She looked at Belial again. "I will keep the rest for you and try to research things that will be useful to you." Belial tilted his head, clearly not understanding, but that did not matter to her.
"I need to think about how to use all this," she murmured.
Belial flew back toward the battlefield. He wanted to see if the Lord would try to strike again.
He was not stupid. This was clearly not just mining. Blowing up crystal deposits that were known to explode did not look like excavation at all.
Even if they wanted to build something, they would not bring a giant combat machine dozens of meters tall unless there was another goal. Hunting him did not quite fit either, because a real hunt would have set traps before he woke, not lost most of their people in one blast.
Mephist did not believe absorbing Magic ore alone was worth such a formation. There had to be a deeper reason, something that risked exposure and aimed to erase all witnesses. "Looks like my heated little nest is not so simple," he thought.
He pushed the dusty thoughts aside and focused on something important. He had memorized the scent of the MOGUERA controller, and this return was to see if anyone came back. If they did, it would confirm many things.
The hostility aimed at him was open and crude, different from before. It felt low and vile, and since they came to him first, this feud was set. He did not know why, but he instinctively disliked the other side.
Still, waiting like this was annoying. Why did every enemy he met have the habit of not dying in one fight? "What a pain," he muttered.
"Where did it go?" Ludwig could no longer find more metal Shard fragments after a third scan. His face was dark, since tens of thousands of tons were missing and the recovered amount was pitiful.
This metal, once called nanomachine metal by humans, could not possibly be produced in this era. Even using a small portion, every loss mattered to him. The only explanation was that the dragon who defeated him had noticed this detail.
"Greedy dragon. Just wait," Ludwig snarled, then paused. A steward ran over, panting, and bowed. "My lord, we have a reaction from what you were looking for."
"Where?" Ludwig grabbed the man's shoulders in excitement, fingers digging into flesh. "The third mine!" the steward cried.
With a single squeeze, the steward collapsed like knocked-over blocks of Shard. Ludwig strode out of the tent.
The core energy of that weapon had not been buried directly when it crashed. It had activated self-protection and hidden within layered spatial gaps. The Magic Crystal Ore vein here was proof of leaking energy.
After years of searching, Ludwig finally traced the nearest coordinate to reality. He was only a step away, blocked by some unknown dragon. "But it does not matter. I finally found it."
Deep underground, all soldiers and workers were gone. A web of dense threads spread behind Ludwig, and his delighted smile infected everyone above, making them mirror it.
Eight spider legs formed from countless tiny wailing faces stretched out and pierced reality. They braced against the edges of the Rift and pulled, glowing threads probing inside.
"So close. So close," he whispered as threads broke through layers of space, cut by unknown defenses that only excited him more. He poured in more threads, and the weakened core could no longer resist.
A blinding light burst from the Rift, and the Magic density surged visibly, filling the air with glow. "Hahaha. I got it. Finally."
A sphere wrapped in silver metal radiated red light, scarred with visible Rift damage and distortion. Immense Magic waves poured out from it. This was the heart of the weapon.
"I got it," Ludwig cried.
"I got it," Belial said with a smile.
In the next instant, Gravity Tornado exerted millions of tons of force and crushed Ludwig into pulp. Space Claw drove straight into the ground, smashing the remains into Shard dust, and the massive Great Dragon tore open the rock above and fired a blue-white spiral beam that erased everything left.
No one above realized it, but all remaining personnel died at the same instant, flattened by Belial using Gravity Tornado. After adding a couple of freezing blasts to be sure, Belial looked at his reward with satisfaction.
"So this is what they wanted," he said. Feeling the massive Magic, he licked his lips and lifted the glowing sphere into his claw with Gravity Tornado. To him, it was pure value.
"This must be where my warm little nest gets its energy from. Very nice. Thanks," he said.
"No. No!" A single exploded eye stared at the Great Dragon holding the sphere, veins writhing on the ground before a tail sweep crushed it. Why did this dragon come back? Then again, there was never a reason he had to leave.
In rage, Ludwig refused to lose this core. From far away, he forcibly pulled threads, sacrificing puppet souls as beacons, and nearly three thousand people in a distant city collapsed at once.
Spider fury spread as threads pierced space again, cutting away more metal and teleporting it over. The pieces fused with what remained, assembling into complex parts that moved under thread control.
With a thunderous roar, an even larger MOGUERA stood up, its back sprouting spider-like mechanical limbs lined with cannons. All guns opened at once, locking onto Belial underground.
Belial had just swallowed the sphere and flown back up when he saw the new MOGUERA and the incoming barrage. He stared at the modified machine for a moment, stunned. "No way."
He almost lost composure. "What is this, strapping a super mech G flight pack onto it?"
Photon Reflection Shield activated. Even firepower nearly twice as fierce as before failed to break through this layer of Wall of Sighs, and though the surface flickered under the barrage, it never collapsed. Belial stared at the new form in front of him and found it hard to react.
Honestly, at least by his own taste, the MOGUERA frame was not good-looking at all, but he could understand it since the original design came from the old fifties. The version that appeared in Space G already felt like it had beauty filters and heavy editing turned on. The one in front of him now felt more like some kind of Evil God special edition.
Overall there were no huge changes, but an eight-pointed spider-like sigil had appeared on the chest armor. The whole body bristled with extra gun ports, and the arm-mounted lasers had become split three-claw structures with cannons extending from between them. The shoulders and hips carried even more weapons, and most eye-catching of all was the backpack-like module on its back, packed with multiple muzzles.
Belial hesitated to comment. It looked a bit like a mech dragon, but the design also leaned toward Super Mechanical G, and since the original shape was already abstract, the stitched-together result was hard to judge. Still, judging from the scale of the display, Belial was sure the other side was panicking.
If they were panicking, that meant he was doing something right. "This should be a lot more fun to fight now." He was not in a hurry to absorb that thing, so he sealed it in his stomach for now, and white crystals grew again along his side as Photon Reflection Shield bent the incoming light aside.
At this moment, MOGUERA turned into a crazed firepower turret, burning resources without restraint. For a time, it even shook Photon Reflection Shield itself. It really had that Super Mechanical G feel.
"But this still is not enough. You think I only know how to take hits?" Another Spiral Heat Ray shot out, but this time it was intercepted midair by MOGUERA's beams and exploded. Unlike before, Belial charged at extreme speed and immediately followed with a triple burst.
Three Spiral Heat Ray shots broke through the firepower net, and one was about to land on MOGUERA when a sudden barrier appeared. It did not block the attack head-on, as the beam was tugged at by something like threads and skewed to the right, then deflected by the barrier in coordination. "Interesting."
Ludwig had learned from the last encounter and knew how dangerous that level of attack was. This time, instead of tanking it directly, he manipulated Authority from behind the scenes and deflected the strike. The consumption was higher, but as long as he could reclaim the core, it would all be worth it.
He had been overjoyed when he sensed that the dragon had left, and then detected the core here, so Ludwig came eagerly to dig it out. But why did it come back at the last moment. The plan was almost completely ruined.
With killing intent surging into Rend, Ludwig forced control over the massive machine, advancing step by step while continuing to unleash overwhelming firepower. "You have angered me, dragon. I have already thought of an ending for you."
He was certain he would not lose, even if the opponent was a Great Dragon who had grasped Laws. That was because he possessed Authority that stood above Laws, and that alone was enough to secure victory. Winning did not always require one side to fall, and spiders were not hunters that charged like the Lord.