She had also set up a large spatial loop Magic Array. When the bomb detonated, its city-level destructive power would be confined within it. Dragging him down with her was enough.
"I'm certain," Sylvia said. "You're not going anywhere. I won't give you the chance to chase that child."
"Then let's see whether you detonate first or I swallow you first," Edward roared.
He charged forward. The sphere in Sylvia's hand split open with white light, and she threw it. The moment she did, she felt something was wrong.
The five-headed evil dragon was still wearing a mocking expression.
Yes. Following fate, everything was part of the plan. Why could he obtain such a weapon. Why could an Ascendant Hall-level Demonkind appear here. Why had he said so much just now.
All of it was required by fate. Edward had only given it a small push.
"Boom!"
An unexpected disturbance appeared.
Everyone present, including Edward, Sylvia, and Ham, froze as they stared at what now lay between the two dragons. It looked like a small mountain range.
Its surface was an unusual black, rough like peaks weathered for ten thousand years. Yet it was clearly not a mountain, but countless densely packed scales. What was it.
Both Sylvia and Edward instinctively thought the same thing. It felt familiar, like a dragon. That shape looked a bit like a wing.
But how was that possible. Just the visible portion was already larger than both of them.
"Rumble!"
Everything happened too fast. The ground shook like a massive earthquake. Large sections of the surface collapsed like falling blocks, plunging into the bottomless Abyss.
Nearby mountains shattered into Shard, revealing razor-sharp back spines shaped like ancient peaks that pierced the sky. Ham looked up in confusion.
Hadn't the sky just been white a moment ago?
The white light radiating from the Magic Fusion Bomb suddenly grew faint, as if it were quietly covered by an endless black sky that had spread without warning. The ground split open with Rend, tearing a Rift, and the object simply rolled inside and fell into the Bottomless Abyss. Yet everyone present, including Sylvia and Edward, ignored this critical item, because something far more unbelievable had appeared.
On that day, vast black clouds were dragged down by an overwhelming will, frozen by extreme cold and roaring with lightning as they crashed toward the ground. The light once cast by the sun was swallowed by the dark sky without mercy, forming a massive vortex that devoured everything below. Above and below answered each other in silence, as if the world itself were being folded inward.
Mountains rose straight up from the earth, hundreds of meters tall, forming sharp ridges that pointed at the sky. Countless rocks and soil floated under the influence of a magnetic field, assembling into enormous ring-shaped structures. An entire mountain range was flipped into the air, its unimaginable mass thrown aside like light cotton, exposing blazing magma beneath.
Several great rivers froze into endless glaciers, and the raging winds that had crossed thousands of miles bent the forests as they passed. The surrounding trees seemed to age thousands of years in an instant, growing taller and more ancient, their vines and branches twisting with an almost human posture. It looked disturbingly like an act of worship.
What exactly was happening here? Was this a divine miracle, or the birth of a new world? The first to sense the truth behind it was Edward, because his body reacted faster than his thoughts, trembling with the most basic instinct of fear.
"No… impossible. Here of all places? When did it come out?" His voice shook as he shouted again, "Is this also you, Fate?"
Sylvia looked at the crazed Five-Headed Dragon and saw fear deeper than her own reflected there. At the same time, a familiar sensation surged through her bloodline. The Ham Eggshell hidden among her scales floated up before her eyes, then was swept into the grand scene above by an unseen force and raging wind.
What emerged first were five pillars reaching for the sky, no, a hand, with a massive arm beneath it rather than mountains. Molten magma surged up with it, glowing briefly before dimming. The giant hand pressed lightly against the ground, causing a local quake and grinding everything beneath it into dust.
The shaking did not stop. From behind Ham and the others, an impossibly sharp spear-like structure rose into the sky, as if made of dark Crystal. Then came crystal-like spines that tore the earth apart with Rend between the two sides, and in the last moment before her view was blocked, Sylvia saw Edward wearing a look worse than eating filth.
At last, the true form was revealed. Wings so vast they could block out the sky spread fully, each movement feeling like the collapse of heaven and earth. A head like an ancient evil god shook slightly, shedding stone fragments as magma poured from its eyes like waterfalls.
Then it opened its eyes. A roar followed, barely worthy of the name, yet strong enough to shatter the sky and roar Shard the mountains apart. The storm swept outward as a voice echoed, "Ah… that should do. Let me see which monster I marked before is bold enough to stomp around on my bed."
Carefully holding back to avoid unleashing destructive vibration waves, Belial lifted his head and looked at the two groups present. His evolution was mostly complete, his power increased again, and his body had rapidly grown larger. If he stood upright, he would tower even higher than before, with a body length exceeding two hundred meters and a weight approaching two hundred thousand tons.
To be honest, even after finishing his evolution, with Belial's lazy nature he would normally sleep a bit longer before bothering to get up. But someone he had marked before was openly showing up, practically dancing on his bed. That was not something he could tolerate.
With the thought of coming this far anyway, he decided not to go back to sleep. He got up, intending to beat this thing to death first, since letting it escape would only annoy him more. Then he lowered his gaze and looked things over.
On one side was the familiar twisted ugliness, so unpleasant that killing it carried no mental burden at all. On the other side were a small Black Dragon, a rather pale White Dragon, and a human. That made him pause.
Belial leaned closer and said, "Wait, this does not look like a White Dragon. I think I have seen something similar in what little memory I have left." He vaguely recalled a dragon much smaller than himself, but shrugged it off as unimportant. The small Black Dragon felt oddly familiar, though he did not care much, since they were both black anyway.
His attention fixed on the human, specifically the item hanging at the person's neck. After a moment, he muttered, "Confirmed. It is Miss Witch's Crystal. If they have that, then I guess they count as allies."
Using his world-shaking wisdom, Belial quickly sorted it out. One side clearly deserved to die, while the other carried something from Miss Witch and stood opposed to them. The conclusion was obvious.
"Good. I will protect one side first, then kill the ugly one." He nodded in satisfaction and looked at Edward.
"What… what is that?" someone whispered. "A… dragon?" Ham and Vera stared in shock, while Sylvia stood frozen, craning her neck just to see the underside of his jaw.
Instinctively, she searched her bloodline for any clue about who this might be. Judging by appearances, she would believe it if someone claimed he was the ancestor of the ancestors of those Ancient Dragon elders resting in Dragon Valley. Just a single glance from that vast Black Dragon made her feel completely exposed, the pressure alone nearly crushing her.
She felt as weak as she had thousands of years ago, like a trembling hatchling. Her silver dragon form was already at a normal adult Great Dragon level, yet compared to him she was less than a tiny animal. The size difference was beyond reason.
After searching, she found nothing at all. Even with all the dragon soul records available to a silver dragon, there was no trace of him, not even when she triggered Bloodline Sense. The result that came back made her stare blankly.
"A dragon… beast?" she muttered. The conclusion felt absurd, and she could only assume the dragon soul System had made a mistake. How could such a creature possibly exist?
Still, when she saw him scan them twice and then turn his clear hostility toward Edward, she finally relaxed. Her body nearly gave out from the relief. "That is… that is good," she whispered.
She did not know where this overwhelming elder had come from, but since they were both dragons, he probably would not make things too hard for her side. At that moment, Ham tugged at her clothes.
"Sylvia… tell me," she asked eagerly, eyes shining. "Could this Ancestors be my ancestor?" Sylvia froze, unable to respond as Ham continued excitedly, talking about Bloodline Sense and asking if she could beg him for help.
A thunderous roar interrupted them. "Impossible! How could you escape from the Extra-Dimensional Space created by the combined power of the gods?" Edward screamed, fear and disbelief twisting his face.