Prologue: The Sea Monster
On a stormy sea, a massive cargo ship struggled to maintain its balance, slowly carving its way through one crashing wave after another.
"What are you waiting for? Start the engine! It's coming!"
"Get all the hidden weapons out before we get killed by that thing!"
A middle-aged powerhouse in a white shirt gripped a railing with one hand and held a loaded AK-47 high with the other, roaring at the sailors below. The panicked crew, who had been running aimlessly across the deck, finally snapped to their senses. They scrambled back to their posts to prepare for battle.
At that moment, a dark-skinned young man poked his head out from a rear hatch and shouted to the captain, "Boss! I've locked the cargo in the isolation chamber!"
"Great job, Rhett! They are important cargo—pure silver in our pockets. They cannot have a single scratch, do you hear me?"
"Yes, sir!"
The captain barked a curse but offered a look of praise to his quick-acting subordinate. Then, he grabbed a nearby sailor by the collar and slammed his trembling body against the wall. Seeing the sailor's vacant, lifeless eyes, the captain delivered two sharp slaps to his face.
"Don't stand there like a roadblock! If you're scared, hide in the hold and guard the cargo, you sluggish piece of trash!"
"I... I understand, Captain!"
Watching the sailor stumble toward the hold, the captain's furrowed brow relaxed slightly. He turned back to the crew and continued shouting: "Listen up, brats! Grab your guns! Turn on every searchlight! If anything suspicious appears, shoot it immediately! Is that clear?!"
"Yes, Boss!" the crowd responded in unison.
"Excellent! It's just a giant octopus. We've caught hundreds of them before; we can take this one down easily too. Comrades! Once this job is done, we'll all be millionaires! Kill the monster! A beautiful future is waiting for us!"
The crew's hope was reignited by the captain's powerful speech. They raised their rifles toward the endless dark sea and let out a collective roar.
However, a voice filled with pure terror drifted from the stern, instantly shattering their hard-won confidence.
"Cap... Captain! There's something in the water! It's big... it's huge!!!!!"
"What...?"
Before the captain could finish his sentence, an invisible force surged through the entire ship. The energy was more violent than any storm the captain had ever experienced. Under such intense jolting, no normal person could remain standing.
Steel had been chosen for the ship's hull for the sake of safety, but now that choice seemed like a mistake. No one wanted their fragile flesh to collide with it—and the collisions were incredibly violent.
"Aaaaah! My front teeth!!!!!" A muscular man in a tank top clutched his mouth. Blood leaked through his fingers, mixing with tears and snot.
"Help! I'm falling!" On the tilting edge of the ship, a single hand clung to the railing as a wail echoed from the darkness. A giant wave crashed over, and both the hand and the voice vanished.
"My leg is stuck in the railing! Someone help me!" One unlucky sailor tried desperately to pull his foot free from the iron bars, but no matter how hard he struggled, nothing changed.
"Grandpa, is that you?! Why are you here?"
To the shock of the others, one sailor hugged a mast, crying and laughing at it simultaneously. The atmosphere on deck turned eerie as more people began acting strangely. Some even began attacking their own teammates.
None of them noticed a massive shadow, glowing with a faint green light, gliding beneath the ship.
"What the hell is this! Stay away from me, you monsters!" "I'm going to kill you!" "Disgusting fishmen, die!"
The sailors began slaughtering one another. Their eyes were bloodshot, and they ignored both their captain's orders and their own survival instincts. They had fallen into a state of total madness.
The captain could only stare in horror at the hellish scene unfolding before him. Just a moment ago, they were high-spirited, like revolutionaries on the brink of success. But in the blink of an eye, this "Noah's Ark" had become a slaughterhouse. Everywhere he looked, there was nothing but blood and torn flesh. Some sailors forgot to run; they simply curled into corners, clutching their heads and mumbling to themselves.
Even an experienced old captain like him was powerless against such a bizarre situation. It was bad. Very, very bad.
"Wake up, you fools!!!" He kicked a sailor who was firing at a comrade and knocked out another man who was smiling while slitting his own wrists. But the chaos was too great; his efforts were a mere drop in the ocean.
Suddenly, the captain froze. Even when a maddened sailor drove a dagger into his lower back, he did not react.
The reason was simple: he saw the thing in the sky.
An enormous tentacle was sweeping toward them. It shimmered with a piercing green light, cutting through the pitch-black sky. It slammed into the steel hull, effortlessly smashing the ship into fragments.
"Mon... monster!"
That was the final thought in the captain's mind before he died.