Entire domains filled with armies, monsters, Nanomachines infection, and Evil God corruption were wiped out.
He could accept node losses, but even the core Nanomachines were gone, gutting the foundation. Worse, the dragon destroyed the recovery channels and devoured the collected power and souls. "That is mine, you cannot eat it," he roared inwardly, but any avatar he sent was swatted aside, making resistance pointless.
Unable to even recover costs, Ludwig watched the dragon feast nonstop, destroying nine nodes in a day, leaving only three he rushed to pull back. His schemes were cut short by lack of resources. Seeing the dragon devour souls and Magic on such a scale, he wondered if it sought the crimson path, becoming an existence like himself.
He scoffed, knowing that path only produced a mad fallen god in this era. Still, he sensed the mad dragon had arrived, and the last three nodes might buy time to collect data.
"Slow down, any faster and Sky Island risks falling apart," someone warned. "Too slow, this thing is really fragile," came the reply.
Belial flew ahead, dragging Sky Island with Gravity Tornado. Carrying something like this meant he could not accelerate at dozens of mach speeds anymore. Accidentally crushing a Shard would be bad.
Inside the castle, Bella diligently repaired structures marked as heavily damaged. Even Nanometal could not withstand millions of tons of force while being dragged at several mach speeds. The rear thrusters of Sky Island were shut down, and the secret cannon's delicate components had to be protected, so speed had to drop.
"We should be very close to Evil God's core domain," Bella said to Lilith. "My sensors are failing due to shifts in physical constants and rule distortion, but staying within the dragon's field seems to negate it, and some of my tech even works again."
"I will not think about that for now," Lilith replied. "Do we need to prepare anything? Are you sure this can block pollution from Evil God?"
"According to calculations, staying within the field and not too far from the dragon should work," Bella said. "The domain is still incomplete, just a prototype."
She suddenly looked at the detector as a massive high-density nanocluster target appeared, weighing tens of thousands of tons. "What, is this being delivered early?" she muttered.
The Great Dragon narrowed his eyes, watching the huge object flying out from the faint silver metal city. Belial had planned to casually kill the last targets on the way out and then deal with the mastermind. Instead, a System red mark was moving toward him.
"Oh, it is you again, MOGUERA," he laughed. "You blew up three times and still repaired yourself. Whatever, you are not much stronger, so I will just blow you up again."
Transforming from flight mode, MOGUERA landed and raised its head, weapons locking onto Belial. "Combat phase one initiated," it announced. "Preparing to collect target combat data."
"What is that thing?"
"That should be one of the sub-nodes. It is also a power medium of the Evil God, and it seems to be using an old combat template from the records. But why send it out alone?"
Whether by energy estimates or past combat results, Bella could not understand why the other side would send out a node alone, as if throwing it away to die. There was no way it was really being generous and giving away a free target.
"Anyway, they are about to fight. Let's stay farther away."
Even MOGUERA could easily smash this small Sky Island to pieces, so Bella quietly moved back. At the same time, the the Lord cannon began charging, ready to fire if anything went wrong.
Belial did not care whether this was a trap or not. This was the mission target, and even if it was a scheme, he would still crush it first.
"And you do not seem to have improved much. I am in Overclock Mode form now, so everything dies."
He glanced at the opponent and saw no real change, just a layer of silver-white coating on the surface. To Belial, that was all there was to it.
"After reforging, it carries Laws-type weapons. At least it should be able to stall for a while."
The aura on the opposite side was clearly stronger, its body glowing red as the dorsal spikes lit up with a continuous hum. Ludwig felt that this should be enough.
He had poured more power into this puppet avatar and used higher-grade Nanometal. The machine's mass and raw firepower were far stronger than before. To gather more data, the armor had been thickened, with additional protective Barrier and deflection fields, focusing entirely on endurance.
Belial did not know any of this. Even if he did, he would not care, because the two sides were not playing the same game.
