Epoch of Twilight

The building was 200 meters around and more than 100 meters tall. The surface was smooth with no signs of cracks, patterns, designs or writings, present its perfect curve. It was like a dark, round ball that was flipped inside out.

Such a building was insignificant before the apocalypse, as bigger and more eccentric constructions were everywhere. But at that moment, the place was infested with mutated beasts and there was no sign of mankind to be seen. In the bushes, this stand-alone building in the valley appeared to be out of place. It looked very peculiar in the night.

Luo Yuan watched in silence for a while, controlled his breath and got ready to move forward to attack. When he was only a few hundred meters away, he felt something odd.

It was too quiet.

The usual sound of insects were barely even there. All the noises that he had heard were coming from far away. Suddenly, he realized that there was not a single mutated creature in sight all along the journey to the building.

In shock, he looked around immediately. Besides plants, there was nothing else.

"This is not normal. Could it be a poisonous gas or some other tactics?" he thought in alarm.

His heart raced in his chest. He did not want to risk anything so he used Will to inspect his body. He checked his body carefully and found that nothing strange had affected him to dull his senses. He then scanned the ground beneath him for abnormalities. There was nothing beneath the earth. Not even a dead corpse rotting away beneath his feet.

He was relieved for a moment, clenched his teeth and silently stepped forward towards the building.

The mission was not a simple one as the fate of mankind was in his hands. Even if nobody was to blame him, and he was to retreat to preserve his life, he would not forgive himself for the cowardice of his action. He walked slowly towards the building. His black suit was the best disguise in the darkness. He crept like a phantom in the shadows, and his stealth operation was smooth undetected, so far. Half an hour later, he was approximately 1,000 meters away from the building. He stopped and did not move any further.

At such a distance, although it was dark, the building was crystal clear to him. Its smooth surface seemed to shine in the moonlight. There were no windows or any other fixtures on the building. He circled the building for a better understanding of its construction. After a few times, all he found out that it was just a dark, smooth, beautiful crescent building, and nothing more.

Furthermore, it seemed to be completely sealed off as there were no entrances to be found. However, Luo Yuan had already predicted that. After all, the extraterrestrial civilization was not of this planet. Every planet was different in terms of adaptation to ozone layer pressures and compositions. Those living on earth could live and breathe easily but perhaps to the aliens, it was deadly. The interior of the building obviously had its own air production and circulation system.

The night was quiet, Luo Yuan buried himself in a mound of dried leaves. He exhaled slowly and felt unusually calm, considering his circumstances. Although he was 1000 meters away from the building, he did not simply wait. His prediction ability allowed him to attempt different scenarios in his head to test the responses of the extraterrestrial civilization.

His first predicted scenario had him slowly walking to the building. And suddenly, everything went blank and nothing happened two seconds later. That was a definite failure.

With the second scenario, he made a beeline towards the building at almost 300 meters per second. In less than 0.1 seconds, a tiny hole appeared on the surface of the building. A high-energy ray hit Luo Yuan in the forehead and he blacked out. The defense of the building seemed to be extra sensitive to high speeds. It could detect targets within 0.1 seconds and instantly eliminate them. It was upsetting. He let out a sigh in defeat.

A while later, he tried again.

This time he did not run in straight line, instead, he zigzagged towards the building. The building immediately attacked once again. The first attack missed him, but the second attack hit him and again, he blacked out.

Luo Yuan tried a few times more. Besides occasionally avoiding the first hit, he always got attacked by the second hit and it was right on his forehead. Each prediction seemed to end with a blackout, meaning instant death.

Luo Yuan was really tensed and his heart was beating fast. The extraterrestrial civilization had terrifying military technology which enabled them to lock on targets immediately and state of the art data analysis systems. In such a situation, no matter how unpredictable he was with his approach, he could never run away from the system’s hawkeye-like detection.

It was horrifying for such a strong evolved human like him to feel powerless. To be in such a situation, there was nothing he could do and nowhere that he could run. No matter how swift his Agility was and how fast he ran, death was the only result.

Without the help of his Predictions, he would have been in all the certain death situations that he saw in his mind if he had rushed at the building.

As his heartbeat slowed down, he tried again. This time he tested some attack tactics where he tossed makeshift spears and rocks at the building. The speed of his toss was almost three times faster than the speed of sound. His +16 Agility allowed him to attack at an impressive frequency. He seemed to have transformed into the thousand-handed Guan Yin where his hands were dancing in the air throwing spears and rocks at the structure. The attacks were like a rainstorm that pelted the extraterrestrial construction, but any spear or rock at a distance of 10 meters away from the building was shot down by the high-energy beam. The last hit was on his head and he blacked out again.

He did not stop testing his predictions that night. He even braced himself to get closer but he retreated before he was 200 meters away, as he knew that if he stepped any further, he would reach the security zones automatic defense mechanism. No matter how slow and harmless he was, there was no escape for him. He found no blind spots or weaknesses he could exploit.

