Later, when he grew past ten meters, some monsters fled, but many still attacked him recklessly. Now that he was over thirty meters long, he truly could not understand why this one still dared to face him. He could not figure it out at all.
The reason lay in two simple points. Before igniting the Nuclear Reactor, his body gave off almost no Magic fluctuations, as everything was swallowed by the Nuclear Reactor. To many monsters, he looked like nothing more than a huge body with no magic at all.
Even after igniting the Nuclear Reactor, as long as he did not release his Energy Field, no Magic could be sensed from him. All of it was tightly bound within the Energy Field. Monsters often judged strength directly by the amount of Magic, and most of the time, that judgment worked.
Without sensing any Magic fluctuations, the Icefang Dragon believed this oversized enemy was just an empty shell. That belief gave it the confidence to bare its claws. As a ruler of the snowfields with dragon blood and a strong lineage, it trusted its own power completely.
It had killed larger enemies before, so what if this one was bigger. With that thought, it launched its attack.
Its body burst into motion with incredible speed, powerful hind legs blasting a crater into the ground. The forelimb blades swung toward the black dragon in a blur, carrying raw strength that could shatter stone and cut steel. Frost-aligned Magic clung to the strike, ready to freeze flesh from the inside out.
The icy blades flashed forward, slicing through snow and tearing the wind apart. The Icefang Dragon already imagined its enemy frozen solid in the next moment.
"Crack."
Huh?
For the first time in its life, confusion flooded the Icefang Dragon's eyes. The blades had clearly hit their target, yet there was no familiar feeling of cutting into flesh. Instead, cracks spread along its own arm blades.
Belial lowered his head and stared as well, puzzled by the sight of the Icefang Dragon freezing in place after striking his abdomen. The ultra dense Ice Element and Magic coating his body had already frozen and shattered the blades, yet the attacker had not even reacted. As for the impact, he had never considered that he could be pushed back at all.
While the Icefang Dragon stood there stunned, Belial decided he should not just wait with it.
"Since you are done, it is my turn, right?"
He scratched his massive head and slowly opened his mouth. The surrounding Ice Element gathered toward him, glowing with a clear blue light as it flowed. The icy radiance surged, his back spines lighting up as a torrent of frost and Magic blasted forward.
The Icefang Dragon took the freezing breath head on at close range. In less than a few seconds, its body, despite its high resistance to Ice Element, turned into solid ice. The cold spread from the surface inward, freezing blood, bone, and organs alike.
Its body, robbed of any chance to think, became a solid block of ice. The following shockwave from the Magic shattered it completely, reducing it to a pile of icy fragments. There was no doubt it was dead.
The Magic was captured and absorbed by the Energy Field, but staring at the pile of ice shards, Belial felt stunned.
"How am I supposed to eat this?"
The opponent had attacked him with such confidence that he thought it would be strong. Seeing it end so easily left him wide-eyed, unable to understand why it had put on such a show in the first place.
Mephist searched for a long time and finally picked out one thing that was still somewhat intact from the pile of ice shards. It was a pair of amber saber teeth, but they had been almost completely soaked by Ice Element, and with a little pressure they crumbled in his grip. In fact, that was exactly what happened, leaving only powder behind.
As for the rest of the flesh, well, if someone liked shaved ice and had strange tastes, it might still count as food. His sense of taste had long since become nothing like a human's, so eating raw meat was not an issue at all. As long as it provided nutrients and was rich in Magic, he would put almost anything into his mouth.
When he was starving, he could even eat dirt and rocks. He had once pinned down a monster, forced it to breathe fire, then killed it and roasted the meat, but the result was not very good. During grilling, some of the nutrients and Magic were inevitably lost.
Human cooking was not only about flavor but also about making food easier to digest, using fire to kill toxins and act as an extra step of digestion. For Godzilla, none of that was necessary. Fatty raw meat that still dripped with blood even had a faint sweetness, and eaten directly it held the most nutrition.
Those ore chunks rich in Magic he had eaten before tasted like crispy biscuits. He could even roughly tell sweet from salty based on the concentration of Magic and minerals. If he went back to eating human food now, it would probably not taste the way he remembered.
If he had to say what he really liked, it was things rich in energy. Radiation, for example, was a direct and massive supply that gave him more satisfaction than flavor ever could. If possible, he would even like to eat Nuclear Rice.
"Mm… this breath seems to have something to it." Belial scraped at the mess on the ground with his claw, and under the surrounding wind and snow, the remains of the Icefang Dragon quickly scattered everywhere. By instinct, he felt that something was off, as if this icy breath held something deeper that he had not noticed yet.
He found a few monsters willing to become test subjects. The first dozen were all blown apart by the icy breath and merged into the swirling snow, following the storm like companions of Senbei Icefang Dragon. Their ends were quick and left almost nothing behind.
"Looks like I still need to adjust it." Belial lowered the output again and widened the spray of the breath. In this frozen environment, his power was naturally strengthened, and sheets of icy storm poured from his mouth.
The biting cold wind struck the test monsters as if ice blades were stabbing into every part of their bodies. Frost split skin and flesh, cold drilled into bone and blood, and the sense of winter crushed their breathing. Blood froze in clumps, and even their insides were coated with frost as the cold sank deeper.
Some monsters that already carried Ice Element began to change under the influence of something hidden within the breath. Though it was still Ice Element mixed with Magic, the foreign ice carried a deeper force that overwhelmed their own. Their internal ice turned against them and rushed through their bodies along the flow of Magic, leading to only one result.
Under attacks from both inside and out, the monsters slowly turned into ice sculptures. Their bodies were wrecked beyond recognition and finally shattered into chunks by the violent surge of Magic. They did not just die from an outside attack, but from their own internal collapse.
Belial expanded his Energy Field and pressed a claw to one monster's head, carefully sensing the entire process. He followed every channel of energy, even as the overwhelming Magic destroyed organs and brain, tearing the fragile body apart. After watching it once, he felt a strange sense of familiarity.
"…Ah." Yes, this was exactly like when he had eaten that fragment before. His body had been invaded by Ice Element, frozen through every bit of flesh, and should have ended in destruction, yet the unreasonable g cells had forced him through it. They had even grown new organs to consume the invading Ice Element completely.
Because he had eaten that fragment, did his ice-related power now carry the same nature? To be sure, he continued testing for a while longer. Several more kind monsters passing by helped provide confirmation.
Monsters that could use ice magic and carried Ice Element died the fastest under the breath. They were frozen from the inside and outside at the same time, turning entirely into ice. As before, once too much Ice Element invaded the body, it easily triggered a violent surge of Magic.
This kind of damage, erupting directly from within, was almost impossible to defend against. No matter the creature, internal organs were always fragile. Anything with ice affinity was especially vulnerable to his breath, which also built toward a killing threshold, while those without it simply took longer to be frozen through.
Could it be that this deeper ice force was embedded in the breath itself? He tried again, this time using ice magic directly.
"Let me try this." Belial casually tossed out a Magic Circle no bigger than his fist, and in an instant it expanded into a massive Magic Array tens of meters wide, covering all the monsters. Clusters of ice spears pierced their bodies, froze them solid, and were then shredded into fragments by the oncoming blizzard.