The chains gave off a faint black glow that wrapped around the blue light, dimming it, like shadows breathing softly. Of course, Belial couldn't take his eyes off the shard.
Even without getting close, he could feel the immense power it held, more than everything else in the cave combined. And in truth, it was. The other crystals and their magic had formed around this shard. It was the source.
Looking at it now, he couldn't help but wonder, was he the main character?
Was this one of those once-in-a-lifetime chances?
Only, he hadn't faced any life-threatening danger yet...
Not that it mattered. What he'd stumbled into was already something that had spelled doom for others more than once. "But hey, whatever it is, I'll eat first and ask questions later."
If it turned out to be a trap, well, he'd at least get a taste of the sugar on top. After all, he'd learned from past experience, diving headfirst into danger sometimes came with ridiculous power boosts. He wasn't going to say no to that.
Who needed long, slow training arcs when you could cheat your way to strength?
He began expanding his energy field, scanning the area and sucking in the surrounding magic like a vacuum. The moment he took a deep breath...
"Gah! Pfft!" He spat out a mouthful of ice shards. Okay, maybe not with his mouth.
The ice element was too dense. Even one strong breath nearly froze his lungs. Any regular creature would've turned into a statue from the inside out.
So, he stopped being reckless and focused on drawing energy through his field instead. Magic rushed in like a calm stream, and Belial let his eyes drift shut, a small grin on his face.
This was how power-ups were supposed to happen.
Who even levels up through boring training anymore?
The cold was still biting, but he was slowly getting used to it.
Bit by bit, Belial began to relax. His body took in magic and expelled breath in a steady rhythm. What would've frozen others to death now flowed through him, slowly giving in to his will.
The surrounding ice crystals began to glow even brighter, then dim, their stored energy drained in seconds. They cracked, shattered, and fell apart.
But unlike his earlier adventure in the mine, this cave wasn't just rich in magic. The ice element itself was dangerously concentrated, and no matter how careful he was, he couldn't avoid absorbing it along with the magic.
Normally, his body could handle it just fine. But this time, it was different. The sheer amount of cold seeping into him became a problem.
Before long, the elements began taking form, small, sharp ice crystals started growing inside his body.
The first signs of trouble showed in his capillaries, then moved to his veins, his muscles, and finally, even his organs began to feel the effects.
Luckily, Belial's body wasn't like any ordinary creature. While this kind of overload would've destroyed others, his adaptive biology, especially after past evolutions, kicked in automatically.
It began flushing out the excess ice elements in the background while still taking in magic. But unlike before, this time, he had to constantly manage the buildup too.
Thin layers of frost began forming on his black scales, leaving white marks across his body, visible signs of the extra ice his body couldn't fully absorb yet.
Fortunately, his mutated Godzilla genes, particularly from SpaceGodzilla, made him resistant to this kind of extreme cold. For other kaiju, it might've been a death sentence, but for Belial, it just slowed things down.
Time passed, and while he continued to absorb magic, the intake had to slow down a bit because of the added burden of ice element processing.
But even with that, his body began another round of growth. The demand for food spiked with his increasing size, and his hunting habits grew more frequent and aggressive.
This time, it wasn't just his length that improved. His body became bulkier, muscles filled out, and his weight jumped considerably. Now over thirty meters long, he looked a lot more solid than before.
Still small compared to the original SpaceGodzilla's 120-meter frame, but the changes were noticeable.
As the power built up inside him, Belial often found himself on the edge of falling asleep mid-absorption. But hitting this new growth phase left him too excited to truly rest. So, he went back to something familiar.
He began practicing magic again. But in this place, where the ice element practically ruled the entire cave, things were different. The heavy presence of ice didn't just sit still, it pushed back. Even when he tried to cast magic, it resisted.
Magic from any other element came out sluggish, weakened, and at risk of freezing over mid-cast. It was like trying to move underwater with a weight on your back. Still, it fascinated him.
Even though it was within his own energy field, every spell felt slow and heavy. Forming a simple magical construct that used to take seconds now became a frustrating, jagged mess. But this was just training, after all.
So, he stuck to a rhythm, absorb magic, test spells, go hunt when hunger kicked in hard. Rinse and repeat.
During his breaks, he messed around with sculpting ice from the excess element in the air. Crystals formed naturally, thick with magic, and he'd shape them into random figures.
He'd never learned art, so the results were always strange. He'd often smash them afterward in frustration, but it killed time.
Little by little, though, something inside him started changing. Unbeknownst to Belial, not all of the absorbed ice element was being purged.
A fair portion stayed behind, gathering and grinding against his internal structure. Yet, thanks to the nature of his cells, nothing foreign stayed useless for long. His body did what it always did, adapted.
The ice started being pulled into a forming reservoir inside him, slowly turning into a crystalline organ. Originally meant for collecting cosmic energy, it now greedily fed on the ice element instead. What began as resistance turned into nourishment.
In this frozen world, adaptation kicked into overdrive, using the environment to get stronger. He no longer had to worry about ice clogging his system, it was being devoured and turned into something useful.
Belial assumed this was just him getting used to the place. And in a way, he was right.
Encouraged by how smoothly it was going, he opened his energy field wider and began drawing in even more magic.
What followed was a flood. A surge of cold energy swept in. That strange organ inside him, now clearly active, responded instantly, absorbing the rush like a hungry beast, pulling the ice into itself and spreading through his system, linking with his body's internal flow.
Every single trace of invading ice was consumed. After a while, the magic flow stabilized again. His body, now more used to the environment, returned to a steadier pace, allowing him to finally catch a bit of real rest.