The name tugged at something in his memory. Belial wasn't just a cool-sounding devil name from random fantasy stories.
In ancient texts, the name meant "lawless." It showed up in old Hebrew scriptures as a title for the wicked then later, Belial became a full-fledged demon in apocryphal writings and grimoires, one of Hell's high-ranking nobles. A deceiver. A tempter. A king of chaos.
Calling it his name now felt fine, since the last part of his dragon true name happened to be exactly that. In that sense, it really was his name.
If he ever got annoyed, he could always drag that hell g next door into hell and beat him up until he changed names. With that settled, he finally allowed himself to call himself Belial and set a simple main goal for now, to become stronger, with no deadline or fixed target.
"With a goal in mind, what should I actually do?" That question immediately stumped him. Humans and other intelligent races could learn magic or battle energy, but he had no such conditions.
Was he supposed to learn SpaceGodzilla's method of tanking supernova explosions, or Godzilla's traditional habit of eating nuclear bombs? How did dragons and other monsters actually grow stronger? Dragons gained inherited memories during sleep, and their bodies naturally grew, but beyond that, he had no idea.
Push-ups and long-distance running? That sounded a bit stupid. Maybe he could try to get in contact with humans later and learn magic from them. Even that felt far away, since he could not even solve the language problem, and with such a huge and different body, could he really learn?
"Grr…" His stomach growled. "Hungry again?" While his mind was wandering, Belial was pulled back by the urge from his belly. He had eaten not that long ago, so why was he hungry again so soon?
"Is this because of SpaceGodzilla, or are dragons just like this?" He could not tell, but filling his stomach was never a wrong choice. He looked around, but since he was still short, he could not see very far.
It looked like a forest, somewhat sparse, with large rocks exposed on the ground. Dragons might be able to survive by eating dirt, but he really did not want to try that. Hunting real prey was still the better option.
This was the time to use his brain, since running around blindly would not work. Thanks to his bloodline, his sense of smell was extremely sharp, and he could clearly tell moisture, various scents, and even traces of blood in the air. Following water and animal paths in the forest, he could find a water source, and prey would naturally be there.
As for whether he could beat them, that was not a concern. Even in his earlier starving, mindless state, he had killed things easily. Now it would be even simpler.
The search turned out to be surprisingly easy. By a stream, a group of creatures that looked like large reindeer were gathered in small clusters, drinking water. They had branching, blade-sharp horns and six legs.
One of them suddenly noticed a dark shadow passing through the water. Startled, it raised its head and cried out, alerting the others. Meanwhile, Belial, truly at home in the water, swam about with excitement.
He did not know which organ he was using to exchange oxygen in the water, but it did not affect him much. What excited him more was that there were indeed fish in the stream. They were around seventy to eighty centimeters long, with smaller ones close to half a meter, different from Earth fish but not by much.
As long as they did not look too strange, they were edible. He did not know how to fish properly, but he remembered how slippery fish were. Grabbing them by hand was easy to mess up.
So he used his claws like spears. It hurt a bit at first, but after getting used to it, the pain faded. Soon, he did not feel it at all.
Boom. Underwater, his arm shot out like a harpoon, and the force traveled through the water, exploding into a splash at the surface. With his strong body and absurdly fast reflexes, he almost never missed, though a few escaped early on due to his poor swimming skills.
Once he got the hang of it, it became easy. He caught one after another, stuffing them straight into his mouth without caring whether they were poisonous, since they could not poison him anyway. His stomach had some unknown structure, because even after eating far more than his body volume, it only bulged slightly, and the food was digested at a terrifying speed.
What was strange was that eating raw fish did not taste that bad. It was a bit sweet and a bit salty. Then again, he had changed species, so a change in taste made sense.
He ate seventy or eighty large fish, plus many smaller ones he did not bother counting. Only after his stomach felt full did Belial climb back onto the shore. Once full, he wanted to sleep, but first he needed a suitable place.
After looking around, he did not find anything satisfying like a cave. Glancing at his sharp claws, he suddenly understood. In a hidden gap between rocks, he dug out a small cave by hand, just big enough for him to move around.
He curled up inside, and as the drowsiness grew heavier, he closed his eyes and fell asleep peacefully.
Belial opened his eyes. He poked his head out of the cave he had dug, judging by the marks he had left around and the dim sky that, if time were still counted in hours, he had slept less than six. By human standards that would leave him tired, and even by dragon standards it was barely more than a nap.
Even so, he felt full of energy. He took a few deep breaths as fresh air rushed into his lungs, and his body was already ready to move. By now, a fair amount of time had passed since his arrival in this other world and his first hunt.
There was nothing special to say about that stretch of time, just eating and sleeping, then sleeping and eating. He also had to keep expanding his cave because his body was growing too fast. Every time he woke up, the space felt smaller again.
"Time to expand it again," he muttered.
He crawled out of the cave and looked back. After several rounds of digging, the cave already felt cramped to him once more. His growth rate was getting ridiculous.
He had no clear reference, but if his earlier body length was counted as one, then now it was five. His length alone had increased fivefold. And this had happened in fewer than ten sleeps since the first time he ate his fill and rested.
At first, he had worried about how many years it would take to grow into a Cosmic Giant Monster without something like a nuclear blast landing on his head. That kind of power was on the level of a supernova, and he wondered if eating normally for hundreds of years would still leave him small. Looking at his current size, that worry was clearly pointless.
He used the number of times he slept rather than days because he had no clock. He could only tell roughly whether it was morning or afternoon by the sun. His sleep was also irregular, sometimes lasting hours and sometimes days, so exact counting was impossible.
In the end, it did not matter much right now. There was only one reason he usually woke up. His stomach made a low sound, and he sighed.
"Hungry again."
Belial was used to it by now. He had figured out that hunger was the main thing that pulled him out of sleep. After merging with the SpaceGodzilla template, his growth was abnormal, and most of what he ate went straight into building his body instead of turning into fat.
His cells were dividing all the time. Once new nutrients came in, anything beyond basic life functions was used to increase his size. Many times he seemed to grow while eating, his body changing at a pace that was easy to notice.
The increase in size and weight brought a clear benefit, his strength rose quickly. The price was that he woke up hungry every day. He let out a long yawn, shook his head, and pushed off with all four limbs.
The ground where he had been standing was torn up by brute force. His five-meter-long body turned into a fast black shadow, weaving through uneven ground and trees. In moments, he reached his destination and dove straight into the river.
He treated it as a simple morning wash, and then it was time to eat. He opened his mouth, sharp teeth exposed, his longer tail swaying as his thighs tucked close to his body. Using his keen sense of smell, he tracked schools of fish moving through the water.
Following the scent was easy. It seemed to be breeding season, and the fish were fat and full of roe. Back when he was human, he might have thought about the ecosystem, but that idea had long since been digested along with everything else.
The huge black shape swept through the water, killing fish in clusters with extreme efficiency. It was almost one bite per fish, barely any chewing at all. Even fish too large to fit comfortably in his stomach were swallowed whole.