As Alien Mefilas departed and Chris and the others finalized their plan to evacuate, in waves, the survivors currently sheltered in the underground bunker.
Over on Ryuuen's side, the analysis of the blood coagulant's composition was likewise complete.
Without turning around, he barked at the personnel behind him: "Send the formula to every chemical plant right now. Spare no cost — synthesize this stuff at full throttle for me!"
A technician, drenched head to toe in sweat, swallowed hard and stammered:
"B-but... based on this monster's sheer size, fully coagulating its blood would take at least several hundred tons of Coagulant and coolant!"
"And besides, the temperature around it has already broken two thousand degrees Celsius. Not even radiation-shielded armored vehicles can get in there. Even if we manufacture it, how are we supposed to inject it into the thing?"
"That's not your problem to worry about."
Ryuuen let out a scornful snort and cut him off without mercy: "You just handle the execution. We'll take care of the rest."
"You think I'm actually counting on you people?"
With that, Ryuuen stopped bothering with this pack of useless bureaucrats and concentrated all his computing power.
In an instant, across all of Japan, every fighter jet and drone swarm still able to take off — even some of the armed helicopters the U.S. military had left behind — had their flight-control systems forcibly hijacked.
"Come on, you big lizard! Let's see just how long you can keep breathing that stuff!"
Ryuuen cranked his neck. Piloting the drone formations, he raked Godzilla's head with harassing fire from every direction.
Godzilla let out an irritated roar, and its purple Atomic Breath swept across the heavens.
But bolstered by alien tech, the swarm juked like a pro gamer threading the dense bullet-hell of "Thunder Fighter," always pulling up or barrel-rolling within a hair's breadth, dragging Godzilla's line of attack around with an absurdly low loss ratio.
He even deliberately steered Godzilla's breath toward the already-evacuated no-man's zones and out to sea, minimizing civilian casualties as much as he could.
After several rounds of luring its fire, Ryuuen noticed that the purple glow along Godzilla's dorsal fins was visibly beginning to dim.
It seemed to have realized how much energy such wide-area saturation was burning, and switched into "power-saving mode."
No longer firing the sweeping full-field beams, it now relied only on pinpoint rays from its mouth and the tip of its tail to precisely clear away the most annoying drones.
"Heh — so now you know to conserve?"
Far from discouraged, Ryuuen clenched his fist in excitement: "Doesn't that just prove the energy inside you isn't as plentiful as it was at the start? A little more push and we'll be ready for the next phase!"
"Let me play ace pilot for once today, too!"
A little cheating didn't count as cheating!
As long as he won, he didn't care what means he used.
Watching Ryuuen sink fully into it, Kouenji Rokusuke — standing not far behind him — arched an eyebrow.
He'd meant to say something, but in the end chose not to disturb Ryuuen while the man was riding high.
He turned and patted the shoulder of Katsuragi Kohei beside him: "Ryuen-boy looks like he'll be playing around a while yet."
"Since he's handling walking Godzilla up in the sky, we ought to fulfill our duty as testers and help move the civilians below."
"After all, this is our test too. Reaping without sowing is hardly the Kouenji way."
Katsuragi Kohei nodded, though his expression wasn't as relaxed as Kouenji's.
His steps faltered slightly as he raised the open Y-GUN radar screen in his hand, his voice heavy: "Kouenji, something seems off."
"Look — apart from the red dot at the center marking Godzilla... there's an extra red dot in the city district, a few kilometers out from us."
"And the color depth of this dot... it's highly unusual."
Kouenji Rokusuke's gaze sharpened.
"When we slip into the Mirror World later, let's go find Chris and his group."
Katsuragi agreed. "We can use the Controller in his hands to see what's really going on. I've got a bad feeling about this."
Meanwhile, on the flame-wreathed streets of Shinjuku.
Amid the devastated ruins, a middle-aged man in a well-tailored suit, refined in bearing, strolled leisurely across the burning asphalt.
A force field seemed to wrap around him, sealing out all the searing heat.
Alien Mefilas tilted his head up slightly, watching the fighter swarm lure Godzilla across the sky like moths to a flame.
