Aris stood next to the dragon’s foot, staring at a scale that refused to freeze from the extreme cold. She took a deep breath as she gathered Mana from the air and rejuvenated her body after it took a huge toll from Aristoria’s power. Once she had gathered enough Mana to stabilize her condition, she placed her hands on the dragon’s scale on it.

The scale began to glow as if it responded to her energy and then more and more scales began to tremble when they got exposed to Aris’ energy. Rasmus and Rullein watched Aristoria try to tame the scales, it was similar to what Aristoria did when she turned all kinds of energies into her own. It couldn’t be denied anymore that Aristoria race was the closest being from True Dragons.

The giant scales suddenly got attracted and flew toward Aris as the scales shrunk into small scales. Aris immediately dashed away from the True Dragon’s corpse as far as she could before the scales could reach her. Once she was far enough, she let the scales glued to her fingers, hands, arms, and body almost rapidly that she began to collapse from the heaviness of the scales. More and more scales flew toward her and buried by the scales. If it wasn’t for Aristoria’s armor, her whole body would turn into scales. When the scales began to stick onto her face, Rullein was getting worried and didn’t know what to do to save her.

"I’m fine!" Aristoria shouted as she grunted when the scales tried to suck all her energy.

Rasmus and Rullein watched as the scales on Aris’ face invaded her skin and went under it. The scales acted like something from science fiction in Rasmus eyes when the scales merged and became one with the armor like nanotechnology. They could see the pain, a pain that was nothing like how humans felt pain. She began to scream and crawled on the ice, her fingers scraping the thick ice underneath her like it was water because she did it so effortlessly.

Aris grunted as she suddenly burst out her glowing bright blue energy and made the scale that had become one with her skin and armor to be pushed off of her. The scales slowly fell to the ground one by one, making loud thud sounds, showing how heavy each one of them was. She managed to push them all off of her as she slowly stood up and almost collapsed again.

"There we have them..." Aris said weakly as she rubbed her face because of the lingering pain. "If you store them in the spatial ring, it might attach on to some of the items you have there. Need an empty one to assure that these won’t attach to anything else," she added.

"Your spatial ring, transfer it all into mine," Rasmus said as he approached Aris and offered his right hand to her.

Aris held Rasmus’ hand and let the two spatial rings touch. She then released all the items from her spatial rings while Rasmus opened the spatial ring with his Mana, allowing the items to flow into his ring. After she transferred everything, she then hovered over the thousands of scales into the spatial ring, storing them without a problem.

The three of them looked at Aris’ ring and they could see the intensity of the ring where it drained her Mana. Fortunately, she was capable of taming the scales inside the ring, and she could feel the scales were reacting to spatial space and shifted their sizes rapidly because it reacted to her Mana but couldn’t attach to her.

"That’s barely a hundredth of the total scales on that corpse..." Rasmus said with his brows furrowed. "I don’t think you can handle more than what you got," he added, and there was a glimpse of thought where he wanted to try it himself.

"I can’t," Aris shook her head, knowing that she had reached her limit. "I might be able to grab more, but not in my current condition," she added.

"Then what do we do with this corpse? Too big to hide it, too big to move it," Rasmus asked as he tried to think of something that could prevent Satan and her followers from taking this to their advantage.

"Bury it deeper?" Rullein suggested as she looked at Aris and Rasmus. "We are in the middle of nowhere, and this location is closer to Orthias land than Satan and her followers. Wouldn’t it be better if the Orthias took care of this?" She added.

"If Videl can’t even absorb this power, I don’t think none of them can," Aris answered as she looked at Rasmus, hoping that he could find a solution to this.

Rasmus thought about it for a moment even though he knew that he was running out of time because the swarm of Demonic Beast must have taken a few cities and perhaps a nation by now. He then decided to bury it deeper as Rullein had suggested by simply swiping his hand to the side. The True Dragon’s body slowly began to sink into the crater while at the same time the ice began to form around the body, preserving and hiding it from plain sight.

Once the body was deep under the sea that it could no longer be visible with the naked eye, Rasmus filled the crater with ice, making it clean as if nothing had happened there. Although the corpse was deep under the frozen sea, they could faintly sense the greatness of the True Dragon’s energy.

