By hacking into the Vortex database, Type Zero mapped out the precise resting location of every slumbering behemoth. In less than a day, Hyuk systematically awakened six of them.
Vortex was completely powerless to stop her.
They deployed as many warships and fighter jets as they possibly could around the perimeter of the Kemp Islands. Compared to the other behemoths, the one slumbering beneath these islands was of paramount importance.
Its codename was Uranus.
Inoue Jinji called it the King of Behemoths.
Once Uranus awakened, its primal roar would rouse every other slumbering behemoth across the globe. When that happened, humanity would no longer be dealing with just a handful of beasts.
But rather, dozens, if not hundreds.
This critical piece of intelligence was known only to Inoue Jinji and the highest-ranking Vortex officials. It had never been uploaded to any digital database; otherwise, Hyuk would have targeted the Kemp Islands first.
After awakening the sixth behemoth,
Type Zero spoke to Hyuk: "The nations of the world have prepared a rather grand 'welcome ceremony' for you at the Kemp Islands. Vortex is planning to establish a dialogue."
"Not interested."
Dialogue was meaningless.
Hyuk's current actions had absolutely nothing to do with taking sides. She could already guess what Inoue Jinji wanted to say, and she had no intention of halting her crusade to wake them all.
"Where's next?"
"How about the Kemp Islands?"
Type Zero suggested.
Hyuk had no objections. She spun around and accelerated to Mach 10, charting a course for the Kemp Islands. Crossing half of Gulan, a distance of 18,000 kilometers, took her exactly one hour and twenty minutes.
As she flew over the planet's night hemisphere, a brilliant ribbon of light stretched across the sky, the luminous trail left behind by her decaying plasma sheath.
Thanks to the intense plasma blackout phenomenon, Vortex was able to track Hyuk's coordinates continuously through their global radar network. Her terrifying speed left them utterly paralyzed with fear.
...
Around the Kemp Islands.
A massive fleet of warships stood battle-ready. High-yield nuclear warheads had even been stationed on the islands. If their defenses failed, they were prepared to detonate them, dragging both Hyuk and Uranus to the grave with them.
"She's here!"
BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!
The target's radar blip jumped massive distances with each screen sweep. Even in a modern, information-era combat environment where the enemy was far beyond visual range, the psychological pressure of this signature was overwhelmingly suffocating.
Inside the aircraft carrier Blue Whale, the atmosphere was incredibly tense. The radar data indicated the target's speed was not dropping at all; if this continued, they were bound to suffer a repeat of Mount Domino.
The Commander made a split-second decision.
"Launch interceptor missiles!"
"Initiating launch sequence!"
"Launch successful!"
Immediately,
Columns of thick white smoke erupted from the warships. A barrage of sleek, blade-like missiles pierced the heavens, racing toward the distant target.
If possible, they truly didn't want to initiate hostilities. But if the intruder refused to slow down, any hope of establishing a dialogue was nothing but a pipe dream.
Within the howling winds of the stratosphere, Hyuk's high-speed frame cut a clean path through the clouds. A split second later, an interceptor missile, guided by both radar and satellite, scored a precise hit.
In slow motion, one could see the missile's proximity fuze trigger, detonating the warhead in a brilliant bloom of fire. Hyuk dove straight through the center of the fireball, emerging from the explosion completely unscathed.
Several submunition warheads detonated, releasing a cloud of shrapnel to execute a kinetic interception. Upon head-on impact with Hyuk's body, the metal fragments instantly glowed cherry-red from the intense heat, crumpling like tin foil against her skin before inertia and the raging winds stripped them away.
Far from feeling pain,
Hyuk felt absolutely nothing.
Kinetic strikes of this caliber were completely useless. They couldn't even compare to throwing pebbles; physically, it was the equivalent of a single oxygen atom drifting into an average person.
To call it a gentle breeze would be an understatement.
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
Explosions boomed in the stratosphere like a string of firecrackers. The raining barrage of interceptors detonated along Hyuk's flight path, carving a thunderous trail of fire across the sky.
Yet, it was all in vain.
"Target speed is unchanged!"
"Deploy thermobaric warheads!"
It was hard to say if the target could even be classified as human anymore. Since kinetic impact was useless, they would test her limits with high-yield thermobaric explosives.
Five seconds later.
The thermobaric warheads closed in on the target and detonated.
The Commander held his breath, staring at the screen.
Then,
BEEP!
The target's radar blip flashed once more. Its speed hadn't dropped by even a fraction. Every conventional countermeasure in their playbook had failed, leaving them utterly defeated.
