And those cities were not some medieval villages, but massive fortresses with hundred-meter walls made of unknown materials, layered with dense defensive barriers, covering an area as large as a famous international metropolis from his past life. That also included all the combat power within those cities. There was also High Heavens, where gods existed on a different level from mortals, along with demon kings and heroes who were close to cheating.
So powerful that even in inherited memories, dragons could only be described as very strong, with no clear picture of their real limits. Dragons were strong, yes, but they also died in large numbers, whether because someone wanted their hoards, treated them as rare materials, or turned them into mounts. Many powerful people liked doing exactly that.
Strong as they were, that very strength made dragons stand out too much, and everyone wanted to take a swing at them. Dragons were solitary creatures with no backing, and causing too much trouble usually ended with being beaten to death by a group. Too many stories liked to use a dragon as a stepping stone halfway through, with princesses, princes, knights, and heroes always having an evil dragon as a supporting role.
There were not many people who could defeat a dragon alone, but it was not as hard as people imagined. It did not even have to be a single top-tier expert, since humans liked to fight in groups. A group that was slightly weaker, forming an army with equipment, targeted potions, and dragon-hunting gear, could still kill a dragon.
When you are out in the world, being able to fight is not enough. In other words, he had just advanced into the level of a high-tier monster, far from being someone who earned a unique title or suffix. On top of that, he was special, a dragon beast that was not a true dragon yet possessed such power, and someone might want to cut him open just to see how he worked.
Even adult dragons often could not act however they wanted. He went through his limited inherited memories again, especially the impressive collection of how his predecessors had been killed, which firmly corrected his sense of reality. The way to survive was A Long Road Ahead.
After all, once he had ignited the Nuclear Reactor, resources were no longer an urgent need. His lifespan was long, and slowly building up energy would eventually lead somewhere. Belial twisted his neck and examined his current body.
His size had nearly doubled, and compared to the humans he had seen before, he was now over thirty meters long. Among dragons, that probably counted as a big one. But compared to Godzilla, even if he stretched from head to tail, he was still tiny, nowhere near the level of the original.
"Laying low is actually pretty nice. Fighting and killing all the time is boring," he said. As he recalled and estimated his own strength, his thoughts naturally went to the old man he had nearly killed with a single slap before. The barrage of spells back then had been dense, and in terms of raw power, it was enough to turn most monsters he had met into scraps.
But so what, could he be sure that old man was some named character rather than a nobody who would never appear again. He had not even felt much pain, so maybe it was all flash and no substance. In a barren place like this, what kind of strong people could there really be?
Besides, the other side had no reason to fight him one-on-one. Humans lived in groups, and if they could not win, they would call for help. If you beat the young, the old would come, and after that, some ancient monster would show up, endlessly. After thinking it over, Belial decided to go back and absorb the remaining magic vein first, since wasting such a huge supplement would be a shame and he was not in a hurry anyway.
After lighting the Nuclear Reactor, he had gained many new abilities. For example, he could now sense and roughly use the magic inside his body. By simply coating his claws with it, a single strike could smash out a crater far larger than pure physical force, which should be a SpaceGodzilla skill known as Space Claw, with strong explosive power.
There was also surface radiation for area damage, but he felt it would not be used often. Strong enemies would not care about area attacks, and weak ones were not worth it, though it might work well on something like a pterosaur dragon. As for Corona Beam, it still lacked something and could not be released yet, while Gravity Tornado was not very strong or refined, though it let him fly, even if he could not yet control gravitons.
The pressure he could release before had now turned into an energy field filled with his magic. Skills used within it could be amplified, like the kilometer-wide surface radiation from earlier. Another use was absorbing energy.
He dug back to the previous magic vein location, where the place he had stayed before had collapsed from the backlash of igniting the Nuclear Reactor. That was not a problem, as he simply used surface radiation to blast out a new cavity, then stabilized the surrounding rock with Gravity Tornado, easily creating another underground space. He then spread out the energy field, and all the magic within it was absorbed at extreme speed, like water being pumped away.
This was completely different from passively absorbing magic through sleep. Feeling magic rush into his body from all directions was like soaking in a hot spring, extremely comfortable. Every cell seemed to cheer while greedily drawing in magic, growing stronger with every moment.
The surrounding ore flickered, then gradually dimmed, and finally turned into ordinary stone. A small section of a magic-rich vein was drained dry in a very short time. After Belial fully absorbed all the magic within the energy field, he opened his eyes and noticed crystal formations similar to his own body growing on the rock walls.
White crystals jutted out like sharp cones, glowing faintly, and in his perception, they carried magic fluctuations similar to his own. The familiar scene made him remember something. "Right, I am SpaceGodzilla after all."
Belial nodded and moved closer to examine them. This counted as a domain skill of SpaceGodzilla, extremely powerful, relying on human-built towers and crystals spread across Tokyo to create an almost infinite energy supply. These crystals greatly boosted SpaceGodzilla, and even the original G and MOGUERA had to destroy them first to stand a chance.
But what exactly were these things made of. Under the energy field's detection, he found the crystals were formed from his magic mixed with other materials like stone dust, shaped by the energy field. When the energy field touched the crystals, it strengthened the field and expanded its range, which then caused new crystals to grow, forming an endless loop.
At their core, the crystals were made from common matter found everywhere. In theory, anything would work, even stone dust, and once his magic seeped in, it naturally formed special structures at a microscopic level, appearing as dull crystals on the outside. If he shut down the energy field, the crystals would lose their support and collapse on their own.
"Looks like I can't just open the energy field whenever I want," he said. It was not that it was bad, but the impact was far too obvious.
If he slept while the energy field was active, it would not take long for all nearby magic to be drained, and crystals would keep spreading outward from him. The range would keep growing larger. He did not want to wake up to a group of powerful beings from all races chopping him into pieces over crystal overgrowth, and he did not want to cause mass extinction either.
After a closer check, he found there was still a limit. The energy field weakened as it spread, both in size and strength, decreasing with the expansion of crystals until it reached a threshold. That limit depended on his own strength, though maybe one day his range could cover the entire world.
Belial tested switching the energy field on and off. There was a cooldown, but it was short, and the range was only a few hundred meters around him. "That should be useful for absorbing magic later."
Still, he could not activate it recklessly. Using pressure to bully others was risky, since he might hit something he could not handle, and scaring all the monsters away would leave him with nothing to eat. He also tested adjusting output and forming barriers.
The output control was hard at first and very tiring, but with practice it should be manageable. As for the barrier, he used all his strength to form a tiny one, uneven on the surface, and it shattered with a poke from his claw. Forget it, he was still a baby, and his energy reserves were nowhere near those of a true SpaceGodzilla born feeding on cosmic energy and supernovae.