Epoch of Twilight

The sun slowly rose in the horizon and the fog lifted in the forest. A new day had begun.

On a piece of open grassland, a gigantic monster was holding a giant corpse in its mouth, walking towards the strange tree. The area around the tree was full of corpses. They were piling up like a hill, covering almost the whole tree.

These corpses were nothing. There were even more bodies by the entrance of the cliff, waiting for the monster to move them.

The high intensity and repetitive activity together with the high volume of the corpses were already making the violent monster impatient. Occasionally, it would do something to release its frustration, like tear the dead bodies apart and swallow them down to its stomach.

Of course, it would not do that frequently. Most of the time, it was very well-behaved and carried out its daily job carefully. It had had a few bloody lessons before, but its horrible owner was not there at the moment.

Sometimes, when the monster dropped the corpses on the ground, it would stare at the fruit on the tree as if there was something attractive about them, but it never went near them.

The soil around the strange tree had been soaked deeply by the blood of the corpses, and the air was filled with the strong smell of blood. Some kind of translucent silk like mycelium seemed to have been awakened by the bloody smell. Since three in the morning, they had started to stretch out from the roots of the tree and wrap tightly around the corpses.

When the silk-like mycelium started to eat the corpses, the thread on the trunk crept slightly in yellow and purple colors. From afar, it looked like the trunk was rotating.

Inside a cave, somewhere in the middle of the cliff, there was a heavy snoring sound that sounded like it was being played by an orchestra.

After being busy the whole night, everyone was exhausted and had fallen asleep early.

There was nothing much to do early in the night, but they started to get busy later. They needed to clean up their new camp and throw all the giants’ corpses down from the passage of the cliff.

In such hot weather, if they were to leave the corpses unattended, they would get smelly and rotten and attract a variety of insects and parasites. No one wanted to sleep near smelly, rotten corpses in their new camp.

The giants were not light by any means. They were about five to six meters tall and really burly. Each of them weighed almost a ton, so it was impossible for just one person to move a body. It took at least two or more people to even push one.

When all their hard work was over, everyone was completely exhausted. As soon as they were done cleaning up the corpses, they immediately fell asleep. Even Luo Yuan, who had a superhuman physique, felt a little tired. However, instead of going to sleep, he opened up the system log.

"Current Mission: D Level Special Mission: Destroy the Giant Tribe and kill all intelligent creatures in it.”

“Note: This is a special task. The actual difficulty has been decreased by one level.”

“Time Limit: None”

“Task Status: Completed”

“Evaluation: Excellent"

“Name: Luo Yuan”

“Completion: 100%”

“Basic Experience Bonus + 9,600 * 100%”

“Rating: Excellent, Experience + 9,600 * 100%”

“Experience: 5,520/153,600”

“Battle Beast: Giant Lizard”

“Completion: 0%”

“Basic Experience Bonus + 9,600 * 0%”

“Rating: None, Experience + 4,800 * 0”

“Experience: 1,140/19,200”

“You have upgraded!”

Luo Yuan was stunned for a while. He was both happy and surprised. He had not expected an upgrade, but two consecutive, perfectly completed D-level tasks had increased his experience and led directly to one. It was a pleasant surprise that even lightened the burden of the curse he had suffered.

He hastened to open the properties panel and look at the extra attribute point and five skill points. He could not help but laugh. It took him five whole minutes to calm down.

When he finally did, he closed his eyes and scowled, his face looking slightly serious.

“In the past, whenever I upgraded, I did not seem to cause me such a big mental fluctuation. It seems like the existence of the curse is greatly affecting my Will. A part of my Will is being restricted by the curse, and once there is a trigger, my emotions get out of control."

“This issue cannot be ignored anymore. It should be resolved as soon as possible, otherwise I might end up doing something shameful in the future.” Luo Yuan’s expression darkened as he imagined a scene where he humiliated himself in front of everyone and lost his prestige.

He tried to stay calm and opened up the properties panel again. He looked at all the properties, but they seemed to be fairly distributed. Other than the bonus of the "Earth Stomp" and the "Heart of the Ghost Tree", his Strength, Dexterity and Physique were all 14 points. On the sub-property front, other than his Will, which was 15 points, all other properties were at 13 points. However, that was not a big issue. He already had his own plans for Intelligence. Perhaps there would be a breakthrough after that round.

What he couldn’t decide was whether to allocate his extra point to Dexterity or Will.

