After hearing the full description, Bella's expression grew darker, though she held her tongue. Louis became certain that even if these two were not the ones who attacked, they knew far more than most. In this situation, securing their help was necessary.
"I will think it over and give you an answer later," Lilith said. "Our situation is clear to you, Miss Lilith. Could you help us? There will be generous reward."
Louis spoke with sincerity, and with his status, that promise carried weight. He left their camp's location and withdrew. Lilith waved her hand, let the pavilion sink into the ground, and returned with Bella to Sky Island, knowing from her reaction that this was serious.
"Now that no one is around, tell me how bad this really is." Bella frowned deeply, having already searched her databases during the talk. "Pollution assessment level three, intensity level two. No detected rule changes, not a Divine Kingdom domain."
She took a breath and spoke gravely. "Time is short. This likely involves an even stronger Evil God. My main body may already be polluted and acting as a medium. We must act quickly."
Lilith's face hardened as well. If even this usually carefree companion was so serious, then the danger was immense. The gray-white traits resembled Ancient Steel corrosion but were far worse, consuming every aspect of the ecosystem.
There was no time left to let Belial grow further. Lilith tried to call him, only to realize she could not locate the dragon at all. "Where did the dragon go?" "He's right here."
Belial had been idly flying above, scouting out of boredom. On the ground, he spotted large patches of gray-white, something he had only seen before on MOGUERA and Mechagodzilla. Annoyed by the thought of someone encroaching near their base, he dove down to investigate.
He found masses of twisted humans and monsters, their bodies warped and covered in gray-white blotches. Behind them crawled a moving city made of buildings, rocks, trees, and corpses fused together, belching gray-white smoke. It spewed out grotesque creatures, many resembling scaled Great Dragon.
The sight felt familiar, like the return of a Beast Tide. Memories of past battles surfaced, but this time he had no intention of charging in blindly. There were more important things now, and the energy source at home was far better.
"This is just an event rerun. It won't distract a veteran like me. I'll head back and keep growing…" "Ding."
"Detected similar power." "Template: planetary Godzilla. Analysis failed." "Continue collecting targets: 13/0."
Belial froze midair. He turned slowly, baring his teeth at the gray-white horde below. "So it really is the second phase of the event." "I'll just take some samples back. That's fine, right?"
"Officer… current remaining numbers are two hundred thirty four."
"I see. Then the distance to those monsters…"
"Estimated to be within twenty kilometers. The Scouts we sent out have not returned, so they are presumed dead."
Officer bit down hard on the pipe in his mouth and looked around. All around him were silence and shaking, soldiers with torn uniforms and bodies smeared with blood. These few hundred were not a single unit, but the remnants of many units that had clumped together to survive.
Most of them had only lived because they were stronger than average and endured the first wave of corruption. They barely escaped through brutal fighting, and then ran without looking back. How could they possibly win?
That gray-white horror was everywhere, along with endless monsters and spider-like shapes piled from corpses. The living city itself was there too, and every one of them could easily crush people like them. Even running had taken everything they had, because once a comrade was badly wounded and fell into despair, the gray-white corrosion would take them and turn them into monsters who drew blades on others.
Before the expedition, most people thought this would be an easy victory. In the blink of an eye, the sharp contrast of reality almost dragged everyone into despair.
"How many can still fight?" Officer asked.
Sergeant was about to count, but Officer raised a hand to stop him. "Forget it. No matter how many can still fight, we have to fight. Either we die, or we fight and then die."
"Because of that light, we lived a bit longer. That is already enough."
By now, everyone was exhausted and barely had any strength left. If not for the massive orange-red light that had erupted earlier and blocked some of the monsters, things would already be over. Along with that, there had been a secret summoning message from Second Prince, which barely kept them going.
"Let's go. We fight those monsters!" Officer shouted, forcing what little morale remained.
Just moments before, he had secretly arranged for his strongest confidant to run and pass on information. At the very least, someone had to spread word of what was happening here. The few hundred left with him would stay and fight to buy time.
As soon as Officer finished wiping his weapon, he felt something wrong with the temperature. Without realizing it, a patch of snow had already landed on his shoulder.
Snow? How could that be? At this season, it should not be possible. He frowned as the cold sensation grew clearer.
"Cold? How is that possible… I can actually feel it?"
The situation became more and more abnormal. He could feel the temperature around him dropping, which alone should not have mattered to someone of his strength. But the fact that he could feel cold at all was the real problem.
"No… is my heat being drained?"
"Look… the sky!"
Officer was pulled out of his thoughts by shouts around him. He looked up, his pupils shrinking in shock, as the clouds seemed to collapse into thick black-gray masses falling straight down, mixed with snow and freezing wind.
The spectacle stretched as far as the eye could see. Even more shocking, more than ten vortices appeared in the sky. From those vortices, blazing suns completely opposite to the surrounding cold slowly descended.
More than ten radiant suns crashed into the ground, exploding among the gray-white monsters that had somehow already been covered in ice and snow. Countless flashes of light and heat erupted, and even the massive mechanical city behind them began to thaw.
"These things are a bit hard to kill," Belial said.
After casually stomping two giant spiders to death, he realized these creatures did not have normal biological organs. If the gray-white parts were what really mattered, then these things were closer to some kind of spore-based creatures. To kill them completely, they had to be destroyed inside and out, which was annoying and might take a few more blasts of Spiral Heat Ray.
So Belial chose the simplest method. High-temperature sterilization, or better yet, extreme temperatures. Put simply, combining ice and fire worked best against things like this.
"Perfect timing. I can use that spell I copied from the little dragonman earlier."
Back at the volcano, that little dragonman had used a fireball-like Magic against him. He had personally tested it afterward, and also copied a few more spells from the group of dragons that foolishly tried to surround him. Later, with help from Lilith and Bella, and based on his overwhelming ice-type Laws power, the spells were redesigned to suit Belial perfectly.
With a sweep of the enormous Black Dragon wings, dense magical structures appeared. More than ten spells were constructed at the same time, and blazing fireballs began to form. First, the surrounding clouds instantly froze into fine Shard-like ice mist, and snow began to fall as heat was forcibly stripped away and drawn into the fireballs.
The phenomenon continued to spread, hitting the gray-white monster horde below first. Their bodies stiffened, ice forming over their surfaces, and the city itself let out a sound like a dying wail. The ground below became a frozen wasteland, while overhead, Belial had prepared more than ten dazzling suns.
They burned with extreme heat, brilliant and white, yet the heat was tightly contained without leaking out. A hint of Lilith's elemental fusion principles was mixed in. In essence, it was an extremely complex composite reaction, but to Belial, it was still just a very complicated Fireball.
Then the gray-white monsters and the city below were hit by the second wave of heat. The surface was instantly devastated as if struck by tactical nuclear weapons, with expanding fireballs swallowing everything gray-white. Torn apart, everything was swept into rising black-gray mushroom clouds.
Even ecological corruption with incredible vitality could not survive such extreme temperature shifts. The affected area was vast, leaving no chance for anything to escape. Still, the dying city did not completely perish, relying on its sheer mass to endure, its gray-white surface now pocked with scorched craters.
That result was close enough to what Belial wanted. He dove down and casually unleashed two blasts of Freezing Breath, freezing everything except a small portion he deliberately preserved. Only after ensuring everything was truly dead did he fly back, carrying the sample in his grasp, as the red-marked target had already been wiped out in the second heat strike.
"Honestly, this mission target was much easier than before, and it even had numbers marked," he said. "That kind of endless progress bar before was way too annoying."