Then it swung the dragon-slaying greatsword, slashing fiercely toward Belial's head. The strike was empowered not only by the strength of its territory but also by its own legend.
In Faris Empire's local legends, on the very day the current Augustus ascended the throne, swarms of Dragon Calamity attacked the capital. Without deploying a single soldier, Augustus sat upon the Throne and raised his sword, cutting down the invading dragons.
After years of promotion and embellishment, this deed became a legend attached to the emperor himself. With the reinforcement of his domain and land, this sword strike carried special effectiveness against Dragonkin.
"Evil dragon, you…"
"Where did this idiot come from."
Belial felt there was something wrong with this man's head. He dressed so flamboyantly, talked endlessly on the spot, and in the end produced nothing but a flashy special effect.
It was just a large hollow shell, bigger than himself but lighter than a soda can. The golden light was both irritating and unpleasant to look at.
So he did not say anything else and simply spoke the most useful words for the moment. "Super Vibration Wave."
"Roar!!!"
The golden giant knight wielding a greatsword and the mountain-like evil dragon formed an epic scene. If a lucky bard recorded it, it might be sung for ages.
It looked like justice against evil, knight against dragon, and by coincidence there truly was a the Lord present. However, the outcome clearly did not follow the rules of poetry or fairy tales.
The deafening roar blasted the air, compressing it into tangible shockwaves that spread in all directions. Invisible ripples of vibration twisted and tore the light they passed through, smashing directly into the golden giant knight at point-blank range.
The solid armor formed from dense Magic and warped rules was supposed to be nearly immune to physical damage. Yet it was torn apart like paper, shattered into fragments.
The rule logic composing the golden giant knight was drowned in chaos and completely destroyed. The attached concepts of indestructibility and permanence collapsed as easily as knocking over blocks.
The immense roar flattened everything in sight, sending fan-shaped waves of earth surging outward. The materials that once blocked the way were reduced to clouds of basic particles.
The severed mountain face left behind was smooth like a mirror, so fragile that a breeze could turn it into dust. From Belial as the starting point, a deep fan-shaped scar stretched from the clouds down to the ground.
As for the golden giant knight, only the lucky lower half remained, untouched by the blast. And that so-called anti-Dragonkin greatsword was nothing more than cheap glass shattered at the neck.
Belial had no interest in dragging this out with such an annoying opponent. He preferred to end it in one hit, since if he could not even one-shot a weak roadside monster at this point, there was no reason to continue.
"…As expected, this was the result."
Watching that massive roar wipe out Augustus in midair, along with the material forming his body being shattered into basic particles, she felt no surprise.
Sylvia looked at the familiar scene of standing up and instantly killing the opponent. Aside from shock at his strength, she even felt a bit like laughing.
One after another, they came like dumplings being served. Belial felt much the same, wondering if this guy had come purely for comedy.
"Wait, this feels familiar. If they keep coming like this…"
"Oh no, I turned into Sukuna. So who is next to fight me?"
Looking at the completely dispersed golden giant, Belial let out a breath. Thankfully, he always made sure his opponents were thoroughly erased, leaving no chance for anyone else to take over.
"But I should thank you. This awkward situation finally feels easier to brush off by doing something random next… hmm?"
"…"
…
Faris Empire's capital.
The towering imperial palace that occupied most of a mountain range stood in silence. In the gold-filled but empty supreme emperor's hall, Augustus opened his eyes from the throne and swallowed the blood in his mouth.
There was a different look in his eyes now. "If my senses are correct, my avatar was erased in an instant?"
Recalling that moment, he could still feel how both body and soul were shredded into fragments by the terrifying roar of the evil dragon. Even the knight avatar built from his territorial domain had been useless.
"It seems I was set up… no, they deliberately led me into doing this."
He understood his own nature, knowing that in such a situation he would prioritize eliminating the largest threat. That despicable dragon had clearly taken advantage of this.
Augustus was not angry, because when he cooperated with those so-called allies, he had already accounted for being used and suffering some losses. He still had to fulfill the pact, since it was bound by his own domain and rules, which granted power but also constrained him equally.
"Without reclaiming all honors, rights, and territory, I cannot deal with that evil dragon using only my border domain and an avatar."
His ring-covered fingers lightly tapped the armrest as Augustus made his decision. The pact only required achieving the goal, and the methods used in between were another matter.
It was simply that the distance made direct action difficult for now. With that thought, the emperor gently raised the sword beside his throne and divided his border territory.
This was not a symbolic division on paper, but a division of the territory's very space. The immediate result was that behind Ham and Vera, who had been cheering, a massive spatial Rift suddenly appeared.
After that, Augustus did not need to do anything else. Fate would arrange the rest on its own.
"What is this!" Sylvia's eyes widened as she recognized it immediately.
She tried to raise her hand to stop it and close the spatial Rift, or those two unlucky kids would be sucked in. But she was still a step too late.
It was not just Augustus's pull on the two of them. There was also fate itself.
Spatial barriers were not fixed and unchanging, but flowed like sea levels, constantly shifting in thickness. The suction of a spatial Rift depended on that thickness and was a physical result of rule-based self-repair.
Like how massive objects produce gravity, tearing open a spatial Rift created suction that changed with the surrounding spatial walls and their repair. A weak suction could suddenly intensify if the thickness increased.
Such a change could be abrupt, like the difference between a calm sea and a tsunami. Distant disturbances could propagate through space as a medium, reaching this point.
All of this was possible within probability. Given enough time, even the smallest chance would eventually occur, until it became inevitable.
So everything was a coincidence. Everything was fate.
"Wait… save me!"
"And me too, I do not want to be with this stupid dragon…"
The suddenly intensified suction of the spatial Rift instantly pulled them both inside. In her panic, Ham activated Spatial Magic, triggering a second Teleportation for both of them in an extremely brief instant.
"Ham!"
Sylvia watched it all happen, powerless to stop it due to how fast it was. A second random spatial Teleportation within the void meant no one knew where they would reappear.
As for Belial, it all happened too quickly for him to do much. From tearing space open to the suction increasing, pulling them in, and then teleporting again, it took less than half a second.
He was not completely idle, having tried to pull them back with gravity control the moment they were dragged in. But Ham's strange Spatial Magic activated again, teleporting them elsewhere.
That made him unhappy.
"So you dare mess with me? Very well, you dogs hiding behind this, just wait."
Belial narrowed his eyes.
That person had been carrying Lilith's Crystal, which meant they were allied. Losing allies under his protection was a blow to his pride.
In the rush, he had stuck a lump of his own darkness onto them as a marker. Falling into a Rift and then returning to reality was something he knew very well.
"So you two were working together, coming and leaving one after the other, both targeting my allies."
"Very good. You are dead."
Right now, Belial badly wanted to drag out those people messing things up in the shadows and beat them to death one by one. It was still that strange situation where the one who acted earlier had already been killed, but it turned out to be some kind of Clone, with the real body hidden somewhere unknown. Even with Hunter Mark that could cover the whole world, he could not find the real target.
That was fine with him. As long as the other side dared to show themselves, he would rush over and kill them on the spot. The one behind them was much easier to track, clearly marked and staying in one place without moving, which made things convenient.
"But first, I have to pull those two back."