NOVEL NEXT Chapter 95: Beacon of Order
‘Urgh…’ Zyrus sat up after being awoken by his throbbing head. Every muscle of his was sore after using spatial stab. Worse, due to his scales his outer skin was harder than metal. This made him feel like his insides were swollen.
“Took you long enough,”
“How are things right now?” Zyrus gave up on standing up after taking a good look at his body. He was bound to bed for a good half month.
“It’d be a lie to say that everything is fine. I’m not sure what’s happening over the other side, but that squirrel told me that it’s fighting the third lord. Things are pretty hectic on the ocean.”
“Where is it right now? And how long was I out?”
“A month give or take. I have no clue about the former.” Franken sighed and sat down on the floor.
The duo chatted about the current state of the troops and the squirrel’s origins. Zyrus was sure that it was related to the earth’s will. But since it was his first time interacting with an existence like that, he didn’t have any knowledge about their powers and limitations.
‘Anyway, it’s good as long as I have another ally,’
Zyrus put the thoughts at the back of his head and lied down. He hadn’t thought that the side effects of the spatial stab would be this severe.
‘I should thank Aurora for the previous time,’
Even while being limited by the system’s power, she had healed him after his fight against Nidraxis. His vitality at that time was pitiful to say the least. It was a miracle that he survived.
Zyrus decided to work on a body-strengthening skill next. He was too feeble to use his Sylvarix bloodline at full potential.
Nonetheless, everything had to wait till he recovered. Even using his head was excruciatingly painful at this moment.
“Wake me up if anything serious happens,”
“What, you going to hibernate like a polar bear?”
“Well, that might not be a bad idea,” Zyrus chuckled as he recalled he hadn’t had a good night’s sleep for a while.
‘About time I took a good long nap,’
…
Days passed by as Zyrus recovered his mana and vitality. He was like an overworked engine that needed a good rest and maintenance. His days were boring as with his exhausted mental strength he was unable to work on any skills. Physical exercises were naturally out of the question.
The only good thing was that this time allowed him to focus on training his summons. There wasn’t much to do in any production-related facilities. Zirnitra and Franken were helpless due to lack of any suitable materials, so they grilled the poor summons in the meanwhile.
The formation he laid out was also improved after he used the remaining minerals on earth. These monotonous days had stabilized Zyrus’s shacky foundations on earth.
Just as Zyrus was about to go back to sleep, he noticed a visitor at the window. It was none other than the squirrel he was waiting for.
[<[Apologies, I was unable to give you your due rewards. Thankfully, everything’s settled now.]>]
Zyrus’s suspicions were confirmed at this moment. It was indeed possible to manipulate the cube’s rewards.
“Are you going to answer my questions? If you can't then at least tell me everything you can,”
[<[Sure, no problem]>]
The squirrel jumped from the window and sat down on a chair beside his bed. Rather than answering his questions, it directly transmitted the related memories.
Zyrus felt like he was in a world of moving images. Millions of scenes were playing out all around him.
‘Mind link, a high-rank spell,’
He identified the spell at a glance. Bit by bit the unrelated images were blurred until only the important ones remained.
The pages of history were flipped backwards, towards the fateful day when everything changed for humanity.
…
In the year 2748, an interstellar object crashed at the center of the north pole. No one took it seriously as they believed it was just another case of space junk falling down or maybe the work of a burnet-up meteor.
Still, both of these items were valuable. Humanity had made rapid improvements in the last couple of centuries. The entire planet was now run by sustainable sources of energy. Gone were the days of using fossil fuels while fearing global warming.
There were no diseases that couldn’t be cured, nor were there any major wars that took place. It was perhaps the greatest era of peace and development.
But there was one thing that no amount of technology could solve: Greed.
No matter how bright the sun shined it couldn’t eliminate all shadows. Smuggling and illegal trafficking were some of the things that stuck with humanity even after all this development.
It was one such group of smugglers that found the interstellar object, or rather, the Beacon of Order.
…
Year 2859, at the headquarters of Osiris Corporation. Hundreds of scientists were bustling around a spherical object that resembled the structure of an atom- A bright golden core surrounded by rings of intricately carved metal.
It was this object that allowed them to rise to the prominence. From a smuggling gang to the leading company in space research, their rise was perhaps the highlight of the past century.
Naturally, all of this was because of this object. They realized that this was some sort of a communication device sent by an alien civilization. Their level of technology was too far apart. Just in the process of decoding the message- and by experimenting on the alien artifact, they had advanced their research by leaps and bounds.
It was only a matter of time before they figured out the core text. They couldn’t imagine what sort of impact it’d have on earth’s development.
…
Year 3078, a world-shocking incident took place on this day. Wars had long since become a history of the past, but today, humanity once again glanced at its shadow.
In but an hour millions of lives were lost. The common public had no idea as to why the major nations were waging a war. They had long since set their sights on the endless starts, what conflict caused such a disaster then?
Before long, conspiracy theories and half-true evidence spread on the internet. It was rumored that the cause of this war was a discovery made by the Osiris corporation, a behemoth of a commercial empire that was wiped out in this massacre.
No one knew what information they had found or who was in charge of it now. However, one thing was for certain.
The days of peace were over.
…
Year 3218, a world conference was held to end the wars. A tenth of earth’s population was wiped out just because of their greed. Everyone knew by now that the cause of this disaster was a mysterious object that had untold wisdom. Everyone wanted to be the first one who unlocked the true message.
Only today did they realize how stupid they were. The object in front of them wasn’t an elixir they sought.
It was a herald of doom that destroyed everything they had built since the dawn of men.
The message was short and simple. It explained how the aliens had invaded the earth billions of years ago, at a time when earth was just a boiling hot planet.
In the deep crevices of the ocean and beneath the dark underground they lay dormant even to this day. Their proud civilization was nothing more than livestock raised by those creatures. They were only separated by a thin membrane, a membrane which was starting to break apart.
The message told them that they were neither the first nor the last civilization that had been attacked in this manner. The object called the beacon of order had ample information on how to halt the alien’s invasion and how to escape during dire times.
In order to avoid mass panic, this news wasn’t spread to the common populace. A peace treaty was signed on that momentous day. All nations gathered together to usher in a new era of development.
They had a lot of time to prepare for the alien’s invasion. They didn’t fear the aliens with the newfound technology and three billion years in their hands.
…
Zyrus looked at the last image with a heavy heart. He had expected such an outcome after reading Tauranox’s and Camazotz’s source of existence.
‘I always believed that sanctuary was too strange of a name for that hellish place, but now it makes sense,’
After seeing true hell with his own eyes, he realized that the place he loathed in his past life was more like a heaven. Things were getting bigger and bigger as he uncovered more secrets.
After regressing, his only goal was to get revenge on the Eternals. At the start, he hadn’t put much thought into why he had regressed on the abandoned earth three billion years later.
‘Just what happened in those last 400 years that led to the current state of earth?’
Zyrus steadied his breath and moved towards the last scene.