Epoch of Twilight

During the nightfall, the forest was filled with a layer of dense fog. A group of fist-sized mutated insects that looked like fireflies were hidden in the hazy mist. Their bodies were glowing and visible even through the fog. It attracted a lot of insects that liked to fly close to the light. Those were its preys.

However, while they were attracting their food, they attracted the attention of their predators as well! A colorful toad was hiding quietly and its light-bulb-like purple eyes were firmly staring at the luminous fog. It looked cruel and hungry but just when it attempted to make a jump, there was a soft rushing sound that came from afar.

At first, the sound was still very weak; however, in just a breath, it seemed to have come nearer. The toad was slightly shocked and quickly hid back into the darkness. It even buried half of its body into the soil. After the toad hid itself, the mist in the air was stirred by a strong force! All the fireflies scattered and tried to fly away. It could be vaguely seen that there was a black shadow passing by.

Only when the sound got softer and the black shadow completely disappeared did the toad slowly climb out from the soil to carefully observe its surrounding. It seemed like the scary monster had gone away so it raised its neck a bit and slowly walked ahead like the king of the new barren territory.

Luo Yuan had departed in the evening and now the sky had completely turned dark. He had no idea how far away he was from the target destination. All he knew was that he had climbed over three hills, crossed five rivers, and passed through seven territories of huge mutated beasts. He could only estimate the distance based on the time spent.

However, it was quite meaningless to calculate the distance as the danger of the cliff and the complexity of the hilly roads were far more challenging than he expected. The straight-line distance he traveled might only be 100km, but he traveled 500-600 kilometers as a detour to avoid the mutated beasts and their territories, taking more time.

The direction to his target destination was solely based on his visual estimation. When the sky became dark, he had to rely on the coordination of the stars in the sky to make sure that he did not deviate from his original direction. Under such circumstances, making an error was inevitable. It would be fine if it was a only short distance, but for farther distances like this, Luo Yuan might end up a 100 kilometer away from his actual destination.

In fact, he did not know where exactly the nest of giant bird was located, the only clue that he had was the giant rock that was thrown down by the bird. If the nest was not located nearby, the only thing he could do was to wait. Even though it would take a lot of time and effort, the success rate was actually very low.

Luo Yuan had a bad feeling so he quickened his pace and stopped at the top of the highest hill he could find within a few minutes. He was wheezing severely and looked at his watch. He found that he had run for nearly three hours! It had been very exhausting to run continuously for so long even with his strong physique.

After resting for a few minutes, he jumped onto a huge stone on his left and looked towards the target destination to observe the terrain. Luo Yuan has good low-light vision thus even in the night he could see very clearly.

"Eh?" Luo Yuan looked a bit surprised.

He saw a huge lake at few kilometers away. Under the moonlight, the lake was reflecting the sparkling light, and that was the destination that he wanted to head to. He was happy. The pebble he took with him would probably have come from there! In his previous route, he passed through a few rivers with a couple of pebbles, however, they were not in the same size and color that he was looking for.

The stones that were dropped by giant bird were white in color and about four to five tons heavy; they looked like limestones and there were no similar pebbles along the rivers he passed through before. He did not want to rest any longer and was eager to reach his target destination. He used all his force to jump down from a giant rock. The slope was about seventy degrees steep and he jumped directly into the air but fell rapidly due to gravity.

There were trees everywhere underneath him and he stepped firmly on a thick branch to support his fall. Due to the huge momentum, the branch broke instantly when his feet met it. However, that slight contact was enough support for Luo Yuan to make another leap into the sky. Every leap that he made was about 100 meters and he decided to get back on the ground after a few leaps.

Over the past three days, he had successfully cleared himself of the curse and his Will was not only restored, it even improved under the endurance of the curse! He could use his Will freely now and even controlled it as per what he wanted. Though the improvement was not shown in the system, it was a pleasant bonus to him. At this level, it was extremely difficult to improve his Will as it required a lot of time and special opportunities unless it was obtained by attribute points.

After running for about another half an hour, Luo Yuan gradually slowed down. He was in a high density mutated beast area and most of the beasts here were light green level. Some were even higher than that but they were hiding in the dark. The fights here were extremely fierce, and the screams and roaring never stopped ever since Luo Yuan entered. The air was filled with a smell of blood and it made the beasts feel nauseas.

During Luo Yuan’s journey, he even witnessed two giant mythical monsters biting and tackling each other. The fierce battle caused the whole ground to tremor and many trees had collapsed under the impact. The ground was stained by more fresh blood. However, Luo Yuan did not stay any longer to watch to two of them who were at least green level. The battle was too terrifying and made Luo Yuan feel pressured.

The drought had continued for seven to eight days now and under such a high temperature, most of the rivers were getting dried up. Those tiny mutated insects could still rely on dew for a living but the huge mutated beasts would die if they could not get any sustainable source of water. Everyday there must be many mutated beasts that come here by following the moist air from the water source. To secure the territory, battles and fights were inevitable.

The fights here were too fierce and too frequent that the entire ground was all sticky with blood. Luo Yuan felt very creeped out and shocked by the scene. This was simply a battlefield for mutated beasts and the law of jungle reflected vividly here. No wonder he did not see any strong mutated beasts along the way when he came here as most of them were already here for water.

As he was wearing the shield from the Green Hidden Creature, he could hide from everyone. Sometimes he had to pass through a variety of powerful mutated beasts but he managed to do so without catching any of their attention. Come to think of it, even if they saw Luo Yuan, the human body was too small to fill up their stomachs, thus, they might not even have any interest in him.

However, Luo Yuan still walked very carefully and he even tried to evade light green mutated beasts that were typically vulnerable to him. If it was possible, he did not want to start any fight. After walking for nearly an hour, he finally saw the huge lake but he was not able to see the end of the lake due to the mist that surrounded the lake.

At this point, there were many mutated beasts lining along the lake to drink water. Luo Yuan was surprised to see that it was extremely peaceful over here in stark contrast to the frightful scenes that he encountered before. Although there were still a few fights that occurred, it was nothing compared to just now. Most of the mutated beasts seemed to restrain themselves and walk away quietly after drinking some water. Suddenly, there was an injured light green level mutated beast growling and forced its way into the line where some lower level mutated beasts were already standing at.

Its blood trickled down from its injured thigh and soon it made the water nearby turn red. The light green level mutated beast was too busy drinking water that it did not pay much attention to the blood that trickled into the lake. Some of the mutated beasts behind had moved away but it was still unaware of the strange scene that was unfolding.

Suddenly, there was a drastic change in the lake as it agitated violently. There were numerous sea snakes that were a few meters in length that jumped out from the lake and attacked the light green mutated beast that was injured.

In just a moment, Luo Yuan could see no less than 10 sea snakes attacking the wounded beast. However, the sea snakes were too small to cause any significant pain to the giant-sized light green level mutated beast. Furthermore, its wound was already in pain thus it did not feel any abnormality until a few second later. It finally felt something was wrong and looked up uneasily.

However, it was too late! Luo Yuan could see that more than 100 sea snakes had been eating into the wound of the beast and even into its body. It was too creepy to even look at it now. The light green mutated beast began to growl violently. However, it had no impact on the sea snakes. The snakes were strong; they seemed to stop for a second after the sound wave hit them, but continued feasting on the beast very quickly. A few sea snakes even entered its opened mouth, nose, ears and basically everywhere else they could enter!

In the lake, there was a group of sea snakes wandering towards the mutated beast. At this point, it finally decided to try to escape but it had already met its doom. It took just one step but already felt weak. Its body shook a few times and then fell into the lake causing a big wave and splash.