As he went deeper, the surrounding colors changed. It was no longer just black. Before, he could see a thin layer of red even from afar, but now it was a visible sea of blood-red. There were faint, unknown Shard fragments, and massive streams of resentful souls flowing like ocean currents. The concentration of dark power was beyond imagination, hanging everywhere like black clouds that covered the sky.
Yet, strangely, there was not a single trace of light. To be honest, Belial's eyes might as well not exist here, because they could not receive any external light at all. That was because even light, as an electromagnetic medium, did not exist there. Belial felt something odd. He was relying on his deployed Energy Field and faint planetary perception to judge direction.
"This place is really strange. How should I put it…" The more Belial sensed, the stranger his expression became. He had mentioned before that when he encountered enemies with their own map-like domains, he often felt a strange reaction, like nausea or irritation.
But what was this place supposed to be? The answer was literally nothing at all. Those so-called spaces were only occasionally marked by some Shard fragments, and even those were scarce.
Vaguely, he could feel a force similar to Laws here, but it was completely mixed together like a pot of soup, with no trace of its original form. If he had to describe it, before it was like a badly assembled puzzle or a fallen Figurine cabinet. This place was far more chaotic than any of that, yet because it was too chaotic, everything blended together into a state like a cleared table where nothing stood out.
Some strange intuition told him that this place did not seem like it was originally supposed to be this way. His speed had now truly accelerated to near light-speed. How much time had passed since Belial set out, even he could not remember.
The small gap behind him was only marked briefly, and at this distance it was completely invisible. "So where is the person?"
As he flew, he fell into thought. In a place like this, how was he supposed to find someone, and how was he supposed to probe those dozens of bastards?
Belial kept flying deeper for a long while, and a faint sense finally took shape. His flight path was following the breath attack he had fired toward this place earlier, chasing the aftereffect of his own strike. Since it was a finishing blow, there had to be a target, and even if he did not know how large this space really was, there was at least something extremely big near the impact zone.
He could not clearly judge the strength of these so called kind hosts, but it was always right to start with the softer target. Anyone who had taken that fully charged breath would not be feeling good, which made the timing just right. He muttered that getting injured here would be dangerous, since there was no decent energy source or material supply nearby.
Even feeding on wandering resentful souls was inefficient for energy recovery and mostly helped with healing wounds. This place was not just empty, it had nothing alive at all. If something went wrong, resupply would be a real problem, and that made him pause in midair.
"Did I find it?"
Within this Crimson Purgatory, Belial, wrapped in a high speed shell of Crystal, detected a definite presence and adjusted his trajectory. Very quickly, he saw what that object was, and for a moment his mind went blank, almost mistaking it for outer space itself. It looked like a gigantic sphere made of mottled gray and white metal, like a planet, faintly glowing with light sharp enough to cut.
Its surface bristled with countless sharp peaks and Canyon, and several similar satellite-like objects orbited nearby, along with something like an asteroid belt. There was no gravity, yet the sheer size was still shocking. As Belial passed through the belt, the Crystal shell around him collided with metal asteroids, and only then did he see the truth.
This was not just metal, but a twisted mass formed from countless blades, spears, swords, and other weapons crushed and warped together. What stunned him even more was something else he noticed inside. He stopped and said he needed to rub his eyes and look again.
He actually did rub his eyes, and confirmed he was not mistaken. Thick, black, massive tubes really were sticking out of those asteroids, something he knew all too well. He muttered that these were guns, no, even cannons, and some clearly looked like missile silos, which made no sense in this place.
He almost shouted, because it did not stop there. Things that should only exist in science fiction movies were everywhere, including beam sabers, blaster guns, massive cannons, and even what looked like half a space warship buried in the ground. He had thought nothing could shock him anymore, but this really broke his composure.
As Belial slowed down, he sensed something, and the weapons began to turn their barrels, blades humming as they actively approached the incoming Crystal meteor. In the next instant, they all turned into true scrap metal, smashed apart by overwhelming mass and momentum.
Fireworks bloomed in the sky as the Crystal meteor burned and peeled away, plowing through and destroying layers of air defense weapons. When he got closer to the surface, Belial saw more of the same below, with weapons covering everything, mixing technology and Magic in clashing styles. Without exception, all of them performed their duty as weapons against this intruder.
With a thought, Belial used gravity control and electromagnetic force together, forcibly subduing the weapons and gripping them in place. Then he activated another forbidden skill, Ecological Corrosion. Using Energy Field as a spreading range, the metal surfaces began showing traces of Crystal-like changes, followed by misfires, explosions, and even weapons turning on each other.
The important part was not the destruction, but what this revealed, making Belial narrow his eyes. These things were not just simple technological creations, as other powers were mixed into their composition. Ordinary people would never notice it, but he was very familiar with that presence, clearly belonging to one of those dozens of old acquaintances.
He could not remember which one, but recognizing it was enough. This weapon planet clearly belonged to one of them, not necessarily a true body or lair, but definitely connected. It was also the exact location where his previous direct strike had landed.
He spotted another clear sign, a gigantic crater over a thousand miles wide, branded into the surface and burned black at the bottom. As Belial hovered over this region, the weapons nearby seemed to lose all vitality, reverting to inert objects with only faint sparks. Near the center, another crater about ten kilometers wide appeared, its base filled with heat-scorched Crystal.
Belial landed and removed the flying Crystal shell around his body. He said he had landed safely and that it was time to see what kind of place this really was. Shaking his head, he pushed off the ground and left the crater, since it had been blasted into Shard by his breath and nothing was left to see.
A bit farther away, the weapons greeted him enthusiastically again, and he naturally replied with Ecological Corrosion, making the exchange strangely harmonious. He then started living the life of a scavenger collecting Figurine, digging through weapons to see what familiar things were inside. The composition was truly complex, ranging from cold weapons to firearms, from stone spears to mech-mounted thermal cutters.
Ignoring the overly obscure or overly futuristic pieces, he even dug out familiar items like tanks and fighter jets. This planet felt like a fusion of every weapon humanity might ever create, from past to future, all mashed together in an unreasonable way. Some were stuck together in ways that felt deeply wrong.
The level of wrongness was hard to describe, but even extreme hobbyists would probably call it sacrilege. Digging deeper, he even uncovered weapons with a style resembling certain dark games, and at that point he stopped, feeling disgusted. After flipping open a warship deck that looked like it had been stuck into the ground as a mountain, he realized he had overestimated the place.
If this was really a fusion of weapon concepts, it was far too narrow and childish. He commented that there was not even something decent like mathematical probability weapons, and that if there were an author behind this, their imagination was lacking. After finishing his critique, Belial disassembled a combat mech down to microscopic particles and recorded it into his internal System to show to the kids back home.
While he was about to continue investigating, the ground beneath his feet suddenly softened. The solid metal turned mud-like and swallowed more than half his body. A strange wave followed, making everything around him look pixelated, then came continuous explosions and misfires as the area fell into chaos.
Countless weapons transformed into living metal serpents, surging forward and slamming into the body of the Great Dragon that was stuck in the mire. He calmly said that the real the Lord had finally shown up. Then he activated internal radiation.