Chapter 240
I thought the nations hadn't discovered it yet, but I was wrong. They just hadn't gone public with it—they were already conducting secret investigations. Flags from countries like the UK and Russia were visible too. A total of nine nations were already carrying out exploration activities.
"You fucking bastards, how dare you invade someone else's land!"
It felt like a full-blown invasion, and fury surged through me. I wanted to slaughter them all. Sneaking into our world without permission to plunder it... those goddamn scum... There were plenty of animal carcasses too, likely from their hunting. Guys in white lab coats seemed to be running experiments.
Hanyaseong's face flushed beet red with rage. To think he hadn't even noticed these thieves trampling around in military boots until now...
If it weren't for the screens, he'd still be clueless. Out of hundreds of screens, only nine showed signs of intrusion, so the other areas must still be safe. But that wouldn't last. They'd swarm in like the Age of Exploration all over again, nations racing to stake their claims.
He had to deal with them fast—as soon as possible.
"Whew, alright. Let's calm down first."
His blood was boiling too hot, so he forced himself to cool off. It was still early days for their settlements; there was time to respond. For now, he needed to master every detail of operating this battleship. Then he'd wipe them out and ensure no one ever set foot in this world again.
Examining the screens more closely, he saw they were barely past the crawling stage. They had minimal gear and were still assembling jeeps. But the assault rifles and heavy weapons were a real threat.
Pathetically—or disappointingly—Korea wasn't among them. Always lagging behind in these things. Maybe that's why Korea's only portal was in his own attic. If he'd reported it to the authorities, would the Korean military have shown up? If they'd known, they might have.
Staring at the screens, Hanyaseong realized each one represented a single forest. That meant this world had as many forests as there were screens—roughly three hundred, by his quick count.
The battleship's location showed up too. So did his lodging. Touching the screen with his finger made it move. It had zoom and pan functions, just like browsing photos on a smartphone. The amazing part? He could see inside his lodging. Somehow the lens curved, capturing the campfire he'd lit indoors in perfect detail.
Incredible tech. The giants' civilization was thousands of years ahead of Earth's.
"Alright, Yadong—you're my first mate, and I'm the captain. Got it?"
Yadong let out a gya-rung and started stomping wildly on the panel. It was like watching someone play a video game. Maybe he'd always wanted to try but never could; now he was going ham. The screens shifted constantly under his paws.
Hanyaseong let him keep the main screens as-is and play around separately. After scanning hundreds of them, his eyes ached, so he stopped. He took a sip of water, then glanced at Yadong with a question.
"Hey, can you pull up anything on the history here?"
Yadong gya-runged and pawed at the panel again. A new window popped up on one side of the screen, text scrolling into existence. It looked like giant script—complex, of course, and utterly unreadable.
"Try pictures or video instead."
Yadong worked the panel again. The text vanished, replaced by a holographic projection of giants, like a video chronicling the battleship's history. Hanyaseong leaned in, eyes glued.
The ship was an exploration vessel. The giants were building cosmic colonies...
The footage showed hundreds of giant ships launching from a distant planet, fanning out in all directions. This one was among them. He couldn't gauge the distance, but it was immense—galaxies crossed, or maybe interstellar voids. The gut feeling screamed unfathomable range.
The crew aboard had been in stasis. They awoke and landed on this planet. But it was barren—a wasteland. Nothing but dirt. No forests, no water, no life. Like Mars.
The giants activated something, then returned to stasis. Time blurred forward—who knew how long. Rain fell, forming oceans; microbes spawned, plants sprouted. Thousands, maybe tens of thousands of years flashed by. Perhaps hundreds of thousands, until forests like today's rose, teeming with massive beasts.
Whatever the giants had triggered was terraforming—sparking life and evolution.
Eventually, they emerged. The ship had buried itself over eons as terrain shifted atop it, soil and forests piling on.
Local creatures like Yadong approached. The giants left the planet untouched, letting megafauna and critters thrive unchecked.
More time passed. Then, amid the Yadong pack, the Yadong appeared. Hanyaseong blinked, flicking his gaze between the hologram and the real Yadong beside him. Yadong gya-runged, staring at his holographic self too.
A mild-mannered giant took Yadong everywhere, even aboard the ship. Yadong trailed like a pet. But he shied from fierce-faced giants.
That must be the source of Yadong's instinctive terror—the scowling ones.
The giants got along decently but argued often. The fierce one and the gentle one clashed most, Yadong hiding during their spats. Four others stayed neutral, uninvolved. They kept to themselves outside work, no group hangouts.
Time flowed on. Then the fierce giant started experiments—genetic tinkering? Lab animals warped into monstrosities. Even those three watchdogs were among them. No wonder they'd seemed off; gene mods.
Worse, a gorilla-like creature turned into a hulking cyclops brute post-experiment. It rampaged, wrecking the lab in a frenzy of savagery.
The fierce giant pressed on, mass-producing mutants. Finally, the gentle giant and others burst in, furious. Arguments escalated to brawl. Outnumbered, the fierce one lost.
He packed up, fled the ship with his test subjects, and tunneled underground to build.
Enter the gold bar. But enormous—not pocket-sized, a massive cubic meter-plus ingot. It was one of the ship's engines, some exotic material he'd stolen. It conjured structures instantly underground: that giant door from before, a pyramid inside.
He made it his lair, twisting animals into guardians. He kept experimenting in secret, seeding mutants across the planet's three hundred forests without the crew knowing.
Most died from side effects; survivors couldn't breed, dwindling further. Only about fifty species endured.
Done meddling, the fierce giant returned to the ship. More fights erupted. He snapped, grabbing weapons—gravity-wave launchers like bazookas. They vaporized giants one by one.
The gentle giant fought back with his own. Ship interiors crumbled; he fled outside. The fierce one pursued, duel raging.
A temple of giant beast bones—mere hobby craft, not sacred—shattered under their gravity blasts, reduced to its current ruin.
Yadong watched from hiding.
The duel turned fatal. Both took gravity hits. The fierce one's vaporized shoulder regenerated slowly. The gentle one's wounds didn't heal. Weapons broken, he'd lose at this rate.
Bleeding out, immobile, the gentle giant lay defeated.