Black iron, Silver, Gold. In this world, those were the three stages of strength beyond the ordinary.
The body is tempered in black iron. Worn down over time, it begins to shine, reflecting light like silver. And when silver burns bright enough to ignite the soul, it turns into gold.
For most, reaching gold feels like the top. But once they arrive, they realize the truth: beyond gold lies a chasm deeper than anything they've crossed before.
The step from gold to what comes next is bigger than the entire climb from black iron to gold. And when that path ends, when no road lies ahead, there's only one direction left to go: Up.
That's where Law begins.
It's when a person's will and understanding of the world become something real, something that is. When power no longer obeys rules because it starts making them. When one leaves the mortal realm and begins to shape reality.
This is the King Tier. It's not just a level, it's stepping into the impossible. Rewriting the way the world works. Like making an apple fall up instead of down, just because you willed it so.
"King Tier I."
Malrik didn't remember when he crossed that threshold. The memories were too tangled, too full of borrowed thoughts, souls he had consumed, memories clearer than those their owners had ever known.
Every time he used this power, he had to fight not to drown in them. They were part of him now. He couldn't cut them out, couldn't ignore them.
That was the cost. Not a side effect, but the very nature of his strength. The price for touching the divine.
But "not now" didn't mean "never."
When the obsession burned hot enough, when his twisted artistic hunger took over, he would use it.
And right now? He was burning. He had surived Belial attacks, and now prepared counterattack."
"Hahahaha! Come, come, come! This is Movement I of the symphony I composed just for you! I promise it won't disappoint!"
From the ruins of the mountain rose a monstrous creation, a grotesque cathedral of flesh, held aloft by dozens of muscular arms gripping lotus-shaped platforms. Thousands of mouths sang in eerie harmony, like a choir from hell.
With each beat of its swollen heart, strands of tendon and sinew stretched and snapped. The wind screamed through its hollow bones, its exposed spine vibrating like a pipe organ.
Skin masks made of human faces shifted across its surface, flickering through emotions like a living gallery. Naked muscle and pale skin pulsed together like a breathing, bleeding monument.
It was art. Malrik had become living art. Some edgy heavy metal fans might've called it beautiful.
Belial didn't. Actually, he hated it.
It was disgusting. Obscene. Just looking at it made him want to hurl.
And yet... he also liked it.
Not the monster, but what came with it, after that huge red dot transformed into this ugly blob, his system went wild. The XP boost was massive. Interface permissions unlocked. It felt like the thing was stuffed with power just begging to be taken.
Maybe the boss had entered phase two? Maybe it was just feeling generous?
Didn't matter. Ugly, bloated, ridiculous, if it screamed and dropped loot, then fine.
"You just gave me three great reasons to kill you. Not doing it would be rude."
Around him, the remaining monsters, the ones that used to entertain him, had lost their meaning. They were just distractions now.
Time to clear the mobs. His crystal tail whipped out, glowing with destructive energy, and sent a devastation through the battlefield. One swing, and the area around him was flattened. Leftovers scattered like trash in a storm.
His eyes locked on the grotesque cathedral standing like a tumor on the mountain ruins. It was loud. It was ugly. And now it was pissing him off.
'Time to shut it up.' He let out a roar that shook the sky. His back spines lit up as an Ice Beam, colder than anything before, launched straight at the creature.
The monstrosity reacted fast. Dozens of hands reached up and clasped together to form one gigantic palm. It blocked the beam.
Seriously?
Did it forget what happened to the last thing that tried that?
Even if it had triple the health of anything else he'd fought, it had no right to tank that kind of blast. Unless... Maybe it couldn't move. Maybe it got too fat after transforming.
Or maybe... "Does it have a trick up its sleeve? A power that can actually match this?"
Then Belial noticed it. From the center of that palm, cold light started flowing outward, not from his own beam, but from inside it.
The creature was absorbing his energy. His Ice Beam froze and shattered every hand it touched, but they kept growing back, faster, stronger.
The ice particles in his beam were being neutralized. Absorbed. Cycled. The flesh was adapting. Its resistance was increasing.
It wasn't just enduring, it was evolving. "What is this… what kind of freak ability is this?"
Malrik, locked inside his monstrous creation, felt his outstretched arm begin to shake. He couldn't pull it back. Couldn't stop it. The power was coursing through everything, out of control.
Tens of thousands of bodies stitched together were tearing apart. Bones snapped. Blood sprayed like fountains. The structure was being yanked apart, dragged down.
Only one force could do this. The dragon.
"You're the first opponent I've used this on since coming to this world," Belial said calmly.
Inside him, the atomic furnace roared to life. Energy surged through his crystalline frame like liquid fire. Heat radiated through every vein, every crack in his armored body.
The humming sound of something ancient and unstoppable filled the air.
All magic suppression was gone. All elemental locks had been shattered. His energy field boiled with chaotic power.
His spines lit up, not cold blue, but deep crimson, pulsing in rhythm like a heartbeat.
Light burst from his body. From his open jaws came not frost, but a beam of scorching white fire.
The King of Monsters. The Godslayer. "Atomic Breath!"
The blue-white beam tore through the world like it was made of paper. As it should, nothing could survive that.
A streak of glowing white and electric blue burst from Belial's jaws, not something born of nature, but a force from beyond. It wasn't just light. It was annihilation, pure, focused destruction. The dragon's signature extinction ray, a power worthy of the Beast King himself.
It wasn't a simple breath. It was the product of energy drawn from deep within, a thermal beam packed with enough heat to turn mountains into mist. As his internal reactor hit critical mass, the crystal spines along his back lit up in sequence, tail to head, energy pulsing visibly until his whole body glowed.
Then it all surged forward.
The energy raced through his body, along his bones, through his blood, concentrating at his throat. And then it erupted.
The beam, over fifty thousand degrees, pierced the cathedral of flesh. That abomination barely lasted ten seconds under the blast before it broke apart and melted away, layer by layer.
And even that wasn't the end.
The shockwave slammed into the mountain behind it. Rock and soil instantly vaporized, launching molten slag in every direction. The mountain was gone. Obliterated.