"Gentlemen, it has been an absolute honor serving with you on this mission."
The Commander offered a final salute to the sailors aboard the ship.
Because they had run out of time.
A second later,
BOOM!
A blinding flash of plasma sliced through the horizon. In the next instant, it crashed directly into the bedrock of the Kemp Islands. The immense kinetic energy punched a bottomless crater straight into the archipelago.
Immediately after,
The solid earth underwent a violent fluid-elastic effect. A colossal shockwave radiated outward in all directions, warping the surrounding terrain of the Kemp Islands into the jagged shape of an impact crater.
The shockwave rippled all the way to the coastline, churning the ocean into a frenzy of towering waves that capsized multiple warships, tossing them like kindling before the raw majesty of nature.
Standing on the deck of the aircraft carrier, Inoue Jinji watched the apocalyptic scene unfold as if a meteor had struck the earth. His face was pale with horror, entirely consumed by profound shock.
"This level of power..."
An unimaginable volume of pulverized earth was blasted into the atmosphere, erupting outward like a volcanic plume to form a suffocating, hundred-meter-tall wall of debris.
Darkness blotted out the sky, cascading down upon the fleet scattered across the sea.
...
Vortex Headquarters.
"Target has collided with the Kemp Islands. We have lost her signal signature..."
A heavy silence fell over the command center.
Every single one of their countermeasures had proved entirely useless. Their so-called interception protocols were a joke; the target hadn't even deigned to acknowledge them, yet the mere shockwave of her arrival had decimated their fleet.
"Even a behemoth doesn't possess this level of destructive power."
An official murmured to himself before asking, "Can we still receive the signal from the nuclear charge?"
"Yes, sir. It is primed and ready to detonate at any moment."
The high-yield nuclear mine buried within the Kemp Islands remained online. It was their sole piece of good news. Resorting to this drastic measure had been their only viable option.
Attempting to deliver a nuclear payload via missile carried far too much risk; both the target and Uranus could easily evade or shoot it down.
Only by catching them off guard with a pre-planted charge could they hope to inflict fatal damage. Furthermore, they didn't have the luxury of time to prep a new deployment; this single device was the only one in position.
...
Sometime later,
A low, ancient, and majestic roar echoed from the bottomless pit of the Kemp Islands. Amidst the echoes, a figure slowly rose from the depths.
Despite the raging waves, the aircraft carrier Blue Whale had managed to stay afloat. Inoue Jinji remained on the deck, waiting for his window, until he finally spotted Hyuk rising into the air.
He shouted at the top of his lungs:
"Your Excellency! I believe we can talk! You are human, aren't you? I don't know your reasons for doing this, but for the sake of humanity's survival, I beg you to stop!"
Hyuk's gaze swept over Inoue Jinji. Unmoved, she offered no response, continuing her steady ascent. A split second later, a monstrous behemoth clawed its way out of the pit, snapping its jaws at Hyuk, but its teeth missed her by a wide margin.
Witnessing this,
Inoue Jinji let out a heavy sigh.
"Detonate!"
Simultaneously, back at Vortex Headquarters, the command was issued, and the detonation button was pressed.
The nuclear mine buried deep beneath the Kemp Islands triggered the instant it received the command. Detonating explosives released a perfectly uniform shockwave, crushing the nuclear core into a super-dense mass.
Reaching supercriticality, fission occurred, instantly igniting a thermonuclear fusion reaction.
BOOM!
The high-yield hydrogen bomb erupted with a blinding, white-hot flash. The release of extreme thermal energy superheated the surrounding air in a fraction of a millisecond, unleashing a cataclysmic shockwave.
Bedrock and soil at ground zero vaporized instantly. As the shockwave expanded, millions of tons of pulverized earth were shot into the sky, where a titanic mushroom cloud slowly billowed upward.
The ocean erupted once again into a frenzy of gargantuan waves. Several unlucky warships capsized under the fury of the water. Yet, the sailors and soldiers aboard the fleet had braced themselves for this outcome, having joined this mission with a resolute determination to lay down their lives.
The aircraft carrier Blue Whale violently rocked and pitched, but successfully stabilized itself thanks to its colossal displacement. Unable to look directly at the nuclear flash, Inoue Jinji squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his fists.
Will this actually work?
A long time passed.
The blast finally subsided.
Vortex Headquarters desperately attempted to re-establish communications with the Kemp Islands fleet. However, the titanic mushroom cloud blotted out the sky, completely blocking any satellite feeds.
Furthermore, all radio contact with the fleet was entirely lost.
...
