"Launch the nukes! Launch them now!" Inside the war room of the United States Department of Defense, the commander issued the final order. He had panicked after seeing the ten-thousand-meter-long giant monster emerge from underground.
High-ranking PPDC officials were ashen-faced, but no one voiced an objection. On their monitoring screens, the colossal beast was writhing across the ruins of Kyoto; every movement obliterated a vast swathe of buildings.
"Kyoto is beyond saving," a general said loudly. "Sacrifice one city to save the entire world."
No one disagreed because everyone understood clearly: the survival of Japan was no longer within their scope of consideration. The only thing that mattered was ensuring that terrifying organism remained forever trapped on that land.
Nuclear missiles soared from the deck of a United States carrier, whistling as they tore through the sky. Since the fleet had already been deployed in the waters near Japan, the missiles carrying the nuclear warheads reached the target airspace in just a few short minutes.
The atmosphere in the monitoring room was tense to the extreme; everyone held their breath, staring at the main screen. They expected the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion; they expected everything to end here. They did not believe any biological entity could survive a nuclear strike.
But the Precursor civilization never followed humanity's script.
This ancient race, which had colonized the universe for over a billion years, had long ago pushed biological modification technology to a pinnacle beyond human imagination. All the Kaiju deployed previously were merely scouts—tools meant to gradually alter Earth's environment. When the Precursors truly decided to conquer this blue planet, human technology was laughably primitive. Only that massive Titan earned a sliver of their respect.
The monster sensed the incoming nukes. Its massive body twisted violently, its tail reared high, and the final segment of its body detached directly from the main host. This separated part rapidly reshaped and expanded in mid-air, eventually growing a massive maw.
That terrifying mouth, composed of biomass and metal, swallowed the high-speed nuclear missile directly into its gullet.
"Detonate! Detonate the nuke immediately!" Inside the United States command center, an officer who witnessed this frantically hammered the red button on the control panel.
But no matter how he tried, there was no response. The nuke seemed to be shielded by some unknown energy; there was absolutely no sign of an explosion.
The Japanese media, observing this through military satellites, broadcast the scene in real-time to the citizens of Japan. Hundreds of millions of Japanese netizens saw this, and the internet exploded instantly.
"They don't care if we live or die at all!"
"Dropping nukes directly on our heads? This is a war crime!"
"Even allies can't treat us like this!"
On international social platforms, the people of Japan vented their fury. In their eyes, even if the United States had always been their 'protector,' they couldn't be treated this way! After all, even a father cannot kill his own child at will! The child will resist!
For the Precursors, who possessed a civilization history of billions of years, stopping a primitive explosive device from a low-level planet was beyond easy.
The second, third, and fourth nukes arrived in succession; all were easily devoured by the 'mouths' separated from the monster.
The United States military was unwilling to give up. At the moment the fifth nuke was about to be swallowed, they remotely detonated it prematurely. A dazzling white light exploded in the high altitude, but to everyone's shock, the separated monster tissue did not dodge. Instead, it swallowed the exploding nuke directly into its belly.
The energy of the nuclear blast caused its body to swell violently, as if a sun were burning inside it. But it did not burst. That terrifying monster's body slowly contracted, actually compressing and digesting all the energy of the nuclear explosion. A moment later, the digestion was complete, and several piercing beams of energy shot out from the edges of its 'mouth.'
Then, it emitted a strange sound similar to a 'burp,' as if what it had just eaten wasn't a powerful nuclear weapon, but a delicious lunch.
The war room of the United States Department of Defense fell into a deathly silence. The netizens of Japan were also silenced. Faced with such a powerful enemy, did they have any hope of survival?
Having brushed off the 'playful' nuclear strikes, the giant monster began to roam wantonly through Kyoto. Wherever its ten-thousand-meter-long body passed, everything was crushed and devoured.
Inside the underground shelters, hundreds of thousands of Kyoto residents had turned from their initial panic to total despair. The sound of crying spread rapidly, eventually merging into one. As time passed, despair began to corrode people's sanity.
"We're all going to die! All of us! Not a single person will live!" a middle-aged man suddenly screamed hysterically.
"Shut up! You damn bastard!" another man shoved him hard.
Eventually, the shoving turned into brawling, and the brawling triggered a larger-scale conflict. Fear and despair caused humanity to collapse completely; order within the shelters disintegrated. Some people drew weapons they carried—in an era of frequent monster invasions, many citizens of Kyoto had obtained self-defense weapons through various channels.
Gunfire echoed through the underground space along with screams. The refugees, who should have stood together in unity, lost their final shred of humanity under the shadow of death.
On the surface, the monster keenly captured the sounds and vibrations coming from underground. Its massive head turned toward the source of the noise. Thick, sharp limbs easily pierced the heavy concrete layers, and it then tore a massive hole in the roof of the shelter.
The screams stopped abruptly.
After devouring this shelter, the monster continued moving toward Mount Fuji, the ultimate goal of its journey. But the Huaxia embassy lay directly in its path.
Satellites broadcasted this scene across Huaxia. Hundreds of millions of Huaxia citizens watched the screen with hearts in their throats, silently praying for their compatriots inside the embassy.
Inside the embassy's underground shelter, hundreds of Huaxia students and diplomats gathered. Initially, they tried to remain calm and discuss countermeasures, but when the monster's silhouette appeared on the monitoring screens, everyone knew all they could do was pray. A young female student clutched the jade pendant at her chest—an amulet her mother had given her before she left. She closed her eyes and prayed softly, and others began to pray with her.
The monster's massive body brushed past the side of the embassy. People in the shelter breathed a sigh of relief; some even began to weep, thankful for this unexpected luck.
But the next second, the monster suddenly stopped. As if it had sensed something, its giant head slowly turned toward the embassy.
"No!" the people inside the embassy screamed in despair.
The monster raised an incredibly large forelimb and thrust it directly into the embassy; the sturdy building and the ground were torn apart instantly. The people in the shelter let out cries of despair.
At that moment, the sky was pierced by a streak of blazing golden light.
It was a beam of light more dazzling than the sun, shooting straight down from the high altitude, penetrating the clouds, and striking the ground. Within this golden light was a massive Three-Pointed Double-Edged Spear, which accurately pierced the monster's head, pinning it firmly to the ground.
The entire world seemed to stand still at this moment.