Sure enough, just a few minutes later, he saw it, a huge gathering of magical beasts. Behind them, the faint silhouette of a city wall peeked through the snowstorm.
Same plan as always. First, sweep the area with an enormous blizzard to freeze the fodder in place. Then, move in and rip apart whatever's left with his claws.
Crystals embedded in Belial's body began to glow, pulsing with icy mana that surged into his jaws. Along his back, the crystalline spines lit up with a chilling radiance, sparkling like frozen gems under moonlight.
Even from a thousand meters in the sky, the air temperature plunged. Cold winds coiled tightly around him as the clouds below began to spiral into a massive vortex.
Magic circles formed one by one in front of his mouth, layered, glowing, inscribed with intricate runes and flowing patterns. Their purpose was straightforward: supercharge the devastating force of his next breath attack.
As the energy reached its peak, Belial opened his jaws and let it rip. "Mob-Clearing Cannon!!!"
A blinding beam of icy light roared down from the sky. It pierced the magic circles like a drill through glass and slammed into the battlefield below like divine judgment.
A storm of wind and ice followed, wild and unstoppable, like a frozen dragon crashing down from the heavens. Shards of enchanted snow and spear-like ice filled the air, each packed with violent elemental force.
The blizzard howled with terrifying speed, tearing everything apart as it surged forward.
Belial move through the chaos, his wings slicing through the storm. Every flap sent a blast of wind strong enough to rip monsters clean off the ground.
He dove in again and again, shredding beasts left and right as snow whirled around him like razors. The weaker creatures didn't even have time to scream. They were flung into the air and shattered mid-flight, dead before they touched the ground.
Even the tougher ones couldn't hold out. They were frozen solid, sliced apart, and left as nothing more than icy bones and shredded flesh. A few lucky, or just stubborn, survivors managed to crawl free of the blast zone, dragging broken limbs and leaving trails of blood. But Belial wasn't done.
He always finished what he started.
Just like earlier, when he'd thought that one beast was dead. Its guts were spilled everywhere. And yet somehow, the thing was still alive?
"Oh no you don't," he growled, diving lower, eyes locked on the familiar scent ahead. "I'll fix that mistake right now."
He plummeted through the cloud layer, wings folded in tight. The storm crackled with lightning as the massive white dragon burst out of the sky, jaws wide open. He didn't even need to attack directly, just the pressure from his descent tore through the survivors, ripping their bodies apart like paper in a hurricane.
The battlefield below was done. The city's outer defenses had already been flattened. The human soldiers and mages were frozen in place, watching in stunned silence. It was like watching the end of the world.
A single blizzard, one spell, had wiped out an entire wave of monsters. And somehow, as if by divine design, or cough author's will… the inside of the city remained untouched.
The storm had stopped just at the border of the wall, like an invisible line had been drawn between destruction and safety.
A few adventurers looked around and spotted some survivors among the monsters, mutated things with unnatural forms and insane endurance. Some had thick hides resistant to ice. Others just refused to die.
But none of them got far. Because what came next made even the boldest fighters go pale.
"…That's… a dragon?"
"No… that can't be. Are we really seeing this?"
"God, that is the dragon…"
All eyes turned to the sky. Even the most hardened veterans, people who had fought demons, monsters, and all kinds of magical nightmares, had never seen anything like it. Not outside of fairy tales. Not in real life.
A massive white dragon soared overhead, wrapped in blizzards and streaks of lightning. Its wings shimmered with frost.
The air around it twisted and screamed. Thunder echoed in its wake like a war drum from the gods.
Its body was beautiful and terrifying at once, covered in jagged crystal ridges from snout to tail, every inch of it exuding power. Even its flight was a weapon.
Every beat of its wings sent frozen wind howling across the battlefield, cutting through anything still moving. It wasn't just flying, it was hunting.
People grew up hearing stories about dragons, immortal beings with ancient magic and unstoppable might. But those stories didn't do this justice.
This wasn't a story. This was real. And it was horrifying.
In less than a minute, it had ended a beast tide. And the craziest part? It didn't even seem hostile.
"…At least…" someone whispered, clutching a broken staff, "…at least it's not attacking us, right?"
Behind the corpse of a fallen behemoth, a soldier fumbled with a blood-soaked cigarette, trying to light it with shaking hands. If that dragon had even wanted to kill them, they'd all be dead already. "LOOK!" a soldier yelled, pointing toward the wall.
The outer wall was breached. A lone female mage was barely hanging on, struggling against a deformed nightmare of a beast.
She was bleeding badly, cornered. No one thought she'd make it. And then, something changed. The monster stopped.
It shivered. Not because it was scared. It was instinct. Something deep in its corrupted brain screamed at it to run.
"GROOOOOOOARRRRRRRRR!!!!!"
A roar tore through the sky, Everyone looked up. And there it was, the dragon. The same one that had just slaughtered an entire army of monsters without mercy.
"Trying to run? Wind Cutter Slash!"
Belial's sharp eyes scanned the battlefield outside the city. His gaze locked onto the creature clinging weakly to the top of the crumbling wall. Only half of its body remained, its legs had already been torn off earlier by Belial himself.
'Hmph. That little coward…
It's the same thing that faked death and got away from me last time. Give me back my damn bandwidth!'
Without giving it a second thought, he fired a freezing breath, blasting the creature off the wall and crushing it deep into the earth. He didn't stop until every inch of its flesh had turned into a frozen popsicle.
Only then did the system progress bar in his head start crawling forward again. Belial gave a satisfied nod.
He landed directly on the wall, but not before adjusting his gravity field to lighten himself. If he hadn't, with his current body weight in the tens of thousands of tons, a single step would've leveled what was left of the fragile wall.
Even so, the stone beneath him still cracked. Debris flew as bricks shattered and part of the platform caved in from the pressure.
From here, he picked up a new signal coming from within the city.
'Nice. Found it.'
He was just about to take off again when he noticed something under his claws. Blown slightly off balance from his landing was a small, blonde-haired girl. She wore the robe of a magical society member, and her energy felt unusually strong.
'…She looked kind of familiar.'