With the backpack added, MOGUERA's firepower rose by more than a tier, firing continuously while ignoring damage to the outer armor. The constantly spinning drill-like right arm smashed into the barrier, metal screeching as the shield's Shard was torn by Rend. From within emerged a huge black fist and the gaping jaws of a Black Dragon.
One hand restrained the right arm, while the jaws bit off the gun barrels on the left side. Space Claw carved deep marks into the thicker armor and kept releasing internal radiation. The drill from the mouth extended under deformation and stabbed into the neck of the Great Dragon, producing a harsh grinding sound that made Belial feel a slight sting.
A thick yet flexible tail wrapped around MOGUERA's shoulder, explosions ringing out with the flow of energy as it tried to crush the neck apart. "You are strong, but you are still a bit short." Despite its adaptable metal making it agile, MOGUERA could not match Belial in close combat, and multiple structures were damaged.
A golden laser pierced the sky, and Belial dodged in time, awkwardly bracing his arms behind him to avoid the beam. He opened his mouth wide, preparing a Spiral Heat Ray at the head. With a loud impact, he was knocked flying by the rear backpack, which twisted in midair to try to entangle him.
He tore it apart with brute force and searing energy, ripping the entire backpack in half. Startled, Belial crossed his arms to defend as MOGUERA seized the chance to open its abdominal cannons and unleash full firepower again. Even without the backpack, the assault was still fierce.
Light Cannon shots and lasers splashed bright sparks across the black body of the Great Dragon. As MOGUERA charged forward, Belial roared and more white crystals grew around him. This time, however, MOGUERA released gray-white metallic particles and deployed several components.
These formed an energy suppression field that interfered with the crystals' amplification, using metal's absorption properties to counter Belial. Missiles locked onto the crystals and destroyed them one by one, making Belial pause in surprise at how familiar the tactic felt. "But it does not matter."
He did not care that his domain move was being countered, since anything used openly would be targeted eventually. After the exchange, Belial knew he was still far stronger and had no fear at all. "Just do it. Take my space burst punch."
Under heat and brute force, thick armor was destroyed, one arm left barely hanging before being completely severed by a crystalline tail blast. Amid roaring, Belial tore off the other arm as well. Against something that could self-repair, directly reducing body mass was the best method.
Another crushing strike shattered the abdominal armor and destroyed the most dangerous cannon inside. At that moment, the mouth drill of MOGUERA spun rapidly and fired, turning most of its head into a drill missile that curved in midair and struck the same neck wound it had drilled earlier.
Belial felt a brief surprise. The drill pierced the outer scales under combined impact and explosive force, and liquid metal rushed inside through the narrow hole. In Ludwig's design, this should have invaded the body and destroyed vital organs.
"It seems I will not need that move. I win." Ludwig grinned savagely, confident no one could hear him. How could any creature be indestructible on the inside.
In theory, that was true, if the inside was actually fragile. The spider's eyes widened. "Impossible."
"This move is pretty good. It might have worked on the old me." Belial pulled out the missile and shoved it back into MOGUERA's mouth. With Wraith Constitution layered with his crystalline constitution, even his internal defense was greatly enhanced, down to every drop of blood.
The liquid metal failed to invade and was beaten apart by muscle and blood, then expelled as regeneration surged. A Spiral Heat Ray shot destroyed MOGUERA's head, while the tail pierced the abdomen and detonated crystals inside, wrecking internal structures. The massive body collapsed again.
"That is enough. I will send you on your way." Belial pinned it down, standing over it as orange-red light surged between his back spines while he charged power. An energy reaction more violent than before appeared.
"No, it is not over yet." The spider was never a beast that charged like the Lord, but a patient hunter. With no other choice, Ludwig triggered his last resort as the chest's eight-pointed spider sigil formed metal barbs that stabbed toward Belial's chest, releasing power beyond Laws.
As the peak of Authority, its strength surpassed all, though in his current state it was far weaker and used through a remote medium. Still, he sacrificed part of himself to unleash a single mental attack meant to destroy the soul outright. The power slipped unseen into the Black Dragon and charged straight for the soul.
What it saw was darkness, deeper than the void beyond the world, stretching without end. Then a light appeared, expanding into a blazing red sun with a corona, shining so fiercely it burned through the spider's vision. The will was instantly consumed, fleeing in terror before being swept away.
The sun sank back into darkness. Outside, Ludwig stared in agony and disbelief at the Great Dragon that should have died, untouched. The reactor roared as Belial's body glowed, orange-red light pulsing with hints of crimson.
"This will make sure you are completely erased." He opened his mouth, unleashing a beam like lightning from the heavens, power surpassing Spiral Heat Ray itself. It fell like a sun crashing onto the horizon. "Corona Beam!"
"...Where did you pick this up from again?" Several dull metallic thuds sounded, and Lilith raised her head to look at the even taller, strangely familiar gray-white metal mountain in front of her. By conservative estimate, it had to weigh tens of thousands of tons, a mass so excessive that she slapped her own face in disbelief.
She had only just managed to convince herself not to question where this dragon, who did not seem very bright, kept getting such things from. But it had not been long at all, and it was already this absurd again. Was he going out to restock supplies, and was the storage space on her Sky Island about to overflow?
"How exactly did you get all this metal?" Lilith foolishly tried to make Belial understand, but he only tilted his head as usual. When he tried to explain with images, she could barely follow them either, seeing two people in bulky suits trading flashy attacks while smashing incomprehensible models.
Belial withdrew the stitched-together footage of a space battle version of MOGUERA from his Otherworld imagery, and Lilith once again felt her mind failing to keep up. She sighed and continued with today's lesson. After teaching for so many days, aside from finer theory and hands-on details, she had already taught Belial almost everything, simply because his learning ability was terrifying.
Or rather, it was his absurd memory, calculation power, and extremely precise energy control. Most of the time, he could recreate things perfectly after seeing them only a few times. In Lilith's estimate, once he gained more practical experience, he could be called a Mage anywhere on the continent.
In Belial's understanding, casting a spell meant first learning it and compressing the entire structure into a package, then unpacking it like software when needed. Tools such as Magic Staff, rituals, and prepared sites worked by preloading parts of that package to reduce its size and speed up deployment. His old method of real-time calculation was something others would not even dare imagine, since Magic resembled programming itself, and recently he had begun trying new approaches.
"Even after merging with the God of Destruction, the changes to my body make this usage feel strange." The unity of body and soul was still showing its effects. Simply put, where thinking once relied on the brain, he could now think with his toes.
It felt odd, but that was the reality. His entire massive body was like a supercomputer, with greatly expanded memory, and over these days he had nearly emptied the stockpile of this Witch. Lilith had grown used to it, deciding she could no longer treat him as a normal living being, and chose to teach something extreme.
"Our abilities are actually quite similar in many ways." After some study, Lilith confirmed that both of them grew crystals, both had amplification effects, both could deploy domains similar to Energy Field, and both relied on crystal-related powers. She mastered the Six Great Elements, while Belial was forced to master them.
Since they were so alike in this regard, she suddenly thought of something. "Since we are so similar, can you learn my Laws?"
Using the Six Great Elements as a foundation, Lilith unfolded her Laws domain. Her extraordinary Magic spread outward, allowing her to freely control all Magic and elements within it. This domain did not specialize in one direction but was instead highly versatile.
At its limit, it was less about what it could do and more about what it could not. Lilith understood the danger of spreading herself too thin, so her domain developed along only two paths. The first was extreme compression.