A World Unknown: Wait...Is that a Dragon?!

Zachary woke up in a trance. What greeted him was the ship's familiar ceiling. He was riddled with injuries everywhere. Gently tracing up his chest, a few protruding bones could be felt. He winced in pain as he moved a bit on the stone-cold floor he was laying.

The last thing he could remember was being swallowed by an unstable wormhole that was imposed at the warp points spaceway masked with the powerful electromagnetic field that rendered their technology unable to perceive it; then he blacked out completely.

There was always an inexplicable occurrence in the universe at times, but he would have never thought that such a day where a man-made wormhole and a naturally occurring one would overlap together. And they hadn't taken notice of it!

So much for being Solar Systems' gathering of the best.

'Ughhh.' Zachary groaned as he propped himself a bit, while carefully observing his surroundings. The battleship's flickering lights messed with his vision, but that did not stop him from concluding that his battlecruiser was a mess.

"Ughh.... Battleship, ini--initiate status check, now!" How Zachary survived such a journey, where he was now, and how severe his injuries were that he could hardly even breathe was the last thing he could think of. He needed to know if the ship was okay. Can he use his mecha to navigate the space? The answer was a hard f---ing NO. Without it, he was truly done for.

The reply was only an uncomfortable silence. There was only stillness in the surroundings, devoid of any sound or noises.

Zachary slowly crawled backward, using his arm strength to propel him to move forward while ignoring the seething pain he was experiencing, all the way to the medical hatch located just below the command seat. Opening it roughly, he immediately grabbed a vial of syringe marked with the word 'morphine' and injected it into his left arm. He gasped a mouthful of cold air as the painkiller kicked in immediately, giving him an ample amount of leeway to slowly loosen his clothing to breathe more comfortably while panting.

Checking out his injury; other than some superficial cuts, there were a few broken bones and ribs here and there. Grabbing a few more medications, Zachary then felt slightly better.

"Battleship, initiate status check!" He tried again, which in turn was welcomed with another round of silence. With the system being down, and the gravity still on the normal levels, it could only be explained that Zachary landed somewhere safely. After checking out that the oxygen levels were normal, he finally relaxed a bit.

Zachary proceeded to dress up his wounds. With his ribs broken, he would need a thorough check, later on. Picking himself up on the cold hard floor, he slowly limped on the way to the engine room.

What he needed to do now is to hard reboot the system manually. After an hour or so of fiddling, Zachary was able to finally activate the battleship again. He then hobbled slowly back at the command room and attempted to shout out an order again.

"Initiate Status Check!" Finally, the request was finally accepted and a holographic interface was shown right in front of Zachary, with the complete overview of the Battleship Cruiser's status. There were a few red-shaded parts on most of the rooms shown in the ship's diagram indicating that those places were not functioning normally anymore.

Studying it completely, it seems that all of the ship's thrusters, including the backup ones, were destroyed entirely. Also, the energy levels were slowly deteriorating as we speak. Other than the storage room, the equipment room, and most of the defensive installations of the ship, everything else was destroyed.

Zachary may need to thoroughly check it himself personally if it can still be fixed. He sighed after coming up with such an answer.

Traveling in a transient state at the speed of light, really took a huge toll on the ship. It also seemed that he had crashed into somewhere which further drove the wedge to the already broken battleship, turning it into a huge scrap metal of a mess.

Activating the cameras surrounding the battleship, it was pitch dark. Triggering the night vision mode on next, it seems that the whole ship was buried underground.

True to his guess, it appears that due to the huge force of the rough landing, Zachary's ship was planted belowground.

He smiled wryly while looking at the situation he was in. Zachary felt that this was a blessing in disguise. At least he was in a secure location right now. Currently, what he needed to do was to recover.

After knowing that he was safe, Zachary felt a bit dizzy, then he blacked out completely and slammed himself on the metallic floor with a big thump.

__

Zachary spent his days recovering from his injuries. While doing so he was sorting out the supplies that he has right now, be it equipment, food, water, or weapons Zachary thoroughly listed it all down while waiting for the report of the scout drone that he sent to check out the surroundings of where he landed. After a few days of waiting, a notification of the drone completing its initial scouting was given.

"T-this...! It can't be!" The drone's scope was a 200-kilometer scout range. After checking out all four directions, what was sent back was stunning.

Lush green trees were present everywhere. It was not something that any of the individuals residing from the Solar System has ever seen personally. Even for Zachary himself, this was a first. Except for images available in history classes, and some illustrations that are widely shared by ordinary citizens on what the Earth looked like a thousand years ago, such an abundance of trees were impossible to see now. Such a view was so captivating that he let out a shout of joy due to this discovery.

The decline of natural resources was a given. With humanity living longer than usual, and the population increasing even with the Birth control and Population Policy widely advocated, a lot of problems still occurred. It was a pressing matter that made the government give so much importance to exploring and colonizing new planets.

Sadly, a planet like Earth was something so rare that only a few were discovered over the centuries, and it was at most 40% to 60% match.

He finally did it! A planet like Earth, that he was the first to discover! A Planet so similar to Earth that--wait. His joy grew to a halt.

"What are these creatures? Are these monsters, or are they the first inhabitants of this planet?" Zachary mumbled as he zoomed in on the image report the drone sent. It was a different planet altogether, so having a different ecosystem wasn't a cause for worry. But having a forest filled with monsters that made dinosaurs, a creature from the beginnings of time, look cute was unprecedented.

Different kinds of plants could be seen--some plants could even be seen walking. This made Zachary feel a bit dizzy. This wasn't a different planet altogether, this... this... might as well call it a nightmare-ish place!

The walking plant which was two meters in height easily caught a small creature using its vines. It opened up its petal-like head brimmed with thorny teeth and swallowed it whole, it slowly munched at the poor thing in gusto, before proceeding to stand there unmoved like a plant should be.

Zachary gave the strange creature a peculiar look before moving to inspect more of the image feed that was sent.

There seem to be no more sightings of any lifeforms other than these monstrosities. Zachary grew curious as he checked each image thoroughly. Were there humans or any intelligent beings on this planet? Or was this place in its initial stages like any of the other ones that were discovered in the past?

Then an unexpected thing happened. The scouting drone that was sent was cut off of its signal.

'What? Was there a malfunction of some sort? That's odd.' Zachary thought

After checking out the last data feed the drone sent, a video with a huge flying serpentine-like creature could be seen, flapping its wings towards the drone in a frenzy. And then--it gobbled the drone in one bite, cutting off the video form report that was sent to a halt.

"Ahem.. I might be hallucinating. Haha." The Master Seargent laughed weakly.

Surely... what he saw wasn't a dragon, right?!