Once she finally felt safe, her thoughts caught up, and she could not stop complaining about how absurd this all was. Based on old texts she had read, on Ludwig's many oddities, on power that left her unable to resist, on the constant mining of Magic Crystal Ore, and on the core Belial had picked up from the same mine, she pieced together a frightening conclusion. When she judged that the other party might be a servant of an Evil God, she sealed herself with Laws to avoid corruption or worse.
She knew she had left traces of her spell at the scene, but she had no confidence that Belial would not notice, given methods beyond her imagination. Thankfully, when it came to absurdity, this dragon still came out on top. Even so, her curiosity only grew stronger.
"You're not also some kind of Evil God servant, are you? Or do Dragonkin actually have gods too? Which race's god favors you?"
After thinking it through, this seemed like the only answer. Other races besides humans worshiped gods as well, like the Elves who followed the Primal God of Nature, while humans worshiped the God of Light. As for whether Dragonkin had a god of their own, even Lilith did not know, since the education of Great Dragon relied entirely on soul inheritance.
Most Great Dragon lived alone and were proud, making it hard to learn anything from them, but their power and dragon soul inheritance made her suspect there really was a Dragon God. Combined with Belial's unreasonable strength and the unnatural power she sensed from his body, she guessed he might be a favored one without realizing it himself. If some god was secretly backing him, everything made sense.
After returning, Lilith jumped down from the palm and looked at her home, now in even worse shape than before, and sighed. Why was her place always meeting disasters like this. And now it needed repairs again.
"Hm?"
She watched her Sky Island rise back up under some unknown force and turned toward Belial, only to see him already flying away with the red core. He needed to rework the surrounding Magic Array and boost the firepower so that anyone who came would be blown apart. The best way to prevent a home invasion was to make the home stronger than yourself.
"What is that…"
Lilith snapped her head around and aimed her Magic Staff at something beneath the ground. The surface wriggled, bulged, and then silver-white liquid metal seeped out. Seeing it, she became instantly alert and was about to shout for the dragon and crystallize the thing on the spot.
"Wait… wait!"
"Please don't… call… it here, I am not…"
She stared in shock as the metal itself spoke, the sound clearly coming from vibrations within it. Her grip tightened as she raised her voice.
"Who are you? Speak now. I will count down. Two. One."
"No, don't… I don't know either. The database is damaged. I should be the core's built-in ai. Please do not call it over!"
The voice grew smoother as it spoke, no longer mechanical, but matching Lilith's own voice, clearly synthesized. She frowned in confusion.
"AI… what is that?"
She searched her memory for anything that matched, finding nothing at all. The stranger it seemed, the more suspicious it became, and she considered destroying it outright. Sensing her intent, the metal hurried to explain.
"You can think of me as having forgotten many things… but that creature you call a dragon is the highest-risk target in my remaining data, I mean memories."
"Please, at least hear me out."
She narrowed her eyes, quietly setting up several contingencies to call the dragon if anything went wrong. Then she looked down at the trembling liquid.
"Come back with me and explain everything."
"O… okay."
Deep underground, Belial considered for a moment and then finalized the number of guided ghost crystals before him. He was laying out a much larger Magic Array with energy focusing, air defense, and scanning functions, since this incident left him with an uneasy feeling. From his experience, people like that never stopped, they always took the chance to stir up trouble again.
He was not afraid for himself, but Witch's safety came first. This time, he could not let the home be attacked again. Fighting while dragging someone along was not an option, since one stray shockwave could get them killed.
The ground trembled as he induced crystal growth on an unprecedented scale. The underground space was nearly filled, with growth still spreading outward, forming the base for a Magic Array shaped by his own understanding. This massively strengthened the extraction and use of Magic, like cutting off a small pipe and opening a floodgate instead.
Next, he turned his gaze to the spoils in his grasp, the crimson core still pulsing with energy. He had known it was valuable, but not this much, since it had been enough to build a Mechagodzilla. Since the enemy had come for this thing, hiding it was pointless.
"The best solution… is to use it myself."
He embedded the core into a crystal tree over a hundred meters tall, its interwoven branches connecting the entire underground Magic Array. Once complete, the absorption surged, and the Crimson Core shell trembled as energy was forcibly squeezed out and fed into the array. Belial coiled atop the tree, opening his jaws to drink it in.
The surge was too strong even for him, so excess energy stored itself in crystalline organs throughout his body. Pulses of light flashed across his surface, his crystalline spines shone brighter, and a deep hum echoed from his chest like a reactor at full power. His temperature rose, energy leaked outward, and he figured he would look much the same when he woke up.
Satisfied that no one would disturb his sleep, he closed his eyes. Less than half an hour later, knocking sounds woke him again, and he opened bloodshot eyes in irritation.
"Who is it this time… huh?"
Standing there was Lilith, and there were two of her. One was entirely metal, similar in appearance but clearly different in many details, something he recognized at a glance. Was this not the metal figurine he had made for her before, and why was it alive.
Lilith turned back, clutching her clothes as the ai hid behind her.
"I told you I am here. What are you even afraid of?"
"I don't know… it feels like an old instinct warning me. Also, my main body is here, my processor."
"Can you please stop this dragon from draining it? I am going to break!"
Seeing this, Lilith sighed softly. Why did things always move in the direction of more trouble.
Time was pulled back a little. "Um… could you find me a body? This amount of Nanometal is not enough to support my Computational Power."
Lilith narrowed her eyes at the lump of silvery metal slumped on the table and did not move at once. She asked first, "Do you have a name?"
"Huh? Yes… yes, I do. You can call me Bella."
"The metals I have here are a bit different from what you are now, and the amount is only about my size. Is that fine?"
The difference could be seen from the color alone, one grayish and almost black, the other silver and reflective. Lilith had seen this kind of metal before, back when she examined a core. …Were the two related?
"That's fine… ah?"
After seeing what Lilith took out, Bella froze. From the Spatial Ring came an earlier gift from Belial, a life-sized Figurine molded from metal.
"You can see it too. This is all I have left."
Lilith was not lying. It had been kept as a gift and never used, stored in her own space all this time.
"Alright then." Bella agreed.
At worst, she would just change her appearance, or so she thought. Her body flowed into the Figurine, and the Figurine came to life.
After getting a new body, Bella twitched twice on the spot and almost fell forward. She caught herself with both hands, then stood up unsteadily and moved her arms. She adjusted the reflective frequency of the metal surface to match Lilith nearby, and the metallic skin and clothes quickly became lifelike, until the whole body looked like a real living person.
Bella took a moment to get used to it, since it had been a long time since she had been human. Then she suddenly realized something and showed Lilith a stunned face of her own. "I was always an AI, right? Not being used to this is normal, isn't it?"
"You should be able to change your look. Can you do it faster? Seeing someone exactly like me feels strange."
"Oh, okay."
Bella closed her eyes and started modifying the base form. Her small face tensed as she strained, clearly putting in effort.
Lilith watched for quite a while. During that time, the clothes and hair changed, but the face and body did not move at all, and in the end Bella made a very awkward expression.
"Well… there seems to be a small problem with the metal you gave me," Bella said with a miserable look. "For some reason, I can change the surface, but I cannot alter the internal human structure at all."