On the level of consciousness, control over Laws was far tighter than any physical link. In this space, the amount of Laws she and the fire of decay held corresponded to the fragments within the ritual area around Canyon.
The only explanation was that her fragments in reality had been destroyed, along with the Laws within them. Recovering that would require rebirth. But how could anyone destroy the core fragments of a great spirit? Even ground down to dust, they would not truly be destroyed unless reduced to their most basic elemental particles.
She recalled the thin blue-white beam that had shattered her wings. That terrifying heat felt familiar.
Her expression slowly changed.
Fei'er Li watched anxiously as Icelis spoke through clenched teeth. "It should not be possible… no way… I thought it had already left…"
"What are you talking about?" Fei'er Li asked.
Icelis looked back at the pursuing fire of decay. If her guess was right, it would soon be beaten as well due to the shared loss of Laws. They both drew from the same source.
Before she could fully imagine it, a deafening roar erupted. The shockwave snuffed out the blockbuster flames and dyed everything in terrifying black. Icelis nearly fell over in fright.
Something seemed to emerge from the darkness. The fire of decay narrowed its eyes and turned away from Icelis, focusing on that presence instead.
Before a form appeared, a rhythmic hum echoed, like a nuclear reactor starting up, growing faster and louder. Patches of bright blue light lit up within the darkness, drawing closer, as if an enormous mass was charging forward with steps weighing tens of thousands of tons.
The fire of decay suddenly widened its eyes, spread its burning wings, and let out a shrill cry.
"Roar!"
From the black fog burst forth a Great Dragon, wings beating and wind pressure easily blowing away the surrounding flames. Its mouth glowed with searing blue-white light. Its surface was pitch black, with light flowing beneath every scale.
It threw open its fang-filled jaws, and the blue-white light, opposite to fire yet far more violent, erupted in a blazing flash of pure destruction.
Icelis was fighting with Fire of Decay over the same share of ice Laws. Their mental avatars were anchored to that Laws, and the destruction of Icelis's core fragments in reality was reflected here, a distorted mirror of the real world. Because they were bound to the same Laws, both of them took the hit when Belial absorbed fragments, as the mental will contained in his Energy Field lashed out without discrimination.
Belial had no intention of doing it, yet his mental will followed the connection like a crawling wire and forced itself into this space. Even Icelis, whose mind fragments made up the larger share, had her wings shattered by a small blue white beam of light. So what would happen to the part of Fire of Decay that made up most of the body fragments, the part that had been absorbed by Belial?
In a world where everything had decayed into red fire, a single blue white beam appeared. Its color was cold, yet it burned hotter than the flames around it. Like a sharp sword, it split a straight path through the sea of fire, and Fire of Decay was blasted several kilometers away by a Spiral Heat Ray at least several meters thick, spat out by the Great Dragon.
This was clearly Fire of Decay's own mental domain where it had held the advantage. Yet it was not only knocked flying by a single strike, but the violent explosion and extreme heat that followed spread outward in a ring. A blockbuster of flames was blown out by the rapidly expanding fireball and pressure, and Fire of Decay itself was in even worse shape, with a hole blown straight through its chest and the scenery faintly visible beyond.
Half of its wings were already torn to pieces, even though they were regenerating at a decent speed. Still, in those eye pupils as large as a person, there appeared a very clear emotion that did not belong to a god. Confusion.
It understood what this meant. Outside the material reality, there was something that had just appeared in the mental domain, that Black Dragon Avatar. It had not only destroyed part of the Laws that it was fighting over, but had directly erased and devoured part of its power.
A dragon? In its ancient, chaotic, and mad memories, there were faint traces of such slightly larger ants. Even those four that were a bit different could not possibly do this. Its status far surpassed everything in the current world, and even weakened as it was, a trace of its power could never be crushed by mere quantity.
It was like a child who could solve hundreds of simple problems but could never solve a single advanced equation, no matter how many they did. That was suppression at the level of essence. In other words, that thing was probably not a dragon at all, just something else wearing dragon skin, perhaps those similar beings, or that False Light whose traces had just appeared.
There was no time to think about that now. As long as it seized this body first, it could break the seal later. Even though it had taken a heavy blow, Fire of Decay's body had mostly regenerated by now, though its size and strength were reduced due to the loss of Laws.
Even so, it was still not something Icelis, who was shrinking and trembling in Phil's arms, could resist. The pitch black and ferocious Great Dragon stood there motionless and slowly dissipating. Icelis did not dare look at it, and until it fully vanished, she suspected it might turn around and bite her again.
And most likely, more of her fragments had been eaten in reality. Why did that dragon keep staring at her to eat her? Was it endless? Could it not eat the one on the other side instead? Fei'er Li now seemed to understand why Icelis was so afraid.
Just seeing such a towering Great Dragon with a black and vicious appearance was enough to make her legs go weak. "And also..."
Fei'er Li's expression turned strange as she recalled the voice and scene from earlier, a familiar sense of overlap appearing in her mind. "No, no, it must just be a coincidence, right?"
She noticed that the necklace she wore in reality, the one holding the fragment found in Icelis's bedding, had appeared here as well. It faintly flashed with a trace of holy light, and a phantom goddess amulet appeared in her pocket, while the blank book appeared in Fei'er Li's hands.
"...Dawn?"
Thinking back, she had been protected by holy light ever since entering this place. Fei'er Li reopened the book and flipped to the page with the ice blue mark, the page of the contract skill.
She reviewed the use of the contract skill she had previously activated without thinking. Among the tangled clues and usable tools, a spark appeared in her eyes that had once been filled with despair. It seemed there was a way.
"But..." "Icelis, I have a way to get you out, and there is also a chance to deal with that thing. But can you listen to me and do what I say?"
Taking a deep breath, Fei'er Li looked seriously at Icelis's shoulder and into her eyes. "If you really do, then say it quickly. Things cannot get much worse." "Alright, Icelis! Make a sacred severing with yourself, as hard as you can!" "...?"
The clash on the battlefield of wills was fierce. In reality, Vann was also having a hard time.
In the real world, Icelis had already mutated to a certain degree, forming a headless, birdlike skeletal body that rose into the air. She flapped her wings to sweep out freezing winds as massive ice mountains burst from the ground. Vann relied on his Battle Aura and powerful physique to move and dodge among them, carving out a path when there was no way through, and he could not draw on Dotleivy's power at this moment.
The goal was only to delay time, not to defeat the opponent, and it was not certain he even could. Even while avoiding direct combat, he still suffered badly, cold seeping into his body until his blood vessels felt frozen stiff, frost forming on his beard. He blasted a tunnel through an ice mountain as hard as iron, rushed through it, then turned and kicked into the rock wall to make a crater, gasping for breath.
"I do not know why the attack frequency and power suddenly dropped earlier, but I think I am about to hit my limit."
He spat out a mouthful of blood mixed with ice shards, his eyes locked on the huge skeleton that had gone berserk and was being gradually taken over by an evil god. Its spine arched high toward the sky as if roaring, and this time it was not towering glaciers rising one after another, but an all-encompassing ice storm with no blind spots.
There was nowhere to hide as it swept over like a shattered frozen river. "Wait!"
Vann's pupils shrank. He could not dodge this move. At that critical moment, the ice storm seemed to hit a red light and slowed to a brief halt, automatically opening a path upward through it.
"Get up here!"