At most, he chewed a little, just enough to get the food down his throat. His teeth were mostly sharp points, with almost no flat molars for grinding. That probably had something to do with Godzilla, whose main food was radiation, making complex teeth unnecessary outside of combat.
As long as he could eat normally for now, that was enough. With his current digestion, he did not need much work in his mouth anyway. Large amounts of meat were sent to his stomach and broken down fast, fueling his body like an engine.
At this time of year, the fish were rich in roe and fat, which suited his taste and provided better nutrition. Occasionally, there were water snakes, turtles, or other aggressive aquatic predators, and once he even ran into something like a crocodile. To him, they were all the same, just more meat.
He grabbed a fleeing water snake and stuffed it into his mouth like a snack. Larger predators were just slightly bigger dishes, though fish remained his main food because there were so many of them. He chased the schools along the river until he felt something in his stomach.
Only then did he surface. Belial climbed onto the bank, dripping wet, and looked at his reflection in the clear water. The red and black mottled scales he once had were being replaced by neat black triangular scales, with a layer of smaller soft scales beneath.
His head and eyes had grown longer and more fierce. The uneven pairs of horns had become more regular and extended slightly backward. Spines ran from his head, rose along his back, and continued all the way to the tip of his tail, growing sharper in shape.
His limbs and tail were longer and thicker, with clear muscles bulging out, and small spikes had grown at the joints. On his back were two noticeable lumps of flesh. He guessed these were where a true dragon's wings should be, though after merging with the template, he did not know if wings would ever grow.
For a dragon, he was leaving infancy and entering a juvenile stage. For Godzilla, though, he looked more like an ugly premature newborn. Even with his increased size, he still could not breathe anything, neither dragon fire nor Godzilla's heat ray.
Once, he had foolishly stood on a mountain peak with his mouth open for a long time. All he got was a belly full of wind, and in frustration he ate a passing beast that looked like a cow. He probably had not finished developing the internal reactor that Godzilla should have, and as a mere dragon beast, dragon breath might be beyond him.
"Forget it, no rush. I'm still young," he said.
Belial was not anxious. In such a short time he had already grown this strong, and if he kept a low profile for a few more years, the future looked good. His stomach was not full yet, so eating came first.
With that thought, he ran upstream along the river. Out of curiosity and boredom, he had once followed it far, hoping to find humans. He did not find any, but he did discover a huge lake high upstream.
The river he hunted in was just a branch. Farther up, a larger river flowed into the lake. The lake itself was strange, almost too regular in shape.
It was nearly perfectly round, surrounded by raised mountains. In other words, it looked like a massive crater formed by a meteor impact. Since this was another world, there was an even more unsettling possibility, that some powerful beings had smashed it out during a fight.
He was not there to solve mysteries. The lake was rich in aquatic life, and many other animals gathered at its shore to drink. For him, it was an excellent hunting ground.
He hid in the nearby bushes and even rolled on the ground, smearing mud over himself to mask his scent. It was not fear or a need to stalk carefully. After charging into herds and killing freely before, many creatures had learned his smell.
After several failed attempts to hunt him, they had decided that if they could not fight him, they could at least run. Once they smelled him, they fled. That forced Belial to do some preparation, or everything would scatter and make things annoying.
He narrowed his eyes and focused on a herd shaped like water buffalo, covered in thick brown fur with two pairs of horns. There were dozens of them, a decent target. Just as he was considering his move, he saw another figure approaching.
It was wrapped in intense heat. The herd reacted at once, hooves stamping as they grew restless. Calves ran into the circle formed by the adult bulls.
Warning calls rang out, horns pointed outward together, but the newcomer ignored them and walked straight to the lake. The herd even retreated, moving farther away to drink. Belial only narrowed his eyes further as he watched.
Belial hated bugs. Whether back when he was human or now as, well, something that was not quite a dragon and not quite Godzilla, the feeling had never changed. Small creatures like that hid in dark corners, and by reason even a child could crush them with ease, yet fear always slipped in anyway.
He did not think that made him strange, since most people disliked insects unless they kept them as pets, and many stories used bugs as a stand-in for hated figures. Centipedes were especially bad to him. Even after learning they were arthropods in theory, he still lumped them together with spiders and called them bugs, the kind that showed up as giants in nightmares.
Right now, the thing he was secretly watching was a huge dark brown centipede, seven or eight meters long. Rows of sharp legs writhed, its mouthparts jutted like blades, and two whip-like feelers lashed about as it claimed a stretch of the lakeshore for itself. It drank openly and even let its feeding be seen without care.
Several young and hot-blooded giant bulls clearly disliked this takeover of their water. Muscles rolled under their hides as they scraped their hind hooves and charged, unstoppable like armored vehicles, frost glinting faintly around their horns. The centipede raised its upper body, a red glow shining under its back plates, and blasted out a stream of flame.
The fire spread at once, turning into a burning wave that boiled the lakeside water and swallowed the three bulls that charged fastest. One of them staggered out first, its body scorched black before it collapsed. The other two were pierced straight through by the whip-like feelers, their flesh carrying the burnt smell as flames burst from their noses and they died on the spot.
The feelers dragged the bodies back, and the mouthparts stabbed in and sucked hard. Like jelly being slurped or air leaving a balloon, the huge corpses shriveled at a visible speed. It was a strange sight by any measure.
Nearby, in the water that had been heated to a boil, a black lizard poked his head up while sipping at small fish floating on the surface. Belial narrowed his eyes in comfort, since water still above ninety degrees felt no more than a hot bath to him. This was another world after all, so bugs breathing fire was nothing unusual.
He remembered hunts where an easy prey suddenly turned around and blasted fire into his face, like taking a high explosive head-on. In the end, nothing serious happened, and he bit them to death anyway. Godzilla defense was absurd, and even as a juvenile he at most ended up a bit dirty.
It even felt novel to him. He sometimes went out of his way to draw attacks from monsters, letting them use their skills on him. Most did nothing at all, and only a few managed to injure him before being eaten.
As he grew stronger, fewer and fewer could even hurt him. What caught his attention was that stronger monsters filled his hunger more easily, and when he ate them he felt something like energy or heat flowing through his body. Flipping through his sparse inherited memories, that should have been the invisible thing called magic.
By logic, magic should exist in his body too, since he had eaten so many creatures. Yet aside from a vague feeling, he could not actually use any of it, not even a spark. No spells, no fire breath, nothing.
He watched the centipede showing off on the shore and thought calmly, "It's fine. I'll kill you later." He stayed submerged in the lake, blowing bubbles as he waited. On the shore, the centipede faced off against an even larger bull that stepped out as the herd leader, cold air spilling from its body.
This bull was the biggest and strongest, its body marked with scars from past battles. In the face of the challenge, it was right for the leader to step forward. It let out a deep bellow, drum-like and heavy, eyes locked on the centipede as the creature swayed from side to side.
The centipede looked as if it were retreating, but in truth it was coiling and storing power, its fangs glowing red. The bull lowered its body as well, frost spreading across the lake surface beneath its breath. Both sides waited for the moment.