"Interesting technology — hardly the level this planet's native humans could produce."
Mefilas murmured under his breath and slowly bent down.
He reached out and, from a shattered length of building rebar, plucked up a chunk of dark-red flesh still carrying a faint trace of activity.
It was scrap flesh flung off Godzilla during the bombardment.
A single glance was enough for Mefilas to spot the anomaly.
"Oh? These cells... can actually undergo infinite division and regeneration?"
Astonishment flashed in the refined man's eyes:
"Merely by breathing air and absorbing water, it autonomously converts them into nuclear energy to power itself... what an efficient, perfect bioweapon."
"And its genetic sequence is highly unstable — it seems to still have vast room for evolution..."
Mefilas casually crushed the flesh to ash and lightly clapped his hands clean.
"I never imagined that a distant planet out here on the edge of the universe could give birth to a monster of this caliber."
But he soon frowned again.
"Yet this does not appear to be the Earth this one originally selected."
Mefilas glanced around.
"Given the temperament of that 'Ultraman' from the Land of Light, he clearly wouldn't have chosen to exile me... So then — was it some even more unknown higher civilization, one that even I couldn't detect, that cast me here?"
"Or does Earth itself possess some kind of 'peculiarity'?"
Mefilas pondered a moment, gazing off at the sky lit purple.
After a long while, he let out a soft sigh and pushed down the thoughts churning within. Since he was here, he might as well make his peace with it.
His favorite saying was "go with the flow."
"Whoever sent me here, let me first find out... whether the humans of this Earth are equally susceptible to my 'Beta Box.'"
With that thought, Mefilas gave his necktie a tug and stepped into a teetering, dilapidated building whose load-bearing points were nonetheless packed with sheltering refugees.
Like any ordinary refugee, he found a corner to sit in and quietly waited for the so-called "rescue" to arrive.
By now, thanks to Ryuuen's extreme maneuvering, Godzilla's attack range had been successfully diverted, forcibly carving out a relatively calm evacuation corridor in one corner of the district.
The temperature here had dropped noticeably compared with the heart of the inferno — now within the range a human body could just barely endure.
Chris gave a decisive order for the official rescue units rushing in from the outer perimeter to quickly lead away everyone who wasn't seriously hurt.
He himself, together with the vast Phantom Legion summoned by Amanatsu Kazuha, pushed deep into the danger zones the rescue teams couldn't reach.
They searched for those trapped in underground parking garages, or pinned and unable to flee beneath collapsed buildings.
Because although Godzilla's attacks were world-shatteringly powerful, its beams came in sweeping strafes rather than absolute saturation bombardment.
And so, beneath the rubble, the number of surviving victims was still staggeringly high.
To improve efficiency, the group had to split into several teams.
And to guard against Godzilla suddenly switching targets for a surprise attack, Chris had deliberately arranged a tactic: anyone without a [Blank Card Box] carried a mirror or reflective object and was paired into a team with someone who had one, ready at any moment to duck into the Mirror World and run when things turned critical.
But since only a limited number in the group currently held card boxes, and to field one more team to speed up the search-and-rescue and save time,
Chris took it upon himself to form a team with Shiraishi Asuka, Morishita Ai, and Yotsuya Miko — girls who had no strong means of protecting themselves.
Honestly, with Amanatsu Kazuha now able to summon dozens of phantom ninja, if they truly wanted to chase efficiency, they could simply have the phantom soldiers drag the trapped civilians straight into the "Kingdom of Shadows," then ferry them safely to the shelters through the shadow passages.
But much like the combo of [The World] and [Blank Card Box], the intel and hints Chris was already giving them amounted to quite a lot.
Better to teach a man to fish than to hand him one.
He felt his current guidance was more than enough, and had no intention of taking on everything himself, spoon-feeding them exactly how to work the loopholes.
They still needed to fumble around a bit on their own and uncover the potential of their items — that way it would leave a deeper impression, wouldn't it?
Just then, high in the distant sky, two F-35 fighters, melted by the blistering heat, plunged down trailing black smoke.
