With the powerful recovery from Crystal Domain, as long as his body could hold, Belial could turn himself into a near-infinite firepower turret. Fire of Decay, already resolved to die and driven mad, forcibly shattered a portion of its own divine kingdom and converted it into power through Authority of Decay. Even fiercer flames spiraled through the air and plunged straight down.
There was no medium for sound, yet another kind of deafening roar filled the senses as Photon Reflection Shield was raised. The crystalline shield blocked the surging, poisonous flames outside. "Impressive," Belial commented, only for part of Photon Reflection Shield to be pierced by burning claws and then shattered by a self-destructive blast from Fire of Decay.
Belial swung his tail and retreated, firing several crystal detonations that struck the opponent. Fire of Decay flapped its wings, and the sweeping flames destroyed all the white crystals nearby. Another Spiral Heat Ray fired, while Fire of Decay treated its own body as decay, squeezing power from its already ruined form and answering with a highly condensed black-red beam.
The beams collided head-on. In the end, the black-red light overwhelmed the blue-white, and the hastily deployed Photon Reflection Shield shook violently from the aftershock. The concept of decay within it also began to erode Belial's body.
The underlying structure of his body seemed to disconnect and rapidly decay, releasing huge amounts of energy in the process. On the surface, this showed as scales bursting open on his arm before slowly repairing themselves. This was decay, something that had nothing to do with defense values.
By now, Belial had accumulated many such wounds, and his energy continued to leak during the decay process. Thanks to the periodic activation of Crystal Domain, his overall state was still acceptable. He even had time to sigh.
"So this Otherworld really is full of hidden monsters. I never expected a Rodan to be buried in a place like the polar regions." Why not just stay in a volcano like normal?
Fire of Decay was also covered in wounds, its armor shattered and leaking flame-like blood, yet there was no sign of recovery. Instead, as its injuries worsened, its output kept increasing as it freely turned itself into decay itself. At this point, it was not just confused, it was certain the opponent was not a Great Dragon.
It was simply absurd. Since perfect soul ascension, taking the crown of Laws in the hall, carving out its own territory with Rend, and ascending as a god, it had almost never fought like this again. Battles between beings of that level long ago surpassed simple physical exchanges.
At that level, fights easily twisted existing rules of reality, extending to higher dimensions, finer scales, and even along the flow of time itself. Reality built on physical Laws could not support such battles, and authority alone could reshape the world by will. Raw power differences had long since become meaningless.
Even those a tier lower had already moved past pure numbers. Stacking resources gave poor returns, because a longer energy pool meant nothing if you could not land hits. Overkill was wasteful, like using an anti-tank weapon to kill one person.
To put it simply, this was an era where cultivation had reached a very high realm, and further grinding was inefficient. Everyone focused on perfecting their state instead. That was exactly why Fire of Decay was so baffled.
It found that the foundational rules making up the opponent's body were unbelievably solid and complete. With its current strength, it was impossible to shake them on a conceptual level. Worse, this Great Dragon had used that completeness to stack resistance, rendering its usual authority far less effective.
Yet somehow, the opponent's attacks still caused real damage, even injuring the soul itself. Left with no choice, Fire of Decay could only redirect its rules and authority to raise energy levels and output, hoping to crush the opponent that way. This was exactly what made Belial so frustrating, dragging the fight back into an era of brute force number brawls.
Even worse for Fire of Decay, this was what it lacked most. It had been starving in the cracks of existence, and without the ability to draw power from decay, it would have died long ago. Even so, it showed that a starved beast could still fight hard, trading blows and even suppressing its foe at times.
During the clash, it had already sensed a path to victory. Its wounds multiplied, and even its divine kingdom was sinking into decay, but by crazily extracting power from it, the Evil God ignited flames so dark they were nearly pure black. They resembled something of extreme density collapsing into a devouring darkness.
