The remaining two-thirds of the city's flesh puppets, nearly a hundred thousand disguised as civilians, began marching in unison toward the center. Men and women, old and young, their blank faces were stained with a trace of madness. Black mud flowed from the castle down the mountain, and when it touched the first puppet, the body exploded with Rend and melted into blood.
This reaction spread rapidly. Flesh puppets continued to burst apart, dyeing the white ground into dark, blood-soaked black, with the flowing blood reaching up to the calves. Some monsters that had quietly withdrawn from the fight threw themselves into the blood without hesitation, dissolving into something even deeper.
Large blasphemous rituals originally meant to modify the Great Dragon were reactivated. The surviving believers leapt into them without hesitation, offering their lives as blood sacrifices. All of it was aimed at Salva himself.
Centered on the city, a ring of extreme darkness extended outward into an eight-pointed shape. His voice echoed with laughter and devotion, praising eightfold blessings and eightfold rites. Even he sounded surprised by what he had created.
The blood merged into a single mass, black mud spreading through every drop before rapidly condensing. From the castle ruins, massive black-and-red tentacles covered in twisted faces and warped limbs tore everything apart with Rend. The ground shook as the ocean of blood slowly rose, standing upright like a giant.
Bloodfalls poured down as the substance reverted to its essence and began to reweave itself. A bone-white forest grew atop the crimson sea, bones extending and wrapping with muscle like vines and branches. Blood and white intertwined into a cathedral-like body.
Beating hearts formed one after another, blood flowing through the whole structure. Jewel-like eyes were set into it, while organs led by a brain laughed wildly. A massive arm, its skin smooth like that of a woman and covered with human faces, slammed into the ground.
A towering humanoid shape stood, genderless, its upper body like many people fused together. A crown of fingers rested on its head, countless eye-gems, exposed organs, and human and monster limbs blending into a disturbing beauty. The eyeless face seemed to be everyone and no one at once, releasing laughter that sounded like countless voices merged together.
This moving flesh cathedral lifted its gaze. Countless eyes passed over the ruined castle and fixed their fervent stare on Belial, who stood surrounded by a circle of corpses.
Black Iron, Silver, Gold. Three Transcendent Tiers of This World. Mortal earth forges the body and tempers it into iron. Black Iron sheds all excess and shines like Silver.
Iron and silver reflect each other, and their color becomes gold. In the eyes of most people, reaching the peak means Gold, yet only after stepping into Gold does one understand how long the road ahead truly is, with gaps even greater than the distance from Black Iron to Gold. When the road of Gold is finally exhausted, one may discover that there is no path left to walk. At that point, with no roads around, the only direction left is the sky.
That is Laws. By manifesting the nature of the world through one's own understanding, stepping into the air and entering the hall, they become beings whose difference from ordinary Gold can no longer be measured on the same scale. Thus, they are called Sanctum Tier. It is power that truly peels away the surface, breaks common restraints, and borders on the unbelievable, where apples falling upward are only one small display of it.
"Improvised composition, First Movement!" Salva searched through the smoke-like sea of memories in his mind and could no longer remember when he had entered that hall. Power that touches the essence of the world is never something simple, and the law he comprehended himself could hardly be described with exact words.
Once he used his law, Salva had to constantly struggle against the memories of countless people he had devoured before, memories clearer than those of the original owners. With the slightest mistake, he could drown in that ocean of memories, and they could never be stripped away, because the the Lord of those memories had long since become part of the many selves that formed him. This was not a side effect but an inevitable trait of his path, a double-edged sword.
Not using it does not mean he cannot use it. Under certain conditions, Salva would activate his Laws, and the present situation was exactly one of those moments. His fanatical pursuit of art was so extreme that it allowed him to ignore all other memories.
"Hahahaha, come, come, come!" "This is the First Movement I improvised for you. I will not disappoint you!" The enormous Flesh Cathedral advanced on dozens of massive arms, lifting a lotus-like platform of flesh, while countless throats sang together in the voices of tens of thousands.
The heart beat like a drum, each movement pulling tight the strings of muscle, and cold wind passed through hollow bones as rows of protruding vertebrae turned into a giant pipe organ. Faces fused into the skin shifted without pause, and exposed flesh contrasted with pale skin like a series of beautiful paintings, turning its own body into a vast hall of art. It itself was moving art.
Perhaps some extreme enthusiasts would like such a thing. Belial both disliked and liked it. He disliked it because it was unbearably ugly and nauseating to look at, yet he liked it because after the largest red dot took this form, the power he needed to unlock templates surged at an astonishing rate.
The experience pack had grown again, and that made him happy. This boss was surprisingly generous. Even if he did not know the exact reason and could only think of it as the boss entering a second phase, it did not matter.
It was ugly, it had set traps to kill him, and it was exactly the experience pack he needed. "Giving me three good reasons to kill you at once. If I do not kill you now, that would be embarrassing." Around the Great Dragon, those monsters that could still provide a bit of entertainment for Belial no longer had any reason to live.
When fighting a boss, clear the trash first. The thick giant tail swung at extreme speed, and spear-like crystal extensions at its tip were coated in destructive energy that spread in all directions with the motion. A bright circular sweep easily reduced the remaining survivors into fragments, and after collecting the last bits of experience, the dragon turned its head toward the towering Flesh Cathedral standing on the ruined mountain fortress.
The more he looked at it, the more hateful it became. It was ugly and screamed unbearably, clearly courting death. A hum sounded as light flowed along the back spines, and the dragon released an even brighter burst of icy radiance than before, an ice-blue beam shooting straight toward the blasphemous giant atop the mountain.
From the massive flesh construct extended arm after arm, grasping and climbing over each other until countless palms formed an even larger hand that directly caught the beam. Was it insane? Had it not seen the previous power, where a single spreading breath had wiped out a third of the city?
Even if its health was thicker than all that combined, how could it dare to block the breath of this hateful Great Dragon with flesh alone? Either it was too slow to escape and had no choice but to block, or after entering the second phase it had turned into some inflated creature, or else it truly had a method to withstand it.
Belial saw it. From the palm spread a cold radiance that did not belong to the dragon, flowing through the veins of the hand. The icy breath froze and shattered palm after palm, blasting them into powder while the hand kept regenerating, and in the exchange the beam truly failed to break through its defense.
On a finer elemental level, the active Ice Element within the breath was suppressed by a higher authority, reducing its activity, and the hand even absorbed part of the Ice Element and circulated it back out. The flesh adapted as well, its resistance to ice rising during the attack, even regenerating while enduring the breath. From a stalemate, it gradually turned into an effortless block.
"Ice Laws. No matter how I raised resistance before, I could never truly oppose it." "So now I use the same Ice Laws against you. Dragon, what will you do?" Voices filled with fanaticism, joy, sorrow, and rage echoed from the palace, though the dragon could not understand them.
Salva knew that even with borrowed Laws, enduring the breath was still painful. Only Laws could oppose Laws. Then in the Northlands, who held the strongest Ice Laws? Without doubt, it was the former Ice Spirit.
Overwhelmed by fanaticism, he ignored his ally's warnings. This massive Flesh Cathedral was not only a boost to combat power but also a giant signal receiver. The music and Magic fluctuations transmitted through special frequencies on the wind and snow, and during the time bought by the modified monsters, he succeeded.