The storm swept unchecked across the sky.
King Ghidorah flew over plains, over hills, over flooded farmland and villages.
He made no particular effort to look at what the antlike humans below were doing, nor did he care whether they lived or died. He simply flew, moving from one end of the continent to the other with an ease almost like a leisurely stroll.
Had this been an ordinary hurricane, it would have weakened to varying degrees as it passed inland, affected by the local geography.
Mountains would block it, forests would dissipate its energy, and the cities' magical barriers would disrupt its airflow. But King Ghidorah's storm was no ordinary hurricane. It was part of his body, an extension of his will.
Mountains could not block it, rivers could not alter it, and the continent's terrain offered it as little resistance as a whetstone offered a laser sword.
This was a storm that could tear apart even the stratosphere. Those obstacles on the ground were not worth mentioning.
Below, the monsters in the forest felt the oppressive presence drawing ever closer.
An enormous mountain bear charged out of its cave, its fur standing on end, and ran toward the far side of the ridge with a low growl.
Two half-grown cubs followed behind it, stumbling as they ran and nearly tripping over tree roots several times. The mountain bear glanced back at its cubs, slowed its pace, and nudged one of their bottoms with its nose, urging it to run faster.
A herd of horned deer thundered out of the valley, their hooves raising clouds of dust.
They formed a long line, racing south along the ridge. The lead stag's antlers gleamed golden in the sunlight. It was the fastest, running at the front and occasionally turning back to give short calls, urging its companions behind it to keep up.
Up in the treetops, several long-tailed wind monkeys shrieked as they leaped along the branches, swinging from one crown to another as fast as streaks of brown lightning. Their cries were shrill and piercing, as though they were warning one another, or cursing the increasingly dark sky.
Smaller creatures-rabbits, foxes, badgers, snakes, lizards, and insects-were also fleeing, each in their own way, from the area the storm was about to swallow.
Some burrowed deeper underground, some hid in cracks in the rocks, and some buried themselves in fallen leaves and soil. The entire forest was stirring, running, fleeing for its life.
And the mass of black clouds in the sky did not slow for their panic.
King Ghidorah landed amid a mountain range.
The entire mountainous region shook.
It was not an earthquake, but the impact of his landing. As his thirteen-hundred-foot wingspan folded, the fierce winds it stirred bent the surrounding trees low. His enormous claws stepped onto the rocks, stamping several deep cracks into the hard strata.
Standing water surged outward from his ankles, raising waves half a person's height that splashed against the distant rock walls.
King Ghidorah lowered his heads to look at the standing water beneath his feet.
The water rose past his ankles. Broken wood, dead leaves, and the corpses of unidentified animals floated on its murky, yellowish-brown surface.
The terrain here was much lower than he had expected. The deepest water already exceeded three meters, and only the crowns of the shorter trees remained exposed, like clumps of shrubs floating on the surface.
"Looks like this should be close to where I first woke up."
King Ghidorah's middle head rose and looked toward the distant horizon. The direction of the mountain ranges and the distribution of river valleys here bore some resemblance to the frozen valley in his memory.
This was probably the storm's central region, relatively close to where he had awakened, which was why the damage was worse. Landslides, mudslides, and floodwaters surging back in had turned this once-undulating mountain terrain into a shallow lake.
As far as the eye could see, water covered several kilometers. Its surface glittered with dazzling reflections in the sunlight. In the distance, a few solitary dead trees poked out of the water like the outstretched arms of drowning people.
Farther away, he could see a half-collapsed mountain peak, its exposed cross section showing grayish-white rock like a wound sliced open by a blade.
King Ghidorah stood in the water, his three heads slowly turning as he took in his surroundings.
Then he froze.
No, he had not frozen. He had remembered something.
He had always felt that something was missing. Ever since he had transmigrated into this world, through awakening, fighting, raising storms, collecting treasures, and controlling an avatar to wander through human cities-from beginning to end, he had felt something was missing, but had never remembered what it was.
Now, standing in this water and looking at the desolate, devastated mountains around him, devoid of any trace of civilization, he suddenly remembered.
It was a "home."
