Chapter 302

In the middle of the jungle stood the lonely control room.

Inside, the woman frantically mashed the [Emergency Lockdown] button on the console with trembling hands.

As hydraulic cylinders hissed and the doors slammed shut, the sound of raptor claws scraping against the control room’s door echoed through the air.

Had the emergency lockdown been just a second slower, those raptors would’ve breached the control room in a catastrophic turn of events.

The woman gasped for breath as she leaned back in her chair.

“Hmph.”

Now, she was all alone inside this massive hunk of steel.

Her always-kind fiancé and the ever-helpful senior colleague were both dead, claimed by those monsters.

With no one else left, the control room felt far colder than before.

Struggling to calm herself, she slowly exhaled.

“Hoo… I can’t die like this.”

She tried hard to paint the situation in a positive light.

“It’s fine. Dinosaurs will never be able to break through the object containment walls.”

All her colleagues were gone, vicious dinosaurs prowled outside, not to mention the domain of the special-class object ‘Green Moon.’

“If I hold out here, rescue will definitely come.”

Standing up, she looked around the control room.

It was packed with computers, monitors, and various devices.

The emergency object generator built into the control room had about three months of operational life left.

Letting out a deep sigh, she knew she had to think strategically to survive.

She needed to find a way out of this desperate situation.

But exhaustion weighed heavily on her.

Lying down on the floor, she closed her eyes for a moment.

Even in dreams, she wanted to escape this terrible reality.

Suddenly, the shrill emergency alarm jolted her awake.

Beeeep! Beeeep!

Shaking off the sleepiness, she checked the control room monitors.

The CCTV screens showed raptors lurking near the control room.

However, some CCTV connections were inexplicably cut.

“!”

Looking at the CCTV, the woman froze in terror.

The raptors on screen looked…off somehow.

Like their bones and flesh had melted and then solidified in twisted shapes.

Worse still, these deformed raptors were circling the control room and tearing apart external surveillance cameras with their teeth.

“How could they possibly…”

Raptors shouldn’t understand how cameras work!

One by one, the monitors illuminating the control room went dark.

Haa… Haa…

Though safe behind the containment walls, an unknown fear gripped her, making her breathing rapid.

Eventually, all camera feeds went black.

It was like suddenly going blind.

Raptor screeches.

Claws mercilessly scratching the outer walls.

Though unseen, she could feel the raptors’ presence clearly.

Then, the ceiling lights flickered ominously.

“Could it be the wiring?”

Just as she jumped up to check the control room console…

The control room screen began flashing red.

[Emergency Generator Offline]

Had the exposed wiring from the damaged outer wall caused by the Green Moon’s influence snapped?

As darkness settled over the control room using minimal power from emergency batteries, coldness crept in alongside it.

Darkness, fear, cold.

Curling up, the woman muttered to herself.

Rescue will come soon, so it’ll be fine.

The elephant-proof outer walls mean it’ll be fine.

Every time she heard clawing on the walls, she flinched but tried to stay calm.

How long did she endure, curled up in the cold and fear, until the raptor noises stopped completely?

Haa… Haa…

In the oppressive silence, only her breathing echoed.

Staring blankly at the red-flashing monitor, she dozed off.

Peeek!

In the hazy state between sleep and wakefulness, she heard the control room door opening.

How much time has passed?

Could another survivor have arrived?

Turning her head to check, beyond the open control room door stood an indistinct silhouette.

Not human, not dinosaur…something else entirely.

“How did it get past the iris recognition security door?”

This thought briefly crossed her mind before she noticed something more alarming – her senior colleague’s head, faintly visible, awkwardly grafted onto the silhouette’s body.

***

A jungle where no trace of the space station remained.

I was there, furiously pounding away at some annoying meat.

Punch. Punch. Punch.

With my giant black reaper sword, twice my height, punch punch.

Assisted by the strength-enhancing black reaper armor, punch punch.

Due to my poor coordination, I was bashing the meat with the flat side of the blade rather than slicing it.

“This isn’t proper tyrannosaurus!”

What I was beating was the first dinosaur I encountered in the jungle – a tyrannosaurus.

But tragically, it wasn’t the kind of tyrannosaurus I liked.

It had thick lips, feathers, and a pot belly – a monstrosity that smelled faintly of human blood, which made the mini-reapers uninterested.

“Heheh…”

They just laughed at the ugly tyrannosaurus.

When the tyrannosaurus was thoroughly reduced to minced meat, I finally collapsed onto the ground.

Lying there, I saw truly blue sky above.

“The station really became a planet.”

Though it looked like a space station from afar, as I approached, the green moon consuming the station grew larger and larger.

And when it filled my entire field of vision, the green moon transformed into a lush jungle-covered planet.

“Never seen space station-scale spatial erosion before.”

While contemplating this and that under the sky, commotion broke out among the gathered mini-reapers.

“Mom!”

A golden reaper came running toward me with quick steps.

“Son!”

Turning to look, I saw a happy-looking golden reaper.

[Image]

A tiny dinosaur was biting the golden reaper’s face.

Though the small dinosaur’s sharp teeth looked menacing, they were useless against the physical immunity of the golden reaper.

“Just got a new hat, hehe~”

Other golden reapers, envious of the new hat, had already captured quite a few small dinosaurs.

The little dinosaurs squirmed pitifully while emitting sorrowful cries, trying to escape the golden reapers’ grasp.

Those that failed to bite hard enough to become hats were summarily executed.

“Golden reapers show no mercy to creatures clearly harmful to humans.”

For some reason, this thought crossed my mind.

When all the golden reapers were wearing miniature dinosaur hats, I stood up.

Putting on the full black reaper armor and raising my massive sword toward the sky, I projected determination.

“Extinction of ugly tyrannosauruses!”

“Extinction!”

The mini-reapers also happily chimed in with their determination.

Tubangtubang.

Dubangdubang. Dubangdubang.

And thus, I and the mini-reapers marched toward the dinosaur-filled jungle.

***

The girl spent a warm night nestled in the enlarged creature Mingming’s embrace.

Following Mingming’s guidance, she gently wandered through the jungle with the now-small creature cradled in her arms.

“I wonder where Mingming is leading me?”

Mingming seemed to have a clear destination in mind, but since they couldn’t communicate, she felt somewhat frustrated.

“Ming!”

Sometimes it felt like Mingming understood her words, but she quickly shook off such thoughts.

“Is Mingming an object or just an animal?”

To the girl, whether Mingming was an object or not was quite important.

Because it determined whether she could call it “Mingming” or not.

Though tempted to affectionately call out “Mingming-ah!”, she refrained since it might cause trouble if Mingming was indeed an object.

Its golden glowing eyes did suggest a high likelihood of being an object.

Lost in thought, she soon spotted the completely wrecked control room.

The pristine white outer walls were covered in dried blood, and the lingering metallic scent hung in the air.

Startled, she moved to investigate what had happened, but Mingming suddenly enlarged and blocked her way.

“Ming!”

Then, something began to emerge from the pitch-black jungle shadows.

It looked like a grotesque mash-up of dinosaurs and humans, carelessly kneaded together.

Most horrifying of all was its head.

From the mouth filled with sharp teeth protruded a disturbingly familiar face.

It was her colleague’s face from the James Space Station control room.

“Long time no see.”

“Long time no see.”

“Long time no see.”

That head kept endlessly repeating her colleague’s voice.