Arknights, but Terra Is Raised in Captivity

"Sea Creature 7: Lord God seems to be ignoring us..."

"Sea Creature 8: Could it be that Lord God doesn't like Little Flower's appearance?"

"Sea Creature 9: What do we need to evolve into before Lord God will take us away to eat?"

Chen Ran himself probably never would have imagined that he had merely ignored them, yet that group of Sea Creatures had started considering whether they should evolve on their own again.

On this Worldline where the Sea Creatures had destroyed the world, they had not only smashed Terra and humanity to pieces—they had even destroyed Originium along with them.

That level of power was absolutely unreasonable, so after thinking it over, the only possibility was that they had cheated.

Yet the cheating Sea Creature Great Swarm had not brought Terra to utter ruin. On the contrary, after humanity and Originium had both vanished, this land entered an age of flourishing vitality and boundless prosperity.

Because the Sea Creature Great Swarm's objective was exceptionally clear—they only targeted humans.

Thus, the land was now blanketed in vegetation, with every plant growing in vigorous abundance.

Animals roamed the plains and skies in herds and flocks, freely enjoying the inexhaustible food the land provided.

Even the Great Beasts that had once slumbered awakened one by one. Looking at the utterly transformed environment before them, their minds were filled with confusion: I only took a nap. Where the hell did this place come from? Is this still Terra?

And upon this land stood a city that had raised high walls amid the mountains, barely clinging to life with technology left behind by ancient history—the last bastion of humanity.

There were no more nations, no more classes. The remaining humans huddled there.

After the Sea Creatures ascended, these surviving humans finally had the chance to open the bunker's gates and try exploring and reclaiming the outside world.

But today—

Something was different.

Kal'tsit, who was discussing matters with medical operators while overseeing logistics and medical duties for the other organizations, looked up at the sky more than once today.

Ever since the Sea Creature Great Swarm had effortlessly torn apart the Starship Pod as though piercing a sheet of paper, Terra no longer had its false sky.

But precisely because of that, the positions of the planets in the night sky should have remained fixed... No, perhaps that was not entirely accurate, but at the very least, they should not have shifted so drastically within a single day.

What had happened in the sky?

Just as Kal'tsit frowned once more and lowered her head to inspect the documents—

"Dr-Doctor Kal'tsit?! Doctor Kal'tsit! Th-the sky!"

Panicked, chaotic cries erupted all around her.

Amid the chaos, Kal'tsit immediately looked up again, only to see a planet approaching Terra at a speed visible to the naked eye.

"The moon is falling?!"

"It's going to hit us!"

"H-help! Help!"

Amid the uproar, the planet hurtling toward Terra blinked in full view of everyone.

And in that instant, the previously clamorous crowd fell into utter silence.

Because no matter how slow they were, they all understood now—

That was not a planet, nor was it the moon. It was an eye.

A plan to destroy humanity was carried out by that lord!

An indescribable terror spread from the spine all the way to the base of the tail—

Simply put, their fur stood on end.

Because even Kal'tsit, who prided herself on being "all-knowing," was utterly incapable of comprehending such an existence.

If what had been parked beyond the stars had been a colossal spaceship, Kal'tsit would not have found it strange, because Pre-Civilization had long since achieved interstellar travel.

But that was an eye.

No, it should have been called an eyeball—an eyeball as large as an entire planet.

That eyeball was so enormous that one could not help but wonder: if a single eyeball was already this vast... then just how immense must its owner be?

A giant that played with planets like marbles?

Such a scale exceeded the limits of their imagination. They could not even comprehend numbers of that magnitude.

Megalophobia?

No, this was God descending upon the world.

At that moment, existing scientific views became a joke, while religious fervor reached its peak—

But the Sarkaz had already been wiped out. The Sea Creatures had done it.

So all that remained for these surviving humans was despair and terror as their worldview collapsed.

Crying, wailing, madness—there were quite a few whose sanity had dropped to zero in that instant. The cacophony was unending.

But Kal'tsit only found them noisy.

Kal'tsit, who had weathered countless storms, was the first to recover. She wanted to calm down and direct the others in comforting the crowd.

But her little tail, hidden beneath her skirt and fluffed up into a ball of fur, refused to obey her.

And—

Kal'tsit keenly noticed that the enormous eyeball, as large as a planet, was examining the continent of Terra as though observing and patrolling it.

It... no, He—what was He searching for?

The answer was that Chen Ran was searching for the survivors.

There was no helping it. Even when observing an ecosystem bottle, he had to look around, turn over the moss, and check whether any little animals were hiding inside. Searching for people on an entire planet was naturally even more difficult.

Compared to a planet, mountain ranges were tiny. And compared to mountain ranges, humans were even tinier.

They were not even sesame seeds anymore. He would need a microscope.

Chen Ran felt like his eyes were going blurry.

