Belial stayed in the vein and continued absorbing magic obediently. With the energy field and the ignited Nuclear Reactor, his absorption efficiency had greatly increased, and as the crystals multiplied, it surged to an extreme level, all of which his hungry body accepted without issue. His energy was abundant, and since the Nuclear Reactor was only in an early stage and still needed vast magic to grow, he could not even fall asleep.
But he had to find something to do. Belial began researching and training his skills. Space Claw was simple and crude, just channeling energy to boost destruction, and because it was so simple, he could not find much to refine yet and skipped it.
Gravity Tornado was his current means of flight, so he tried using it to lift heavier objects or to raise something as small as a pebble with precision. The other crystal-type skills were still unusable. As for releasing Corona Beam, he had not found a way yet, and it seemed to be more than just an output issue.
He tried compressing surface radiation to see if he could release a weakened version of Spiral Heat Ray, and it seemed possible. To maintain higher absorption efficiency, he had to stay awake and actively keep the energy field open. To be honest, days like this were very boring, but he had to keep himself busy somehow.
After some time, Belial stopped feeling anxious. He realized that he had plenty of time ahead of him. If this were a standard Otherworld story where a hero was summoned, the goal would be to defeat the Demon King.
But he had arrived as a Godzilla. He had no assigned mission, and whether judged by dragon standards or by the lifespan of a Godzilla, his time still stretched far beyond the horizon. Constantly absorbing Magic and eating everything he could was only to make himself stronger, strong enough to wander around Otherworld without getting killed.
As for what came after that, it was not something he needed to think about now. That could be handed to his future self. His real goal was never to become invincible and overthrow the whole world by himself, but something simpler, just strong enough that he would not die from doing something stupid.
Looking at it that way, there was no rush at all. As long as he stayed hidden, even if it took hundreds or thousands of years, slow accumulation would get him there eventually. Time was just a number, and maybe it would pass after sleeping a few times.
Belial did not notice that his sense of time had already changed. Since he could not fall asleep right now, he decided to find something to do. He first tested all the abilities that belonged to a Godzilla itself.
After that, he started training nonstop. He increased the load supported by Gravity Tornado and repeatedly turned Photon Reflection Shield on and off. He did not know whether it was useful, because for a Godzilla, training barely mattered, as strength naturally rose once energy increased.
After training for a while, his attention shifted to something that did not belong to a Godzilla. That was Magic. Previously, because it had to supply the Nuclear Reactor, no matter how much Magic he absorbed, he could not freely use it.
Now it was different. With Energy Field constantly absorbing and circulating energy, he had a steady supply of Magic and could finally try using it. Before, he had only fused it crudely into Godzilla abilities, such as throwing out Space Claw directly, or spreading it within Energy Field for other uses.
This time, he tried simply releasing Magic outward. When Belial had been human in his past life, he was not very smart, and that had not changed. Even this simple step defeated him, as he could only make Magic circulate inside his body and could not find any sort of output point.
He did not rush himself. Time was now clearly on his side, and he could experiment slowly. Energy Field could keep running on its own anyway.
After a while, he learned how to release it through plain familiarity. There was no sudden insight, only repeated grinding. Watching Magic flicker at his fingertips like weak static, cutting in and out, he continued testing.
He wondered what the point of simply releasing Magic even was. Once he could release it, he quickly learned to increase the output. He could now shoot a stream of Magic from his mouth like a beam of light.
It had some destructive power, but it felt very inefficient. The damage was not worth the amount of Magic consumed. Increasing power was easy, but that only meant gaining another beam attack that felt mostly useless.
Thinking about this, Belial wondered if there was a more efficient way to use Magic. A word naturally surfaced in his mind. Magic.
Right, this was Otherworld. As one of the most classic elements of Otherworld, he had ignored it without thinking. He recalled his earlier fight with that old man, and after reincarnation his memory had improved so much that he could still picture the magic circles appearing in the air.
He also remembered the ring the little girl had given him. From the Spatial Ring, he took out the few books inside, along with strange metal instruments he could not understand. They had diagrams on them that did look like magic circles.
They were filled with runes he could not read, along with geometry, circles, triangles, and matrix-like structures. There were even helpful three-dimensional drawings, showing how much care the owner had put into them. Belial began trying to control Magic outside his body to form magic circles.
This process was far harder than expected. Before, it was like learning how to turn on a faucet and let water flow out. Now, he had to turn it off again and still make the water move exactly as he wanted.
Just keeping Magic under control after cutting off the supply, instead of letting it dissipate, took him a very long time. After that, making it stay fixed in the air and form specific magic circle patterns took even longer. Before he finished building enough familiarity, another idea came to him.
He could use a medium. Any stone would do, and he could just carve an existing pattern onto it. That would be much simpler.
Belial gathered Magic at his fingertips and used his sharp claws to carve into stone. This was much easier, although he sometimes crushed the stone outright by using too much force. While going out to hunt for food, he even wondered if he could peel the skin from prey and write directly on it.
That idea sounded perfect in theory, something even ancient ancestors could have thought of. Unfortunately, his size and claws made it too easy to tear the hide into shreds. In the end, stone was still more practical, even if carving it every time was a bit troublesome.
He memorized the feeling of maintaining specific shapes on stone. Along the way, he shattered or crushed countless rocks, either from poor control of his claws or because too much Magic made them collapse. After practicing with stone, he returned to forming patterns in midair.
This time it was much easier. After failing thousands of times, he finally succeeded. He had plenty of Magic to waste, and any energy that dissipated into the air would automatically return to the circulation of Energy Field and be absorbed again.
Next came multitasking. He tried drawing multiple patterns at once, including circles and triangles, and then combining them into complete structures. Multitasking itself was not hard, as constant practice handled that, but keeping overlapping patterns stable without breaking their internal flow was difficult.
Each path of Magic had a fixed direction of circulation. It was like a road only wide enough for one lane, yet needing two vehicles to pass in opposite directions. A collision was inevitable.
In the end, Belial used a clumsy solution. He kept grinding multitasking familiarity and manually controlled the circulation of Magic at every overlap point. It worked, even if it felt inefficient and somehow not quite right.
Thinking back to certain classic stories, he relaxed again. If even ordinary high school students could be written as having brains like supercomputers, then his simple multitasking was nothing special. Besides, this was Otherworld, and compared to that old man he had seen using magic, his level probably did not count for much.
So he kept practicing. Failure did not bother him, since this was only meant to pass the time. He continued creating and overlapping patterns, increasing their number and complexity.
He moved from simple two-dimensional shapes to three-dimensional structures, and eventually could change them freely. Relying on the powerful brain and terrifying calculation ability of a Godzilla, he could truly do it. Later, on a whim, he even started sketching freely, eventually drawing figures that looked like pretty girls.
Still, it felt like something was missing. Belial suddenly realized that Magic could emit light depending on its release frequency and energy level. With that insight, he tried controlling frequency and density while maintaining the patterns.
He set a basic range and created a simple image, letting the light of Magic naturally outline shadows and highlights. Going from zero to one, then from one to two, was easy. After that, it was just repetition.