Chapter 46 – Underwater Exploration

The male snow crab is happy these days.

Born in the sea near Korea, since he became an adult, the state of ‘full stomach’ has continued indefinitely.

Thanks to this, he has a large size that cannot be compared with his parents or his ancestors.

I ended up mating several times with females attracted by this. Soon, more than a million eggs containing his genes will hatch and spread throughout the world.

Not a few snow crabs are captured by humans before reaching this size.

Crab fishing boats sink with pieces of anchovies, sardines and mackerel in their pots, because no crustacean can resist the taste of fish carcasses.

After enjoying a dinner at the cost of one’s life, after a while, it is displayed in a mart in a steamer.

But this male snow crab avoided all such threats.

A large barrel that emits both an unpleasant iron smell and a faint smell of poetry right in front of your eyes.

The male snow crab crawls into the barrel without hesitation even today.

When I first found this barrel, there was a lot of meat to eat, and more than that, it was filled with many competitors.

As time passed and even the last piece of meat disappeared, the competitors left this place.

But the male snow crab knows that there is a secret chamber deep in the barrel.

Getting there is hard work, but it can be rewarded well.

The snow crab finally arrived at the promised room after completing a small winding passage.

The moment you enter the room, the strong smell hits your nostrils.

It is the smell of meat, the smell of corpses.

The crab’s little brain was immersed in ecstasy, as if it had been injected with drugs.

Right. Right.

The claws of both hands collide in front of each other and make a sound. The snow crab’s eyes gleamed with anticipation.

The prey in front of them is large and sturdy. It will provide ample nourishment for him to breed for years to come.

The mouth of the snow crab moves busily, tearing, biting, chewing and tasting the blown meat.

With that slight vibration, the hat the prey was wearing slipped off and slowly sank to the floor of the battle command room.

Moments later, the bruised eyeballs fall out of the bruised skull and lie next to the hat.

A few strands of optic nerve from the eyeball sway back and forth in waves from the movement of the index hand.

A black-brimmed hair embroidered with golden laurels.

This place where the male snow crab is in is not an iron trap. It was tens of thousands of times bigger and heavier than a trap.

This huge lump of metal has a long and beautiful streamlined body, and you can see the number 991 written on the front.

These are the words of the Korean Aegis destroyer, once called King Sejong the Great.

After a full meal, a male snow crab comes out and looks at the sea surface.

Today, the ‘King’ did not go. Could it be that he went somewhere else?

The king suddenly appeared one day and gave great gifts to all the sea creatures in the area.

When the king appeared, after a moment there was a roar that made his head shake, and then the unpleasant lumps of metal settled down.

But inside that lump of iron was filled with chunks of meat that smelled so lovely.

The king gave them prey, but he didn’t seem interested in taking them.

At first, it was inevitable that the sea creatures, who were overwhelmed and noticed, started to follow the king someday.

Far away in Cape Town, on the Atlantic Ocean, dolphins, sharks, seals, Cape gannets and Bryde’s whales form a bizarre alliance to hunt the tens of millions of sardines that embark on their annual migration.

The same thing is happening in South Korea’s territorial waters. Around the king, numerous sea creatures signed a strange truce.

To taste the delicious lean meat in the steel cage.

Cutlassfish, mackerel, flatfish, croaker, saury, flying fish, perch, cod, anchovy, mandarin fish, skate, filefish, crab, shrimp, lobster, vannamei, red crab, snow crab, snow crab, blue crab and many other seabed inhabitants.

For the first time, they meet a reversed relationship after thousands of years of being on the human table and having their bones and flesh separated.

A lot to eat.

Land meat that you can hardly taste.
It has superb taste.

As long as the king continues to give favors, there is no need to fight each other.

The male snow crab thought for a while about whether to go looking for the king, but decided to stay here.

Because there was enough meat left to eat on its own.

The male snow crab’s eyes caught something shiny on the sea surface.

It gave off an unpleasant smell of iron and rubber, and as it rushed forward, creating a splash of water, the startled snow crab hid itself under the sand.

* * *

The view of the underwater drone was transmitted to the large screen in the central control room.

A destroyer that once boasted a brilliant majesty is sunk beneath the sea.

It had a dent in its side, as if it had been hit by something strong, and it looked like it was 8 meters in diameter.

Thousands of dents rippled across the ship from its center.

The tens of thousands of cracks it caused would have been filled with seawater in an instant.

“I don’t think I got hurt by that guy who looked like a mantis clam…”

If it was hit by that nuclear punch, it would be better to break it in two instead of being crushed like that.

The first thing that Artemis and I pursued after the prisoner rescue and acceptance work was completed was sea exploration.

‘Boom!!!’

The roar that came vividly through the speakers. A nuclear punch that cut a large ship in two with one shot.

What the hell is that ridiculous behemoth?

It was a monster to the extent that there was no sense of incongruity even if it appeared in Pacific Rim.

It’s not that there’s no sense of incongruity, but it’ll be popular.

As if a boxer were playing with a speedball, Jaeger collapsed in a barrage of punches thrown one after another… Is there any audience who wouldn’t cheer for this?

Fortunately, he got off the ferry and disappeared right away, but the problem is that even the sea is not safe.

