198: Chapter 196 The Army's Arrival, Boss Bro's Warm-up Exercise

"Direction: Due south." Luo Yu pointed forward.

Godzilla lifted a foot.

With one step, the ground within a two-kilometer radius collapsed by half a meter. A shockwave spread outward at a visible speed, kicking up dust and rock fragments into the sky.

Second step.

Third step.

The pace grew faster.

The 1,900-meter-tall Titan moved at a steady speed, crushing the scorched earth of the Abyss World.

Every step down was a minor earthquake, leaving behind a trail of footprints the size of lakes. Magma seeped up from the bottom of the pits, branding a string of glowing red dots onto the gray earth.

"It's very quiet."

Su Zhiruo sat cross-legged on top of Godzilla's head, her hands maintaining the spatial perception array.

"One hundred kilometers ahead, no life signals."

"One hundred and fifty kilometers... zero."

"Two hundred kilometers... still zero."

The entire zone between the entrance area and the outpost line was ridiculously clean.

Luo Yu lay in the groove between Godzilla's horns. The wind whistled past on both sides, blowing his hair into a mess, but his expression was relaxed.

"Two hundred kilometers now."

"Yeah. Keep walking."

Godzilla continued walking.

...

Three hundred kilometers.

The landscape began to change.

The flat scorched earth disappeared, replaced by a dense forest of black stone pillars.

The tallest stone pillars were five or six hundred meters high, looking like giant teeth growing out of the ground, planted crookedly into the earth.

Godzilla walked through the stone pillar forest; it was four to five times taller than the pillars, and any pillar it touched with its legs would be crushed into powder.

Gravel rattled down.

After walking a few steps, Godzilla suddenly stopped.

"Hiss."

Luo Yu's eyes narrowed.

He felt it too.

The vibration frequency underfoot had changed.

Previously, it was the periodic vibration caused by steady walking; now, there was an additional set of low-frequency resonances coming from underground, the same as what he had perceived at the bridgehead.

Breathing sounds.

The resonance generated by the concentrated breathing of thousands of giant beasts.

But this time, it was closer.

Clearer.

"Su Zhiruo?"

Su Zhiruo's expression had already changed; the array's rotation speed suddenly accelerated, and sweat appeared on her forehead.

"Three hundred and twenty kilometers ahead... underground... a large number of life signals are moving!"

"Direction?"

Su Zhiruo swallowed hard.

"Coming toward us."

"Quantity?"

"Countless." Su Zhiruo shook her head and said, "The limit of spatial perception has been broken. The signals are too dense, overlapping each other. I can only give you a rough range—the underground area between 280 and 320 kilometers ahead is completely filled with life signals."

Completely filled.

A depth of forty kilometers, with underground life signals so dense they couldn't be distinguished one by one.

Luo Yu lay on top of Godzilla's head, his chin resting on his crossed arms, looking at the end of that black stone pillar forest ahead.

"They don't come with good intentions."

"No kidding."

Su Zhiruo rolled her eyes at him.

"What rank?"

"Mixed. Low-rank ones make up the majority, but... interspersed in the middle are at least hundreds of high-rank signal sources, above the sixth rank."

Hundreds above the sixth rank.

In human terms, it was equivalent to dozens of Nation-level powerhouses rushing over in a swarm.

Half a year ago, this formation would have been enough to cause all global defense lines to collapse simultaneously.

Now, though...

Luo Yu looked down at his feet.

The 1,900-meter-tall Godzilla was standing there gnawing on a stone pillar it had pulled from somewhere. After chewing twice and finding it unappetizing, it tossed it aside.

"Godzilla, a big bunch of bugs have crawled out from underground. Care to guess what they want to do?"

"Hiss?"

Godzilla turned its head to look south, its vertical pupils contracting slightly.

It naturally felt them.

The Planet-level perception range was vastly wider than Su Zhiruo's spatial array; to it, those life signals surging underground were like someone opening a bag of snacks in the distance.

"Hiss!"

Its tail swung twice, and crimson light patterns spread up along its dorsal fins.

Translation: Just in time for a snack.

Luo Yu chuckled.

"Zhiruo, shrink into my spiritual power shield. It's going to be bumpy soon."

Su Zhiruo swiftly retracted the array and moved to Luo Yu's side. A spherical shield made of atomic energy wrapped the two of them, firmly embedded in the horn groove on Godzilla's head.

Mothra also landed, stopping on Godzilla's left shoulder. Her wings vibrated slightly, and light energy began to gather at the wingtips.

Hmm!

She was warming up.

Pandora?

Pandora had already burrowed into Luo Yu's clothes, coiled around his waist, its entire body tense, its single eye tightly closed.

Play-dead mode activated.

Meanwhile, two hundred and seventy kilometers ahead.

The ground cracked.

Not a single fissure, but a large-scale, overall rupture.