Godzilla stomped hard, seemingly irritated by the endless stream of iron birds. It was just about to rear its head and let out a roar —
but Ryuuen's staggered drone formations instantly filled the gap, driving Godzilla to even greater irritation.
Forced to swallow that roar, it slipped back into "power-saving mode" once more, using its mouth and tail to spit small doses of Atomic Breath at the targets overhead.
Seizing the chance, Chris resolutely led Shiraishi Asuka and the others toward the dilapidated building Mefilas had slipped into earlier.
Every barrier of reinforced concrete blocking their path along the way, they cleared with their Black Sphere war swords, carving out a lifeline passage wide enough for at least one person to slip through.
They moved with astonishing speed and efficiency, soon reaching the safe room on the ground floor and rescuing all several dozen survivors sheltered inside.
However — just as they guided this batch of survivors out of the building, handing them over to the official rescue teams waiting outside and preparing to send them off to safety —
Mefilas, blended into the crowd, suddenly stopped.
He turned his head, looked at Chris clad in [Demon Possession], and spoke in the tone of a man grateful to have survived: "Thank you so much for your help."
"Just now in the safe room, I watched a live news broadcast on my phone... They said you're saviors from another dimension."
Mefilas pushed up his conjured glasses and asked, probing: "Which is to say, once you've resolved this crisis here in Tokyo, you'll leave..."
"You won't stay long to become our messiahs, will you?"
At his words, several of the just-rescued survivors around him seemed to snap awake, chiming in one after another:
"Yeah, yeah! You're so powerful — can't you stay and protect us?"
"If we ever run into something like Godzilla again... will you descend to save us?"
There were even a few devout Christians in the group who crossed themselves over their chests while gazing, eyes fervent, at Ichinose Honami in the distant sky, beating her wings of light to soothe the crowd.
Clearly, in their despair, they had come to regard Ichinose Honami as an angel sent down by God to save mankind.
Though this deviated a bit from the setup of the Black Sphere exam in the finer details, in a certain sense... it wasn't entirely wrong either.
And this was precisely what Alien Mefilas was most focused on at this moment.
So for the time being, no one around spoke up to interrupt.
After all, as someone who had witnessed the Clockwork Wraith's "Mystery Shop" from afar earlier, Alien Mefilas still harbored a wariness toward that mechanical woman.
He wasn't keen on recklessly approaching her at this juncture.
But Chris was different.
Even though Chris wore what looked like fairly extraordinary armament, in Mefilas's eyes, individual armor of this grade still fell into the "dime a dozen" category.
Mefilas figured there was no harm in trying to make contact with this group.
To understand the power behind these so-called "otherworldly saviors," he'd need a channel one way or another.
Hiding forever would get him nowhere.
Worst case, if they grew suspicious, he'd just disguise himself as a few more people and test them one by one.
Faced with Mefilas's obviously leading questions, Chris could hardly fail to grasp this alien politician's little scheme.
Too bad. In Chris's plans, either he'd wait until later to fuse the worlds of "Shin Ultraman" and "Shin Godzilla,"
or he'd simply let Mefilas make a token appearance here, leaving behind a few traces to plant foreshadowing for a later dungeon.
But in either case, Mefilas's wish to exploit the information gap and bewitch — to wreak havoc on — the humans of this world was clearly no easy feat.
So Chris thought it over, then raised a hand and pointed at the sky:
"Whether we come or not isn't decided by our personal will."
"It's up to the will of the 'presiding god.'"
"But the presiding god having us cross worlds to come here seems to be its way of cultivating us into beings strong enough to protect the world..."
"If the situation ever grows dire in the future, we should come again."
At this, those few Christians were instantly moved to tears of excitement: "Hallelujah! Praise the presiding god! Praise the angel!"
Alien Mefilas, blended into the crowd, nodded along too, wearing a grateful "I've learned much" look, and didn't ask a single further question.
As a wise cosmic being, he understood well the principle that too many words invite trouble.
In his disguised refugee identity, drawing out this much information so naturally was already the limit.
Digging any deeper would definitely put them on alert.
A presiding god, hm... behind this there seems to lie a higher-dimensional being keen on nurturing the sparks of civilization.