MOGUERA's eyes lit up as newly mounted weapons and heavier armaments opened fire in succession. Stronger lasers, the Disintegration Beam that could shatter molecular structures, energy-suppressing artillery, and clouds of metal particles that dampened surrounding energy were all deployed at once.
"Hey, those are all weapons from the database. Damn it, they can still be used like this?"
"Just watch quietly. It will be fine."
Dense beams and artillery strikes poured in, far stronger than before, but Belial did not even bother to activate Photon Reflection Shield. He wanted to test his current strength anyway.
"Internal radiation release."
Unlike before, the overclocked state now sent out a nearly orange-red wave of blazing energy from his body. After modifying this skill, he could unleash far greater damage in a single burst.
The beams that touched Belial's surface were instantly evaporated or blasted away by even fiercer energy. At the same time, the Great Dragon lunged forward, its charge overwhelming like a collapsing mountain range.
"What, again?"
The Nanometal particle fog meant to suppress energy vanished completely in the extreme heat. Ludwig also realized that the protective coating on the machine's surface had already been burned through, despite being designed to survive conditions like bathing on the surface of a star.
The temperature exceeded preset thresholds in an instant, and surface weapons melted down. Worse still was the overhead strike of Belial's Space Claw.
"Ugh!"
A familiar claw slammed down as MOGUERA raised a metal arm to block. The entire body was forced downward, and amid violent energy explosions and heat, most of that arm was ripped off.
The other arm switched to melee mode, its drill not yet able to act before it was grabbed by another powerful claw. It was crushed into a lump of scrap metal.
"Even if it absorbed part of my power, how could it reach this level? This makes no sense!"
Ludwig, along with Bella and Lilith behind him, all thought the same thing. Belial did not care what they thought at all.
"So this is all you have. Your stats did go up a lot, that much is true."
"But my growth curve is exponential. Next time, do not log into the wrong game."
With a practiced over-the-shoulder throw, he grabbed the opponent's leg and swung it around. The ground shook as tens of thousands of tons of metal smashed into the surroundings, mountains collapsing as if he were playing with a giant toy.
How strong was Belial now? Even he did not know. The combined boost of two templates was not a simple numerical increase, but a deeper fusion that produced absurd gains.
Although his size was only around a hundred meters, his strength had already surpassed Heisei Era levels. It was far beyond the million-ton range, and a so-called tens-of-thousands-of-tons MOGUERA was truly just a toy in his hands.
"Damn it, this cannot continue."
If this went on, forget collecting data. Even exhausting all hidden cards would only let the enemy play around.
"Activate the second copy of the unit, now."
The earth trembled as Belial happily dismantled his toy. A massive drill suddenly burst up from beneath his feet, revealing a second MOGUERA that was even larger and stronger.
This one stood well over a hundred meters tall and had emerged from underground. It was Ludwig's backup plan, and hiding it alone had taken considerable effort.
The highly compressed Nanometal drill would carry tens of thousands of tons of mass under extreme pressure, stabbing into Belial's body and spreading its corruption inward. That was the original plan, to at least cause trouble even if the dragon could not be defeated.
The premise was that Belial had not already noticed it.
The red dot on the map was very clear.
The moment the second MOGUERA emerged, it was met by Belial leaping into the air to dodge the drill. He fired a crystallized explosive tail shot in midair.
"Fishermen never come back empty. You come out too."
The sharp tail spear pierced straight through the metal head. With brute force, he dragged the towering, tens-of-thousands-of-tons metal body out of the ground using his tail.
"What?"
The second MOGUERA was slammed onto the ground, then grabbed by the leg. Belial spun both machines around together before smashing them into each other.
The second unit's mounted firepower automatically retaliated, even stronger than the first. It was still useless.
"That is the second node, but it does not seem to matter."
"Yeah, he looks like he is playing."
"Wait, the third one seems to be out as well."