บท 1: CH-1. Beginning
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There was no sun or moon in the sky, and no sense of time or place on the earth.
This was a dark space of eternal silence.
In the vastness, there was no sound and no movement.
James's consciousness felt very cold, his memory tangled and confused. The last image he could recall, like a fading scene from a movie, was of watching *Godzilla* in a cinema. After that, there was nothing.
What was a movie theater? What was *Godzilla*?
James couldn't remember why he thought of these words.
He couldn't think much further because he felt so cold. Cold enough that his soul seemed as if it would freeze and shatter.
He needed rest.
But then, in that eternal darkness, a dim light appeared from an unknown direction, piercing the void.
The source of light began to spread, illuminating the entire space.
Even in his foggy state, James felt it.
And then, the silence was shattered as the light exploded, sweeping across the void in a burst of radiance.
In that moment, James's consciousness was completely extinguished.
When he woke again, it felt like a dream. James was enveloped in warmth, as though wrapped in a hot spring on a winter's night.
Time lost meaning, drifting in that comfortable haze, until one day, James finally awoke fully.
In that moment, he found himself floating on a dark, turbulent sea.
His eyes opened wide as he stared at the world before him, feeling that everything was surreal.
The sky was covered with thick, dark clouds, roiling with an endless storm. Fiery plumes erupted from the seabed, filling the air with the scent of sulfur, and huge waves churned the ocean, making it appear murky and menacing.
This was an unknown, apocalyptic world.
James didn't want to accept the reality of what he was seeing. He was still disoriented, his mind thick with confusion.
Subconsciously, instinctively, he tried to escape.
He moved his limbs like a lizard.
No—he was a lizard.
A strange little creature that could navigate the scalding sea without fear.
His skin was rock-gray, he had a long tail and short limbs, and his entire body resembled that of a freshly hatched lizard.
But somehow, this seemingly insignificant creature could survive in this harsh world. Perhaps that in itself was a small miracle.
Under the sea, he could survive without needing to surface, even when nearby volcanoes erupted. He might be flung through the water, only to land safely in the warmth of the sea again.
The heat from the volcanoes felt almost pleasant. Sometimes, when he saw lava spilling from an island in the distance, James was tempted to curl up beside it and rest.
His mind was foggy, a mix of instincts driving him to abandon the dangerous allure of these volcanic currents and flee as fast as he could.
Days blurred into nights as he swam through the water, observing the bleak surroundings. When he grew tired, he'd drift along with the currents, only to awaken and continue his journey.
Time ceased to matter.
Finally, James grew completely exhausted. Like a lizard adrift on the water, he floated with his belly to the sky.
One day, James woke with sudden clarity.
He remembered his past as a human and understood his memories of becoming this lizard, witnessing the desolate landscape around him.
With renewed awareness, James lifted himself from the seabed. He glanced down at his body and limbs, feeling a pang of melancholy.
"Am I really a lizard now?"
He didn't need to breathe air, wasn't afraid of intense heat. What kind of lizard was he?
These questions lingered only for a moment; hunger overpowered them.
He was so hungry that his whole body, every cell, urged him to find food immediately.
Glancing around, he noticed the waters had grown clearer since his last awakening. Sunlight filtered through the ocean, illuminating the area.
James looked up, thinking of swimming to the surface, but then spotted a group of odd crustaceans scuttling along the seafloor. They looked like horseshoe crabs but with extra pairs of legs and two long tentacles.
"What are those things? Are they poisonous?"
He hesitated briefly, but hunger swiftly silenced any further thought.
His instincts took over, and he lunged forward.
James was much larger than these creatures; it was like an adult confronting children.
Hunting them was easy. His sharp claws tore through their shells, spreading blue blood through the water.
The scene was gruesome, his eating raw and savage.
One wasn't enough to satisfy him; he devoured over a dozen of them before his hunger subsided.
The taste was unpleasant, fishy and briny, but his body accepted it without issue. He didn't even feel the urge to vomit.
"Guess that's that." He muttered, glancing at the scattered shells around him. His stomach now full, he turned his eyes toward the ocean surface.
Gathering his limbs close, he swam with ease, his tail propelling him faster than any fish.
Finally, after a short while, James broke through the surface. Water sprayed around him as he looked up at the sky, catching his first glimpse of the sun in this strange world.
The sun in the sky was blindingly bright.
James squinted, feeling a wave of nostalgia as he observed the world before him.
The clouds in the sky weren't particularly thick, but the air was filled with a familiar scent of sulfur.
Turning his head slightly and glancing at the horizon, James finally identified the source of the sulfuric smell.
Not far from him, in the vast ocean, lay a small island, spewing thick smoke into the air.
However, despite the smoke, no flames were visible, leaving the surroundings strangely quiet.
The sea was calm, with only gentle ripples swaying with the sea breeze.
Drawn to the island and its sulfuric scent, James instinctively swam closer.
