On the roiling surface of the ocean, a tempest raged with wind, rain, lightning, and thunder—a scene straight out of the apocalypse.
A warship was tossed about on the waves, at one moment engulfed by the sea, the next thrown high into the air by a towering crest.
Pan Jianguo sat in a cabin on the warship, hands clamped onto a nearby handle. He gritted his teeth, fighting with all his might to keep from being thrown aside.
The warship was filled with fully armed soldiers, their faces tense. Against the awesome power of nature, all they could do was fight to stay upright and avoid being tossed into the ocean.
The cold, the hunger, the exhaustion, the fear of death—it was all completely real, far beyond anything Pan Jianguo’s imagination could have conjured.
As one of the world’s leading physicists, Pan Jianguo had previously heard mention of the "True Apocalypse Game" from a colleague while they were drinking late one night.
At the time, he had dismissed it as drunken rambling and hadn’t taken it seriously in the slightest.
After all, if such a massive secret organization truly existed, it would almost certainly be common knowledge by now.
Besides, this so-called Salvation Army sounded just like the Mount Hsuan Hermitage or the secret histories of the Rothschild Family—tabloid fodder, plain and simple.
But when a blood-red eye icon lit up on Pan Jianguo’s phone last night, everything changed.
At first, Pan Jianguo thought it was some kind of prank, or perhaps an act of espionage by an enemy nation.
After all, the knowledge possessed by a physicist of his caliber was a priceless treasure to any nation; he himself was practically a national asset.
He had been about to delete the icon, but the app immediately presented him with information he was powerless to refuse.
It was a formula—a physics formula. To be precise, a quantum physics formula!
The perfection of this formula was unlike anything he had ever seen. The accompanying notes and explanations made Pan Jianguo’s breath quicken.
As a leading expert and a global authority in the field of quantum physics, he knew instantly that if humanity could grasp and implement the principles within this formula, it would represent a paradigm shift for human civilization.
Humanity would be able to create Space Wormholes—and perhaps even achieve time travel!
For humanity today, its significance was tantamount to primitive man discovering electricity.
’The True Apocalypse Game... it really exists!?’
Without a moment’s hesitation, Pan Jianguo followed the app’s instructions, logged into his Other Shore virtual reality system, and entered.
If one could learn the Way in the morning, one could die content in the evening.
For him, this quantum physics knowledge—so far beyond humanity’s current technological level—was a fatal attraction.
Though he was a physicist who didn’t normally play games, Pan Jianguo did have some experience with VR systems, as he used them for microscopic modeling.
Still, nothing could have prepared him for what happened next.
The moment he selected "True Apocalypse Game" and entered, he was instantly transported to the roiling sea, inside the violently pitching warship.
Everything was so realistic that he was hit with a powerful wave of seasickness and almost threw up.
Just then, the storm began to subside slightly. A colossal shadow emerged from behind a nearby wave—it was another frigate!
Only then did Pan Jianguo realize that countless other warships were also cutting through the waves on the dark, surrounding sea.
Frigates, destroyers, cruisers, aircraft carriers, supply ships... thousands upon thousands of warships were traversing the storm-tossed ocean, all heading toward some unknown destination.
He looked up to see a sky blotted out by escorting aircraft. There were thousands of them, a fleet so vast it reminded Pan Jianguo of the massive bomber formations from World War II.
He, too, was dressed in a sailor’s uniform.
’This is the prelude to a great battle. We’re heading to the front lines!’
"Old Pan, get to your gunnery station! What are you standing there frozen for? Scared stiff!? Get a move on if you don’t want to die!"
The voice belonged to a square-faced man, clearly a superior officer, who was frowning as he spoke to Pan Jianwei.
’He’s a game NPC!’ Pan Jianguo realized.
’But judging by his reactions and mannerisms, he’s completely lifelike. I have no idea what kind of engine this True Apocalypse Game is running on, but it’s incredibly powerful.’
’It’s practically a second life.’
Although he had no idea why a physicist like him was being ordered to man a cannon, he still complied and ran to a gunnery station, his anticipation for the game’s mission growing.
The "gunnery station" was a square chamber at the rear of the deck, large enough for three people.
In front of the chamber was a long electromagnetic slide rail, with an energy accelerator at the rear. He could even see the silvery gleam of Kinetic Energy Bullets.
’It’s an Electromagnetic Railgun!’
Pan Jianguo knew that the Electromagnetic Railgun was humanity’s ultimate black tech, a superweapon developed to counter the new tentacled monsters.
