A spatial vortex appeared in the kitchen, and Yuzhou stepped out of it.
He stared at the empty induction cooker and fell silent for a moment.
The frying pan—and the fried egg—were still in Geed's world.
Even if he brought them back, the egg would no longer be edible.
With no other choice, Yuzhou went to the supplies warehouse, took out a new pan, and started frying eggs again.
…
After finishing all arrangements, Yuzhou headed into the village.
The village had been restored exceptionally well. Every household now had a new home to live in.
Compared to many cities, the village where Yuzhou lived was probably one of the fastest to be rebuilt.
He also noticed that people from outside the village frequently came by.
From time to time, they would chat casually with the villagers, subtly probing for information.
Yuzhou could more or less guess who these people were.
As expected, the Global United Organization had taken notice.
"I wonder how much they've figured out so far," Yuzhou muttered to himself.
He assumed that Earth's human leadership still didn't understand Ultramen very deeply.
After all, neither he nor the other Ultramen had ever transformed in full view of the public.
Every transformation had taken place without bystanders.
"Still… how did they trace things back to here?"
Rubbing his chin, Yuzhou sank into thought.
Suddenly, one name surfaced in his mind.
Nagano.
As the actor who portrayed Daigo in Ultraman Tiga, Nagano was bound to attract enormous attention after Tiga appeared in the real world.
Yet during this period, Nagano had left the island nation and come to an obscure, nameless village in China.
On top of that, the village had been rebuilt at astonishing speed—naturally, this drew attention.
That said, Yuzhou couldn't really blame Nagano.
When the apocalypse began, monsters appeared all over the world, yet Tiga had only manifested in this village.
That alone was enough to suggest something unusual about the place.
It was only natural for high-level authorities to take interest.
Yuzhou didn't find this particularly threatening.
His team had already taken shape, and their overall strength was more than sufficient.
One could say that there was nothing left in this world capable of threatening him.
If Earth's leadership chose peaceful coexistence, that would be ideal.
But if they harboured any ill intentions, Yuzhou was not an Ultraman who would allow himself to be bullied.
"Maybe I should go take a look at Tsuburaya," Yuzhou suddenly thought.
After so long into the apocalypse, he wondered what had become of that company.
Had it been destroyed by the monsters he himself had written into existence?
If there were any survivors, Yuzhou wouldn't mind taking them in.
After all, they were the "creators" of Ultraman—the ones who wrote the stories and worlds of countless Ultramen.
That said… sometimes the writers at Tsuburaya had a habit of stabbing each other in the back.
And there was also the issue of devoured or overwritten settings.
Which was why, in the end, Ultraman lore was mostly smoke and mirrors.
Ultraman power was fundamentally will-based.
If you believed you were strong, then you were strong.
Transforming into a beam of light, Yuzhou flew to Tokyo in the island nation, arriving at the location of Tsuburaya.
In fact, he had been here before—during the New Frontier World, when he and Daigo were on patrol and first encountered Charija.
At that time, he had still been a consultant for the GUTS team, though one who wasn't fully trusted yet.
That Tsuburaya looked no different from the one before him now.
Fortunately, in this world, Tsuburaya had not been damaged by monsters. It appeared completely intact.
However, its front gates were tightly shut, and the interior looked deserted.
The surrounding buildings were also relatively intact, and from time to time, a few survivors passed by.
After thinking for a moment, Yuzhou stopped a passerby to ask:
"Excuse me, sorry to bother you. May I ask where the people from Tsuburaya went?"
The person he stopped was a young man. Though in the prime of his life, he looked visibly worn and dispirited.
"Oh, you mean the people from Tsuburaya?" The young man glanced at the closed gates and replied.
"They stopped coming to work when the apocalypse broke out."
"That makes sense," Yuzhou nodded.
After all, who would still go to work when the world was ending?
"Some of them did come back once," the man added after a moment's thought, "but they were attacked by a lot of ordinary people."
"Hm? What do you mean?" Yuzhou perked up.
He hadn't expected anyone from Tsuburaya to have returned.
"They seemed to be here to retrieve some documents—carrying lots of file folders," the man explained.
"But some civilians believed the monsters were created by them. So when they saw those people, they threw stones and rotten eggs at them."
Recalling the scene, the young man even smiled faintly, as if he found it amusing that Tsuburaya staff had been pelted with rotten eggs.
"Oh, and one more thing," he added, just as the conversation seemed to be ending.
"A helicopter came to pick them up. It didn't look like a private one."
"I see," Yuzhou said.
At that point, everything became clear.
The people from Tsuburaya had been taken away by Earth's high-level authorities.
After the apocalypse, Earth had established a Global United Organization—something Yuzhou already knew about.
Most likely, the Tsuburaya staff had been taken there.
"Thanks a lot," Yuzhou said with a smile after asking so many questions.
He then reached behind his back and took out several cans of beef—extremely valuable commodities in the post-apocalyptic world—and handed them to the young man.
"Consider this a token of thanks."
"These are—!"
The young man stared at the cans in shock, visibly overwhelmed.
He quickly reacted, took off his worn jacket, and wrapped the cans inside it.
Food this precious couldn't be casually exposed in the current world.
"No, brother, I should be thanking you!" the young man whispered nervously, glancing around to make sure no one had noticed.
"I'll be going now. Hopefully we'll meet again someday!"
With that, he hurried off into the distance.
"Yeah. Until we meet again," Yuzhou replied, watching him leave, then letting out a quiet sigh.
Who knew how long it would take for Earth to be fully rebuilt?
The destruction caused by so many monsters was simply beyond measure.
Just as Yuzhou was about to leave, he suddenly noticed a figure approaching the tightly shut gates of Tsuburaya.
"So… it's him."
Yuzhou's brows knit slightly as he looked at the man with a trace of hostility.
This was someone Yuzhou both knew—and didn't know.
He was familiar because this man was the actor who portrayed Asuka Shin, the human host of Ultraman Dyna.