Kwenfield's face turned iron-blue. From the last battle, both of them already understood what kind of monster that dragon really was and what hid beneath its scales. The shadow of being beaten to death with a single blow still lingered, and Kwenfield had no desire to face the dragon head-on again.
The best outcome was to finish the plan smoothly and let the Lord truly descend into the world. If that happened, neither a dragon nor anything else would matter. Still, just as Salva said, this was within his expectations, mostly because recent plans had failed one after another, lowering his mental expectations.
This moment could be called the final act, so everyone had to enter the stage in order. He had to stop the dragon, at least until Ice Spirit arrived.
"…Your side of things," Kwenfield said quietly. "I do not want to see a second failure."
He turned away, his black robe sweeping as he vanished into the snow. In the blink of an eye, he had already reached the chosen direction, the side where the dragon was coming from.
Just as planned, layers of sealing, binding, and barrier Magic Array were also set up here. Kwenfield knew these would not stop the dragon. Fighting directly was pointless, and all he needed was to delay for a short time.
So the dragon had to be made to leave on its own. That required bait, and one of the best baits was Kwenfield himself, who had received many blessings and currently possessed the greatest strength. Salva was far better at altering and playing with souls, so he could not be used yet.
"…It's here," Kwenfield muttered.
In the distance, he felt a brief but massive surge of Magic, already close to two-thirds of his own output. The scouting measures placed farther away saw the clouds in the sky split open into a huge fan shape, before the violent storm that followed destroyed all contact.
There was no sound, because the dragon was faster than sound itself. Something more oppressive than noise or wind pressure arrived first, fear. A massive shadow appeared on the horizon and closed the distance at extreme speed, like a mountain charging straight at him.
The dragon tore through the storm with wings and claws, killing intent sharp as blades. But when Kwenfield truly saw its form, his eyelid twitched.
"Hmm?!"
By his estimate, this dragon was far too big. Its length was at least fifty meters. When he had been beaten into paste before, it had only been around thirty or forty meters long.
What was this thing now? Had it gone berserk on growth? Even being raised in medicine from birth could not produce this result. It had only been a few months, and the dragon had grown this much?
Did Great Dragon also have something like gigantism? And that person had actually urged him to fight this thing in person?
Kwenfield realized the situation was worse than expected. Could he win? Could he…
"Boom!"
"What are you posing in the air for? Die!"
Belial had no patience for it. The dragon opened its jaws and immediately fired Freezing Breath, an ice-blue beam that froze everything as it surged forward. In a fight, there was no need for courtesy, and a sneak attack that killed was best.
From earlier intelligence, Kwenfield knew enough to avoid taking a breath attack carrying Laws head-on. He instantly released the fire of decay, trying to make the dragon's information about him decay rapidly into forgetfulness.
It did nothing.
Great Dragon turned its head, the icy blade in its mouth slashing at him again. The dragon's awareness of him was completely unaffected. Kwenfield had no choice but to dodge in midair, moving fast, but the ice-blue beam exploded outward and still caught him with its aftershock.
One of his arms froze solid and lost all feeling. Kwenfield did not hesitate and used fire to sever the arm from his body. The Laws carried by Great Dragon was extremely dangerous, deadly on contact and highly corrosive.
"It's more dangerous than I expected," he said grimly.
In a single exchange, he was already wounded. He tried to activate the surrounding support-type Magic Array to suppress Great Dragon. Most of them shattered the moment they touched Belial, crushed by an unknown force and an overwhelming Magic pressure.
A small part of them worked, but they had no real effect on Belial at all. The dragon noticed these tricks, yet the various Magic effects landing on it were negligible. It was the kind of thing you would not even notice without checking a status panel.
The dragon's judgment was simple. "Clown, what are you stirring up again?"
After this greeting-like exchange, the distance between man and dragon had shrunk to only a few kilometers. For beings like them, that was almost point-blank range.
Belial was ready to tear the opponent apart again, and this time he intended to be fast enough to leave no chance of revival. The experience reward this one could provide was huge. If the other one was nearby too, killing both would firmly unlock the path tied to God of Destruction.
"You are already within my firing range," Belial said. "Take this. A five-kilometer radius Gravity Tornado!"
The dragon's eyes sharpened as the invisible yet powerful Gravity Tornado spread outward at extreme speed, reaching Kwenfield thousands of meters away in an instant. A force capable of lifting tens of thousands of tons wrapped around a human body. Even without being pushed to the limit, its purpose was only to trap and pull him in.
Even so, Kwenfield's body sprayed blood again, bones cracking under the pressure. Despite many modifications that made him barely human, this grasp still injured him. The familiar sensation dragged him back to the memory of being punched apart before.
His bones felt like brittle biscuits, crushed inch by inch, as if he were caught between two hydraulic presses. Yet his mind remained clear. From earlier battles, he knew that once Great Dragon's long-range control took hold, escaping was extremely difficult.
"But I am not without options," he shouted. "Dragon, feel the grace!"
Kwenfield burned a massive amount of Blessed Power without hesitation. The holy fire of the Lord made his body decay further, yet his face remained fanatical. The flames scorched the void itself and even caused the concept of space to waver briefly.
Decaying fire could not normally affect something formless like space. Space itself had nowhere to burn. But as a favored servant, using himself as the anchor and a number of souls as fuel, Kwenfield could shake that concept directly.
The cost was enormous, but it no longer mattered. In an instant, Kwenfield turned into a figure of flame. Along a path aimed at Great Dragon, the surrounding space began to waver and decay.
"Hm?"
Belial paused and shifted his massive body slightly aside. A violent explosion erupted next to him, with large amounts of Magic and lightning scattering outward, nearly wrapping half his body.
The dragon dodged the blast, but a hint of surprise appeared in his eyes. What had just happened felt strange, almost wrong. "My energy went out of control for a moment? No, that's not it. It feels like a disconnect."
With his fine control over his own power, Belial quickly analyzed the situation. The energy that exploded came from his own body, where Magic suddenly ran wild and broke away, like a train derailing.
The problem was that this escaped Magic was still under his control. It was like driving too fast, hands still on the wheel, but the vehicle failing due to excessive acceleration. That should have been impossible under the strict control of Energy Field.
"There really is a small trick," the dragon said coldly. "So it was you."
He twisted his head to look behind him, fixing his gaze on Kwenfield, who had somehow broken free of Gravity Tornado by a method similar to Spatial Teleportation. "Strange. You managed to escape Gravity Tornado. That takes skill, but…"
The dragon's pupils narrowed slightly. Within the coverage of Gravity Tornado, he sensed a clear trace brushing past him, exactly at the area where the energy had gone unstable.
"If that's all, you still have to die."
The damage was trivial. Energy breaking away did harm the body, but to his regeneration it was no more than a patch of scraped skin. Where energy had leaked, white ice and snow melted away, revealing a small patch of long-hidden black beneath.
Damaged scales and skin were already repairing at a speed beyond normal understanding. The method was strange, but that was all it achieved. Using everything just to scrape a bit of skin was nothing to fear.
"To show respect, I'll show you something special," Belial said.
Energy surged through his entire body at high speed. Blue-white light overflowed from his eyes, and the reactor within him hummed under the violent reaction. That light shone from the crystal at the tip of his tail and spread upward, flowing between the mountain-like ridges of his back.
Kwenfield snapped out of the divine effect of the Lord. Wielding even a portion of that authority demanded a price no mortal could easily bear. Still, such risk usually came with great power, and he had expected heavy results.
He looked back.