You have no idea what lurks beneath the seemingly peaceful surface of the sea.

Jokingly, on a full moon night, something resembling a fish might crawl up from under the sea and knock on the back door of the shelter.

For the safety of the city, it was necessary to check whether there were any infectious agents under the sea.

And the result.

“Is it clean?”

[It’s not that clean. It is truly beautiful.]

Artemis corrected my assessment.

As she said

We sent out underwater drones for underwater exploration and sent them hundreds of kilometers away, but there was nothing wrong with the sea.

Is it because fishing activities have completely stopped? It has become rich beyond being clean.

Seaweeds extending from the bottom of the sea toward the surface.

Small fish roam busily among the algae forest.

A precise drone camera captured eggshells clinging to the algae and showed a male fish spraying semen on them.

[It’s sandfish. Now is the spawning base.]

Artemis told me.

It looked like a bunch of silver grapes growing out of a pointed pine leaf.

Starfish floating in the sea, sea urchins rolling like chestnuts, corals emitting colorful lights, and jellyfish fluttering far away are truly a treasure trove of the ecosystem.

A continuation of life, harmony and beauty.

Not the slightest bit of eye mucus was visible.

The only things that spoil this landscape are the sunken ships.

Countless ships, including fishing boats, passenger ships, and warships, are sunk after being destroyed.

There are various causes, such as a large hole punched in, a squashed like a giant hitting a canned food, or a split in two.

However, except for those scrap metal, it is a perfect natural appearance.

“What happened? Why is the sea so fine?”

As far as I know, infection does not discriminate among organisms.

Beep-

At that moment, a large red dot was caught on the sonar at the bottom of the screen.

[Upper northeast large object detected.]

“Are you a bastard?”

It refers to the monster resembling a mantis shrimp that destroyed Perry.

[If you check it, you will know.]

“Wouldn’t it be a whale or a ship?”

[Moving at 35 knots under the sea. Neither.]

He manipulated the underwater drone and sent it to the target point.

The giant object came and went as if it was on patrol, but it happened to be near our drone, so we were able to run into it right away.

“Is it someone else?”

The figure captured by the drone’s camera is a giant stingray. To be precise, it was something resembling a stingray.

As far as I know, there are no stingrays that are 200 meters long. It doesn’t even have four red eyes burning with hatred.

It was walking around with its huge mouth open. Just like baleen whales feeding.

However, what he had was not a beard, but a bundle of long tentacles reminiscent of sea anemones. Each one of them wriggled hideously, as if it had its own will.

Beep-

Another movement was picked up by the sonar.

“Was there another one?”

[No, the one caught this time looks like a real whale.]

As Artemis said, a large whale appeared from the other side.

[It’s a reference whale.]

Right whale moved straight in the direction of the colossus.

“I will die there.”

I wanted to stop the dangerous approach, but there was no way. The moment you try to imagine the image of a torn apart whale spouting blood.

Contrary to my expectations, that did not happen. Rather, more than that happened.

Ki Woo Woong-

The monster, resembling a stingray, passed the right whale as it was, and the right whale waggled its tail while making a strange cry at the monster.

If it wasn’t because of my mood, it felt like a friendly greeting.

At that moment, the stingray monster turned towards us.

In the dark sea, the 4 eyes that seem to be on fire grow deeper.

The big mouth that could swallow a shark in one bite closed and protruded forward.

At the same time, the tentacles sprouting from the corners of the mouth convulsed at a tremendous speed, causing numerous ripples. It is as if hundreds of millions of water striders are dancing at once.

A powerful sonic arrow was fired from the middle of the ripple.

The sonic arrows flew tens of meters apart, creating circular ripples the size of an apartment building.

Artemis immediately performed an evasive maneuver, but to no avail. The speed of the sonic arrow was incomparably faster than that of torpedoes, and the size was also large.

[You can’t avoid this.]

Beep beep-

The video connection is disconnected and a loud warning sound is heard.

On the screen that showed the beautiful undersea environment just now, only the message “No signal” Is displayed on a black background.

The drone was destroyed by him.

Click.

The loud beeping stopped when Artemis disconnected.

“Did the destroyer get hit by that guy?”

[Maybe.]

Undersea exploration started for risk preparation.

Fortunately, there seemed to be no danger to the city, but instead a number of questions arose.

“Let’s clear things up for a minute. What we have seen so far.”

Knock knock.

I tapped the armrest with my index finger as I buried myself in the chair.

“The marine ecosystem is maintained as it was before the outbreak, check.”

[Rather, it has become richer. Because fishing activities have completely stopped.]

Artemis recorded the first thing I said on the control room screen.

“Only powerful super-sized infectants exist in the sea, check.”

[Unlike shelters that widely infect dogs, mice, and plants, universal infection did not occur in the sea.]

A second point was recorded.

“They don’t attack sea creatures, at least not whales, check.”

Also note the third

[But drones and ships attack, check.]

Fourth point so far.

It’s puzzling.

“What are these guys doing?”

The zombie virus in the movie is at least intuitive, but what about this guy’s…

When the touch panel was operated, the drone played the last recorded video repeatedly.

Burning eyes glaring at us.
What was in those eyes was clear hatred.
A whale passes peacefully in front of it.

The more I thought about it, the more my doubts grew.