Inside the planet, countless weapons were fed into roaring furnaces and melted into pure essence and molten iron. The concepts of slashing blades, piercing spears, and gunfire were extracted and poured into the massive body that bore tens of thousands of weapons. Layer by layer, armaments forged from memories of ancient battle were embedded into its back.
Each of those weapons, if cast into the upper world, would have been enough to become legendary or infamous. Yet on this monster's back, there were countless such blades. This was the seat of its Authority, after all.
Once the crude arming was complete, its body was recast in layers of molten metal. From the infernal core of the planet, the colossal form crawled outward, triggering massive earthquakes and roaring in fury. The sound carried even to the surface, and everything that heard it changed in subtle ways.
Swords and blades gained cracks and bullet holes, scars and stains of blood, as if just taken from a brutal battlefield. Even guns and shells darkened with soot and etched marks of damage. Among the lowest forms, even teeth, fists, thighs, and pencils showed scars, as long as they could be recognized as weapons.
Only scars were remembered most deeply. Pain from blades, from piercing, and from countless other wounds was awakened. Across the surface, weapons that had caused endless suffering began to manifest the resentful souls of those they had killed.
They wailed together, bodies covered in scars, bound to the weapons that had slain them and unable to escape. Torn apart again by the roar that embodied suffering and scars, they were endlessly reborn, repeating the cycle. The massive body, stretching for kilometers like a moving mountain range, emerged slowly from the great Rift.
"Roar… ang!" The enormous beast, the bearer of blades, this world's the Lord, finally stood before Belial. With the slightest movement, the ground shook, its back laden with countless scarred weapons.
Its overwhelming presence spread the instant it appeared, and the entire weapon planet cried out in pain. In response, Black Dragon simply let out a tired-sounding reply. "Mm."
"Well, I didn't expect this, but I'm used to it," he said. "Another nobody."
The Scarred Beast, Weapon-Beast Overlord, the Painful Beast Industry, The God Who Bears Ten Thousand Blades… these were the ranks and titles I once held, each stronger than the last, each with a higher grade and greater power. My name is… The God of Scars! As a god of The World-Devouring Crimson, ever since I ascended to the Crimson summit, my strength and cultivation have kept growing, so strong that I rank just below one, two, three… well, actually quite a lot, dozens at least.
To ensure that I forever hold this supreme status, I will use any means necessary, whether devouring countless souls for the Crimson or tearing apart worlds with Rend to seize concepts. This is my way, my path. Because I once suffered a disastrous defeat at the hands of The Mirror Butterfly, I have been stuck squatting here like a prisoner, starving ever since, but a god will spare no cost to survive.
For example, investing in a few puppets in Prime World, even though the plan has failed three times already. Still, I remain proud, since a bit of hardship means nothing. And so I absolutely cannot tolerate some ant stirring up trouble on my territory, yet after I revealed my true body, why did that ant react like this, as if it was looking down on me?
With too many things happening recently, a slightly confused The God of Scars stared at the small Black Dragon in front of him. What exactly was Belial thinking? From his point of view, the ground suddenly split open with Rend, and a gigantic monster several thousand meters long burst out.
It stood on thick limbs, horns pointing skyward, blades growing from its snout, and its body was wrapped in heavy armor that looked like molten iron cast into shape. Slash marks, bullet holes, and burn scars covered it from head to toe, countless in number, making it look a bit like a dinosaur. The most eye-catching part was its back, densely packed with countless weapons, some ordinary blades, others strange beyond measure, with both cold and hot weapons mixed together.
Those weapons were the ones that had carved countless scars in the past, and every slight movement of its body set off a blockbuster of clashing blades and guns. The spreading sound waves and a certain conceptual force, the power that symbolized scars, already sliced everything around into pieces, leaving behind a sudden field of blasted craters. These were scars, and the scars made by the countless weapons on its back now reappeared, enough to tear an ordinary person apart just by being seen.
Belial did not care about the strange situation for now, because the shape of the thing in front of him felt familiar. He was not sure, so he decided to pull back his view and take a closer look.
"Damn it, I knew it!" He started cursing again. "Isn't this just a reskinned Anguirus? What's the big deal, you made me think it was something special. Turns out it's another nobody!"
Looking at this hedgehog-like thing with similar features all around, Belial easily mapped it onto an old familiar enemy. He did not usually judge by appearances, but the monsters he fought could mostly be matched to their strength by looks alone. Small fry like the Western Caesar King could be killed casually.
But once it came to bosses at the level of King Ghidorah, he had to activate Second Phase to fight them properly. As for Anguirus's standing, all he could say was that it was just a ball, something anyone could kick around, in more than one sense. And really, it was just bigger in size, only a few thousand meters, while a casual basic attack of his covered several times that distance.
"So you are the real the Lord here, right?"
After realizing this, he moved forward like a the Lord, grinning ferociously as he stared at the opponent's left arm. There was no mistake, that was the trace left by his earlier special breath attack. In other words, this thing was the real target of his orbital bombardment and follow-up strike.
That meant this creature probably knew something about his teammate's whereabouts, but Belial did not think he could ask it out of its mouth. He also had no intention of adding it as a friend and having a warm, friendly chat. Besides, judging by the number of resentful souls, he had never planned to let it live from the moment he started keeping notes.
He would kill it cleanly, pull out its soul, and then just browse the most recent fragments. Both of them were thinking the same thing, such perfect understanding, so how could he refuse such kindness? The battle was not about to erupt, it had already begun long before the descent.
Slash.
"Roar…!!!"
Without question, it was powerful. The God of Scars only needed to open its mouth, and the first roar alone blasted Belial away, dragging him across the surface for dozens of kilometers before flinging him straight into the outer asteroid belt. Many surface structures were smashed apart by the flying Black Dragon, melted by frictional heat, and countless slash marks were left along the way.
What kind of attack was that? It was slash, or rather, cutting. When the blades on The God of Scars's back rang out, the concepts stored within those weapons manifested, from the cutting of teeth tearing food to the clashes of blades on a battlefield.
Any object that carried a damage concept fitting cutting and that had once left scars was refined and embedded into that forest of weapons on its back. Now, simply releasing them produced such shocking results. This was not ordinary cutting damage, but a direct twisting of reality that forcibly branded scars onto the target, causing the wounds to appear as a matter of course.
With almost no way to block it, the premise of a scar was taking damage, so any individual marked by scars naturally suffered enough damage to create them. No matter how solid the defense, once the concept of scars was applied, it would be torn apart by Rend. This was the power of its Authority, not flashy in scale like others, but absolutely troublesome, making every strike a guaranteed hit that always caused damage.
No matter how much one dodged or defended, it could not be blocked, like forcibly deducting health, or in other words, forcibly adding a health bar to anything and then dealing damage through scars.
"Roar…!!!"
Under the command of the god of this domain, the entire metal weapon planet began to tremble. Countless weapons and attacks poured down on the flung-away Belial. Slashes, impacts, freezing, burning, tearing with Rend, and pulverizing into Shard, all kinds of weapons that could produce scars charged at him, each performing its function to the fullest.
The planet's surface was almost instantly blasted into a massive basin, and from time to time Belial was even knocked into the asteroid belt, only to be bombarded back down by orbital platforms. The ground shook as more gravity anchors emerged, forcibly smashing him back onto the surface, while different forces from all directions squeezed his body.