Far away, near the valley, King Ghidorah stretched his body.
As he stood up, the entire valley trembled.
Loose stones tumbled down the slopes with a clatter, like a small landslide. Streams changed course, their surfaces shaking violently, while pebbles on their beds knocked against one another with crisp clicking sounds.
Several shallow-rooted trees toppled, their roots ripped bodily out of the soil with great clumps of damp earth attached. Flocks of birds roosting around the valley scattered in alarm, a dark mass blotting out nearly half the sky, their cries shrill and frantic, as though sounding an alarm to the entire world.
King Ghidorah lowered his heads and examined his true body. His golden scales were completely intact. The wing that Apekus's [End of an Era] had scorched on the coast had already been restored by his regenerative ability, without even a scratch remaining.
He flapped his wings once. The tendons along his wing bones tightened and relaxed with a hum like vibrating bowstrings. Air compressed and released beneath his wings, whipping up a gale that sent a stretch of forest before him swaying wildly.
Good. Perfect condition.
I'd played the "side quests" long enough. Time to try the "main quest."
In his previous life, Gu Chi had possessed a deeply ingrained habit: whenever he played a game, he cleared every side quest, revealed every question mark on the map, and gathered every collectible before progressing through the main story.
This habit often meant he had played for over a hundred hours without seeing even half the story, while his friends were already discussing strategies for the final boss.
Now he had transmigrated, become King Ghidorah the King, and arrived in an unfamiliar world filled with magic and steampunk elements.
He had collected treasures, coaxed a child, tailed miners to a midnight gathering, and crouched in a mine digging through rocks to rescue people.
At least, he had cleared things to the point where he wanted to stop for now.
It was time to see the rest of this world.
King Ghidorah spread his enormous wings.
Golden wings thirteen hundred feet across unfolded with a thunderous roar in the valley. The bioelectric light coiling around his wing bones suddenly erupted, golden arcs leaping between his wing membranes with explosive crackles.
His wings beat once, just a gentle stroke, and the airflow bent the trees on both sides of the valley low. Leaves swirled through the sky, and loose stones were swept into the air before crashing back down.
The air was heating up.
It was no illusion. The temperature around King Ghidorah had begun soaring the moment his wings spread. Beneath his golden scales, his bioelectric energy radiated heat furiously, like an activated nuclear reactor.
The distant lake began boiling. Not figuratively, but literally. Like a great pot suspended over a raging fire, its surface bubbled with enormous, gurgling bubbles. Steam rose from the lake in a vast white mass, like a cloud growing out of the ground.
Vast quantities of water vapor were carried into the sky, where they met the storm system naturally forming around King Ghidorah. Hot and cold converged, and clouds began piling up, churning, and spinning wildly.
The sky began to change.
First came the little patch above the lake. The clouds, originally pale in the morning light, began spinning, churning, and sinking, as though stirred by an invisible hand.
White clouds turned grayish-white, grayish-white turned blue-gray, and blue-gray turned inky black. Like a sponge into which ink had been dripped, the clouds darkened, blackness spreading outward at a visible speed.
King Ghidorah was in no hurry to take off. He stood in the valley with all three heads raised, gazing at the sky he had stirred up, as though admiring his own work.
Then he moved.
His enormous golden wings beat violently, and his massive body leaped out of the valley. Air exploded beneath his wings with a deafening boom, like thunder erupting beside one's ears.
As he rose into flight, the entire valley trembled. Rocks split, trees snapped, and waves taller than a person surged across the lake.
The storm spread rapidly.
A dozen or so kilometers.
King Ghidorah kept the hurricane within a radius of a dozen or so kilometers, a figure he had calculated in his head. The storm triggered by his last awakening had covered half the continent and nearly destroyed the planet's ecosystem entirely. Apekus had been scared half to death, begging him through tears to call off the storm.
Although he did not mind stirring up another global hurricane, there really was no point.
He did not want to destroy this world.
At least, not now.
Under King Ghidorah's control, the hurricane remained at a relatively "mild" scale. Against his enormous frame, the storm clouds spanning a dozen or so kilometers resembled a custom-made cloak.
Black clouds concealed his body, lightning coursing through them and illuminating his outline in intermittent flashes. From the ground, all that could be seen was a moving, rolling thundercloud emitting golden electrical light.
No one could see the silhouette of the three-headed golden dragon deep within the clouds.
That was exactly what he wanted.
King Ghidorah adjusted his course and flew toward the continent's interior. The hurricane followed close behind like an obedient pet, moving in time with him.
He did not know what lay there.
But he would find out soon.
Somewhere on the continent lay a forest far from the human realms.
It was one of the few regions on the entire continent untouched by industrial civilization and war. There were no steam factories belching black smoke, no crisscrossing magic ore tunnels, no iron-shod hooves of knights or spells of mages.
There were only trees, grass, water, stones, and ancient races that had lived in harmony with nature for thousands of years and wanted nothing to do with humans.
The forest elf A Qiu crouched beside an oak snapped in half, clutching a branch and poking it into the ground.
Calling it a "branch" was misleading; it was actually thicker than her forearm. She had finally dug this barely usable piece of timber out of the wreckage after considerable effort. Rain had softened its surface, and there were traces of insect damage around its edges, but it was better than nothing. She sharpened one end, pushed it into the soil, then hammered it hard a few times with her fist, driving it almost halfway in.
"Mm... that should do."
A Qiu stood, stepped back twice, and tilted her head to examine the little wooden house she had just finished building.
Calling it a "wooden house" was something of a stretch. A more accurate description would have been "a few pieces of wood cobbled together into a shelter that could barely keep out the wind and rain."
The walls were made of trunks and branches of varying thicknesses lashed together, the gaps stuffed with moss and mud. A thick layer of leaves and dry grass covered the roof, rustling down whenever the wind blew.
The door was a crooked plank hanging from two hemp ropes. It would not close properly, leaving a gap a palm's width across.
She had lived in the forest for decades and had never built such an ugly house.
A Qiu wiped the sweat from her forehead. Her fingers brushed mud onto her skin, leaving a dark smear at her temple. She paid it no mind, simply watching the little wooden house as the corners of her mouth curved slightly upward.
Done.
It was ugly, it was tiny, and a strong wind might blow it away-but it was done.
Several furry animals of various sizes crouched in the clearing beside her. Seeing A Qiu step back twice and tilt her head to examine the house, they tilted their heads too. A gray squirrel jumped down from a stump, holding a pinecone in its front paws, and squeaked twice.
A brown animal resembling an oversized marten lay on a rock, swishing its tail, the tip curled into a question mark.
There were also several round little creatures with large ears that A Qiu could not name, huddled together and making soft, chittering noises.
"Squeak, squeak, squeak-"
The gray squirrel raised its pinecone overhead, as though lifting a glass in celebration.
A Qiu looked down at it and could not help smiling.
"Thank you." She crouched and gently poked the squirrel's furry belly with a finger. "Without you, I couldn't have finished my home in so little time."
Her voice faltered slightly as the word "home" left her mouth.
Home.
She remembered the little wooden house the storm had swept away a few days ago, even tearing up its foundations.
She had built it herself over an entire spring. Every piece of wood had been carefully selected, every gap filled with moss. The roof had been covered with three layers of bark and dry grass, and not a single drop leaked through when it rained.
She had lived there for three years. Every day, the morning sunlight woke her, and when she opened the window, she could smell pine resin and wildflowers. Mushrooms and berries she had gathered dried on the rack by the door, and she kept several plump trout in the stream behind the house.
Life had not been prosperous, but it had been peaceful-so peaceful that she had thought she could keep living that way forever.
Then the storm came.