When he finally climbed ashore, a deep, primal satisfaction surged through him.
The island was scorching hot.
No vegetation grew, and there was no sign of marine life. Before reaching the shore, James had noticed a vast number of bubbles rising from the boiling water surrounding the island.
These bubbles appeared from cracks and crevices in the seafloor, bursting at the surface and creating a thick mist around the island.
Gazing at the desolate landscape, James decided to make his way to the island's volcanic crater.
The intense heat, coupled with his body's instincts, seemed to tell him that this environment might be perfect for his growth.
Though the idea seemed absurd, James—who had regained all his mature rationality by connecting it to memories from a past life—found it strangely plausible.
What kind of creature was he, anyway?
A regular lizard?
Looking down at his limbs and the shape of his body, James felt an odd helplessness.
There was no way he could be an ordinary lizard.
He didn't need air, and he didn't fear extreme temperatures.
Could this be a mere lizard?
Based on memories of his past life, no such creature existed.
James was now immersed in the magma within the crater.
He found the molten lava even more comfortable than seawater.
At one point, he became so comfortable that he drifted into a deep sleep.
When he awoke, he exerted a bit of effort and found himself shedding a layer of skin.
Yes, James had fallen asleep, and when he awoke, he began to shed.
Without knowing exactly how much he had grown, he climbed out of the crater and realized he was now large enough to nearly fill it.
It took considerable effort to squeeze himself free from the crater's mouth.
Lacking any reference points, James couldn't precisely gauge his new size.
He did know, however, that he was at least six times larger than before.
He confirmed this by looking at a massive rock near the shore. When he first came ashore, his body length was about a tenth of the rock.
Now, his body stretched over half the rock's length.
Approaching the boulder, James studied it for a moment, then slashed at it with his forelimbs.
His claws carved deep grooves into the stone.
Sharp!
Incredibly sharp.
James lifted his forelimbs and examined the grooves in the rock, momentarily lost in thought.
Had he become a monster?
He wasn't sure whether to feel happy or sad about this transformation.
In this desolate world, surrounded by ocean except for a single, small island, every day felt like an eternity.
With nothing changing in his environment, James tried to entertain himself to pass the time.
On one of his rare hunts in the ocean depths, he managed to capture two large marine creatures.
Although they only matched the size of his forelimbs, they were still considered sizable prey. It had taken James several days of underwater exploration to find them.
One of them was a crustacean that resembled a trilobite.
The other was a giant Anomalocaris.
With two satisfying catches, James returned to the crater, skewered his prey on his claws, and roasted them over the lava.
As he tasted cooked food for the first time in ages, he felt moved to tears.
This was it—this was the taste he remembered.
Delicate, slightly sweet, with the natural saltiness of the ocean.
It was delicious.
But the meal was far too small; even taking careful, measured bites, it only lasted five or six mouthfuls. It felt like nibbling on toothpick-sized bits of meat—hardly enough.
Eager to relive that taste, James rushed back to the sea, determined to gather more food.
Whether big or small, he caught every creature in his path, stacking them up on the shore before carrying them back to the island.
This cycle repeated who knows how many times.
Eventually, he had gathered a veritable mountain of seafood near the crater.
Then, he put his plan into action.
He tossed the seafood into the boiling seawater on the edge of the island, where the scalding heat acted like a natural cauldron.
After waiting a while, he devoured the cooked seafood in a single gulp, not caring whether it was fully cooked.
With his mouth full of tender, salty protein and the crunchy texture of shells, James finally felt truly alive.
Living within magma meant he never felt hungry, but such a monotonous existence felt empty.
Now, with his mouth filled with savory seafood, he felt an immense sense of satisfaction.
Days passed in a steady rhythm: rest in the magma at the bottom of the crater, hunt in the ocean when hunger struck.
Until one day, long after he had grown more sluggish and sleepy, he finally drifted into a deep, lasting sleep within the magma.
During this slumber, his body underwent further transformation, encased within a thick cocoon-like layer, akin to an egg.
When he woke up again, it would be in a new form, a rebirth.
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Time flew by, and the earth's crust continued to shift and change.
A thousand years, ten thousand years, perhaps even a hundred million years passed.
Finally, vibrant algae began to spread through the oceans.
This bloom was a positive sign for some but a nightmare for others.
Many native anaerobic organisms began to die, replaced by a new wave of oxygen-breathing giants.
At night, the algae glowed, casting a gentle light over the ocean, as though capturing moonlight from the sky and transforming countless waters into a dreamlike world.
Under the glow of these algae, strange marine creatures evolved, taking on bizarre and mutated forms.
Some grew into massive fish, others into varied sea beasts.
A few even ventured onto land, gradually transforming into various types of animals, birds, and unusual creatures.
Around this time, vast continents began to rise from the oceans, while the seas slowly retreated toward the poles, where they began to freeze.
Over unknown eons, as mountains rose, new species emerged and evolved into forms unrecognizable from their origins.
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