Having the skies all to himself made things easy. His crystalline barrier was nearly impossible to crack, and no one had landed a proper hit on him in ages.
Still, a thought crossed his mind.
'Would all this easy hunting make him soft? What if one day he ran into someone stronger and got outplayed because he'd gotten lazy?'
It bugged him for a second.
"Just keep a low profile. If I don't draw attention, there's no reason to fight anyone strong," he reminded himself, letting the worry fade.
High up in the air, he continued flying through worsening blizzards, not that the cold bothered him. Strong gusts actually made flying easier.
By cancelling out his gravity manipulation and relying on wind magic and wing strength, he could soar effortlessly. His wings had grown larger, tougher, layered with dark, glinting scales underneath.
The limbs were powerful and flexible now, able to twist and bend like extra arms. His body hadn't grown much in size lately compared to how smaller creatures might evolve, but the strength increase was there.
Not as explosive as the boost he'd gotten while resting in that mineral nest before, but still terrifying compared to the average beast. Power gains came slower now, sure, but they were monstrous compared to what others could ever hope for. His bloodline made things more complicated.
Anyone who got their hands on his scales or blood would probably assume he was a dragon, and that wouldn't be wrong. The blood of dragons definitely played a big part in how he developed. But if someone looked deeper, really studied his cells, they'd start noticing G-cell traits.
No matter how dragon-like he appeared, Belial's true nature, the thing that defined his very core, was still Godzilla, shaped from something greater, something from a higher dimension.
"What's this?" Belial suddenly sensed something strange ahead.
The air felt different. It wasn't just colder, it was a sharp drop, from a bit below freezing to well over fifty degrees below.
The magical energy in the area surged, thick with ice-element power, and something about it made his instincts scream. It felt like he was about to break through some kind of barrier into a completely different zone.
The extreme concentration of ice elements and the furious blizzards quickly coated Belial's dark scales in frost, the chill so intense it threatened to freeze his eyelids shut.
Every breath he exhaled instantly turned to ice. The further he moved, the colder it became, so cold that even his massive limbs began to stiffen.
Without hesitation, he activated an energy field tightly around his body, holding the brutal cold at bay. He tried using fire-based temperature magic at first, but the lack of fire elements in this area made it nearly useless.
The deeper he flew into the storm, the more the cold crept in, clinging to his crystalline barrier and forming layers of frost. Eventually, he stopped resisting it. The frost wasn't enough to threaten his life. It was just something he had to deal with. Still, it didn't take him long to reach his goal.
A mountain. No other word fit. Towering in the heart of the blizzard, the massive peak stretched endlessly into the white sky, its form both majestic and oppressive.
The world seemed to fade in its presence, nothing else could compete with its sheer size and power. The overwhelming amount of ice magic in the area even caused thick crystal-like ice structures to grow from the ground, some resembling the shields he created himself.
Aside from that, visibility was near zero. But he knew something was buried inside this frozen giant, he could feel it. Somewhere beneath hundreds of meters of snow, ice, and rock, something waited.
"Just a mountain, huh? I'll break it open."
Belial expanded his energy field, ramping it up in strength until electric-like magic rippled across his body in glowing waves. His "space claw" ability flared to life. Despite the name, it wasn't limited to just his claws. It could enhance any strike with devastating spatial force.
Focusing power into his upper half, he shaped his crystalline shields into a massive, drill-like weapon. His wings stopped for a brief moment, his sharp gaze fixed on the mountain ahead.
Then, with a roar like a rocket engine, he launched forward in a blinding flash, crashing through snow and ice like a comet slamming into the Earth.
The entire mountain shook from the impact. He didn't need a path, he made one. Like a living drill, he forced his way in.
Even the softest snow had been hardened into solid stone by the cold, while layers of ancient ice had the strength of metal. But they crumbled like brittle cookies before his energy-infused charge.
The space claw, combining sheer mass and concentrated force, shredded through everything in his way. His drill tip shields tore apart rock, soil, ore, and ice without pause.
As he moved forward, he carefully controlled his strength to push the debris behind him, ejecting hundreds of tons of earth every second. The tunnel he left was massive, wide enough for his entire body.
Just as he was nearing his destination, he slammed into an ice layer tougher than steel, incredibly thick and solid. But it was only a matter of time. His forearms lit up with energy, glowing with a mirrored brilliance as his scales shimmered like polished crystal.
Then came the finishing move, surface emission. A low-powered blast, but focused. With one final space claw strike, the reinforced ice layer shattered like glass.
Without slowing down, Belial broke through and burst into the cavern hidden deep within the mountain, a frozen sanctuary sealed away by time and cold.
When Belial barged into the cavern and felt the atmosphere inside, it brought back memories of mining, cold, silent, and heavy with pressure.
The temperature had already dropped below minus one hundred degrees. Even opening his mouth would've been a death sentence; the freezing air could turn blood into brittle shards of ice.
There was no wind here. It wasn't that it had stopped, it had frozen. Completely still. The kind of silence that only comes when even the air has given up moving.
Ice crystals coated the walls, ceiling, and floor, shaped by the sheer concentration of elemental cold. Their soft, bluish glow lit up the entire space like a glass palace, cold and glittering.
It was bone-chilling inside, far colder than anything outside. Any monster wandering in would've frozen solid before realizing they were in danger.
But Belial wasn't complaining. In fact, he was thrilled. Every single ice crystal here was packed with an insane amount of magical energy, and to someone like him, it was like stepping into a treasure trove.
Sure, this cave wasn't as rich in raw magical power as the mine shaft he'd been in before, but this? This was still one hell of a jackpot.
"Wait… what is that?"
His eyes locked onto something in the center of the cavern. Not that it was hard to spot there, standing out clearly, was a shard of ice blue crystal, faintly glowing, sitting like a crown jewel.
It was placed right at the heart of the cave, resting atop a pitch-black base surrounded by a layer of clear ice. And around it, black stone pillars stood tall, each topped with spiked chains that crisscrossed over the crystal shard.