The scorched earth for dozens of kilometers around tilted up like a jigsaw puzzle. Thick, ink-green mist surged from the cracks between the dirt blocks—that was the poisonous mist formed by the steaming of high-concentration abyss energy.

Beneath the mist was a pitch-black mass.

No, "pitch-black" couldn't describe it anymore.

It was a living ocean.

Tens of thousands of Abyssal Giant Beasts surged from the ground—third-tier, fourth-tier, fifth-tier, layered one on top of another. The shortest were twenty or thirty meters tall, densely covering the entire ground like a table of ants that had been overturned.

They were running.

Toward Godzilla's direction.

No formation, no strategy, a pure, torrential charge.

Low-tier giant beasts were in the front as cannon fodder, while high-tier ones were mixed in the middle, using the low-tier individuals as cover to advance slowly.

The earth trembled.

The sound waves could be heard from dozens of kilometers away.

It was the sound of countless giant beasts' claws trampling the ground simultaneously, mixed with roars, shrieks, and the muffled thuds of wings flapping against the air.

Su Zhiruo forced herself to analyze the scene rationally.

"There are an estimated three to five thousand sub-third-tier cannon fodder in the front row, with about two hundred fourth and fifth-tier ones mixed in the middle... and behind..."

Her voice choked.

"What's behind?"

"Ninth-Rank Abyss Great Beast, seven of them." Su Zhiruo gritted her teeth. "And two more... signal strength approaching the Ninth Rank."

Seven Ninth-Rank and two quasi-Ninth-Rank.

In the human world, this team would be enough to steamroll eleven or twelve Eagle Countries.

In front of Godzilla, Luo Yu tilted his head to look at Godzilla's expression.

Hmm.

Godzilla was yawning.

"Alright, Godzilla, stop pretending. Your tail is already twitching."

Godzilla's tail was indeed swinging at high frequency; this was a sign of its excitement—not the kind of excitement from being scared, but the kind of excitement when seeing a buffet open for business.

To be honest, ever since evolving to the Planet-level, Godzilla hadn't been this happy in a long time.

Gnawing on rocks on the moon, while filling, lacked soul. Those Helium-3 were like plain water; the nutrition was enough, but it didn't provide any pleasure.

But these Abyssal Giant Beasts in front of it were different.

They were alive! They were punchy! They were elastic! They had texture when chewed!

"Roar!!"

Godzilla let out a roar toward the sky.

This roar didn't use any energy skills; it was purely physical sound waves. But the sound waves emitted by a 1,900-meter-tall body were, in themselves, a low-level version of destruction.

The sound waves spread in all directions with Godzilla as the center. Visible air-compression ripples pushed outward. Wherever they passed, stone pillars snapped in half, and those Third-Tier Giant Beasts on the ground that couldn't dodge in time were directly shaken into meat paste by the sound waves.

The cluster of Abyssal Giant Beasts charging in the front row all stopped.

To be precise, they didn't stop; the front few rows were so scared their legs went weak.

Third-tier Abyssal Giant Beasts had limited intelligence, but their survival instinct wasn't bad. When a super-organism hundreds of times larger than them stood in front of them and made that kind of sound, the option to run automatically ranked first.

But the team behind was still pushing forward.

The waves behind pushed the waves in front.

The momentum of the charge, combined with the mental suppression released by the high-tier giant beasts at the rear, left those third-tier cannon fodder with nowhere to retreat.

Thus, the scene became like this: the giant beasts in the very front were desperately retreating, those in the middle were being squeezed into patties, and those in the back were still howling and charging forward.

Chaos.

Utter, complete chaos.

"Was the commander of these things dropped on their head as a baby?"

Luo Yu looked at the scene and said with an incredulous expression, "Using third and fourth-tier cannon fodder to charge a Planet-level?"

"It's not charging you."

Su Zhiruo re-expanded her spatial perception, her eyelids twitching. "It's filling."

"Filling what?"

"Filling time."

Su Zhiruo pointed to the very back of the giant beast torrent, deep underground in that direction, where energy fluctuations were rising sharply. "Those two quasi-Ninth-Rank signal sources are sinking. They aren't charging at us; they are running to a deeper place. They are stalling for time."

Stalling.

These giant beasts surging from underground weren't here to fight; they were here to act as speed bumps.

The real target was deeper underground.

That hollow structure with a diameter of twenty kilometers, that Core Area emitting biological spatial distortion—something was there, and it didn't want to be disturbed.

"Interesting."

Luo Yu's eyes lit up.

In the Abyss World, what could be worth using tens of thousands of giant beasts as meat shields to protect?

"Godzilla, stop dawdling. Clear the field."

The moment those two words landed, Godzilla moved.

It didn't use its breath.

To deal with small-sized targets of this density, breath was a waste. Planet-level energy hitting a swarm of ants was the same logic as using cannons to blast mosquitoes.

Godzilla chose the most primitive, most violent, and most efficient method: just walk over.

