Professor Serizawa noticed the miniature elephants in their hands. He blinked, then his face lit up with understanding. "Oh, I see—this is the phenomenon Verne described, isn't it?"
Bella nodded. "Yeah. These aren't actually baby elephants—they're full-grown adults. I just saw one of their calves back there, and it was even smaller. Verne's description of this place was 'small animals grow large, large animals grow small.' Everything here really does point to one conclusion: this might be where the Titans originated."
Godzilla, Mothra—one was just a lizard, the other a moth. Their original forms might not have been large creatures at all. It was this place—what Verne had called "The Mysterious Island"—that caused them to grow massive. Each then underwent its own extraordinary transformation before eventually becoming the Titans known today.
Bella believed they were standing in the Titans' starter zone. This was where they all began.
Serizawa considered it carefully. "The evidence is too thin. We can't jump to conclusions."
In truth, the evidence right in front of them was anything but thin—butterflies the size of hawks, ants the size of foals, plus the giant snakes, centipedes, and enormous rats they'd killed in the cavern. All of it testified to this place's abnormality. Whether any of it was directly linked to the Titans, however, Serizawa maintained they needed further proof.
"Hahaha!" Hobbs laughed. "You scientists and your wild claims. Antarctica?" He caught the dead-serious expression on Serizawa's face and his grin faltered. "...This is really Antarctica? But the temperature here feels about the same as Palau!"
Verne had almost certainly visited this place himself. He must have assumed he was still on an island, which was why he'd named it the Mysterious Island. But according to their calculations, they were in Antarctica.
What had created this anomalous environment? Magnetic fields? Something else entirely? They had no answers yet.
Serizawa didn't immediately reach for the satellite phone to call for support.
They decided to press deeper. Reporting to a national government wasn't among Monarch's mandatory protocols—at the very least, Monarch itself needed to know what was in here first.
Bella and Shaw played with the miniature elephants for a little while longer, then released them back into the jungle. The risk of bacteria or parasites made Bella reluctant to ship them to Arendelle just yet. The journey ahead was still long; she could collect them on the way back for proper study.
Leaving the cavern exit behind, they headed toward the distant volcano.
The vegetation here was enormous. Grass that would have been ankle-high in the outside world grew over a meter tall, with absurdly lush foliage. Any passing insect put the whole group on high alert—the sheer scale of the insects here was staggering.
"Now that's what I'm talking about! I love this place!" Shaw sat on the ground, panting hard.
She and Hobbs had just fought off a cockroach—no firearms, just crossbow bolts, bayonets, and rope—and killed the thing. A cockroach the size of an Alto hatchback.
"Too bad we can't bring Bumblebee out here." Shaw was missing the Autobot. With Bumblebee, their firepower would triple, and they'd have transportation to boot.
Bella smiled at that but said nothing. Bumblebee couldn't be brought to a place like this. The Transformers shouldn't learn too much about what lay inside the Earth—the implications were far too vast.
The giant cockroach was the weakest monster around here. A lizard standing over 3 meters (10 feet) tall and stretching more than 10 meters (33 feet) long had to be lured away by Bella's illusion magic. Without her intervention, the rest of the team would have been wiped out on the spot.
On their first day out of the cavern, Old Joe fell ill.
The old man refused Serizawa's offer to call for extraction.
"Let me rest here for a bit. I may look old, but my body's tough as nails. Two days and I'll be fine."
He insisted on staying. Bella agreed that the life energy in this place was extraordinarily dense—prolonged exposure wouldn't cure every ailment, but it would certainly bolster one's constitution.
The group worked together to build a shelter: logs, vines, and broad leaves, wedged into a natural tree hollow. They left him a handgun, a dozen or so rounds, and some of their food. The next morning, the four of them said goodbye to Old Joe and set out again.
"Hit!" Bella drew her bow. The arrow streaked like a shooting star and punched straight into one of the giant spider's compound eyes.
She loosed three arrows in rapid succession, driving back a spider at least two sizes larger than an Eight Immortals table.
Shaw and Hobbs abandoned any pretense of conserving ammunition. They shouldered their weapons, pulled the triggers, and emptied rounds into the spider's head.
The fight lasted less than thirty seconds, but it was terrifyingly close.
The creature's camouflage was so effective that Bella hadn't detected it at all. Like a predator out of a nightmare, it had positioned itself directly above them.
At least it was dead now.
"Professor, we're running low on ammunition," Hobbs said quietly.
They had been away from Palau for two months. It had been over ten days since they'd entered Antarctica. Between the difficult terrain and the ubiquitous oversized insects, more than half their ammunition was gone. Pushing further would be suicidal.
Bella added her voice to the argument. "Professor, winter's probably approaching. Let's document everything from this trip thoroughly and come back next year."
Serizawa was not an unreasonable man. Quite the opposite—years of dead ends and disappointments had made him deeply pragmatic.
Seeing that both Hobbs and Bella were ready to turn back, he knew that a university professor on his own wouldn't last a single day out here. Still, he made one last attempt: "Can't we hold out for just two more days?"
He gestured at their surroundings. "What if the city of Atlantis that Verne recorded is right nearby? I feel like we're so close to the truth."
Atlantis. The word stirred complicated feelings in all three of them. In Western culture, Atlantis carried a weight all its own. Whoever linked their name to a geographic discovery of that magnitude would stand alongside Magellan and Columbus in the history books.
Dead on their feet, the three of them were still tempted.
Even Hobbs wavered. He turned to Bella—by his reckoning, the only people with combat capability were Bella, Shaw, and himself. Bella and Shaw worked in seamless tandem, so no matter what, he needed both women's agreement before committing to a direction.
He leaned in to consult Bella in a low voice. Shaw suddenly appeared from a side path.
Shaw had a habit of wandering off to investigate anything unusual. This was no different.
Bella knew the real reason. That was genuine spirit sight—Shaw could see ghosts without the slightest psychological burden.
"Gentlemen," Shaw said, "look what I found." She held up an extremely weathered metal shield, its center bearing the unmistakable emblem of a trident.