He had already traded away his Authority, leaving almost nothing of his former self. If nothing went wrong, his former kin might revive upon his corpse. The seed itself was created by that kin, perhaps even a fragment of its remains, a clever plan to turn a seal into part of itself if it could not escape.
The nourishment required would naturally have been him. It was indeed a good plan. However, Ludwig knew that dragon would soon come, carrying its Authority and seeking him out. By devouring both, he would fully revive and ascend again.
"You get out too!"
Lilith pointed at the door and stared coldly at Bella. The other had just caused the twenty third explosion due to some unclear experiment. If the surrounding structures had not already been replaced with Nanometal capable of repairing and absorbing impacts, the place would have been blown apart long ago.
Even so, Lilith could not stand living in a house that exploded every day. One thing outside exploded daily, and now another had moved inside. It was too much. Her home was not even entirely built in a Western mansion style.
"Sorry, but can you at least listen to me? I just came up with an incredible idea," Bella said.
With Lilith's help, Bella no longer had to worry about being beaten by Belial's materials during research. She had even given him a full body check. She wanted to do a gastroscopy, but the metal probe melted as soon as it entered his mouth, so she could only slowly infer and scan his internal state.
As expected, her worldview was shattered to pieces. She knew many things in this era could not be analyzed like old database entries, but this was the first time she had seen a living being with something like a sun growing inside it. When she matched the energy response inside Belial to a database entry called a sun, she was completely stunned.
The concept of a sun had already been lost, but she still felt it had to be something absurd. She did not dare analyze further. When she tried to parse the rules of Belial's internal structure, her core started smoking and collapsed under the data load, leaving her unconscious for a while.
After that, to avoid seeing something she should not and blowing her core, she only studied peripheral samples. And somehow, she succeeded.
"Speak. That will determine how hard I hit your head," Lilith said, raising the Magic Staff. It was another staff, since the original had exploded.
"Do you remember that special rule space you called something emitted in a domain, the way energy is released in a sudden burst? I temporarily named it elemental fusion," Bella said.
She raised her hand, and a tiny white light flickered at her fingertip. This was only possible within the coverage of the Belial's Crystals field. She had accidentally found a similar technique in the database, and that was why the earlier explosion happened.
"In short, based on my research on the energy absorption limit of parts of that huge creature, plus my own modifications, I have a bold idea," she said. "If this violent energy reaction could be made stable and permanent, and built directly inside the body, the output could increase dramatically."
"You want to die, just say it," Lilith snapped.
As a developer, she knew how dangerous this was. Even with mastery, it was only ever used outside the body. The energy did not care about friendly fire, and using it internally was no different from swallowing a bomb.
"Wait, hear me out," Bella said. "Normally no living being could do this, but that dragon is already beyond what we can understand as a biological organism."
Only after researching Belial's properties did she dare think this way. His regeneration was so strong it could not be explained by biology, as even minced to the cellular level, he could recover with a squeeze. His strength exceeded the seventh revision physics model in the database.
After calculating his skeletal structure and weight, she tried to simulate him. Every simulation collapsed under its own weight or ended with the Reactor exploding. Yet in reality, he was perfectly fine, lively, and terrifyingly strong, hammering her worldview into fragments and inspiring this absurd plan.
It was like adding a second engine to a car without increasing total fuel. According to her idea, Belial could try building a stable fusion reactor inside his body. This would serve as a second output port, and since the the Lord favored quick decisive battles, more output was always better.
"No. This cannot succeed in one try, and we cannot gamble," Lilith said with a frown. Even if it sounded feasible, she refused outright when it involved that dragon. This was not something to risk.
"I am not gambling," Bella said. "As for his life, you do not need to worry. Based on my research, even if not a single atom of that dragon remained, as long as enough energy was provided."
"Then even this sample of biological tissue could grow him back from start to finish," she said. "And this is just a proposal. We can also prepare backups to be safe."
Belial lay sleeping inside a newly prepared metal energy matrix. Light leaked from the gaps between his scales, especially along his back spines, glowing orange red. With so much energy available for absorption after so long, his body continued to grow.
Excess energy not yet absorbed raised his temperature and pushed many organs into overload. His body adapted and evolved continuously, his strength increasing every moment. Because of this, Bella had to keep adjusting the energy output.
Even ordinary leakage was enough to form an Magic Crystal Ore level energy source. Even Belial could not swallow it all at once, and since it was being poured in actively by the the Lord, this was the only way. His body radiated heat and light, with internal temperatures only a few hundred degrees, but external emissions exceeding a thousand.
If he were left somewhere and slept for countless years, he would probably form a volcano where he lay and reshape the local ecology. The crystalline defenses and passive protection of the energy matrix were solid, and with no one disturbing him, he could finally sleep well.
"…Ding…"
"…Moni…tor… detected similar… object…"
"Template… ex@*cuting… star…"
"Why is this bothering me too? Who is it this time!" Belial snapped.
He jerked his head up and looked around, but no one was there. He scanned again with Energy Field, and there was truly no one, not even an insect entering his soul vision. Had he scared himself awake?
"Strange," he muttered.
Unable to find the problem, Belial lay back down and went back to sleep.
"So... what exactly are you trying to do?"
After each period of charging, Belial would climb up to the surface, and Bella would adjust the energy output in real time based on his current condition. Even while in an energy overload state, his power kept increasing, and his body was slowly adapting, pushing its limits higher and higher. Each time, he went through a full physical check, learned the newly revised spells from Lilith and Bella, then went back to sleep, and the days felt full.
This time, though, Belial was holding something about the size of his chest cavity, something that looked like a piece of armor. If he had to describe it, it resembled the chest plate of a Type-III Mech Dragon. Under the scan of his Energy Field, he could even see an internal structure that looked a lot like a nuclear reactor.
"Interesting. You want to install it on me? Like cosplaying as a Mech Dragon?"
"Are you really sure this will work? Honestly, I don't really trust it." Having seen how absurd this dragon could be, Lilith complained, only for Bella to light up with excitement and shout, "Trust me... this will definitely work!"
"This is my carefully prepared project, a dragon-only add-on Fusion Armor: version 1.0!"
Considering how dangerous it would be to directly build a fusion reactor inside the body, Bella presented a second plan. Using metal and the previously scanned body data, she would construct a pre-fabricated suit of armor. The idea was that the armor would liquefy at the contact points, press under Belial's scales, connect to his internal reactor, while Bella provided Computational Power support from the rear.
"Relax, it will definitely work!"
Bella's confidence shattered shortly after putting the armor on Belial. "How can this be? According to the energy output... this isn't even proportional!" The armor was tossed aside, large sections melted and smoking black, while Bella looked like she was about to cry and could not believe it.
She had designed the heat-resistant armor based on energy output and Belial's body temperature rise, yet it melted before it even started running. The overwhelming energy output and radiated heat destroyed it instantly, and the connected metal ports were automatically stripped away into Shard. The external temperature spiked to tens of thousands in an instant, and at this level of energy, it was outright bullying the Law of Conservation of Energy.