"To be blunt, modern weapons can't penetrate this thing's scales," one of the volunteer fighters muttered while staring up at Swiftclaw. "Unless so hidden monster stronger than us suddenly appears... you know, the kind of lunatic who punches mountains apart barehanded."
"Maybe we should request a nuclear strike," another suggested weakly. "Sure, we'd all die too, but technically the problem would be solved."
"Great idea. Here."
A phone was shoved into his hand.
"You make the call."
Then the Kaiju roared.
"REYYYYYYYYYY!"
The sound exploded across the sky hard enough to shake the clouds apart above Canghai City.
For a brief mont, sunlight pierced through the gloom hanging over the city.
Then everyone saw it.
Sothing enormous moving at terrifying speed through the opening clouds.
"Wait... is that the Space Battleship Yamato?"
"The hell it is. That thing's a flying warship. And definitely not one built here. Shenzhou military hardware isn't usually this dramatic."
"This counts as reinforcents, right?"
One of the volunteers stared upward with widening eyes.
"You know, the more I think about it, the more I feel like Shenzhou really needs its own organization for stuff like this. I should submit an application later."
The others looked at him like he'd lost his mind.
anwhile, nobody had ti left for jokes.
Because the descending warship suddenly began glowing at the bow.
The mont the civilians saw energy gathering inside the massive cannon, every single one of them turned and ran.
They fled so quickly even the artillery vehicles retreating through the streets couldn't keep up.
Then the warship fired.
A radiant beam of destructive energy erupted downward.
"ARRRRRRGHHHH!"
Swiftclaw's distorted howl shook the city.
The sheer pressure of the blast shattered windows throughout entire districts.
But the Kaiju reacted instantly.
The mont it sensed danger, Swiftclaw ripped an entire high-rise building in half with one forelimb and hurled the remains into the sky.
A second later, the accelerated particle cannon vaporized the building midair.
Flas, dust, and debris exploded across the skyline.
Using the brief obstruction, Swiftclaw curled its streamlined body and rolled violently sideways.
The edge of the beam barely missed it.
As a speed-type Kaiju, dodging the first strike wasn't impossible.
Drex Valen stood calmly aboard the warship, gazing down at the damaged city and the still-living monster below.
"Canghai City really does have terrible luck," he remarked quietly.
Granted, this wasn't his Canghai City.
Still, the sight carried an odd sense of familiarity.
Then he looked at Swiftclaw again.
Interest flickered across his expression.
"So it can dodge."
A faint smile appeared.
"Then we'll switch to saturation fire."
The warship's AI responded instantly.
Dozens of golden particle streams erupted simultaneously.
Brilliant light transford into a rain of destruction as the barrage descended toward the Kaiju like divine punishnt.
Every object Swiftclaw attempted to throw into the air detonated instantly beneath the incoming fire.
Then the bombardnt swallowed the monster whole.
The explosions that followed looked apocalyptic.
Entire sections of the ruined city within a kiloter radius suffered a second round of devastation.
The ground shattered apart beneath the concentrated energy strikes.
Blue blood.
tallic scales.
Chunks of flesh.
Everything blasted outward through the smoke before being completely erased by the expanding energy shockwaves.
Nothing remained.
Not even debris.
One of the surviving civilians stared blankly at the battlefield.
"That..."
His voice trembled.
"That looked like the wrath of God."
The darkness hanging over Canghai City finally began to clear alongside the Kaiju's death.
Smoke dispersed beneath violent winds.
What remained resembled the scarred surface of the moon.
The monster that had monts ago filled the population with despair no longer even retained a recognizable shape.
Its skeleton itself had been blown apart.
The entire attack had happened quickly.
The Kaiju barely had ti to inflict large-scale destruction before being annihilated.
But none of that changed the emotions spreading through the city.
Relief.
Pure, overwhelming relief.
The feeling of surviving a disaster that should have killed everyone.
For the Precursors, this was no longer simply an invasion.
It had beco revenge.
After the humiliation suffered during earlier failures, they understood both their strengths and weaknesses much more clearly.
As long as the Precursors remained alive, Kaiju production could continue endlessly.
But transporting them to Earth was another matter entirely.
Creating stable wormholes required imnse effort.
Even with the planetary beacon established on Earth, the three Precursors dispatched by Thanos were already stretched thin producing Kaiju while simultaneously constructing multiple spatial gateways.
And if a wormhole was discovered before it could be safely closed or destroyed...
The Precursors themselves might die.
"Although we located the trench," Tony Stark said while scrolling through waves of headache-inducing data on the central display, "there's still no sign of the supposed wormhole anywhere within the several-thousand-ter search radius."
Inside S.W.O.R.D. headquarters, Drex glanced sideways toward him.
"No," he corrected calmly. "We found it."
Most people in the room were only pretending to pay attention.
So played with pens.
Others stared blankly into space.
Only Bruce Banner seed genuinely engaged.
Realistically, he was probably the only person besides Drex who actually understood the science being discussed.
"Wormholes are composed of atomic structures," Drex explained. "Their operational principles match our existing theoretical models."
He manipulated the holographic display.
"By folding spaceti, they force two distant points to overlap."
"The deep-sea probes were equipped with my modified detection systems. Residual atomic signatures were confird inside the trench."
Tony frowned slightly.
Drex continued.
"In other words, the transport route absolutely existed there."
A brief pause.
"Originally."
Tony quietly decided he needed to upgrade his own detection systems again.
Imdiately.
"My current theory is that the wormhole's energy source was tied to tectonic activity beneath Earth's crust," Drex said. "Geothermal and geological energy maintained the gateway in a stable state over long durations."
"But wormholes themselves are fragile."
He enlarged several electromagnetic graphs.
"Based on their structural readings and emitted frequencies, any external energy exceeding the tectonic output sustaining the gateway would destabilize and destroy it."
He folded his arms.
"I found no abnormal energy signatures in the surrounding area powerful enough to cause that kind of destruction."
"aning the portal wasn't forcibly destroyed."
"It was shut down intentionally."
The room grew colder.
"As for why, we don't know yet."
"But we cannot rule out the existence of additional wormholes in other ocean regions."
Nick Fury didn't understand most of the technical explanation.
But the final sentence landed perfectly.
"You're saying there's more than one portal?"
His expression darkened imdiately.
Fury had originally assud the solution was simple:
Find the wormhole.
Let Drex Valen and Tony Stark do sothing absurdly genius.
Problem solved.
Now that optimism was dead.
"This is an invasion," Drex said matter-of-factly. "Deploying all forces through a single entry point would be idiotic."
Then his eyes narrowed slightly.
"However..."
"The region where the portal was established should still contain beacon-like residual structures."
"If the invaders weren't careful enough, we may actually be able to reverse-engineer the spatial coordinates."
A faint smile ford.
"And potentially open a pathway directly to their howorld."
The room froze.
Then every single person turned to look at Drex simultaneously.
Drex blinked once.
Then imdiately raised both hands in protest.
"Why are all of you staring at ?"
His expression remained perfectly serious.
"I specialize in weapons and materials science."
"I am obviously not a spatial physics expert."
No one believed him for even a second.
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