MonsterVerse

The two descended the hillside as quickly as possible, keeping their distance as they followed behind the story characters at an unhurried pace.

"Jason, are you planning to keep your face covered the whole time?" Ying Yingying asked.

"What’s wrong with that?"

"Of course there’s something wrong with it. Dressed like that, you look like a boss making an entrance. When the story characters see you, they’ll either shoot you or shoot while running away." Ying Yingying clapped her hands and urged Russell to pull back his hood.

"Hmph, none of your business. I have my own way!"

After a long silence, Ying Yingying spoke again. "Honestly, this scenario is a little bad. The appearance of that group ahead proves that this Skull Island is extremely dangerous."

"What are you saying? Is there such a thing as a safe Skull Island?" Russell asked strangely.

"Of course. Do you remember the velociraptors from before? An old monster movie was also about Skull Island, and it had velociraptors in it. Kong in that one was less than eight meters tall, and the Tyrannosaurus Rex was proportioned like a real one."

Russell nodded and summed it up. "Fighting airplanes atop the Empire State Building for the woman he loves—now that’s a real man!"

Ying Yingying rolled her eyes and continued, "But things are different now. Kong’s height has surged past thirty meters, and his mortal enemy has changed from the Tyrannosaurus Rex to the Skull Crawler. Those things aren’t small either."

"You’re worried the Main God will manipulate the plot and have a swarm of Skull Crawlers pour out of the ground?" Russell frowned. That was indeed a hidden danger. One or two Skull Crawlers were nothing to fear, but if the plot went off the rails and hundreds appeared at once… just thinking about it made his scalp tingle.

"That’s not what I’m worried about. You call yourself a Reincarnator, yet you haven’t realized what a thirty-meter Kong means. Looks like you usually don’t prepare thoroughly enough." Ying Yingying sighed and continued, "According to this Skull Island setting, thirty meters isn’t Kong’s limit. He’s still growing. Expand the story’s background, and it leads to one of the four great movie universes: the MonsterVerse."

"The MonsterVerse!?" Russell had recently been studying the Marvel universe and knew little about this so-called MonsterVerse.

"You know Godzilla, right?"

"I know that one. Don’t tell me it’s part of the MonsterVerse too?"

"That’s right! Not just Godzilla—there are also monsters like Rodan, Mothra, and Ghidorah. Pick any one of them, and it’s a hundred-meter giant beast weighing over ten thousand tons." Ying Yingying analyzed, "They exist within Skull Island’s world setting. If the Main God deploys these colossal beasts, we’ll be in serious trouble."

Russell fell silent in thought. It really was troublesome. His circumstances differed from those of the Reincarnators. Their battlefield was set on Skull Island, and they could not leave, whereas he had no such restriction. It was entirely possible for him to trigger a World Quest to kill Ghidorah.

Russell glanced at Ying Yingying twice. "Didn’t expect you to be so good at this!"

"Only Reincarnators who deeply analyze the scenario and research the world background can be considered qualified Reincarnators. Those who let their guard down… are all dead." What Ying Yingying meant was that Russell was an unqualified Reincarnator.

Unqualified was unqualified. Russell did not care in the slightest. He was not really a Reincarnator anyway. But Ying Yingying’s pompous manner made him want to knock her down a peg. "Don’t talk so big. Did you research the world setting of the Sea Monster we encountered before, the one from Deep Freeze?"

"I wouldn’t call it research. I know a little."

Ying Yingying raised her hand like a feather fan and waved it lightly. "The Sea Monster’s name… if I remember correctly, should be Ottowa. It’s an ancient Ottowian species branch, and its size changes according to its environment. Below four thousand feet in the deep sea, it’s only as long as a pencil, with a torso roughly the size of a ping-pong ball. Below twenty thousand feet, it can swallow an adult shark in one bite. The one we encountered must have come from at least forty thousand feet down."

Russell: "…"

Being shown up like this felt awful!

Ying Yingying shot Russell a smug glance and continued her lesson. "That’s the movie’s worldview. In our real world, Ottowa’s design was inspired by the Otto Worm, which originated during the Cambrian period five hundred million years ago. The Otto Worm’s defining feature is its concealed front mouthpart, known as an ‘eversible proboscis.’ As for what it looks like…"

At this point, Ying Yingying paused and said with slight disgust, "It looks pretty much like you stinking men. It’s also called the Dick Worm or Penis Worm. Figure it out yourself!"

Russell: "…"

Hearing Ying Yingying’s explanation, he realized his previous deduction had been completely correct. The Sea Monster really was the natural enemy of magical girls—no, their best friend!

"Well? Anything else you want to test me on? Say it all at once, and I’ll make you completely convinced." Ying Yingying planted her hands on her hips. Having won back a round against Russell, she felt secretly delighted.

Russell really did have a question. "By your reasoning, the Sea Monster is a marine creature."

"That’s right!"

"I have a spell that lets me communicate with all marine creatures, but it didn’t work on it. Why?"

"This…" Ying Yingying did not suspect anything and frowned in thought. "There are two possibilities. Either Ottowa was controlled by the Main God, which made your spell fail in order to increase the scenario’s difficulty. But that seems unlikely. It was no match for you at all, and I was beside you too. Increasing the difficulty that way would be far too perfunctory."

"What’s the second possibility?"

Ying Yingying’s expression turned solemn. "It was controlled by something and refused to communicate with you!"

Russell immediately understood. Thinking of how the Sea Monster had guarded the waters around Skull Island, he said, "Could Skull Island be connected to another scenario?"

"Given the Main God’s shitty nature, that’s very likely." Ying Yingying let out a mournful sigh. "This is getting more and more troublesome. This isn’t the Skull Island I wanted!"

"From the sound of it, you had a choice of Skull Islands?" Russell asked instinctively.

"Of course. I came for Skull Island in this Team Battle. My goal was to collect Tyrannosaurus Rex teeth for… ahem, I was asked to come here and find something." Ying Yingying coughed lightly and changed her words, brushing it off.

Russell nodded to himself. He had wanted to pry out more information, but seeing that Ying Yingying was on guard, he stopped talking.

Ahead, the expedition team was attacked once again. They had wandered into a snake nest and were surrounded by three giant pythons.

Each of the three pythons was over ten meters long, giving off the distinct feeling of a giant snake disaster movie. Fortunately, Husky had warned them in advance, sparing them from an ambush.

The soldiers were all armed with semiautomatic weapons, along with grenades, grenade launchers, and heavy machine guns. They easily dealt with the three giant pythons.

They had been on the island for two days already and had grown accustomed to all kinds of giant beasts. Just like those pythons, they had killed one before.

The grasslands were dangerous, but the expedition team would rather stay there than enter the giant-tree forest. The environment there was even harsher; not only were there giant beasts, but all manner of enlarged poisonous insects.

Giant centipedes, mosquitoes, spiders, scorpions, and countless unnamed arthropods appeared in swarms at night, costing them many men.

Once, they encountered a swarm of fist-sized fire-red ants. If they had not discovered them early, even fully armed, they would have been wiped out.

"ROAR! ROAR! ROAR—"

The gunfire drew in wandering predators. In the distance, two enormous beasts slowly emerged.

Tyrannosaurus Rex!

These two Tyrannosaurus Rexes were nearly fifteen meters long, with heads more than six meters above the ground. They truly qualified as colossal creatures.