"We are done here..." Rasmus said, his eyes still fixed on the ground. "Let’s head back now and regroup with Videl and the others," he turned to look at Aris and Rullein.

They both nodded in agreement. Aris flew away as fast as she could while Rasmus was wrapped in Rullein’s black smoke before he and Rullein disappeared into thin air. The three of them arrived in the nearest town and found it had been trampled and in ruin.

"No survivors, just pieces of body parts..." Rullein said after she released her energy that covered the whole town.

"Let’s find the others. I can sense Serena’s divine power not far from here," Aris said as she landed after she checked the surrounding area for Serena or Yur’s energy.

"I can feel traces of their presence as well," Rasmus nodded and immediately Rullein’s black smoke wrapped his body again and disappeared without a trace.

After the three of them flew for quite a while, they finally saw the terrain ahead of them move like it was having a heavy avalanche. The ground moved to the side as a tall wall formed on its end before it toppled down and rolled the ground like cloth, squeezing all the Demonic Beasts. But even with such destructive power, some of them managed to escape and continued on a rampage, going toward the villages and towns ahead of them.

The only ones that Rasmus saw were Agnesia, Marina, and the three Sorcerers. There was no sign of Doloran, Serena, Yur, or even Videl, making him think about where they had gone. He then noticed the traces of Serena’s divine energy that went to a different path where the Brithia Kingdom was. He also saw traces of a stampede that went that way as well, meaning that they went there to stop the Demonic Beasts from going near the capital city.

"They’re not stopping! What should we do!" Cierra panicked as she tried to create a big wall to prevent the horde of Demonic Beasts from going away.

"Just maintain your Mana!" Gilsus said as he reinforced the walls that were in the brink of collapsing.

Agnesia and Marina couldn’t deal with all of them at the same time because they were too many especially that the wyverns that had turned into demonic beasts already flew so far away. They were out of time and options to deal with the horde until suddenly they saw Aris flew above them with the black smoke that followed her from behind.

"Lady Aris..." Marina couldn’t hide her smile when she realized that they still had hope. "We have to go after the wyverns, sister. Let’s go!" She said and then flew to catch the wyverns.

Aris landed on top of the wall when Rasmus and Rullein appeared from the black smoke. They looked down at the demonic beasts that tried to break the wall beneath them. They noticed that Agnesia and Marina were flying toward them at high speed, so they looked up at the sky and at them.

"Lady Aris, Count Blackheart, and Lady Rullein, we will leave this horde to you! We will catch the wyverns that are going to the Zorzi Kingdom!" Agnesia shouted as she flew away in a hurry.

Rasmus, Aris, and Rullein didn’t turn around to watch Agnesia and Marina leave. Rasmus pulled his black swords and tossed Aristoria’s sword at Aris while Rullein stood on the edge of the cliff with her nails that grew longer and sharper.

Aris and Rullein jumped off the cliff while Rasmus electrified his insides to warm up the coldness in his body. However, when he was about to jump down, he felt a chill down his spine like a cold and sharp object brushed his back. He glanced over his shoulder at the intense killing intent when he saw a being with torn black demonic wings while its whole body was covered in a tattered and burning black robe. He narrowed his eyes as he slowly turned around to look at that being.

The being slowly showed its gray hand like ashes with its long nails, beckoning at Rasmus. The face was hidden in the shadow even when the sunlight was facing the being. A being that stood on the hill in the woods, staring at Rasmus with its glowing red eyes.

Rasmus furrowed his brows, wondering if that being was one of the Fallen Watchers. He knew that he could defeat him if it was them, but he also knew that the Fallen Watchers wouldn’t be brave enough to show themselves to him after what had happened in South Neva and Central Neva. A name then popped into his mind, a name that even Videl found it unsettling.

"Belial..." Rasmus muttered under his breath.

To Rasmus’ surprise, the being slowly nodded its head as if it was affirming Rasmus’ suspicion. Rasmus glanced over his shoulder, watching Aris and Rullein massacring the demonic beasts. He wondered why they didn’t notice Belial’s presence, but knowing that Belial had been so elusive, it wasn’t that surprising. He then turned his head to look at Belial for a moment before he decided to store his black swords and flew toward Belial.