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Gray, though brimming with joy, could not hide her worry.
It was her first time as a mother, and she followed close behind Bahamut as he tested his wings, ready to catch him should he falter and fall.
While the eldest took to the skies, the rest of the nest began to stir.
One after another, the remaining eggs cracked and split, and six more hatchlings emerged into the world.
Each bore the silver scales of their mother, but with a unique difference, bold stripes of color etched into their bodies like marks of destiny.
Red, white, green, purple, silver, and gold.
Even Miraluz was momentarily taken aback.
For a single brood to display such diversity was extraordinary, and in his heart, he knew these hatchlings were no ordinary children.
"Perhaps," he thought, eyes narrowing, "these seven little dragons are fated for something greater than even their mother."
One by one, he gave them names.
The second male, marked in crimson, became Rouge.
The third, a female with snow-white stripes, was Blanc.
The fourth, a green-striped female, was Vert.
The fifth, cloaked in violet, was named Piper.
The sixth, a silver-marked male, became Silver.
And the seventh, the gold-striped youngest, was named Groudon.
The brood was complete, seven dragonlings, each bearing the strength of their bloodline and the promise of power yet to awaken.
And they were not alone.
Within days, the first great wave of hatching swept across Sona Island.
More than five thousand dinosaur eggs split open, unleashing the second generation of the Jurassic Alliance.
Their numbers dwarfed the first generation tenfold.
Every hatchling inherited the abilities of [Unlimited Growth] and [Rapid Growth], their bodies swelling larger by the hour, their intelligence blossoming like wildfire.
Soon, they would not merely be beasts; they would be soldiers, thinkers, and leaders in their own right.
The dynasty of dinosaurs was rising, and the world would tremble before it.
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Meanwhile, across the sea…
Kyushu Island, Land of the Cherry Blossoms.
"BOOM, !!"
Without warning, the ground convulsed violently.
The earth split open, swallowing buildings whole as towers and homes crumbled like children's toys.
Roads shattered, leaping skyward in jagged waves, cascading back down like a stone tsunami.
The super earthquake ripped across the island in mere moments, reducing entire cities to rubble.
Fires erupted. Mountainsides collapsed in roaring landslides.
Mud and seawater surged inland, tsunamis devouring the coastline.
Tens of thousands perished in the first hour alone.
And still, the ground would not rest.
Measured on the Richter scale, the quake had reached a devastating magnitude 9.0, the shockwaves spanning thousands of kilometers.
But what baffled scientists most was not its strength, but its movement.
The aftershocks pulsed outward from Kyushu like footsteps, creeping southwest along the Pacific Ring of Fire, as though something deep beneath the earth was walking.
Local geologists scrambled to explain it as an unprecedented natural disaster, the byproduct of tectonic fault lines. But Monarch knew better.
"This isn't geology," Dr. Ishiro Serizawa said grimly.
"This is a Titan."
Inside Monarch's Tokyo headquarters, he turned to a woman standing silently beside him.
Blonde hair curled over her shoulders, her expression sharp with determination yet shadowed by grief.
"Emma," Serizawa said. "The investigation in Kyushu will be entrusted to you."
Dr. Emma Russell bowed her head slightly.
"Understood, Doctor. I'll uncover the truth."
Once, she had started her research with her husband, Mark Russell, their work culminating in the creation of the ORCA system, a device that could communicate, or even control, Titans.
But tragedy had torn them apart.
Their son, Andrew, was killed during the recent MUTO incident in America, leaving scars that drove Mark to abandon Monarch in despair.
Emma stayed. She poured herself into her work, determined that her son's death would not be in vain.
The ORCA system was nearing completion, and if this earthquake truly was the work of a Titan, it might be humanity's only hope of surviving what came next.
Hours later, the roar of rotor blades filled the sky as Emma boarded a V-22 Osprey, bound for Kyushu.
Beneath the earth, something stirred.
As soon as Emma set foot on Kyushu Island, her breath caught.
What greeted her was no city, no civilization, only devastation.
Entire blocks lay flattened into dust and ash, the air thick with smoke and the acrid stench of burning.
It was a vision of hell on earth, where survivors stumbled like ghosts among the ruins, their cries drowned by the ceaseless rumble of aftershocks.
But one thing drew her attention above all.
At the heart of the destruction, near a shattered mountainside shrine, yawned a vast abyss.
The earth had split wide, leaving a bottomless black wound plunging into the depths of the planet.
Strange tremors throbbed from below, as though something was breathing.
Inside the ruined shrine, Emma uncovered fragments of truth.
Ancient murals stretched across the broken stone walls, depictions of a colossal beast locked in combat with a MUTO Prime.
She recognized the Titan enshrined here, once mistaken by ancient people for "Raijin."
In truth, it was Dagon, the same atomic dinosaur Monarch had unearthed years ago in the Philippines.
The murals told the story: Dagon had been defeated, impaled, and parasitized by a MUTO Prime, its lifeforce drained until death claimed it.
That parasite had vanished into the depths of the earth.
And now, Emma realized with a chill, it had awakened.
Only a creature of Alpha-tier power could cause an earthquake spanning thousands of kilometers.
The MUTO Prime had returned.
Humanity's nightmare had only just begun.
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Mariana Islands – Guam Naval Base
Far across the Pacific, another storm was brewing.
Guam's naval base had become one of America's last strongholds after the devastating attacks by Miraluz and his Jurassic Alliance.
Soldiers stationed there lived under constant dread, scanning the skies, half-expecting the shadow of Deathwing to descend at any moment.
That tension snapped when a trespasser was captured inside the base.
A grizzled man with a hardened stare. His name: Alan Jonah.
Once a British Army colonel, now the infamous leader of a global mercenary syndicate.
He was dragged into interrogation, but he only smirked at his captors.
"What is your purpose here?" the officer barked.
Jonah leaned forward, his voice low but brimming with grim satisfaction.
"You fools… don't you know? Something is coming. Not Miraluz, not the Deathwing."
"Something far worse."
The officer scoffed, though unease crept into his eyes.
"Lunatic…"
Jonah chuckled, a broken laugh that sent shivers through the room.
"You'll see soon enough."
He was thrown into a cell. The officer, unwilling to spread panic, kept Jonah's ravings to himself.
But by nightfall, the prophecy came true.
The ground split open.
"BOOM!"
An explosion of rock and soil tore through the center of the base.
Towers toppled, runways shattered, alarms blared.
Then came the sound, an inhuman, earth-rending screech that made every soldier clutch their ears in agony.
From the abyss, claws emerged.
Massive, yellow-brown appendages bristling with jagged barbs.
They hooked into the earth like siege weapons, pulling up something impossibly vast.
A head rose into view, triangular, armored, jaws lined with scything mandibles.
Its blood-red eyes burned in the dark, and its entire body was encased in a shell of obsidian-black chitin, ridged and plated like living armor.
Finally, with a shudder that rocked the island, the beast tore free of the earth.
The MUTO Prime.
The Earthquake Dragon Beetle.
103 meters tall. 12,000 tons of living destruction.
Its forelimbs, thick as cathedral spires, gleamed with the strength to tear through Titans or level cities in a single blow.
Its roar split the heavens:
"GAAAAAAAAHHH, !!"
The soldiers of Guam realized, with dawning horror, that Jonah had been right.
And the world had gained another Alpha.