Chapter 156 Gatanothor (1)

Vane had zero sympathy for these two. In the original timeline, this father-daughter duo had personally witnessed the apocalyptic consequences of the Gijera bloom, yet they actively chose to withhold that critical warning from modern humanity.

During the early stages of the bloom, the flowers were highly manageable. If GUTS had been warned immediately, they could have easily quarantined and eradicated the plants before the pollen spread globally. But to secure their precious extract, Nuke and Dina had chosen to sit back and watch as the Gijera infected the entire planet. If Daigo hadn’t chosen to defy the ancient prophecy and violently destroy the Gijera himself, modern humanity would have suffered the exact same tragic fate as the ancient civilization.

Completely defeated, Nuke collapsed back into his chair, looking utterly hollow.

The Emperor stepped up beside Vane. “So, what’s the play here? Do we authorize a global strike to burn every Gijera flower to the ground?”

Vane looked at the Emperor and rolled his eyes. “Are you an idiot?”

“The Gijera pollen plunges the human brain into a deep, euphoric dream state without causing physical damage. Do you have any idea how insanely valuable that is as a medical anesthetic?”

“The extract literally preserves brain cells and stops cellular decay. The entire plant is a biological goldmine, and your first instinct is to burn it?!”

“Quarantine the fields, set up controlled harvesting facilities, heavily regulate the supply chain, and turn a lethal hazard into a multi-trillion-dollar pharmaceutical asset!”

The Emperor’s eyes lit up in sudden realization. “Brilliant as always! Damn, even the monsters that invade Earth end up getting put to work on the assembly line.”

“I’ll have the Defense Force mobilize quarantine teams immediately.”

The Gijera was a purely stationary plant monster; it relied entirely on its vines and hallucinogenic pollen to defend itself. Facing a coordinated strike team of multiple Ultramen, it didn’t stand a chance. It was quickly subdued, uprooted, and transplanted into a highly secure, hermetically sealed bio-research facility for mass cultivation.

Meanwhile, the civilians who had been infected by the pollen were rounded up, medically detoxed, and returned to their normal lives.

Not long after the Gijera crisis was contained, several more spacecraft belonging to ancient humans breached the atmosphere. They had come looking for Nuke, Dina, and their share of the Gijera extract.

Vane wasn’t surprised in the slightest. Given the sheer scale and technological prowess of the ancient civilization, there was no way Nuke and Dina were the sole survivors.

Figuring out that a highly specific plant extract could halt cellular decay in cybernetic brains required a dedicated, highly funded scientific research division. This meant that thirty million years ago, when the Gijera first bloomed, the ancient elites had actively captured and researched the plant.

Once they discovered its life-extending properties, they had used it to achieve immortality. It was highly likely they had intentionally allowed the Gijera to spread across the globe just so they could harvest a massive, sustainable supply of the extract.

After all, for those in power, why should they care if the civilization collapsed as long as they secured their own eternal life? The commoners could die in a hallucinogenic stupor—the elites just wanted to live forever.

If the Giants of Light could descend into a brutal, civilization-ending civil war, why would the ancient politicians be any better?

The Emperor immediately picked up on the implication.

“These parasitic leeches. Arrest every single one of them and ship them to the lunar penal colony.”

And just like that, every ancient human who returned to Earth expecting a free dose of immortality was slapped in irons and shipped off to crack rocks in the moon’s titanium mines.

With humanity’s internal crises finally stabilized, Vane decided it was time to take the fight directly to the Ruler of Darkness, Gatanothor.

He wasn’t about to wait for the apocalypse to show up on his doorstep. Striking first meant controlling the battlefield and minimizing collateral damage.

The Earth Federation immediately issued a massive, mandatory evacuation order for the entire South Pacific rim, centering the quarantine zone around the sunken ancient ruins of R’lyeh. All commercial shipping lanes and flight paths were forcibly rerouted or grounded.

Once the area was completely cleared of civilians, Vane gave the Emperor the green light to use his psychic powers to forcefully dredge R’lyeh from the bottom of the ocean.

As Vane aggressively pushed through quests, the Emperor’s psychic limiters had steadily unlocked. Now, he possessed more than enough raw telekinetic power to literally rip an entire sunken continent out of the Mariana Trench.

Under the watchful eyes of the world’s military satellites, the long-dormant ancient ruins of R’lyeh violently breached the surface of the ocean.

Almost instantly, massive swarms of Zoiger—Gatanothor’s avian bio-weapons—erupted from the ruins like an angry hive.

“Engage!”

Daigo, Keigo, and the rest of the Earth Defense Force transformed into their Giant forms, immediately clashing with the massive swarm of monsters.

On the perimeter, the conventional Earth Defense Force fleet and the newly constructed orbital defense cannons opened fire, shredding the Zoiger swarm and ensuring the monsters couldn’t breach the quarantine line and wreak havoc on the mainland.

Enraged by the mass slaughter of its kin, the Ruler of Darkness, Gatanothor, finally rose from the crushing depths of the ocean.

A thick, suffocating black fog laden with specialized ionized particles began spewing from its massive form, rapidly expanding to choke out the sky.

Gatanothor stood a towering 200 meters tall and weighed a staggering 200,000 tons.

It looked like a colossal sea conch, hauling around a massive, spiraled shell covered in dense clusters of black craters. Its eyes were grotesquely positioned below its mouth, and the opening of its shell was lined with a writhing mass of tentacles and massive pincers capable of firing petrifying beams.

“The giant conch has arrived. Time for my entrance.”

“When darkness falls, when monsters run rampant, and when Earth bleeds, the masses shall scream your name. Arise, King of the Monsters, Godzilla.”