His massive body was covered in neat rows of black-gray triangular scales, with a layer of rapidly growing juvenile scales beneath them. The dorsal spines unique to Godzilla had grown taller and denser, running from his head to his tail like spear-shaped bone spikes.
His fore and hind claws became stronger, with clearer muscle definition. Scales along his sides piled up into blade-like ridges, and the bone spurs at his joints stood out more sharply. On his head, two pairs of horns curved backward, their tips faintly pale, while his face grew more angular and his thick fangs jutted outward, giving him a more ferocious look.
Two fleshy bulges on his back had also grown small sharp protrusions, making it seem like wings might develop. He had once looked at his reflection on the water's surface. For Godzilla, his build was too thin and long, like a starved, scrawny sprout.
For a dragon, however, he looked quite powerful, with well-developed limbs, a shorter and thicker neck, and several structural differences. For example, he could now support himself on two legs and stand upright, though it felt awkward and too eye-catching, so he preferred moving on all fours.
His weight had increased again and again, and his strength had risen with it. A single slap could kill or cripple most monsters, and in terms of defense, only that Giant Octopus had been able to injure him at all. Clearly, this lake was no longer a place to stay.
After such a battle, it was hard to even call it a lake anymore, as the surroundings were torn apart. "Next, I will head upstream and find a place with more food."
With his decision made, Belial dove into the water and swam toward the upper reaches of the river. As he swam, his body stayed close to the surface, with his dorsal spines breaking through the water, finally looking a bit like Godzilla in motion.
Even now, Belial still could not figure out how Godzilla managed to walk across the sea. Even with a height of dozens or hundreds of meters, that hardly explained it given the depth of the ocean. Could it really be powered by something ridiculous?
He swam for a very long time, at least dozens of hours by his own sense of time. His swimming speed was quite fast, reaching fifty to sixty kilometers per hour. Whenever he grew hungry, he ate small fish in the water or went ashore nearby to find a group of monsters and feast.
The monsters he encountered along the way varied greatly in strength, with no clear pattern of stronger ones appearing deeper inland. The few stronger ones he did meet were still far below the level of the earlier Giant Octopus. For Belial, the difference between them was whether they took one slap or two.
There was no third slap, because he never gave them the chance to survive the second. From this, he judged that among monsters of similar size, his own strength placed him firmly among the stronger group.
On the way, he also encountered a large yellow-brown lizard over ten meters long, its body covered in rocky armor and moving on four limbs. His dragon blood reacted faintly, and he realized it was likely a drake, born from a giant dragon and another creature, a common earth drake often mentioned in Otherworld stories.
Unlike his own dragon beast form, drakes could think, were smarter, and could cast magic. Some powerful ones could even rival true dragons. Belial found this fascinating.
Then he grabbed it with his bare hands and smashed it into the ground, creating a crater larger than himself. The earth drake bled from all seven orifices, its bones and organs shattered as it died. His only comment afterward was, "The meat is a bit tough."
"It is so cold…" Feltz pulled her robe tighter around herself. As a proud mage, her body was far weaker than a warrior's, and she had no battle aura to protect her. She mainly studied water and earth, with ice as a secondary focus, so she could not fine-tune heat like fire mages or block cutting winds like those who specialized in wind.
As for robes woven with rare magic-conducting materials and constant-temperature arrays, those were far beyond what a poor student like her could afford. She could only pile on whatever clothes she could squeeze into. If she were not poor, she would not have left the camp with its wide-area temperature array to follow her mentor around in the wild just for a pitiful number of credits.
"Ugh… there does not seem to be anything here either." She set the triangular stand on her back onto the ground, and at its top the metallic Celestial Sphere made of circular iron rings spun nonstop. The sun and moon structures at its center drove the outer rings to rotate, following principles drawn from major schools of astrology.
After a brief look, Feltz took out her thick leather-wrapped notebook and recorded the survey results for this spot. Once she finished, she hurriedly tucked her freezing red hands back into her robe. She muttered that if there really were a deposit worth finding, it would not be in a place this empty.
She felt the local lord must be dreaming of sudden riches. This was clearly a survey contract for Magic Crystal Ore that her mentor had taken, yet he had been distracted halfway by a passing Earth Dragon and dumped the work on her. At this point, all she could do was sigh in frustration.
"Honestly, what was that lord thinking, wanting a survey in a place like this?" Magic Crystal Ore was not a single mineral but a general term for magic-rich ores. Their value was comparable to black gold in a neighboring land. According to what Feltz had learned, if such ore were close to the surface, the whole region would show increased ambient magic.
That increase would attract stronger monsters or cause abnormal plant growth. Yet this area was completely barren, with sparse monsters and thin vegetation, worth less combined than the Earth Dragon her mentor had just gone after. As for the idea of a deeply buried, ultra-high-quality vein that barely leaked magic, she thought one might as well buy lottery tickets.
So how much had that lord paid to make her stingy mentor accept the job? What made it worse was that in the end, she was the one doing the work. While her mind ranted nonstop, her face stayed stiff, and her body kept moving honestly as she dragged the heavy equipment forward.
Then, a small accident finally arrived. "Boom!!!" "Aah!!!"
A column of flame shot nearly a hundred meters into the sky, followed by an expanding shockwave. Even from here, a wave of heat washed over her, and she could feel the fire element density in the air rising. Several blazing fireballs and spear-like streaks fell, and a spreading red ring of flame formed as a huge crimson magic circle lit up the sky.
The circle shattered with a deafening crash. From the sea of fire burst a figure wrapped in a red, transparent sphere. Before she could see clearly, a dark shadow struck from behind and swatted it out of the air.
Another massive pillar of fire erupted, forming a giant flaming tornado that tore everything inside it apart, stretching from ground to sky. "No, no… what is that?" Feltz nearly collapsed in fear, barely keeping her footing.
That level of magic and power felt like something only her mentor could produce nearby. What kind of thing could force him to fight like that? As she was still shaking, someone tugged at her robe from behind, and when she turned, she was startled again and did not recognize him at first.
Where did this old man come from? After a closer look, she froze. "M-Mentor! Lord Xion!"
The old man crawled out of a pitch-black rift, his brown-red robe torn, scorched, and still sparking. His beard and hair were gray-white, his mouth spilling blood that hissed when it hit the ground from the heat. The crystal ball in his hand burned his flesh and slipped from his grasp.
He could barely speak, mumbling as the ring on his finger flashed. He stuffed a scroll sealed with green wax into her hand. "This, this is… Wind Walk?"
Just holding the scroll, she could feel magic far greater than her own. It was woven from rare materials capable of carrying and guiding magic, and at this level the scroll alone was worth more than everything she owned combined. It was clearly one of her mentor's last-resort life-saving tools.
What kind of thing could beat her mentor, a mage of his rank, into this state so quickly? Her hands were shaking uncontrollably now.
"O-Okay, hold on to me, I will…" Feltz hoisted her unconscious mentor onto her shoulder, ready to activate the scroll. She threw her bag and survey tools aside, not caring about anything else.
"Boom!!!" A tremendous crash followed, rocks tumbling as the hill in front of her was smashed open. A stone struck Feltz on the head, hurting a little, but she had no time to care.
A massive shadow swallowed her whole. The first thing she felt was scorching heat. Before her stood a huge black dragon, its body covered in dark gray scales, savage in appearance and powerfully built.