Artillery roared across the surface of the sea.
Torpedoes and every modern weapon in the Pacific Fleet's arsenal were deployed one after another.
But aside from the ship-mounted autocannons—whose caliber and rate of fire were enough to inflict meaningful damage—most weapons proved ineffective.
After being hit once by a torpedo, the mutated whale—now exhibiting intelligence on par with a human child thanks to viral mutation—learned how to evade them.
Its aerial maneuvers became increasingly agile and practiced.
As for the soldiers' firearms? Completely useless. They couldn't even pierce its hide.
Helicopters, fighter jets, and bombers were equally ineffective—none could target a creature that could dive beneath the ocean at will. The whale toyed with them like a cat with a ball of yarn.
Even worse, each time it destroyed a ship, it would devour most of the crew and leave the rest floating on the water's surface. Their bodies served as a gruesome deterrent, making nearby vessels hesitate to fire for fear of hitting their own men.
"Goddamn it!"
The fleet commander stared at the rising damage reports on the control room's main screen, his face dark with fury.
Never in his career had he imagined his "invincible fleet" would be humiliated like this—played for fools by a single monster.
But at the root of it, this disaster was the result of flawed assumptions.
The fleet's weaponry was designed to combat humans or armored machines—not living, intelligent monsters with near-impervious hides.
Weapons that could land a hit couldn't penetrate.
Weapons that could penetrate couldn't land a hit.
Of course, if they were desperate enough, the fleet did have a last resort: nuclear warheads.
But using a nuke at close range while locked in battle? That would be the height of insanity.
So the commander could only stew in frustration.
It felt like showing up to hunt snakes with anti-venom and snake tongs—only to find himself facing a wild boar.
Totally unprepared.
Reluctantly, he issued a distress call to nearby U.S. military installations.
---
Ten minutes later.
The entire U.S. military wasn't the only one aware of the situation.
Satellites from across the globe had picked up the commotion.
And the world watched, amused, as the mighty Pacific Fleet battled a flying deep-sea leviathan.
The internet lit up with memes.
The commentary? "Peak Hollywood vibes."
---
Meanwhile, deep within the Amazon rainforest...
A biological research team hiked cautiously through the jungle.
After casually stomping on a large spider, one of the team members turned to the leader and said, "These animals and insects seem way more aggressive than usual."
Ordinarily, spiders and similar insects wouldn't willingly attack large animals like humans—they weren't on the menu. One wrong move, and they'd be squished in an instant.
But now?
Spiders, scorpions, centipedes… not only were they turning on each other, they were attacking everything—regardless of size. Even animals that could kill them with a single kick.
It was as if they'd gone completely mad.
The team leader chuckled. "Isn't that the whole reason we're here? Let's move. We're only a few kilometers from the nearest indigenous village. If anyone knows what's going on, it's them."
An hour later…
They reached the site.
But what they found was nothing like the peaceful tribal village they expected.
Trenches and traps surrounded the area like a battlefield.
But most of the traps had been destroyed. And every single house had been flattened or torn apart.
Whatever resistance the villagers had put up had ended in total failure.
The entire population—over a hundred people—was gone.
No bodies. No survivors. Just… gone.
Staring at the devastation, the team leader muttered, stunned,
"What the hell happened here…?"
"Captain! Over here!"
One of the team members called out.
He rushed over—only to see something that made his blood run cold.
A single feline footprint—pressed into the muddy ground.
It was the size of a washbasin.
He bent down to study it.
"It looks like a jaguar's print…"
"What?" another team member choked. "A jaguar with feet that big?!"
The captain grimly nodded.
"Yeah. Which is why… I think we'd better leave. Immediately."
But before anyone could move, he noticed his teammate staring wide-eyed—mouth agape—at something behind him.
"…What is it?" he asked.
And then he heard it.
A rhythmic huffing—like a massive pair of bellows. And the air around him… it was being pulled toward his back, like a vacuum was behind him.
Realization hit like lightning.
He turned his head.
Behind him loomed a monstrous jaguar—its entire body covered in black, scale-like armor.
Even crouching on all fours, it stood over five meters tall—bigger than a mammoth.
The humans before it were insects.
And that bellows-like sound?
Just its breathing.
"W-What the hell is th—"
CHOMP.
Before he could finish his sentence, the black jaguar lunged and swallowed him whole.
Then it turned its glowing eyes to the rest of the team.
---
At a zoo somewhere…
A zookeeper stood by the fence, staring uneasily into the enclosure.
Something didn't feel right.
Over the past few days, many of the animals had grown noticeably larger.
And they weren't just bigger.
They were different.
For example, a moose had jumped the enclosure fence and eaten two wolves from the neighboring pen.
No matter how he looked at it, that just… didn't make sense.
If it had been the wolves eating the moose, he could believe it.
But this?
And the animals' eyes—
They were changing.
More savage. More bloodthirsty.
Like starving predators eyeing prey.
"Hey, did you hear?" his coworker asked casually, sensing his unease. "Some nutjob in the city got shot—turned out he was eating people."
The zookeeper blinked. "What?"
"Yeah, he used to be a regular construction worker, then just snapped. Cops said it took ten bullets to bring him down."
"That's BS," the zookeeper scoffed, shaking his head.
"Sounds like one of those online rumors."
They launched into a spirited debate.
Unaware that stories like this were beginning to pop up all over the world.
And soon…
They'd become the norm.
_____
T/N:
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