Yes.

Just walk over.

The 1,900-meter-tall body lifted a foot and took a step.

The landing point of this step was exactly in front of the giant beast torrent.

The sole of the foot covered an area of over 20,000 square meters, with a weight of 9.8 million tons.

Added to that was the additional mass from the gravity manipulation ability.

One step down, no sound.

Or rather, the sound came too late.

The moment the sole touched the ground, Third-Tier Giant Beasts within a five-kilometer radius—whether standing, running, or squeezed together—were all crushed into the crust. The shockwave blew the giant beasts further away into mid-air.

Godzilla took the second step.

Third step.

Fourth step.

Every step was a localized extinction.

It just walked into the ocean of giant beasts.

Looking down from high altitude, this scene was hilarious to the point of absurdity: a moving black-red mountain peak, moving at a leisurely speed through a carpet made of bugs, and wherever it went, the bugs disappeared, leaving behind deep pits.

Five steps.

Ten steps.

Fifteen steps.

Over three thousand Third-Tier Giant Beasts in the front row, within Godzilla's fifteen stroll-like steps, eighty percent were dead.

Not beaten to death.

Just stomped to death, alive.

The remaining twenty percent were distributed in the gaps where the soles couldn't reach, but these survivors weren't much better off. Every time Godzilla took a step, it would bring about a surge of gravitational field fluctuations. To high-tier creatures, this fluctuation was just a breeze; to Third-Tier Giant Beasts, it was a road roller.

Viscera shattered, bones broken, dying in painful struggles after their own gravity was distorted.

Su Zhiruo sat beside Luo Yu, the spiritual power shield protecting the two of them well; she couldn't feel any bumps at all.

But... looking down through the shield, that hellish scroll-like scene still made her stomach turn slightly.

"Are you okay?" Luo Yu asked.

"I'm fine."

"Good."

Luo Yu's attention wasn't on his feet.

He was looking at the rear.

Those seven Ninth-Rank Abyss Great Beasts—they hadn't moved yet.

They were scattered at the very back of the giant beast torrent, maintaining a safe distance of about fifty kilometers from Godzilla. They neither came forward to support nor turned to run.

Just standing there. Watching.

"What are they waiting for..." Luo Yu muttered.

Godzilla continued to walk forward.

Its footsteps neither accelerated nor slowed.

Corpses paved a road behind it.

In front of a Planet-level, quantity had no meaning.

This wasn't a battle.

This was a stroll.

...

Twenty minutes.

Godzilla took twenty minutes to walk through the forty-kilometer depth covered by the giant beast torrent.

The earth behind was unrecognizable.

Giant beast corpses were piled into hills, ink-green blood had gathered into streams, and the air was filled with a thick, burnt stench—the smell produced by the high temperature on Godzilla's body surface scorching organic matter.

The jump in evolution progress made Luo Yu raise an eyebrow.

Low-tier giant beasts of the third and fourth tiers contributed minimally to Godzilla's evolution, but over a hundred fifth-tier ones died, as did over a hundred sixth-tier ones, and some seventh-tier ones also died. Added together, it could make up a fraction.

The evolution progress climbed from 53.2% to 53.7%.

Better than nothing.

What really concerned Luo Yu were those seven Ninth-Rank ones.

They didn't move the whole time.

While Godzilla was trampling through the entire giant beast torrent, those seven Ninth-Rank Abyss Great Beasts maintained a fifty-kilometer distance the whole time, neither approaching nor moving away, like seven coordinate points nailed to the map.

"They are guiding the way."

Su Zhiruo stared at the light spots in the spatial perception array and reached an unexpected conclusion.

"Guiding the way?"

"Watch their movement trajectory carefully—they aren't retreating in a straight line, but moving in an arc. Each one's position is being fine-tuned to form a fan-shaped array, with the opening facing our direction of travel."

Luo Yu looked closely, and indeed.

The seven light spots weren't running away; they were spreading out on both sides, "opening" like two large gates, revealing a clear path in the middle.

The end of this path was the underground hollow 580 kilometers away.

"Luring the enemy into a trap?"

"It might not be a trap."

Su Zhiruo thought for a moment and offered a bolder guess. "Perhaps it's a negotiation."

"Abyssal Giant Beasts negotiating with me?" Luo Yu's tone carried a hint of amusement.

"The three kings of the abyss aren't stupid. They were scared, but they haven't lost the courage to resist. And when facing an enemy they can't beat, besides fighting to the death, there is another option..."

"Surrender?"

Su Zhiruo shook her head.

"A transaction."

"..."

Luo Yu fell silent.

He hadn't considered this possibility.

In his perception, Abyssal Creatures were just a bunch of brutes who solved all problems with violence.

But Su Zhiruo's analysis made sense—the The Three Kings, who could establish a hierarchical ruling system in the Abyss World, couldn't be pure savages.