Considering that he was cursed, if he allocated the point to Will, the curse would be suppressed or even dissipated. However, Will was already a very high property, and he always improved it with his personal breakthroughs.

Thus, it seemed a bit of a waste to allocate that point to Will.

"I would rather spend some more time cursed. If I’m able to kill so many creatures, I don’t believe I won’t be able to break a curse." Luo Yuan smiled as he made a decision.

He upgraded Dexterity to 15 points.

As his body heat quickly subsided, he slowly opened his eyes. His surroundings had become more quiet. Even the sound of snoring seemed like a melody. The world suddenly seemed to move half a beat slower, as if he had entered a faster time dimension.

He opened his palm to feel the air, and it somehow felt in closer contact with his skin. He could clearly sense that it was harder than before. It had a flowing texture to it as he squeezed slightly, letting it scatter from his fingers and fly everywhere. He suddenly seemed to be able to catch it, so that’s exactly what he did.

He clenched his fist, producing a popping sound. The air around his fist felt agitated and turbulent, as if it had just exploded because of his pinch.

His 15-point Dexterity was 7.5 times higher than ordinary people’s, The average person walked 7.5 times slower. All physical phenomena in that time dimension began to reveal their essence to him. It was as if Luo Yuan was watching a film. Everything was demonstrated in front of him in a more realistic and clear manner.

He stood up and walked out of the cave. He did not realize that his speed was already the equivalent of an ordinary person’s jogging speed.

The world outside seemed a little strange. Dust fell slowly in front of him, the branches shook slightly in the breeze, and the thick air that surrounded him made him feel like he had jumped out of the world and was looking at everything as an outsider.

Obviously, he would need some time to get used to the side-effects of his high Dexterity. This time the effects were stronger, so it would be even more difficult to adjust than before.

Once Luo Yuan had slightly adapted to the feeling of his high Dexterity, he started to plan how to lift the curse.

He sat cross-legged, his eyes slightly closed, trying to get his mind to calm down completely.

However, even these simple actions seemed particularly difficult for him now. The curse caused all sorts of horrible hallucinations to form in his mind whenever he closed his eyes.

Dying people screaming, blaming gazes, ferocious roars... All kinds of horrible images appeared one after the other. Of course, those things had no big impact on Luo Yuan, but they seriously interfered with his peace of mind. He felt just like a man who was ready to fall asleep, but was suddenly awoken by a high pitch speaker playing beside his ears.

Luo Yuan tried to calm down for a long time, but failed and ended up getting even more upset. If he took it too lightly, he could probably shield himself from external interferences, but the curse was deeply planted inside his soul, so calming down was not as easy as he’d originally thought.

He stood up and walked back and forth for a while. When he started to calm down, he sat down crossed-leg once again.

He knew that this was a fight against his own spirit and Will. If he gave up, he would also lose the fight.

He thought for a moment, but this time he did not rush. Instead, he amused himself by watching his hallucinations.

He found that the hallucinations caused by the curse were very simple. They were mostly short-screen, the picture rather blurred and fleeting. Of course, there were also longer scenes and pictures that were relatively clear. Apparently, human Will got stronger when humans were about to die.

The longest hallucination lasted no more than a second before it changed quickly to another one.

In less than ten minutes, Luo Yuan had already watched them all. When he was finished, he went on to watch them a second time, a third one, a fourth one...

Every time he watched them very carefully. By the fifth time, he had already figured out the underlying law of these hallucinations and was able to memorize the sequence and content of each scene.

He found that the effect of the curse was actually quite mechanical and rigid, like some sort of standard procedure.

If the human brain was a computer, then the curse would be the virus overloading the computer. If the virus burned the motherboard, the computer, or in this case the human, would die. If the virus caused a system crash, then the human would be driven to madness. Even the smallest impact would slow down the speed of the computer and affect its performance. Luckily, Luo Yuan was strong, so he was only suffering a decline in his performance.

He opened his eyes to rest for a while before he continued watching the hallucinations.

He watched them a fifth time, a sixth time, a seventh time... It was like entering a magical world. He kept watching the scenes carefully, even after he had memorized them and was able to describe them in detail.

He was getting tired, an indescribable boredom rising from the bottom of his heart.

He did not want to watch anymore.

The hallucinations were still playing in his mind, but he was too familiar with every scene and detail. It felt like he was being hypnotized. He was able to ignore them now. There was no fluctuation in his mind anymore, he had calmed down completely.

He had finally achieved peace of mind.