Belial glanced down at his gut. The battered shard lay broken, wrapped in his internal energy field, slowly being drained dry. There was no threat left in it.
Even if the leftover magic tried to explode, he'd just absorb it anyway. His stomach, like a blazing forge, worked overtime to squeeze out every last drop of energy. The G-cells drank it in greedily, spreading that power through his bones and flowing into his veins like liquid ice.
Not even the ice element went to waste. It was funneled into new organs built to store and control it.
"Still, eating that thing wasn't easy."
The digestion process had been uncomfortable. Not deadly, but definitely unpleasant. The clash of extremes, searing heat and biting cold, was like downing hot soup and chasing it with ice cream. Jarring, to say the least.
As he digested the shard, the ice energy in the area began to calm down and thin out. Curious, Belial expanded his energy field.
Instantly, a solid block of ice formed in midair. He absorbed it with ease. The released ice elements flowed back into shape, forming a detailed sculpture of SpaceGodzilla, sharp and majestic.
"So I can directly control ice within my field now?"
This wasn't like before, where he had to rely on magic to bend elements. Now, it was pure willpower. No middleman. Just thought and result.
Magic had once been a tool to reach the elements. Now, he didn't need that bridge anymore. His body and mind had become enough. "Not bad," he said with a low growl of satisfaction.
This was a pleasant surprise. Ice abilities meant a lot for a creature like Godzilla.
The most immediate benefit was being able to use the cold to cool his own body, which drastically improved the efficiency of his radioactive heat beam.
"Casting ice-based spells feels faster too," Belial muttered.
He casually lifted a paw. In his grip, a complex, layered magical array came to life, almost like a 3D model made of floating patterns and lines.
With just a thought, he expanded the array around himself. Thanks to the past few days of training and his sharp mind, he had mastered most of the split-type spell arrays.
Some of these runes didn't pull magic at all, they tapped directly into elemental energy. That was new and exciting.
Right then, his connection to ice runes deepened, and not just ice. Fire and wind runes also responded more clearly to him now. He started to understand them, not just use them like tools from a manual.
Before, he relied on preset formulas. But now, he was starting to grasp the meaning behind the symbols. The structure. The reason they worked.
He was proving the spells to himself. And something else was shifting inside him.
Following that strange feeling, his throat tingled. Without thinking, he opened his mouth, and a wave of icy mist burst out.
A blizzard-like breath shot forward, coating the cave in frost and snow in seconds.
It was a pure freezing power, crackling with energy. The spines along his back glowed brighter as more and more ice energy surged through him.
It was just like when he fired his radioactive beam, but this time, it was cold that rushed to meet him, flooding his body as he released it.
"…Whoa."
Belial blinked in surprise and covered his mouth, a wisp of frost slipping out from between his fingers.
"Ice breath?"
Now that was cool.
"This must be from the shard. Makes sense…" He shrugged.
Godzilla mutating after eating weird things wasn't exactly new. It was kind of tradition. Radon, Space Godzilla, uranium-rich prey, weird cosmic energy, he'd seen it all.
It didn't take him long to figure out how it worked.
The ice element stored inside him was compressed and forced through strange reactions. That's what created the breath. It was dangerous enough on its own, able to freeze most monsters solid in a second, and could be adjusted, tight and focused like a laser, or spread out in a storm.
Even better, with a bit of magic, he could steer it mid-air. Split it. Curve it. Attack from different angles at once. "Still not as strong as the heat beam."
Yeah, in raw power, it came up short. But it was a solid backup, great for crowd control and freezing enemies in place. Belial was more than satisfied.
Besides, the ability wasn't finished evolving. By combining it with magic arrays and upgrading his energy field, there was plenty of room to push it further.
He could already imagine it one day matching that crazy human-made absolute zero cannon from the Godzilla universe. But now, it was time to go.
"Mission accomplished," he said, glancing around. "Might as well take something with me."
At first, he considered chipping away a chunk of the mysterious black base nearby. But it was way too big to fit in his tiny spatial ring.
He also thought about grabbing some high-purity ice element crystals. But after learning how to make them himself, they seemed pointless.
In the end, he took a few small crystal sculptures shaped like Space Godzilla, each about fifteen centimeters tall. They were carved from the same type of crystal, and had a nice shimmer to them.
"Let's leave a little gift for whoever stumbles in next." With a cheeky grin, Belial coughed something up.
A shard, identical to the one he had devoured earlier, floated in his palm. It wasn't real, of course. Just a hardened lump formed from all the leftover ice energy inside him, like a magical kidney stone.
Tapping into the old habits of web novel heroes who replant what they harvest, Belial chuckled to himself as he placed the shard gently back into the base. The surrounding magic and ice energy accepted it without question. The shard settled in, already absorbing power.
With everything done, Belial spread his wings and headed back through the tunnel he had carved earlier. He extended a wingtip and formed a swirling crystalline drill at the front.
Boom!
Stone exploded in front of him as he bored through the rock with ease. His body could handle it. His skull was sturdy enough to bulldoze through mountains by now.
Soon, he had opened a wide enough tunnel for his towering body to pass through. Still, he didn't leave the place a mess. He took his time sealing the tunnel behind him, carefully packing it with frost and ice, plugging every gap.
Then he stepped outside and used his magic to adjust the snowfield around the entrance. When he was done, it looked untouched. "No one should be able to tell a dragon was ever here," he muttered.
He gave one final look back at the sealed entrance, smiling a little. Almost guilty, like a kid sneaking out of someone else's backyard.