The final resort upon which humanity had pinned all its hopes was declared an absolute failure as a savage roar ripped through the atmosphere. A hundred-meter-tall, monstrous behemoth stepped out of the boiling mushroom cloud.
ROAR!
Uranus's entire body pulsed with a terrifying, fiery glow. It seemed completely unharmed by the thermonuclear blast; the extreme heat, lethal radiation, and crushing shockwave had done absolutely nothing to it.
High in the air,
Hyuk's figure slowly materialized. Because she had kept her distance from the epicenter, the thermal radiation washing over her wasn't even enough to singe her casual battlesuit.
To her, a shockwave of this magnitude was barely a gentle breeze.
"It failed..."
Inoue Jinji slumped in absolute despair.
Given Hyuk's reflexes and hypersonic speed, she could have easily sensed the detonation and escaped the blast radius in an instant. Yet, there had been no need for her to flee.
She could gauge whether the weapon was a fission or a fusion bomb simply by assessing the thermal radiation released, and she could roughly estimate the temperature range of the blast, even if she couldn't calculate it precisely.
Today, even temperatures of hundreds of billions, or even trillions of degrees made no difference to her. To a fully degenerate-state lifeform, such extreme conditions were nothing more than a warm spring breeze on her face.
It was not a matter of higher temperatures dealing more damage. Extreme heat merely increased particle kinetic energy, breaking down physical matter at a molecular or atomic level.
However, Hyuk's degenerate-state cellular structure defied conventional physical laws; even extreme thermal energy was incapable of disrupting her at a subatomic level.
Let alone a mere few thousand degrees.
Hyuk was far more concerned with whether her battlesuit would get damaged.
If this were a video game world, Inoue Jinji would have probably seen Hyuk's name tag, traditionally that of a passive entity, suddenly flash blood-red, marking her transition into an active World Boss.
As long as they didn't provoke her, she had no real interest in targeting humanity. Provoking her, however, was an entirely different story. In the distance, a sonic boom cloud suddenly condensed.
Instantly,
BOOM!
A massive hole was instantly punched clean through the hull of the aircraft carrier Blue Whale. Moving over the ocean surface like the Droplet from Three Body Problem, Hyuk systematically annihilated and sank the surviving fleet in a matter of seconds.
Steel was torn and pierced without the slightest effort. The colossal kinetic impact snapped warships in half, shattering them into kindling. It all transpired in the blink of an eye.
The Blue Whale foundered, creating a gargantuan whirlpool on the surface that dragged the wreckage of nearby ships down into the crushing depths of the ocean floor.
By the time Inoue Jinji managed to break the surface, Hyuk was long gone. Only the colossal frame of Uranus remained on the Kemp Islands, roaring toward the heavens.
An invisible ripple of energy spread rapidly, reaching every corner of the globe. Beneath mountains, rivers, lakes, and oceans, colossal eyes opened one by one.
Stirred by Uranus's call, the world's slumbering behemoths awakened in rapid succession.
ROAR!
Mountains shattered and the earth cracked.
Lakes and seas boiled.
The behemoths roared in unison, sending their thunderous responses back to Uranus.
...
At Vortex Headquarters, the alarms blared in a deafening frenzy.
"Behemoths are waking up everywhere!"
"The numbers are staggering!"
Awakening signatures popped up all across the globe. Virtually the entire map was painted with active signals, making the faces of the high-ranking Vortex officials look incredibly grim.
The absolute worst-case scenario had unfolded. This meant the operation at the Kemp Islands was a complete disaster; the nuclear detonation had failed to kill Uranus.
...
Half a month later.
Every single behemoth on Gulan had awakened, totaling one hundred and seventeen beasts.
Hyuk's mission was complete.
——
[Main Mission · Phase Two · Completed]
[Reward: Evolution Rate · 15%]
[Evolution Rate: 65%⬆]
——
[Main Mission · Phase Three: All behemoths of Gulan have awakened; the war of natural selection and elimination between humanity and behemoths has begun. Your presence has made the behemoth race sense an existential threat to their survival, triggering the imminent awakening of the Progenitor. You must eliminate the Progenitor; its existence will shatter the delicate balance of this natural selection.]
[Mission Reward: Evolution Rate · 20%]
——
"The Progenitor?"
Hyuk had Type Zero scour for any related intelligence, but the search came up completely empty. The term had never once appeared in Vortex's databases or global intelligence networks.
While she was familiar with "primordial hosts," this was the first time she had ever heard of "the Progenitor." It sounded like the very first individual of the behemoth lineage, some kind of primeval ancestor or mother-organism.
