If Edward could avoid attacks by rewinding, then rewinding the attack as well would still produce the result. He could not truly strike across timelines on his own, but since Edward kept reporting the location of his archive at close range, Belial simply rode along. He read the same history segment and rewound his attack into the past, creating a twisted effect where Edward was struck by his own rewind.
"This is impossible. I might really..." Several of Edward's past records were shattered by the rewound attacks, forcing him to reload further and further back. Yet he could not return to a time before he devoured the Bronze Dragon, as that paradox could not be bypassed.
He had planned to die here, but only by his own hand, not by being beaten to death like this. The outcome was the same, but he could not accept it. The remaining Great Dragon struggled wildly, unleashing even fiercer attacks and spells, all washing over Belial as he endured them head on and smiled.
"Your archive is almost used up, right?" Belial raised his fist, killing intent clear in his eyes. Below him, Edward was left with only the record from right after devouring the Bronze Dragon, and as he stared upward, he seemed to see a sun.
"Decay cannot truly kill me. This time, you win. When I truly become fate, I will..." Before he could finish, his entire body was blown apart in a literal sense, internal energy going berserk, aging at extreme speed, and then exploding into charcoal.
Belial swept his hand and ground him completely to dust, leaving no chance for him to become even a shard of a strong Shard. It did not end there, as the Authority concept power beyond ordinary Laws traced along the dragon he had parasitized, hunting him down one by one.
Across the continent, those known as Dragon Calamity burst into flames from the inside and were roasted into charcoal, dying in screams. These were Edward uploaded into Clone after the main body died, yet the terrifying sun chased him relentlessly, burning him again and again as he fled.
He had expected this outcome. A deep strand of darkness coiled around his soul unfolded into a contract, one signed with the Abyssal Gods. After ensuring the contract took effect, Edward finally relaxed and was swallowed by the sun.
The Great Dragon named Edward was now truly dead.
At last, with that annoying guy dead, Belial felt clear-headed and refreshed. Now there were only two other targets left, one who had been bothering him before and another who was clearly an accomplice, and both of them had to die. He considered himself a good person, and beating up people who clearly were not good counted as doing good deeds, so naturally he should see it through and send all of them on their way.
"By the way, who are these people anyway?" he muttered. "Are they the suppliers of those kind folks from that blood-red space before, or their investors?" He narrowed his eyes and thought back, realizing that most of the strong enemies he had beaten since transmigrating shared similar traits with those so-called kind people.
"Forget it, I should deal with my teammates first," he said to himself. "Come to think of it, I've been fighting this whole time without even knowing who this group really is." After waking up, the list of things he needed to do had grown longer again. First was to find some old acquaintances, second was to get used to his new abilities that interfered with the boundary between light and darkness, something close to time itself, and third was to kill all those unusual old acquaintances from before.
One of them had a known main body location, so he could take care of that one along the way after finishing everything else. The other two little ones had flashed away not too far, and a short flight would be enough to reach them. With that settled, his thoughts moved forward without hesitation.
"Wuu…" It was only after hearing a dragon's cry that Sylvia snapped back to herself, already knowing what that sound meant after these days together. It was like a driver honking to signal it was time to get on. Even so, what had just happened refused to leave her mind.
"Is it really over?" she murmured. "Just like that?" That nightmare from her past, the Edward who had lurked in the shadows and fed on Dragonkin, was really gone. By the time she climbed into her seat, Sylvia still felt dizzy, as if a final dungeon she could never clear had been casually crushed by some powerful stranger passing by.
She was happy, of course, but it all felt unreal. It was as if all those years had been wasted, and she had simply watched Edward be reduced to nothing at all. Still, a small problem lingered in her mind.
"But… Edward also destroyed the Dragonkin inheritance system," she said quietly. "The library that carried all that knowledge is gone, so what happens to Dragonkin now?" She paused, then added, "The Bronze Dragon's Authority should reincarnate, right? How long will it take before a complete system can be rebuilt?"
This was a serious issue, because the destruction of the previous Bronze Dragon meant all accumulated knowledge from that generation had been lost. Any Dragonkin born afterward would never inherit that portion of history. Fortunately, the knowledge of dragons from before that time was still mostly intact, and Sylvia planned to seek out those Ancient Dragon old relics and gather all the dragons to see how much they still remembered.
After thinking it through, Sylvia realized she had overlooked another important point and shifted her gaze back to the massive Black Dragon beneath her. Edward had first swallowed half a dragon skeleton that formed part of the space of Dragon Valley, then half of the previous generation's Silver Dragon Authority, and after that an entire Bronze Dragon. On top of that, there was also the previous generation's ill-fated Gold dragon, which, even without Authority, was still a high-tier and extremely special dragon species.
That meant he had effectively gathered a lesser version of the four great dragon types. He had already been terrifyingly strong, which raised a new question. If stacking four high-tier dragon species together still would not be enough to defeat this Black Dragon, then what kind of existence was it really?
"Maybe I should think about it the other way around," Sylvia said slowly. "Is there something among Dragonkin that could overpower four high-tier dragon species at once?" She fell silent, and then the answer seemed to surface on its own.
There really was something that fit. Ancient, sleeping somewhere unknown, wielding power never seen before, with creative abilities that could revive flesh and bone and a colossal form that once devoured the sun. Still, she shook her head slightly.
"No, that seems too unlikely," she muttered. "It can even resonate with Ham's eggshell, and more importantly…" She hesitated, then said it out loud. "By Dragonkin age standards, this is still a young dragon."
One conclusion was shocking yet oddly reasonable, while the other was absurd to the extreme, like a twisted version of the 'this is eight years old' scene. She could not decide which one to believe. While Sylvia was still torn between whether this was some ancient ancestor or a child, they arrived at their destination, where Vera was already waving while controlling her body.
"Are you all right?" Sylvia jumped down, and Vera replied, "I'm fine. Back in that space, someone used Teleportation to get us out." She paused and pointed to the side. "But it's strange. Ham still hasn't woken up."
Ham lay on the ground with a faint frown, looking like she was sleeping. There was nothing visibly wrong, but she had not woken since the moment they arrived via Teleportation. Sylvia examined her carefully and found no cause, as her body was perfectly healthy, yet she remained in a deep sleep.
"Let's go back to Dragon Valley first," Sylvia decided. "It's better to leave Demonkind territory." Since she could not figure it out, leaving seemed like the safest choice.
Dragon Valley was also accessed through space itself, and the range of Teleportation was wide enough that even from Demonkind territory, it was almost within reach. After only a few steps, just as Sylvia was about to activate Teleportation, she realized a more serious problem. Belial did not seem to know how to get inside.
That was awkward, since she had wanted to bring Belial in to let those old relics take a look and see if they could identify his origin. Now he could not even get through the door. "Maybe we should forget it and wait outside?" she suggested.
Even pushing herself to the limit, Sylvia could only expand the Rift to about a hundred meters, and she wiped sweat from her face. It was not just about size, because Belial's sheer mass was enough to crush the spatial passage, and with only half of Dragon Valley remaining, that unstable space might collapse entirely if he entered.
Belial could only accept it helplessly, though he understood her intent. It was just an invitation to visit her home, and space was something he was quite familiar with. After all, he had once worked on Spatial Barrier at Lilith's place, and later enemies had often wielded similar powers.