It spread its wings and soared, the flames on its body reaching tens of thousands of degrees and still climbing. Blue-white Spiral Heat Ray strikes exploded on its body, yet the energy was drawn in and became part of the fire. The massive, black-flamed figure dove straight toward Belial, and the expanding flames like a solar storm even destroyed part of Crystal Domain.
"Is it trying to go all in with me? Something feels off," Belial thought. Even so, he took it seriously and raised Photon Reflection Shield to its highest output yet. What followed was like a collapsing star smashing down.
Aside from Belial himself, the entire Crystal Domain shattered instantly, and Photon Reflection Shield filled with dense Crack that were still being crushed. For the first time since transmigrating, Belial felt a truly heavy blow as the hundred-meter body of Fire of Decay smashed through the shield and sent the Black Dragon flying with tens of millions of tons of momentum.
He fired a Spiral Heat Ray while activating internal radiation, but Fire of Decay ignored it all. The ever-darkening flames, at their hottest edges, showed a faint white like the rim of an accretion disk. This unprecedented burn damaged Belial's surface tissue and flesh, with loose energy causing secondary injuries.
This time, the use of decay authority was slightly different. "Get away from me!" Belial roared, smashing the opponent aside with Space Claw before firing an even stronger Spiral Heat Ray. Orange-red electric flickers danced within the beam, its heat and power clearly higher than before.
The biological reactor surged again, and after several more beams, Fire of Decay was blasted away, huge craters torn into its body. It roared, yet its goal had been achieved. The Evil God seemed to laugh wildly, as its worsening injuries and the imminent collapse of its divine kingdom only fueled an even greater burst of power.
A dying sun released its final light, and blinding white brilliance spread from its wings like a mass compressed to a single point before erupting. A fireball like a nuclear explosion expanded outward, carrying extreme heat, shockwaves, resentful roars, and shattered Laws in a tidal wave.
Belial stared in disbelief. "Wait, nobody got sacrificed, so how are you still pulling this kind of boost?" He complained loudly, yet did not dare be careless, wrapping his wings around himself and reinforcing Photon Reflection Shield.
The explosion sent him flying, and even his tens-of-thousands-of-tons body felt light. His outer scales resisted the heat well and his muscles absorbed much of the impact, but his stomach still churned. The lingering decay power threw the energy in his surface tissues into chaos, causing internal secondary damage and making him spit out a mouthful of blackened blood for the first time.
Fortunately, no vital organs were seriously damaged, and he could still fight. The Black Dragon dug its claws into the Soul Desert and plowed back over a hundred meters before stopping. Belial looked up at the Rodan, which now seemed barely holding on, and prepared to finish it.
Then something felt wrong. "Hm?" His eyes widened as the energy he usually controlled like his own limbs suddenly slipped free. A chain reaction blasted a wound open on his arm, with more small reactions erupting inside his body.
The energy went unstable, orange-red lightning-like currents jumping between his dorsal spines. "Gwah!" Another internal explosion made Belial spit blood again. Fire of Decay, just recovering from its violent outburst, revealed a faint cold smile.
"What is going on, can Rodan's move that shreds HP with true damage really come with a lasting buff too?"
Sparks kept bursting from his body surface, and the cursing Belial had no choice but to keep grappling with the flying Fire of Decay as it lunged at him again. The constant damage made his movements slower, and the situation was clearly turning against him.
"Roar!!!"
Its injuries were growing worse, yet that only made Fire of Decay stronger. The remaining Authority erupted in a brief peak, forcing its energy level higher and higher.
Its body looked like porcelain filled with Crack, and from time to time something scorching burst out of those Rift. It burned everything as fuel, including its own soul, the Divine Kingdom, and the souls it had sacrificed earlier.
The flames shifted from pitch black to blazing white, spreading from the huge wound in its chest to its entire body. The edges of its wings turned into blazing solar rims, howling as they released storms like those of a star system.
It even used its wings as cutting weapons, their edges carrying extreme heat and massive force. Belial blocked a few strikes with his own wings, leaving several deep gashes cut open.