Before the dragon tooth reached the limit of what it could bear, Bella engraved sixteen incantations in a single breath. Every one represented concepts such as death, destruction, extinction, and annihilation. Negative energy wrapped tightly around the tooth, causing its temperature to plummet from the inside out. When it had fallen to an extreme low, she thrust the tooth into the Balrog's heart and used its inner flame to heat it once more.
The incantations endured for roughly fifteen minutes before shattering all at once. Bella withdrew the tooth, engraved more incantations to lower its temperature, then heated it again.
After three repetitions, the Balrog's heart crumbled into powder and Bella's breathing grew slightly ragged. Using the dragon tooth as a foundation, she forged a two-handed sword wrapped in the Balrog's indomitable soul and imbued with the Mortal Blade's property of awakening the dead.
A sorcerer should wield a two-handed sword!
The dragon tooth came from Smaug, a fire dragon, while a Balrog was, as its name suggested, a demon of flame. Yet when the two were combined, their energy manifested the opposite attribute. With numerous negative incantations added as well, the two-handed sword became increasingly cold and sinister.
The sword was 1.6 meters long. Incantations for awakening and enslaving the dead ran along its spine, while the guard bore the emblem of the Balrog's goat-like head. The Balrog had truly died with grievances unresolved. The final trace of its existence had been wrung from its heart, and the emblem on the guard represented its endless resentment.
Bella raised the two-handed sword and swung it from side to side, familiarizing herself with its weight and speed.
She could not help muttering, "…This design looks a little like that dutiful-son sword…"
Frostmourne! Too lazy to spend time thinking, she gave the newly forged dragon-tooth sword that suitably impressive name.
Since she had chosen to name the weapon Frostmourne, it naturally had to do more than simply cut people down.
Bella quietly returned to Clone Island. The experiment to clone Smaug was still nowhere near completion, and the mechanical Smaug project had made no progress at all. She understood that current technology was inadequate. Continuing to pour time and money into it would be pure waste, so she ordered both projects stopped.
If science could not do it, then she would return to the old path of magic.
While sorting through Smaug's remains, she noticed something was missing and immediately asked the Assassin Brotherhood member in charge of the laboratory, "Isn't something gone? A dragon should have two wings. Why is there only one left?"
The assassin was equally baffled. He hurriedly checked the records, then looked at her with a strange expression. "Mentor, the records show that you took one of the dragon wings."
What would I need that thing for? Bella's thoughts turned twice before realization dawned. She had used it to bribe Kong!
She hurried to Skull Island and searched until she finally found the dragon bones Kong had left after eating.
Kong was an ape, not a dog, and had no habit of chewing bones. He had eaten the meat from the wing but left the bones behind. From time to time, he would even pick them up and lick them…
"Tsk, tsk. You cleaned these remarkably well!" Bella had originally worried that the angel blood would conflict with the spell she was about to cast. Unexpectedly, Kong had licked the bones every day and worn them noticeably thinner.
"Roar—!" Seeing his feeder about to take away his possession, Kong roared in displeasure. Surely this bone belonged to him? He had already worked to earn his reward. How could she simply take it away?
"Here, here. Have a dragon tail. I was afraid it might hurt your teeth, so I even removed the bones this time. Listen, I'm trading fresh meat for your old bones. You're getting the better end of the deal!"
She teleported over a dragon tail more than twenty meters long. Kong scratched his head, then smiled in satisfaction after being fed. He no longer wanted to work hard. Being fed like this seemed rather pleasant.
Bella did not linger with the big fool. Taking all the dragon bones, she returned to Jotunheim.
The concentration of magic there was relatively high, and its negative-energy atmosphere suited the spell she intended to cast.
Bella first reassembled the dragon bones piece by piece according to Smaug's form in life. Then she cast Transmute Rock to Mud and excavated a pit 300 meters in diameter and 500 meters deep. Finally, she buried all of Smaug's bones in the pit and covered everything in ice.
While Tony Stark and the others were busy constructing powered armor, Bella began drawing a magic circle in the uninhabited wastes of Jotunheim.
The circle was both enormous and extraordinarily complex, and she frequently had to make adjustments and revisions.
It had three inner layers and three outer layers. The complete formation consisted of thirteen separate magic circles, each with a different function.
"Answer my summons and come here!" A three-meter-tall demon with twin horns and backward-jointed hooves was summoned before her. Before it could see what was happening, Bella raised her sword and severed its neck. Like slaughtering a chicken, she used its sulfurous head as a magical node.
She slaughtered demon after demon. Their blood flowed continuously into the formation. Astral creatures, spirit-world beings, and even monsters impossible to describe in language that existed only within human dreams were forcibly summoned, killed, and stripped of vital organs for use in the circle.
Compared with the summoned creatures, gemstones and precious metals were consumed in even greater quantities. Gold was casually melted down so she could extract only the purest few grams. Jewels were smashed and ground into powder, then mixed with her own psionic power and poured into the formation.
Bella worked continuously for twenty-one days. During the final few, her psionic power was nearly exhausted, and she even summoned the Demon Nun to help.
The Demon Nun was, after all, one of Hell's pillar demons. Summoning demons was far easier for her than for Bella. She summoned them one after another and strangled each one.
Demon corpses piled up like a mountain beside the formation. Neither woman rested for a moment, and together they killed several hundred demons.
It was not that Bella possessed an especially fierce hatred of evil. Demon blood simply contained the strongest magic and was a natural spellcasting material. Failing to use it would have been wasteful.
"Valak, use your prayer."
The Demon Nun was the only magical specialist among Bella's subordinates. Strictly speaking, she was more like a kind of priest, but she did possess spellcasting ability.
The Demon Nun slammed both hands against the edge of the formation, injecting dark-red magic into it. At the proper moment, Bella drew Frostmourne and drove it into the ground at the position of Smaug's skull.
The Demon Nun seemed to construct a doorway, while the two-handed sword served as a key, piercing the barrier between the worlds of the living and the dead. The vast, chaotic magic within the formation boiled like water.
When the temperature reached its peak, the formation abruptly transformed. Its channels and nodes began flashing with white light. The light held no warmth, only coldness and an ultimate aura that disregarded life and transcended it.
The chaotic magic drawn from demons, spirit-world creatures, and dream beings was converted by the formation into bone-chilling necromantic power, then injected into the dragon bones below according to a predetermined pattern.
Bella took out the Book of Cagliostro and used it to cast the final awakening spell.
"…I grant you new life. Rise, my servant! Rise, Frost Dragon Smaug!"