The centipede burst forward, its long body releasing all its stored force like a spring, flames exploding as it shot ahead in a red blur. With a wet snap, it was seized in midair by a huge lizard lunging from the water and dragged under. Bubbles rose, the water rippled, and then blood and broken plates floated to the surface.
The herd leader bull stared with eyes wide in shock, realizing a hidden attacker had taken advantage. It led the herd back from the shore to create distance, watching the water warily as if the ambusher might strike again. The leader stood at the front in a triangular formation.
After some time with no sign of the lizard, it cautiously moved closer to the water. Then the ground under its hooves suddenly collapsed, one leg dragged into a pit. It bellowed in panic as a black head burst from the soil and clamped onto its neck.
Belial emerged from underground and, with overwhelming bite force, tore through the bull's throat, likely snapping the spine as well. Warm blood flowed into his mouth, and he showed a look of satisfaction. With the strongest threat gone, the shaken herd was nothing more than food to him.
He sprang from the ground, facing the panicked, fleeing bulls with a wide grin meant for a meal. Other monsters nearby felt a chill at the sight. Cries and roars filled the area as chaos broke out.
By the time it ended, Belial flung the last corpse onto a growing pile. Dozens of monsters, bulls included, lay stacked into a small mound of bodies. The others were lucky, he thought, since he would hunt them down after he was full.
There was little to say about the fight itself. He charged, killed one with basic attacks, rushed to the next, and repeated until hunger finally pressed in. Then Belial began to eat, facing a corpse pile many times larger than his own body.
He chewed, swallowed, and tore again and again. Crunching bone, slurping brains, biting into hearts without caring whose they were. His eating speed was extreme, and once food reached his mouth he only had to swallow, since digestion was quick.
Even the hardest parts of monsters were like crackers under his powerful jaws. Organs humans would not eat, bones animals could not chew, even poisonous parts all went down, reunited in his stomach from head to tail. If anything was drawn in by the smell of blood, he slapped it aside and turned it into more food.
Belial was nothing but a merciless eating machine, opening his mouth as wide as possible and biting down as if scooping ice cream, skin, bone, and flesh all together. In just a few hours, he consumed the entire mound, like a snake swallowing an elephant.
What he did not notice was that his body grew at a visible pace as he ate, becoming more even and powerful, scales spacing out as his skin struggled to keep up. Not only his size but also his muscles, organs, and bones were strengthening, cells dividing at high speed under the influence of the Godzilla template. His body pushed toward a level no dragon beast should have.
So where did all that magic go? Belial thought about it for a few hours, then gave up once hunger returned. "I've eaten at least hundreds of tons by now, right, and I've only grown this much. When am I supposed to light a reactor and grow into Godzilla?"
The question passed through his mind, and he buried his head back into eating without another pause.
Several days passed that Belial could not measure.
Once he confirmed that even as a juvenile he was absurdly strong, he felt free to explore the map without worry. He ate his way through the local food chain from top to bottom. Although this was still Starter Village, the rules felt different, as if he had come from a neighboring numbers-only game where raw stats crushed everything without effort.
After a very satisfying meal, he hummed to himself. "La la la… burp."
Belial lay down happily and patted his noticeably swollen belly. He muttered that he could not eat anymore for the moment. Since arriving in Otherworld, and counting that one Giant Octopus, this was the rare time he had actually felt full, which made him wonder how long it would be before that happened again.
The rare feeling of fullness made Belial squint in comfort. Still, there was something important on his mind. "When exactly is my Nuclear Reactor going to light up?"
With the recent stretch of nonstop feeding, countless monsters and their flesh and magic had been swallowed. Belial could faintly sense something inside his chest, a spot that would grow warm now and then, especially after a full meal when magic was abundant. At times, it even made a low sound like a reactor.
He guessed that all the magic he had eaten since arriving here was being used as nourishment to develop the Nuclear Reactor. As the most vital organ of Godzilla, the importance of the Nuclear Reactor was beyond question, and it would be his greatest support for unleashing heat-based attacks in the future. As a side note, Spiral Heat Ray and Atomic Breath were actually different things, used to distinguish two versions, with the latter fitting the idea of a breath attack more closely, while the former referred to something that exploded.
The first carried a temperature of hundreds of thousands of degrees, strong enough to sound like a joke, and his version was enhanced by the SpaceGodzilla template. How much stronger was it? Just two words: double. To go even further, he might eventually trigger Burning Mode, pushing a single blast past a million or even tens of millions of degrees.
As for the Giant Octopus mentioned earlier, it was not mysterious at all. It was the massive monster hiding in the deepest part of the lake from the previous chapter, with a body at least dozens of meters long. In both size and strength, it was the most powerful creature he had encountered so far, enough to truly be called an enemy.
Belial met it when it surfaced to hunt monsters along the shore. He was furious at the time, because it had eaten everything nearby, which meant less food for him. So naturally, he decided to eat it instead.
He consumed both the prey it had caught and the monster itself. The fight was nothing special, as its tentacles and suckers could not restrain him and were torn apart by hand. It used high-pressure water magic fired from its mouth and from all eight tentacles in turn, along with cutting attacks like water blades, powerful enough to shave down nearby hills, plus water prisons and other tricks.
Even when its tentacles were ripped in half, they regenerated at frightening speed. It could also raise barrier-like defenses and once pinned him down with massive waves. It was undeniably strong. In the end, he fought while eating, and before some of its skills could even finish, he bit into its body and devoured its heart and brain, killing it outright.
The confusion on its face was obvious, and later on it did not even dare to wrap around him anymore. As long as it touched him, he would bite without hesitation. Although it died rather casually, it truly was the strongest enemy he had faced, with an impressive amount of magic.
It even made him bleed, which was terrifying in its own way. It took him over half a minute to heal the wound.
"It is time to move again. I have probably eaten almost everything around here."
Since arriving at this lake, Belial had slept nearly a dozen times. Most of the nearby monsters were already gone, and if he kept eating, the local ecology might collapse entirely. His appetite kept growing, and after most magic-rich creatures were gone, he lived off fish from the lake.
As his body grew larger, he gained a minor ability called pressure. He did not know how it worked, but he could control and release it at will. It could scare weaker monsters into freezing in place, though slightly stronger ones would turn and run.
He usually kept it turned off, since leaving it on was inconvenient, as most monsters would flee as soon as they entered its range. The control was crude, with only two states available, full power or completely off. He used it most often in water to herd fish, driving an entire school into a dense area before charging in to eat.
Ordinary fish did not contain much magic, so he ate large amounts of them. Each time he woke from sleep, his size and appetite increased again, leading him to eat even more. That Giant Octopus had stayed in the water until he had nearly eaten all the fish, forcing it onto land to hunt other monsters, where it eventually became his meal.
It seemed to have some ability that attracted monsters, which was why creatures that usually hid and showed some intelligence and strength gathered together for once. That gathering had allowed him to eat his fill. Belial had now doubled in size again, growing to over ten meters long.