Not a home in that sense-the Earth he could never return to, the human identity he could never reclaim. Not that kind.
A place to live.
A lair.
At that thought, King Ghidorah suddenly remembered Godzilla.
That big black lizard, a head shorter than him, covered in dorsal fins, who loved eating nuclear waste. That fellow had an absolutely enormous palace in the Legendary Universe-no, not a palace, an undersea temple.
A structure sunk deep beneath the sea, built from ancient megaliths, a relic enshrining an ancient civilization. Godzilla slept right in the center of the temple, surrounded by enormous stone pillars and walls covered in totems. Seawater flowed overhead, and sunlight shone through the surface, casting a shimmering blue.
Now that was prestige.
And what about him, King Ghidorah?
Since transmigrating, he had slept on Antarctica's ice sheet, on the scorched earth along Apekus's coast, and in that remote valley. All of it wilderness.
He did not even have a place to shelter from the wind and rain-although he did not need shelter from the wind and rain, since he was the storm itself. But this had nothing to do with need. This was a matter of prestige.
He was King Ghidorah the King, a cosmic-level Titan of destruction. How could he make do with any old cave like those wild beasts in the mountains?
The more King Ghidorah thought about it, the more sense it made.
He needed to find a palace.
King Ghidorah's middle head shook.
He needed to find himself a place to live.
It could not be too big-although he himself was enormous, too much space was no good either. It would feel empty. It could not be too small-if it was too small, he would struggle even to turn around.
Preferably, it would have a roof to shelter him from the wind and rain. Although he did not care about wind or rain, having a roof always felt a little more reassuring. Ideally, there would also be decorations, such as murals, sculptures, and tapestries, to give it a tasteful air.
King Ghidorah made a checklist in his mind.
Then he thought of the simplest solution.
The best solution was-to seize one. This was a fantasy world, after all. He had seen countless stories of dragons occupying castles in novels and movies in his previous life.
Those ancient castles perched on mountaintops, amid ruins, or on the outskirts of human cities often housed a greedy dragon that loved hoarding treasure. If he drove that dragon away, the castle would be his.
Or, if that dragon did not know what was good for it, he would turn it into dinner-although he would not eat it, he could roast it for fun.
What if he could not find a suitable castle?
Then he would go ask Apekus.
That fellow had lived for hundreds of thousands of years and witnessed the rise and fall of sixteen eras. He surely had a map of the entire continent and knew where the good houses were.
If even Apekus did not know, he would have Apekus build him one. As the world's administrator, a little matter like this should not be difficult for him.
King Ghidorah made up his mind.
Meanwhile, somewhere in an abandoned mine in the western Karelia Empire.
Footsteps tapped against the loose stones, unhurried, like some ancient, regular rhythm. Several black-robed figures walked single file along a path half obscured by weeds and rubble, heading deeper into the ruins.
The black-robed figure at the front stopped and raised his head.
Shadows concealed most of the face beneath his hood, leaving only a pale chin and a pair of grayish-white eyes without pupils visible. Those eyes swept over the ruins, then slowly closed and opened again.
"This should be the place."
His voice was low and hoarse, as though a handful of sand had been ground up deep in his throat.
The other black-robed figures behind him also stopped. They stood in a semicircle facing the ruins. No one spoke, and no one moved. There was only the rustling of robe hems in the wind and the faint, intermittent birdsong drifting from afar.
The ruins were vast.
Judging by the surviving wall foundations and scattered stone pillars, a sizable complex of buildings had once stood here. Rubble and soil had completely sealed the mine entrance. The headframe had collapsed, and the tracks were twisted.
Several rust-covered mine carts lay tipped over in muddy water, their wheels covered in moss. Farther away stood several collapsed stone houses, their roof tiles shattered across the ground and their walls covered in wild vines and moss.
This place had been abandoned for many years.
It had not been abandoned because of the storm, but had been deserted much earlier, long before. The storm had merely finished toppling what was already on the verge of collapse.
The leading black-robed figure turned around, his grayish-white eyes sweeping over the figures behind him.
"Everyone, I'm sorry for the trouble I'll be putting you through next."
His tone was flat, less like a request than a statement of an established fact.