things he could switch between at will, two sides of the same die with no essential difference. Unlike ordinary Magic, the most important part of Battle Aura was that it contained extremely strong personal will, but even so it was suppression rather than direct mind control.
Will could be contagious, and as long as Belial's mood reached a certain level of excitement, this contagion could be strengthened. Ordinary creatures would be infected and temporarily link with him. Strictly speaking, this was resonance rather than direct control, and the prerequisite was that his own emotions had to fluctuate to a certain degree.
That was how this kind of forced control came about. It could only be called a simple application, since it was not limited to one song, and could be swapped for others as well, though the effect might vary with emotional changes, which he had not tested yet. As for that absurdly strong mental contamination effect, Belial did not know where it came from, or rather, he had not noticed it at all.
So what was really going on? Next came several rounds of stubborn testing by Lilith. Whether she deliberately constructed mental defenses in advance or physically blocked sound transmission, none of it worked. As long as any one of the three, the coverage of Battle Aura, movement, or music, was affected, she would be forcibly controlled.
Later, Lilith even buried herself directly underground. Based on earlier results, as long as Belial played the music, she would always lose control. In the end, her conclusion was that this guy had a fundamental and decisive difference at the very core, and she even tried to copy his release method herself.
The result could only be described as minimal, barely enough to control a small squirrel, worlds apart from something that could directly force control over a top-tier archmage. After dancing more than ten times, Lilith finally settled down and began the final daily observation of growth. "Today, the size increased by about three inches compared to before… ah, it is bigger again."
She routinely recorded Belial's physical data, and after being shocked so many times, her mood was calm, yet each time still broke a new lower limit. A body size far exceeding ancient dragons, absurd weight, and even more exaggerated physical strength, along with an internal energy structure she could not comprehend. Any one of these alone was unbelievable.
When she used Mental Power to probe inside Belial's body, she felt intense burning, and even if he allowed it, the process would be forcibly interrupted after only tens of seconds. She even felt as if she had seen the sun, like a mortal using bare eyes to observe a solar eclipse. As for the scale of Magic inside him, taking herself as the lowest unit of one, it was already racing into the thousands with no sign of stopping.
What concerned her most was the crystallization on his back. Lilith discovered that it seemed to be a kind of heat dissipation organ with the highest energy conduction efficiency she had ever seen. It absorbed and released all forms of Magic and elements without discrimination, and after further observation, she found that the efficiency could even be adjusted according to Belial's own will.
"You are not a dragon at all." She paused, then corrected herself.