Conventional weapons had little effect; only an Electromagnetic Railgun could pierce the creatures’ bodies.
The entire fleet seemed to be sailing north. Their destination was obvious.
’We’re going to the Space Wormhole to engage the monsters!’
’Why is a real-world event happening inside the True Apocalypse Game?’
He remembered reading that just a few days ago, Eagle Country’s Pacific Fleet had been completely annihilated near the Undersea Space Wormhole. Their opponent had been just a single tentacle.
’Is the True Apocalypse Game trying to reenact that event?’
’With this overwhelming armada of warships and planes, fighting a single tentacle should be far too easy.’
’Maybe it’s a simple, easy-mode scenario since I just started the game?’
As the thought crossed his mind, the distant sea surface suddenly began to churn as if boiling. A wave shot up, a hundred meters high, and continued to climb. In the blink of an eye, it was over five hundred meters tall and still rising!
This was no mere wave. It was a mountain of water!
And within that mountainous wave, a colossal black shadow could be faintly seen, its shape suggesting tentacles and limbs writhing beneath the surface.
At the same time, to the port and starboard bows, and to the east of the fleet, similar mountains of water erupted from the sea. The tallest towered over a thousand meters high as they roared toward the human fleet!
"Lock target, 32 degrees dead ahead! Prepare to fire!" A command came through the communication system. The men at the gun station immediately began to aim the Electromagnetic Railgun and lock on.
Missiles screamed from the surrounding warships, streaking toward the mountains of water.
The aircraft overhead had already dropped their payloads of precision-guided bombs, sending them plummeting toward the watery peaks.
The sea ahead and the dozens of watery mountains erupted in massive plumes of spray. Flames even flashed beneath the surface, looking for a moment like sparks encased in crystal—a scene of terrible beauty.
The bombardment slowed the advance of the water mountains. The seawater on their surface sloughed away, revealing what lay within.
They were monsters that resembled giant-eyed octopuses, their bodies covered in sharp, jagged carapaces. Their thick tentacles and limbs writhed like ropes and scythes from Hell itself. From their huge, lamprey-like maws came low, maddening roars that made the very surface of the ocean tremble.
The precision-guided bombs and missiles raining from the sky erupted in fire and smoke, but each explosion only covered a fraction of the monsters’ bodies.
They were simply too massive. So massive that an aircraft carrier was but a toy boat in their presence. So massive that the sight of them triggered a primal megalophobia in the humans, leaving them trembling and struggling to breathe.
"The World Beast swarm has appeared! Commence focused fire! Energy Concentration Cannons, Electromagnetic Railguns, aim for the target at 45 degrees dead ahead! Fire!" a deep voice commanded over the comms.
’So these monsters are called World Beasts!’ Pan Jianguo thought.
VMMMM! With a deep thrum, a nearby cruiser fired a brilliant Energy Beam as thick as a barrel, which instantly slammed into one of the World Beasts.
Simultaneously, volleys of Electromagnetic Kinetic Energy Bullets and beams from the Energy Concentration Cannons lanced out from the fleet, all converging on that same World Beast!
’Just looking at the brightness of those Energy Concentration Cannon beams, you can tell they’re packing incredible power!’
The World Beast’s hard carapace cracked under the concentrated barrage. Green blood sprayed out as it let out a series of low roars.
Seeing this, the commander seemed satisfied and issued another order: "Maintain focused fire!"
From the squadrons in the sky, more Energy Beams and Kinetic Energy Bullets rained down, a veritable thunderstorm of firepower.
The World Beasts, which had just struck terror into the hearts of the humans, were suddenly on the defensive, howling in pain.
Pan Jianguo fired his own Electromagnetic Railgun, a thrill of satisfaction running through him.
But that was all it was.
The World Beasts’ roars suddenly changed. Thick arcs of electricity erupted across their bodies, radiating outward in all directions!
A violent electromagnetic storm instantly swept over every warship on the sea and every aircraft in the sky.
All the electronic systems, humming with power just a moment ago, went dark in an instant—short-circuited and completely dead.
The fury of the electromagnetic storm sent a numbing jolt through Pan Jianguo’s body. Every hair on his body stood on end, as if he’d been struck by lightning.
The electronics on his frigate failed in an instant.
"The sky! Look at the sky! Oh my god!" a comrade beside him screamed, his voice laced with terror and despair.
Pan Jianguo looked up. The once-mighty air fleet that had blotted out the sun had been completely disabled by the electromagnetic storm. Losing power, the aircraft spiraled down from the heavens, falling into the sea like so many withered leaves in the wind...