Everyone aboard the Truth fell silent in that moment. Even Yuan Zhen hadn't expected this result.
The system had finished building the digital model, and the true form of the "Level 5 Kaiju" was now displayed before them.
"Dr. Yuan, what exactly is this..."
A suction cup?
A rift?
An hourglass?
As she watched the three-dimensional model rotate in the holographic projection, Yuan Zhen voiced the answer she had imagined.
"A wormhole. A one-way wormhole." Yuan Zhen's gaze turned icy. "Twenty minutes ago, its opening was only a third of its current size."
On the coast, Xingtian, holding a giant axe, stared in shock at the upheaval unfolding in the distant sea.
The enormous shadow finally broke the surface!
An irresistible force of gravity swirled counterclockwise, carving out a domain of its own in the middle of the ocean!
It was a sight Yu Xiao had never imagined.
A ring thousands of meters in diameter abruptly spread across the sea, like a whirlpool spewing in reverse, driving all the surrounding seawater away!
Countless illusory points of starlight shot out from the vortex, like a brilliant galaxy hanging upside down, pouring the stars into the sky!
Around the ring, a layer of pale green mist swirled along with it!
Yu Xiao couldn't mistake it. It was the blood of the kaiju he'd killed with his own hands!
Why did the danger come from beneath the sea, and not from the sky?
In that instant, all of Yu Xiao's questions were answered.
The kaiju had crawled out of wormholes like this!
Perhaps, in the depths of the Boundless Sea, beneath Leviathan's colossal body, there was another wormhole just like the one before Xingtian!
That wormhole could only be even larger!
Yet beneath Yu Xiao's astonishment lurked a faint trace of despair.
How was he supposed to close this wormhole?
But before Yu Xiao could think of an answer, the energy radar interrupted him.
[Warning: Unknown energy fluctuation detected. Energy level: Unknown]
A tentacle three hundred meters long emerged from the wormhole, reaching for the sky!
At that moment, Xingtian's audio receiver picked up countless overlapping voices!
Screeches, howls, roars, bellows... They rang out all at once, each expressing a different emotion!
Every one of those twisted, frenzied cries came from a kaiju!
Yu Xiao forced down his intense discomfort and locked Xingtian's auxiliary visual module onto the swaying tentacle!
He saw it clearly.
On the massive tentacle, thick enough to flatten Xingtian on the spot, Yu Xiao saw countless twisted faces!
They seemed carved beneath its brown skin like sculptures, while innumerable rifts howled and wailed!
But this was only the beginning.
A second tentacle, then a third...
More and more tentacles crawled out of the enormous opening, thrashing and waving wildly in the air!
The whole scene looked like a cluster of flesh-colored giant seaweed, greedily reaching for something to grab!
And before those frenzied tentacles, Xingtian was as tiny as a toy soldier!
Just then, the first tentacle to emerge slammed straight down toward Xingtian!
Rumble!
Seawater parted like a waterfall along either side of the tentacle. A hundred-meter-high wave swept across the entire coast like a tsunami!
"Xingtian!" Molten Rock's cry was swallowed by the crashing waves and sea wind.
But the eleven remaining mechs still charged without hesitation toward where Xingtian had been.
In the night sky, the Truth blared its highest-level alarm, and the entire ship was bathed in red light.
Yuan Zhen looked down at the coast.
The tentacle had smashed a trench twenty meters wide into the ground!
Even genuine giant-strength metal couldn't withstand power of this magnitude!
Fear and despair weighed on everyone aboard the Truth. Since the war began, this was only the second time the energy radar had encountered something it couldn't identify.
That day, Leviathan had appeared in the Boundless Sea.
"Dr. Yuan! Xingtian hasn't gone down!"
Yuan Zhen immediately turned her attention back to the energy radar.
The light representing Xingtian was still blinking!
When Molten Rock and the mechs jumped into the trench, now filled with seawater, they found that Xingtian was still functioning!
At that moment, Xingtian was kneeling on the ground, bracing himself with the giant axe embedded in the trench.
To keep the tentacle from smashing him into a pile of scrap metal, Yu Xiao had spent 18,000 evolution points to upgrade the [Hardening] skill twice!
But even though [Hardening] had saved the mech, the force of the blow had nearly driven Xingtian into the ground so deep he couldn't have been pried out.
Using the battle axe for support, Xingtian slowly and laboriously got to his feet.
If he covered his whole body with [Hardening] again, as he'd done before, the cooldown between uses would be extended to twenty seconds.
"Twenty seconds... That's more than enough time to get me killed several times over." Yu Xiao looked at the dozen or so tentacles thrashing in the sky.
Just then, however, Molten Rock received an order from Yuan Zhen through his earpiece.
"The system's calculations are complete. These tentacles aren't as physically resistant as we thought, but because of their immense size, the damage they can inflict and the range of their attacks are terrifying."
"So the weapons on our mechs can damage these tentacles?" Molten Rock suddenly realized.
"That's right."
"But how do we close the wormhole?" Molten Rock knew that unless they dealt with the source of the problem, no one could guarantee that even more kaiju wouldn't crawl out of the wormhole.
"The wormhole's structure is unstable. If we bombard it directly with energy weapons of sufficient power, it'll collapse."
"Energy weapons..." Molten Rock thought of the first time humanity had used a nuclear bomb against a kaiju.
And that had only been a Level 3 kaiju.
He could barely imagine what kind of destruction the catalytic effect released by those tentacles would cause if they destroyed this wormhole!
No one here would survive.
"I know what you're thinking, but I can tell you another possibility." Yuan Zhen sounded as if she weren't speculating at all, but stating a fact. "When the wormhole collapses, its one-way direction will reverse, and the destruction caused by the energy reaction will be absorbed by the wormhole as its direction of transmission changes."
"What are the odds?"
"It's all theoretical, but according to the system's projections, the probability of this happening is almost one hundred percent—unless humanity is heading in the wrong direction with its theories about space." Yuan Zhen changed tack. "But we can't predict how fast the wormhole will collapse. If it disappears instantly, the wormhole won't be able to absorb much of the energy reaction already underway."
"So it's still uncertain whether we'll survive." Molten Rock gave a bitter smile, but that was in line with what he'd always expected.
Nothing in this world ever went smoothly.
"If you don't survive, I won't last much longer than you."
Before you continue