All the results of his predictions were extremely disappointing. The best one would be for him to hide behind a giant rock with his body buried in the ground. But instead of a high-energy ray, there was a large ball of energy that catapulted out of the top of the building. This time, he did not see himself dying as the two seconds of prediction was instantly blacked out. With just the impact of the energy boulder, the result would be no difference from the rest.

When the sun had risen in the sky, Luo Yuan let out a sigh and left the place cautiously. Half an hour later, he back in the cave that he was before. He leaned weakly against the wall, pale and exhausted. Although he had stayed hidden and only watched from a distance without moving, the invisible battles that he had in his prediction were no less exhausting than real battles. Especially when he was foiled again and again by the results, it discouraged him. There was no hope for him to breach the walls when he could not even break through the first-line of defense.

Leaning on the wall, he frowned. He could not think of any other ways to do it in such a short period of time. The building was like a porcupine with all its thorns up, making it unapproachable. The only hope that he had now was that the alien or robots would not reside in there forever.

The mission he had was to first investigate the extraterrestrial civilization and his second objective was to retrieve technological devices they used. He should not be seen by anyone, if there was a risk of that, he would retreat.

The criteria of missions from the reconstruction area were wider and more meticulous, but not revealing himself was never a mandatory requirement. Besides, it was not compulsory for him to take up any other mission that was assigned to the system. As it is, it was quite an achievement to be able to reach this stage. It was impossible for any other evolved human to complete the mission if they were assigned to it. He was at his limit!

However, Luo Yuan was unwilling to return empty handed but at the same time, he did not want the reconstruction area to be demolished by the extraterrestrial civilization.

Suddenly, there was an uproar in the forest. It seemed like countless creatures were running for their lives!

"What happened?" he thought. He stood up and ran out of the cave, taking care not to be seen.

He noticed there was a tiny shudder in the air. It was barely there and its frequency was extremely low. The wave could almost be seen by the naked eye and such a wave made Luo Yuan feel as if his organs were about to explode!

He looked at the direction the panicked mutated creatures were stampeding to figure out the origins of the wave. It seemed to have started from the valley. He realized something that caused a chill to run down his spine.

"No wonder there were no mutated creatures around the building, all of them were chased away by the painful ultrasound. Thankfully, the wave was absorbed by the walls of the mountain and the air. When the wave reached this location, it must have weakened." he concluded.

Ultrasound could damage a creature’s organs, cause nausea and worse, death. It was extremely dangerous. If he did not leave the place earlier, he would have succumbed to the wave’s effects.

Suddenly, Luo Yuan had an idea! "Right. Wave and resonance!" he exclaimed to himself.

He grinned from ear to ear. Since the building was like a porcupine in defense, nobody could approach it. But, he could use force to open it. Perhaps an earthquake could make that happen.

Every time he used Earth Stomp, there would be a quake and through resonance, there would be an earthquake that would shake the whole area. He had that thought when he was in the reconstruction area and the ground in the area was too weak. Minor earthquakes would happen from time to time. He could not estimate the consequences of the resonance and to prevent a catastrophe, he had never tested his Earth Stomp in the reconstruction area.

Since he had left the reconstruction area, there was no need for such experiments and he had long forgotten about it. The infrasound here enlightened him to try the technique or else he would have forgotten about it.

But before the experiment, he would need a safe place to practice his skill and not be disturbed by anyone. He was too close to the valley. A real earthquake aside, the impact of the Earth Stomp would be equally massive. He had to be extra cautious as to not get too close. Even if he had a solution to beat the building’s defense, it was not blind and would still obliterate him if he got too close.

Still, it was not ideal for him to be too far away. He could not get close enough to create resonance in the area without attracting the attention of the extraterrestrial civilization. He was in a pickle! Luo Yuan thought about it quickly and had an idea.

He took off the band on his forehead and entered his four-dimensional vision. He thought of utilizing his ability to warp through space-time to go underground.

He was solemn for a moment as the idea was really risky. Even with his prediction ability, he saw what would happen during two seconds of the earthquake and a tiny mistake would lead to being buried alive underground. But it was the only plan he had at such short notice.

He began going through the fourth dimension. As he attempted to distort the space-time around him, it took more than five minutes for the space-time bubble around him to take form. He then took control and sank into the ground. Having no sight of anything underground, he relied solely on his Sense to determine the direction at which he was going. The coverage of his sense shrunk from the usual 100 meters he could sense at to only about 30 meters with all the earth that was around. However, though this was the case, it was sufficient.

To create more impact, he moved forward to the valley coordinates that was registered in his head. He arrived at the border of the valley which was eight kilometers from the building before he stopped.

He used his Will to get rid of the space-time bubble. The space underground spread and formed a two-meter wide compartment inside the mountain. It was located eight meters below the surface of the mountain and was six meters from the ground up. The two meters of humic layer aside, the lithosphere was four meters thick. The distance was the perfect threshold for the collapse from the impact of the earthquake. If something went wrong, he could escape easily.

It was the best distance for him to escape within two seconds based on what he saw in his prediction. It was his last shot!

He put his band back over his forehead, took a deep breath and entered the Earth Pulse mode.