Type Zero remarked, "It seems to be a lifeform that predates even the super-ancient civilization. At the very least, known historical records of the super-ancients contain no mention of it. Even Vortex appears to be completely in the dark."
Perhaps Vortex did know something, as a digital database didn't necessarily contain the entirety of their classified intelligence. Regardless, Hyuk didn't care. She would simply wait for it to show itself.
Judging by the mission description, the Progenitor was bound to be extraordinarily powerful or unique. The moment it manifested, Vortex would undoubtedly detect it.
And Type Zero would catch wind of it immediately.
...
For the past half month following the global awakening, Vortex had been utterly overwhelmed, exhausting every scrap of resources and military capability to combat the behemoths appearing worldwide.
Before long,
They noticed a bizarre phenomenon.
A monitoring technician reported, "Based on the travel routes and headings of the behemoths, they are all converging on Uranus at the Kemp Islands, without a single exception!"
"What's driving them?"
"Unknown at this stage."
"Is there something special about the Kemp Islands?"
Upon discovering Uranus's resting place, Vortex had conducted a comprehensive geological scan of the Kemp Islands. Yet, they had found nothing but a modest, hollow cavity deep underground, nothing anomalous whatsoever.
As the global population of awakened behemoths migrated toward the Kemp Islands, they inevitably crossed paths with human settlements, prompting immediate military retaliation.
Fortunately, not all behemoths possessed Uranus's biological immunity to nuclear blasts. Humanity's heavy ordnance could still inflict severe damage on many of these beasts.
Quite a few behemoths fell to hypersonic missiles and even tactical atomic bombs. Within a brief span of two weeks, human forces successfully liquidated sixteen behemoths.
In turn, the behemoths' retaliation inflicted devastating losses on humanity. Seven major cities were severely damaged, and countless towns along their migration paths were reduced to rubble.
Fortunately, the current generation of behemoths didn't possess an active urge for mindless destruction; otherwise, human casualties would have been catastrophic. As time ticked away, behemoths from every corner of the globe reached the Kemp Islands one after another.
Vortex Headquarters planned to deliver a devastating blow to the beasts. Gathering in one place played right into human hands, offering a perfect opportunity for a clean sweep. Even if they couldn't wipe them all out, they could easily eliminate the vast majority.
"All ballistic missile silos have entered the launch sequence!"
"Satellite guidance systems are online!"
"Report current behemoth numbers."
"Based on our latest intelligence, a total of 93 behemoths have gathered around the Kemp Islands. Fifty-eight are sixty-meter-class, twenty-seven are eighty-meter-class, and eight are hundred-meter-class!"
Analyzing their combat data from the past two weeks, Vortex concluded that only the hundred-meter-class behemoths could completely shrug off tactical nuclear strikes. Other classes would either be disintegrated instantly or left severely wounded.
Humanity's ultimate weapons were not completely obsolete.
"Do we have any intel on what the behemoths are actually doing?"
"Still unknown, sir."
...
High above the Kemp Islands.
Inoue Jinji was equally baffled by the current turn of events. After awakening, Uranus had not immediately initiated a war against humanity. Instead, it chose to remain stationed at the Kemp Islands.
During this time, more and more awakened behemoths answered Uranus's call. Upon arrival, they quietly nested in the ocean depths or along the coastline, exhibiting incredibly puzzling behavior.
Even Inoue Jinji, a survivor of the super-ancient era, had no idea what the behemoths were doing. He had never witnessed such bizarre behavior from them during his own epoch.
Even stranger was the fact that the behemoths did not attack Inoue Jinji. Although he was a Beast-kin who had once fought alongside them in the super-ancient era, they were undoubtedly enemies in this current age.
Uranus made no hostile moves, simply staring quietly at the sky. Around it, the other behemoths stood or lay in bizarre poses. Inoue Jinji followed Uranus's gaze upward, seeing nothing but the pale silhouette of the moon.
"The moon?"
Suddenly,
ROAR!
Uranus's roar echoed deafeningly across the waters of the Kemp Islands. Hearing the call, the surrounding behemoths threw their heads back and roared in unison.
"What are they trying to do?"
Inoue Jinji felt a sudden, ominous dread.
In the next instant,
HUMMM...
A high-frequency wave of pure, concentrated energy spiked violently. Uranus's body erupted with a brilliant, blinding light. It threw its head back, opening its cavernous maw to unleash a titanic beam of energy soaring straight into the sky.
The superheated energy beam warped the surrounding air, distorting everything in sight. At the same time, the surrounding behemoths roared, unleashing their own energy beams.