More information... I'll wait until I've slipped away, then pry it out of these other so-called otherworldly saviors.
Mefilas silently calculated to himself.
Chris didn't linger on him either. Turning away, he led Shiraishi Asuka, Yotsuya Miko, and the others straight toward another half-collapsed building to search for surviving humans.
But just as they stepped into the building's lobby, before they could push any deeper,
a battered floor-to-ceiling window near the wall suddenly rippled.
Right after, the figures of Kouenji Rokusuke and Katsuragi Kohei emerged within the glass.
Kouenji waved to Chris across the distance, signaling he had urgent business.
Chris raised an eyebrow. He brought Shiraishi Asuka and the others up close to the cracked mirror surface and led the girls straight into the Mirror World with him.
The moment he set foot in the mirror space, Chris asked, puzzled: "Something come up?"
"Why not just have Ryuen send a message? He's taken over the networks now — he's basically our signal base station. Reaching me that way should be far more convenient than the two of you running over here."
Kouenji Rokusuke didn't explain right away, but instead pointed at the [Controller] that Horikita Suzune had returned to Chris earlier.
"Because right now, only you and Ichinose-girl have one of these."
"And since we can travel through the Mirror World with extremely high stealth, I didn't want to tip off our quarry."
Kouenji's tone was uncharacteristically serious: "Take a look at the Controller and you'll understand. Or check the radar display on your basic Black Sphere weapon."
At Kouenji's words, Shiraishi Asuka immediately drew the X-GUN she'd stowed at her waist.
After all, on the surface this exam had only one enemy — Godzilla — and the remaining, more valuable Intruders had long since been left to teams like Hayasaka Ai's, who held Blank Card Boxes, to hunt down specifically.
Given that ordinary humans didn't show up on the Black Sphere gear's radar, no one had thought to keep a gun in hand at all times.
This lousy gun couldn't do any real damage to Godzilla anyway...
But when Shiraishi Asuka lit up the screen and saw clearly what the radar displayed, she let out a soft gasp along with Yotsuya Miko beside her:
"...A new enemy's shown up?"
Not far from them, a glaring point of light had appeared.
If nothing was amiss, it was right near where their group had just been!
Seeing this, Chris opened the Controller on his wrist and glanced down at the three-dimensional map.
Skipping past Godzilla entirely, he reached out and tapped the newly appeared red dot.
[Target: Alien Mefilas (Malicious Cosmic Being / Alien No. 0)]
[Value: 200 points]
[Traits: Hails from an advanced civilization; a cosmic schemer and gentleman-type villain. Does not resort to savage slaughter, invading Earth instead through cunning, temptation, diplomacy, and technology. Appears very polite, but is a sinister, treacherous cosmic being at his core.]
[Abilities: Transforms via the Beta Box, possessing monstrous strength, teleportation, gravity manipulation, telekinesis, hypnosis, Optical Camouflage, Telepathy, Mental Domination, and even top-tier network manipulation.]
[Special Move: Grip Beam — releases a golden, lightning-shaped destructive ray from the hand. As a creature that sustains its energy through Negentropy, it has no activity time limit on Earth.]
[Core Objective: Use the Beta Box to bewitch human politicians, freely handing gigantification technology to mankind, whipping humans into a frenzy and turning all of humanity into an army of giant bioweapons. This would inevitably trigger cosmic panic, drawing enemies from across the universe; unable to resist, mankind would have no choice but to depend on Mefilas — letting him take over Earth peacefully, without spilling a drop of blood. To this end, he has even secretly awakened Calamity Beasts.]
After reading the description, Katsuragi Kohei's scalp went numb.
Even the ever-confident Kouenji Rokusuke drew a deep breath despite himself.
"Two hundred points..."
Kouenji rubbed his brow and said with a wry smile: "No time limit, no obvious weakness, and abilities across the board... This is something far more troublesome than the Darkness Devil!"
"And besides... 'Calamity Beasts'?"
Katsuragi picked up the thread: "By the looks of it, beyond Godzilla, this world has no shortage of disasters either..."
____
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