They stared at each other, slammed together, and everything spun. Before he could process anything, he transmigrated again, this time as a soul, flying straight into a mountain. He vaguely remembered dreaming about crawling into an egg, which felt absurdly strange.
…Wait, what is this in my mouth? He blinked in confusion and looked around, seeing what seemed to be a ruined wilderness forest. Then he looked down.
There was a beast corpse several times larger than him, torn apart beyond recognition. Its belly was ripped open, organs spilled everywhere, and its head was in his arms as he drank straight from it. Without thinking, he sucked in another mouthful of red and white brain matter, and somehow found the taste acceptable.
"So what exactly am I now?" By the time he fully came to his senses, he was already about half full. The flesh he swallowed was digested by a furnace-like stomach, easing his hunger and allowing his mind to stop running on emergency mode.
"Hiss… my head is still a mess. What was my name? Where is my system?" Then hunger struck again, and he decided it was better to eat first. Survival instinct overwhelmed everything else, and he lowered his head to keep eating.
Tough hide, unbreakable bones, and dense flesh were all crushed and swallowed whole. Without noticing, the total amount he ate was already larger than his own body by volume. The digestion speed was terrifying, and his once shriveled body grew fuller and stronger at a visible pace as he ate.
The black-and-red mottled scales on his body began to fall away, while new young scales had yet to emerge beneath the skin. The two pairs of horns on his head also seemed to change slightly. When he woke again, only a pool of blood mixed with Minced Meat and bone fragments remained on the ground.
"Damn, I really ate all of it?" He tried to cover his mouth with a claw in a very human gesture, but could not quite reach and gave up. With his mind finally running normally, he started sorting through everything, including his life before transmigration.
"Was my last name... Ichigo? What was my name? And what is my true dragon name?"
The bad news was that he could not remember his original name. The good news was that he had gained a long list of new ones.
"True dragon name… inheritance? Wait, am I a dragon?" From his current perspective, he could not see his whole body, and he did not think his odd shape looked like a dragon at all. People might believe it was some new species that appeared after the sea retreated.
He soon realized that his inheritance was incomplete. Aside from the true names inherited from both parents, all the magic and bloodline powers that should have been there were gone. What remained were only fragments of common knowledge, and strangely enough, memories of predecessors being killed by experts of various races.
Right now, his state seemed to be that of an impure bloodline, a degenerated dragon beast. Dragons laid clutches of eggs, and not every one would hatch into a true dragon. Aside from dead eggs, there were ones like him, whose minds could not withstand the inheritance memories and became malformed, seen by humans as born disabled.
True dragons would not even consider them blood kin, and due to their lack of intelligence, they were worse off than drakes. At least drakes had working minds. But since he was an outsider soul, maybe he replaced the mind that this body never had.
That seemed reasonable, he thought, before remembering something else. "Where is my system? Are you there? Hey, system?"
"Ding! Sys… missing… zzt… exe…"
A light screen appeared before him, or perhaps on his retina, filled with static like bad signal, then instantly went dark. It struggled briefly, sparks flashing, followed by a crack, as if something was added to his mind. After that, there was no more response.
"…." Thinking back to the clash of those two supreme beings, he fell silent. His cheat had been smashed by the truck god of war, so what now? Then another thought came to him.
"Godzilla System? Panel? Template?" He searched through the new thing in his mind. The system had exploded but seemed to leave behind some inheritance, like several packages, with the first already opened.
"Space Godzilla Template: Activating. Current fusion progress: 1%." What the hell was that? After turning it over in his head, his eyes suddenly widened.
SpaceGodzilla, from From the Film Godzilla vs. SpaceGodzilla, is one of the classic enemies faced by Godzilla during the Heisei Era era. It appeared in stories like the demonic dragon's revenge and the decisive battle of the century, leaving a deep mark on Godzilla's long career. Among all opponents, it stood out as one of the most memorable.
Its origin was just as absurd as its power. G-cells, meaning cells of Godzilla, were pulled into a black hole, expelled from a white hole, absorbed energy from a supernova, and then fused with crystalline life to give birth to this monster. Even describing it that way felt unreal.
In space, it could fly at three times the speed of light, and within an atmosphere it could still reach Mach three. Its combat power was terrifying, as it once fought the real Godzilla and the ugly-looking robot MOGUERA at the same time. Fighting two such opponents head-on already said enough.
The rest of its settings were just as extreme. On its way to Earth, it had already destroyed countless planets, and it could create a crystal field that supplied itself with what was effectively endless energy. Its Corona Beam, boosted by cosmic energy, was far more powerful than usual, and it could even manipulate the laws of the universe in a way that bordered on nonsense.
Its weight was close to eighty thousand tons, almost on par with the big guy. It was a classic example of a pure stat monster with an outrageous background, and if its weakness had not been so obvious, and if exploiting that weakness had not given its enemies such a big advantage, it might not have lost at all. Even after being weakened, its power was still stronger than a single Heisei Era g.
Overall, its attributes were a full upgrade of Heisei Era g, along with many unfair abilities, and it only lost because it ran into a shameless two-on-one fight. The other participant, the human-made MOGUERA, was no pushover either, with paper stats several times stronger than the original Mechagodzilla. None of them were weak.
When this kind of template was placed on him, it did not mean he was stitched together with SpaceGodzilla into one body. It felt more like a fusion from a higher dimension, one that would guide his growth toward that form over time. Even if he had originally been human, with no g-cells at all and no way to survive a supernova, he would still be influenced into growing into SpaceGodzilla.
Back when the system still existed, the relationship between the template and him was like a mecha and its pilot. Now it was similar, except the mecha had turned into something like Mazinger Z or Getter Robo, and there was a chance that pilot and machine would eventually become one. The comparison felt oddly fitting.
What made things even more chaotic was that his dragon bloodline also joined in. His physical body in the real world would be directly shaped by that bloodline. With both a higher-dimensional template and a material bloodline acting on him, what he would eventually grow into was anyone's guess.
"Still, this isn't so bad," he muttered. "At least my life should be a bit safer, right?" From his few remaining memories, he could barely piece together some scenes of this world.
It seemed to be a very traditional swords-and-magic otherworld. There were mages who used spells, warriors who tempered battle energy, all kinds of monsters including dragons, and even gods truly existed high above the sky. That part at least was clear.
What worried him was that as a dragon beast, and such a special one at that, he was not actually that strong on a world-wide scale. For now it was fine, but once he grew up, he might attract attention from all kinds of people. Wasn't it common in these worlds to capture drakes or dragon beasts to pull carts and the like?
He really did not want such a miserable future. Even true dragons often became stepping stones in stories, and in his memories, many races were not exactly friendly toward dragons. The thought alone made him uneasy.
At this point, becoming stronger was the only choice. He decided to lie low for now and wait until he had grown into a cosmic super monster before thinking about exploring the outside world. Thinking of that possible bleak future, he shook his head hard.
"Uh… right, wasn't I thinking about my name earlier?" he said to himself. He had once found it strange that a simple transmigration could make him forget his own name, but now it seemed less important.
After taking a punch from a truck-like war god and only losing his name, that was already a decent outcome.
"Then I'll just pick a new one." He paused, then said it out loud. "Belial?"