As for things like Evil God, there was no need to worry. If they dared to show up, Belial could just beat them to death. That was the real reason the world refused to let Belial in, because allowing him inside meant starting a slow death with an ever-accelerating countdown.
"The concept of The End should completely erase all existence in theory, but it seems to have little effect on Belial."
"Or maybe this guy is just too absurd, and the parts being erased have no impact on him at all."
Ham flew outside the world and circled around Belial, but she had no way to deal with that bright red The End mark. No matter what power touched it, everything vanished the instant of contact. She even saw Belial pull the red mark out, slap it with his palm, and cancel it out directly.
But under Ham's observation, the damn mark soon appeared again somewhere else on Belial's body. It was obvious that Belial had been targeted by The End, and with no small amount of attention. Ham felt that what he did down there was far more than just dragging The End down with him.
So she asked Bella, whose thinking overlapped with Belial in strange ways, to act as a translator. It was not that she could not understand, but she felt these two would produce a more accurate result together.
"Oh, so that is how it was. I get it."
After listening, Bella nodded and turned to Ham.
"He said he went down to fish, and caught a lot, more than ten of them. He was not in a hurry, just squatted there waiting."
"In the end, when only three big fish were left, he rushed over and beat them to death."
"Ah?"
It sounded abstract, but Ham roughly understood. More than ten Crimson God fought below, then three slightly stronger schemers took advantage, and Belial was the Gold Rank sparrow behind them. That part made sense.
Next was the appearance of The End. As expected, those guys fighting desperately really could have shaken The End out, and the facts confirmed it.
"Then he said he ran into another very strong guy, which should be the The End you mentioned, and they fought."
"Yes, I know that part. Then what?"
"He said it was very hard at first. That guy hit really hard and was very tough, so they fought like that for a while."
"Only hard?"
Ham frowned and fell silent. If The End struck, being only hard would be a blessing. Anyone else would vanish on contact, yet this guy only felt pain. Still, this meant Belial really fought The End head-on, and it even sounded like a back-and-forth fight.
"So the mark was left during the battle. Is there anything else? Then what?"
"He said he won."
"What?"
Her mind blanked for a moment. What did winning even mean? Ham thought rapidly, wondering whether it was literal victory or if the other side simply dispersed when its time was up.
"This is literal winning. He said it was very hard at first, but luckily when it came to cheating, he was better. He turned things around and instantly killed that The End, and then noticed the mark you mentioned."
"Oh… wait, this is real winning? Literally?"
"That is what it means. What else could it be?"
Ham tried several times to open her mouth and say something, but failed each time. She simply did not know what to say. What was this supposed to mean? Let her sort this out.
So first Belial fought the Beast of the End, which might have had the upper hand at one point, and then got blown apart by a cheating Belial. The more she tried to reason it out, the more confused it became. What kind of logic was this even based on?
That was The End, the end itself. Any defeat was only one side of its interpretation. What kind of thing could even be called defeating it? And what was this cheating supposed to be? She understood every word, yet when combined, none of it made sense at all.
For the time being, Research Team had no real way to solve Belial's problem, so they could only let him stay somewhere relatively close. It had to be a gap that was mostly detached from Abyss but not so far in that entering World would trigger a rejection. Spaces formed by Barrier that had been peeled away from World, such as the former Elven Homeland and Dragon Valley, were all roughly in this same region.
Now there was a new visitor here, a gigantic Black Dragon whose size might have exceeded dozens or even hundreds of kilometers. Its entire body was made of shifting, uncertain mist. The fog rolled endlessly, thick and heavy, giving off a faint blue glow like boiling thunderclouds.
As the blue light moved, it vaguely outlined scales and muscles vast like mountain ranges. Raised dorsal spines stood along its back, fine patterns between them flowing with blue light, while four blood-red markings were clearly visible on the outline of its head. At the place that could barely be identified as its mouth, a massive Rend-shaped valley, storms and thunder surged with each breath.
Blue flashes burst out from within, dragging surrounding magnetic effects with them and forming a spectacular rain of Lightning Magic. The enormous body folded its wings, curled its tail, and drew itself inward, yet even like this it was still unimaginably huge. Its mere presence was like a superstorm spreading clouds across the sea for thousands of miles.
This was roughly the form Belial could take after dismantling himself. If the size increase seemed too exaggerated, it helped to look at just how much his stats had expanded. Even if numbers could not fully describe it, he was at least dozens of times stronger than when he smashed King Ghidorah, and that growth in power naturally brought growth in size.
Put that way, it might sound easier to understand, though not by much. Still, that was how the setting worked, and there was no point arguing with it. When Belial went into Abyss under the Lord, he had eaten far too much.
Just from Crimson God alone, he had devoured at least dozens of souls, each packed with resentment and energy. On top of that were around a dozen unlucky Divine Kingdom, all of which Belial had completely consumed using Ecological Corrosion, wasting nothing at all. It was just a pity that many were lost along with Overlord Ridge, otherwise he could have kept eating.
Then there was the most important part of his power growth, the End Godzilla Template. Even though it was added later, it still benefited from all the previous templates, causing his strength to skyrocket. Inside his body, the perpetual motion effect formed by g-particles still functioned even in this state, letting him grow stronger just by sitting there as his size subtly increased with every breath.
With these four templates stacked together, his growth speed was finally comparable to those absurd cheaters of the Heisei Era. Lowering his head slightly, Belial turned his head at a small opening shaped by Rend, looking helpless after Bella finished translating.
"All right, this is the first time I have seen something this sneaky. If you cannot win, you just slap a mark on me, huh?"
Bella could not explain the concepts in detail, but with her rough mental translation, Belial understood the general idea. In short, Baragon could not beat him, so it resorted to dirty tricks. Using that tiny red spot inside his body, it created a massive negative field aimed at others, causing endless disasters wherever he went.
Because of this, he had been marked as hostile by Starter Village. It was frustrating, but Belial really had no solution right now. It was not that he could not force his way back in, since he could just tear open a gap with brute strength.
World only passively pushed him out and did not forbid him from forcing his way in. However, based on Bella's simple calculations, if Belial really did that, the moment he acted the entire The Continent would fracture and shatter into Shard. It would trigger an unprecedented earthquake, enough to smash the whole supermassive The Continent into countless islands.
That would also raise an unprecedented super tsunami, washing over every inch of land, while magma erupted from below. Once he tore open a gap, a massive Spatial Rift would appear. There was no need to describe what followed, because by that point nothing on The Continent would still be alive.
So he could only stay here, bored, relaxing a bit after getting tired of fishing. He could also take the opportunity to repair himself and rein in the excess energy he had nowhere to release. Even now, Belial still had trouble fully controlling the new Ecological Corrosion effects and his explosive increase in power.
"But I really cannot deal with this thing right now. So what is it exactly, some kind of special energy or some kind of effect?"
After he rubbed out the red mark yet again, it reappeared on his fingertip as if nothing had happened. Its size had even grown slightly, and Belial had lost count of how many hundreds of times he had erased it. Every time, it returned intact.