"Say, can I keep zooming this planet model in and out? Zoom in until my whole body can enter the planet model?"

In other words, just as he had put that Sea Creature into the newborn planet model, could he put himself inside as well?

Chen Ran appeared to be muttering to himself, but he was actually deliberately speaking for the translucent pop-up window to hear.

And sure enough, in the blink of an eye, the translucent pop-up window flickered before Chen Ran's eyes:

"You have submitted a visitation request to the planet Terra in order to give these ignorant, backward natives a little shock at the appearance of a god."

"Now, let us hear Terra's reply:"

"Terra: Don't come over here!!!"

"Terra: If you come over, I'll die right in front of you!"

"Terra: I'm dying right now!"

Chen Ran: "..."

Fine.

Chen Ran had not actually expected it to work. When he tried continuing to zoom the planet model in and out, he suddenly remembered a very important question—

Was the enlargement and reduction of this planet model truly happening in a physical sense... or had he merely been given a telescopic vision buff, or a human-shaped microscope buff?

If Earth were shrunk into a marble one centimeter in diameter, then a human would only be around 1.3 nanometers tall.

If Heart of the Corrupted Skadi had previously been enlarged from 1.3 nanometers to ten centimeters... then how much would this planet model need to be enlarged?

"Then if I mold a clay person, can I give it life and have it help me find those surviving humans?"

Chen Ran gave up on descending into the world in person and instead asked in a more opportunistic way.

He wanted to verify something.

"You have developed a tiny doubt regarding your own creativity."

"The planet Terra, which you personally molded and endowed with life, is currently curled up in a corner, trembling."

"The newborn planet you discarded like trash is currently lying in a trash can, wailing."

"Yes, of course you can."

"Don't ask. It's simply the mighty power of a god."

I always feel like this pop-up window of yours is pretty unreliable.

But having received a definite answer, Chen Ran nodded in satisfaction and reached toward the planet model once more.

As pop-up messages of "Terra: Don't come over here!!!" and "Terra: I-it's inside!" flooded the screen,

Chen Ran successfully inserted his hand into the planet model this time.

He wanted to test a hypothesis, so he used the planet model as a trial run. If it worked, then later, he would not need to bother finding hamsters or other small animals. He could just mold a few stone giants by hand and give that Sea Creature a little challenge.

Chen Ran selected a relatively tall mountain peak and gave it a gentle pinch. Yet whether the mountain was too brittle or his grip was too strong, the entire peak snapped off directly.

Chen Ran froze when he saw that. Then he simply knocked over the entire mountain peak, scooped up some water from a nearby lake, and began kneading clay.

After all, Chen Ran was capable of handcrafting planet models. Handcrafting a lump of clay should naturally have been easy... probably.

In any case, after roughly shaping it into a form, Chen Ran clapped his hands in satisfaction and experimentally issued an order. "Go find the surviving humans."

A god had descended.

In the eyes of survivors such as Kal'tsit, that incomparably enormous eyeball had abruptly departed after observing them for a long time.

But before everyone could breathe a sigh of relief, a palm large enough to cover the entire planet came crashing down in a vast, dark mass.

The entire sky was obscured. The sun vanished in that instant, and as the land plunged into darkness like eternal night,

that massive palm, almost pityingly, slowly shrank. It broke through the atmosphere, tore open the sky, and with a single strike, flattened thousands of kilometers of land.

The earth collapsed, volcanoes erupted, roaring tides rose from the churning oceans, and violent tremors tore apart the mountains.

Indestructible mountain ranges were as soft as sand before that hand, while the largest freshwater lake was easily scooped away like dew from a leaf at dawn.

They all became nourishment. Under the casual kneading of that massive palm, a Great Beast that blotted out the sky was born from the god's hand.

The Great Beast's features continuously melted and crumbled under the flowing mud and sand before being reshaped. Its body, piled together like rotten flesh, rampaged across the earth.

Every speck of mud casually flung away by that massive palm transformed into one incomprehensible little beast after another.

They were migrating. They were searching.

Until—

"Mom! Mom! Save me!!!"

"It's chasing me! It's still chasing me!"

"Help me! Save me!!!"

A lone surviving human, unlucky enough, happened to fall within the field of vision of those Great Beasts.

And so all surviving humans heard several clear words emerge from the Great Beast's hoarse, obscure, incomprehensible language:

"■ Find ■■ surviving ■■ humans."

PS1: You've probably noticed by now that I've actually been testing the review system these past few chapters. And sure enough, a few chapters got reviewed. I'm dying laughing.11

After sanity hit zero, the first religion since the world-ending Worldline was born

Having just survived the Sea Creatures' destruction of the world, the remaining survivors were still shaken,

huddling and trembling inside the final fortress like hamsters. They had finally thought they had outlasted the Sea Creatures, opened the bunker gates, and cautiously peeked outside,