The problem was that frozen meat did not taste very good. He could also use Gravity Tornado, but he was not used to it yet and often crushed the target into paste with poor control, slamming it into the ground. As for his other skills, there was no real need to use them.
After igniting the Nuclear Reactor and greatly boosting his overall performance, he had not met an enemy that required special skills to defeat. Magic counted as a small trick, and he was still inexperienced with it, relying instead on his raw output. Most of the time, a single slap with his physical strength left enemies dead or crippled.
Defense was the same, as he used to get injured occasionally. Now, most enemies could not even touch him, especially when he controlled the air. Breaking through his crystal barrier was even harder, and he had not taken a hit in a long time.
He wondered if constantly crushing weaker foes would make future high level fights difficult, maybe even get him outplayed. Then Belial thought again. "As long as I keep a low profile and stay hidden, there is no need to fight high level battles at all."
That thought lifted his mood. Belial kept flying through the sky, and perhaps this was simply how Otherworld was, because the blizzards felt stronger and stronger. Even so, they still posed no problem for him.
The strong winds up high had an advantage. He could temporarily stop using Gravity Tornado, add a bit of wind magic for support, and rely on his wings alone. His wings had grown further, becoming broader, stronger, and tougher, with fine dark scales covering the back of the membranes.
They were very flexible, capable of wide twists, and each wing limb could even bend with great strength. It felt like having an extra pair of hands. As for size, feeding on ordinary monsters did not increase it much, though he had grown a little.
His strength was not increasing slowly, but compared to the earlier days of lying on mineral veins and leveling up without effort, it felt different. The growth rate also scaled with his current level. From the perspective of ordinary monsters, however, his daily increase in strength was terrifying.
Belial carried a dragon bloodline. If someone obtained his blood or scales and studied them carefully, even down to individual atoms, they would still conclude that he was a dragon. In reality, his cells were gradually gaining traits of G cells, but the dragon bloodline shaped his development most directly, forming his current appearance between a dragon and Godzilla.
At a higher level of existence, his essence was still Godzilla, regardless of any biological bloodline. That truth did not change.
"Hm… what is that?"
Belial sensed something that stood out. As he flew on, it felt like he crossed some kind of boundary and encountered something completely different. The ice element was extremely dense, and there was also a rich presence of Magic.
Then the temperature dropped sharply, almost like a cliff. What had been just below minus ten degrees suddenly plunged to nearly minus fifty. The violent blizzard and dense ice element instantly coated his scales with frost, and his eyelids nearly froze shut.
Even his breath turned to ice the moment he exhaled. The temperature kept dropping as he advanced, and even his limbs began to slow. Belial spread Energy Field in a very thin layer close to his skin to resist the cold, since there was almost no fire element around to support constant temperature magic.
It grew colder still, and frost formed even on the outside of his crystal barrier. In the end, he stopped caring about ice forming on his body, since it did not affect his movement and could not freeze him to death. Soon after, Belial reached his destination.
It was a mountain. A massive mountain, towering into the sky and hidden within the blizzard, stretching endlessly and covered in pure white with no trace of black. The ice element was so concentrated that clusters of ice had grown from the ground, somewhat similar to his own crystals, but otherwise there was nothing obvious.
Though it was only a mountain, Belial could already feel what was drawing him. It was inside the mountain. Buried beneath layers of snow, frozen soil, and rock that were hundreds or even thousands of meters thick.
"It is just a mountain. I will smash it open."
He increased the range and output of Energy Field and activated Space Claw. Nearly solid Magic crackled across his body like lightning. Despite the name Space Claw, he could use it anywhere if he wished.
He activated this state across the front half of his body and shaped the crystal barrier ahead into a sharp drill. Belial narrowed his eyes, his wings paused for a brief moment, and then with a sonic boom he vanished in an instant. He shot forward like a meteor, tearing through the fragile snow layer and smashing straight into the frozen soil and rock beneath.
The enormous mountain shuddered violently. Like a tunneling machine, he carved a path where none existed. In this extreme cold, even loose soil was as hard as iron, and frozen ice layers were even tougher.
Before Space Claw and his arm strength of over a hundred thousand tons, all of it shattered like biscuits. The drill formed by the crystal barrier at his claws met no obstacle, as soil, rock, ice, and even hidden minerals were blasted apart by raw power. Every moment, hundreds of tons of debris were thrown aside as he dug a tunnel wide enough for himself.
His target was close, but then he struck an ice layer thicker and harder than steel. Even that only lasted a moment. Every scale on the front half of his body shone like a mirror, reflecting countless points of light.
Surface radiation at ultra low output. With that and a final burst of Space Claw, the last ice layer broke apart. Belial crashed headfirst into a cavern filled with ice and snow.
After crashing inside and sensing what was going on, Belial realized he had fallen into another mine. The temperature here was already past minus one hundred degrees, and if he opened his mouth, the biting cold would freeze every drop of blood in his body into shards. There was no wind at all, and anything that might have moved was frozen solid along with the air itself.
Ice crystals were everywhere, condensed from ice elements so dense they had turned fully solid, covering every corner of the cavern. Each crystal gave off a faint glow, yet together they lit the entire space until it looked clear and polished. It was cold, truly cold, and packed with far more ice elements than the outside world, to the point that any monster coming close would only end up frozen into a block.
Even though the place was freezing, Belial felt a burning excitement in his chest. Every chunk of ice crystal contained a large amount of Magic that thrilled him. Judging by the size of the cavern, the total Magic here was far less than the vein he had stayed in before, but it was still a pleasant surprise.
"Wait, what is that."
Belial spotted something at the center of the cavern. It was not so much sharp eyesight as the object being placed in an extremely obvious position. There lay an ice blue crystal fragment, faintly glowing, clear and bright like a broken piece of something precious.
It rested at the very center of the cavern on a black base, guarded by transparent cold ice around it. At the same time, dark pillars were driven into the ground at different points, each with a black barbed chain extending from the top and weaving together to trap the fragment in place. A dim black halo pulsed around it, rising and falling like breathing, pressing down the glow of the ice blue shard.
What attracted him most was naturally that ice blue fragment. Even with a rough sense, he could tell that the Magic contained in that tiny piece alone exceeded the total amount in all the other crystals combined. Or rather, all the Magic in the cavern seemed to originate from this small fragment.
Looking at this scene made him pause. Could it be that he was the protagonist and his lucky break had arrived, even though he had not gone through a near death struggle? Of course, what he did not realize was that for anyone else, what he had faced already meant dying hundreds of times over.
"But whatever it is, real or fake, I will eat it first."
Belial decided that even if it was a sugar coated trap, he would lick off the sugar before worrying about the rest. After experiencing the joy of jumping straight into a mine and skyrocketing in strength, he had reached an understanding. Leveling up only really worked when you cheated, and he did not care if someone called shortcuts crooked.
With no hesitation, he expanded Energy Field to cover every corner of the cavern and began to absorb Magic without restraint. He even opened his mouth and tried to suck it in by force. The result was immediate and unpleasant.
"Cough, cough… ptoo!"