Very quickly, he felt a warm flow as magic was absorbed into his body and vanished inside. The amount was small, but that was from just a single bite of dirt, and these magic-filled stones were everywhere. If he ate all of this, it might truly ignite the development of his Nuclear Reactor.
As for eating dirt, Belial had no objections at all. He had been digging and tasting soil since the moment he was born, and anything he could swallow and digest could provide him nourishment. Compared to what Godzilla could consume, rocks were nothing.
He decided that searching for humans could wait, since clearing out all this magic came first. Turning to look at the corpse of the Earth Dragon, he finally understood why it had crawled back here at all costs. With a place like this, even a pig could become powerful.
He nodded in satisfaction and spoke to the corpse. He said he would make good use of the loot it had dropped.
Belial wished he could go back in time and slap his earlier self. He realized he did not need to actually eat dirt at all, because if he lay in a place rich with magic, the surrounding magic would be drawn into him on its own. Before learning this, he had already stuffed himself with a belly full of soil.
In the end, all he needed to do was sleep. The thought made him feel both relieved and annoyed. "Then I might as well stop struggling," he muttered to himself.
He was not asleep all the time, though. When boredom struck, he would fiddle with the small items inside the Spatial Ring, which held about a cubic unit of space. It was filled with the things the blonde girl had left behind.
Across two lifetimes, this was the first time he had received gifts from a woman other than his mother. He did not know where to keep the small ring, since it would not fit on a finger and certainly not anywhere else. In the end, he discovered that he could swallow it, keep it from being digested, and spit it out whenever he wanted.
Inside, he found books and similar items. His eyesight was good enough to see the writing clearly, but he could not recognize a single word. There were also strange plants, along with unknown liquids sealed in special containers, and when he tried a sip, nothing happened.
There were other tools as well, including a shiny crystal ball. None of it was useful to him, and he did not seem to share the usual dragon habit of hoarding valuables. Most of the rest of his time was spent sleeping, and thanks to the abundant magic, he no longer woke up starving.
Now he finally felt like a real giant dragon, able to sleep for long stretches until all the magic within a certain range had been absorbed. Every so often, he only needed to go out and fill his stomach. Belial's appetite was much smaller than before, since he no longer had to convert huge amounts of nutrients into energy for the Nuclear Reactor.
Because of this, he did not need to keep moving around and eating nonstop. He also discovered that the magic-rich stones formed what seemed to be a vein, and the place he occupied was just a small cavern that had formed by chance. The deeper he went, the richer the magic within the stone became.
Eventually, he even found crystals that were almost entirely made of magic, glowing like luminous gems. There were not many of them, but each one held an enormous amount of magic. At the same time, Belial's body began to grow at a speed he had never experienced before.
Out of curiosity, he explored the entire magic vein. He absorbed nearly half of its magic, roughly a third in total, and his body size almost doubled. Most importantly, a pair of wings actually grew from his back.
Like a newborn chick breaking free of its shell, the wings first tore through flesh as a bloody, gray-white skeletal frame. As he absorbed more magic and continued feeding, skin and scales rapidly covered them, and they expanded into broad, powerful flesh wings. With the extra wings, his muscle structure changed, especially in the chest and back.
His overall shape became somewhat gourd-like, but stronger and more streamlined. His two pairs of horns, the dorsal spines along his back, and the bone spikes at his elbows also began to change, growing rapidly and taking on a crystal-like structure. They even looked faintly beautiful, glowing with a dim blue light that pulsed with his breathing.
His scales changed as well, with a clear difference between his back and belly. The back scales grew thicker and harder, layered with special structures beneath that could withstand cutting, impact, and even high-temperature energy attacks. The belly scales became denser, staying flexible while also growing tougher.
If one could see inside his body, his skeleton had also changed, gaining a translucent, crystal-clear quality. His bones were transforming into a crystalline skeletal organ, far removed from that of ordinary dragon beasts. This made them lighter and far stronger, able to support his ever-increasing weight, which had already reached thousands of tons.
More powerful sg muscles clung to this skeleton, carrying a strength that crushed normal biological limits. Cells, channels, and bones delivered vast amounts of magic and nutrients into the chest cavity, where a core crystal organ fused with the Nuclear Reactor and protected by crystalline ribs. Enormous magic gathered there, triggering violent reactions and countless tiny explosions.
The heat and power produced felt impossible for a body made of flesh to endure. Even a true dragon would be roasted from the inside and then explode. With the steady supply of external magic, his body surged like a dry sponge soaking up water, growing stronger at a frightening pace.
At last, his body reached a level that could bear this power. With abundant external magic pushing it past the threshold, the accumulated energy finally tipped over. "Weng… weng…"
One day, while Belial still slept within the magic vein, a rhythmic humming echoed from his chest. It sounded like a nuclear reactor starting up, while his heartbeat thundered and his horns and dorsal spines glowed faintly. His breathing grew heavy and hot, the internal roar peaked, and his eyes snapped open.
The true monster had awakened. Power far beyond anything before surged from within and spread through his body. He pushed himself up, shattering the rocky ground beneath his feet as cracks spread outward in a circle.
Visible magic danced across his body like lightning, so dense it nearly overflowed. His dorsal spines shone brilliantly, and stray arcs from his tail blasted chunks out of nearby rock walls. He spread his massive wings, and the cramped underground space could no longer hold him.
With a violent leap, he slammed upward. Dirt and stone exploded apart on contact, blue light flashing as his horns and spines shone like priceless gems. Belial burst straight out of the ground, carrying tens of thousands of tons of earth into the sky.
In an instant, he soared hundreds of meters high and stretched his wings wide. "Roar!!!!!" His roar tore through the clouds, and a pressure like that of Godzilla spread even more fiercely than before, forming a violent energy field.
The surrounding air was forced away, creating a brief vacuum and a visible white shockwave. He then crashed back down, his body flashing like a flawless diamond as every scale and crystal spine reflected countless rays of light. If Belial had been fully clear-headed, he would have recognized this as one of Godzilla's abilities, internal radiation.
The power was terrifying. Amplified by the energy field, everything within nearly a thousand meters was struck, and even part of a mountain collapsed under the light. Anything too close was reduced to ash.
The blazing energy tore through everything in sight. Rock and forests were sliced away, and the ground rolled like waves of soil and stone. When the light finally faded, only devastation remained, with shattered rocks, broken trees, and ruined monsters pressed into the earth.
Belial stood in a massive crater nearly a hundred meters wide. The soil beneath his feet had crystallized from the extreme heat. Only then did he come back to his senses, breaking free from the instinct-driven excitement.
He listened closely and could hear blood and magic surging through his veins. Near his heart was a steady, lasting hum, the sound of a biological reactor as the Nuclear Reactor finally ignited. "Yes! It finally lit up!"
Belial was clearly delighted. Now he could openly call himself Godzilla. After enduring so much since transmigrating, he had finally stepped into the half-step Space Godzilla The Realm, and at last understood himself. With that, he declared he would take on the entire world alone.
Belial came to his senses a few hours later and finally dropped that Uncle Celestial King mindset he had just been stuck in. After thinking it through, he realized he still did not count as truly strong. In this Otherworld, there was no shortage of beings who could erase an entire city in one strike, enough to slaughter dragons, and that level of power was not something he could be arrogant about.