ROAR!
SSSSS!
BOOM!
The deafening crackle and roar of countless energy beams fused together. Under Inoue Jinji's shocked gaze, the beams coalesced in mid-air into a single, colossal pillar of light, pointing directly at the moon.
Are they trying to destroy the moon?!
The absurd thought crossed Inoue Jinji's mind, only to be immediately dismissed. While the behemoths' energy beams were undoubtedly destructive, the moon was far too distant.
The concentrated beams would inevitably dissipate and lose their potency in the cold vacuum of space. By the time they reached the lunar surface, they wouldn't be able to inflict any real damage.
So, what was their goal?
Inoue Jinji had no way of knowing. But as the image of the behemoths releasing their colossal energy beam was captured by Vortex's satellites, the organization decisively issued the command to launch nuclear missiles.
After releasing their energy beams, the behemoths required a period of cooling down. This meant they were entirely unable to intercept or shoot down the incoming nuclear missiles.
"Launch!"
At that moment,
Ballistic missile silos across various continents erupted with plumes of white smoke as they launched missile after missile, each carrying high-yield thermonuclear warheads.
This was a war for human survival; there was absolutely no room for hesitation or false hope. With this grim resolve, a barrage of missiles soared from both land bases and naval fleets.
Crossing vast distances, they closed in on the Kemp Islands. Just as the behemoths' energy beams faded and died, the first high-yield nuclear missile arrived at a terminal velocity of Mach 15.
BOOM!
The missile detonated directly over the Kemp Islands. A blinding flash instantly swallowed a vast cluster of the beasts. The core temperature of the explosion, spiking to billions of degrees, instantly vaporized any behemoths caught at ground zero.
The intense thermal radiation decomposed and carbonized the surrounding behemoths in a fraction of a second. Inoue Jinji's physical body quickly turned to ash. Yet, in his final moments, he believed Vortex had made the right decision.
He died with a faint smile on his lips.
A second later,
Inoue Jinji's carbonized shadow was briefly left on the surface of a rock before the shockwave of the airburst swept the stone away, plunging it into the ocean depths.
Immediately after, more nuclear warheads struck the Kemp Islands. One by one, blinding spheres of thermonuclear fire bloomed, delivering the most devastating and agonized blow the behemoth race had ever suffered in their history.
Meanwhile,
The combined energy beam of the behemoths breached Gulan's atmosphere. As the travel distance grew increasingly vast, the particle dispersion of the beam became more pronounced.
Its destructive power dropped rapidly.
After traversing nearly 300,000 kilometers, it had lost almost all of its lethal force. Even so, this combined destructive beam, powered by dozens of behemoths, successfully struck the surface of the moon.
...
In Vortex Headquarters, technicians monitored the feed in real-time.
"The beam has made contact with the moon. No structural or significant damage has been detected."
"Good."
The Vortex leadership breathed a sigh of relief.
What they did not know,
Was that the energy particles bombarding the lunar surface sank silently below the crust, transmitting a specific signal to an entity slumbering deep within the core of the moon.
The instant those microscopic, virtually imperceptible particles struck its ancient body, a massive golden eye snapped open.
In the next second,
In the silent vacuum of space, a massive plume of lunar regolith erupted from the moon's surface. Shards of rock and debris escaped the moon's gravity under the sheer force of the impact, hurtling into the deep void.
A winged behemoth emerged from the moon's interior. Its dual golden eyes locked onto the nearby planet Gulan, and it dove straight toward the world.
Vortex Headquarters instantly descended into utter chaos.
"An unknown behemoth has appeared on the moon!"
"It's heading straight for Gulan!!"
Its hideous wings dragged a brilliant trail of blue fire across the cosmos. The high-speed jet of particle emissions propelled the Progenitor forward at an astonishing velocity.
A spacecraft blocking its path was instantly obliterated, reduced to stardust upon impact.
"Launch nuclear warheads to intercept and destroy it!"
Unable to assess the threat level of this unique behemoth, Vortex Headquarters immediately declared a maximum-level alert, launching atomic warheads to execute a scorched-earth interception.
The Progenitor continued to accelerate, quickly breaching Mach 10. At this rate, it would enter Gulan's atmosphere in less than a day.
However,
Hyuk was far faster than any nuclear missile.
...
On Gulan, Hyuk looked up toward the moon.
"Finally!"
Tracking the Progenitor's vector via satellite, Type Zero confirmed, "If my calculations are correct, this unique behemoth is indeed the Progenitor you mentioned."
In the next moment,
Hyuk launched herself into the sky with a deafening sonic boom.