Age of Cosmic Exploration

Chapter 319: After the Big Retreat

It had been 2 years and 3 months since the Noah One had landed on this planet…

Yun Si flipped through his notebook that was earmarked at multiple pages and used his fountain pen to carefully write in it. He was running out of ink, so he was careful to not make any careless mistakes lest the pen dried out before he finished writing everything.

As mentioned earlier, it had been 2 years and 3 months since the Noah One warped to this planet, and it had been almost a year since the mass retreat. The happy and peaceful days on Earth were like a dream. Everyone prayed for it, but they knew deep down that it was no longer possible. Even when they still had the Noah One, they didn’t dare to wish for it, much less now.

"…We’re running out energy after we lost our fuel station and coal mine. If we’re forced to migrate again, we will have to start to use emergency fuel. Thankfully, during the precious migration, we brought along our electricity generator, so if we manage to find enough fuel, then we can recharge the emergency batteries. The key issue is still the location of the next migration shelter…"

Yun Si continued writing before raising his head and sighing. He couldn’t bring himself to continue writing. For some reason, the events from one year ago on the Noah One flooded his mind.

At that time, the high officials of the Noah One were in the middle of a meeting when the world was turned upside down. A school of alien octopuses suddenly appeared within the Noah One and instigated a wide-scale massacre. This was also the first time human beings saw the humanlike lifeforms. They were human beings… except for a few crucial details.

The lifeform shared the same physical characteristics as humans, other than the small fact that the veins on their bodies were bursting. The key difference was that part of their brains had completely changed…

These humans’ brains… had tentacles coming out of them, like the brain had grown a fleshy mustache. Even their eyes were as dark as the night sky. These humans’ skulls no longer hosted normal brains but were infested by the alien octopuses!

The scariest thing was that these humans had superhuman strength. They could rip off a person’s arm with just a small tug… This was not something that could happen in real life! How could someone be strong enough to rip off another human’s arm just like that? Even Hercules needed some tugging and tearing before the arm came flying off!

Such evolved humans and a large amount of alien octopuses appeared suddenly within the Noah One, and the scene was like a picture from hell. It was an open buffet for the alien octopuses. Thousands of octopuses were having their fill of human brains. Either people stood there in shock or they were running away in panic. However, no matter what they were doing, none of them seemed to notice the presence of these octopuses. Even as they ran away from their aggressors, the octopuses had already attached to their scalps and were sucking their brains dry.

Witnessing this, the Noah One’s high officials showcased their leadership talent… They were elites of the elites, so in just the matter of a minute, many orders were given. Of course, it was another issue how many of those orders would be carried out.

However, at the same time, the high officials discovered something curious. In the meeting room, a few people could see the alien octopuses with their naked eye. They were Yang Yun Si, the military doctor, two Blue Berets, Xiu Yue Xuan, a bespectacled female scientist, and Austin, the adjutant.

They were the rays of hope in this time of despair. These four people, excluding the female scientist, were sent out to scout the area. They used weapons to kill and clear out all the alien octopuses that they saw. They were split into four groups, each responsible for gathering the military troops, protect the civilians, and activate the Noah One’s internal defense system…

However, their effort was ultimately futile…

Their effort was neutralized by the humans that were hypnotized. Ultimately, only one-third of humans managed to escape from the Noah One and resettled at the surface industrial base. Captain Norton and many of the Noah One’s high officials perished during that nightmare-like retreat…

However, that wasn’t the end.

Just like how the one-third of human beings wanted to return to the Noah One, the alien octopuses also were hell-bent on vanquishing all the humans.

However, for some reasons, the alien octopuses were extremely sensitive to sunlight, so they would never appeared on the surface. Their ambushes always happened at night, and it was through the usage of human beings whose brains had completely been consumed and taken over.

Due to some unknown mechanism, these humans who had been taken over by the octopuses started to physically change. Other than superhuman strength, another unique evolution was their physical bodies gained immunity against the viruses on this planet. After performing autopsy on these few humans, the medical troop in the industrial base managed to produce the antibiotic needed to withstand the viruses. The contribution of the late Wahala couldn’t be understated. It was due to his demand for a high-photon dialyser that the research was successful.

In the following year, it was a tug of war between humans and the alien octopuses. Humans relied on the surface sunlight to prevent the possibility of mass insurgency from the octopuses. After all, not all human bodies could be taken over by the octopuses. Most humans' physical bodies died off after their brains were consumed. Only a small percentage of human bodies were possible for the alien octopuses to control even after they lost their brain. Therefore, humans managed to eke out a living in the surface industrial base.

This continued until one month ago…

The number of alien-controlled humans started to drastically increase. From the initial ten bodies, it became hundreds. This development set off an alarm in human leader Austin’s mind.

With the sacrifice of several soldiers, they managed to capture one of alien humans and discovered from it their secret… The cellular age of the body was incredibly young. How young? Only one month old!

How was that possible?!

"The alien octopuses used our human sperm and ovum bank to manufacture… yes, manufacture is the right word. Batches of human babies. Then they use some unknown method to raise them into adults. and since they were psychologically babies, they were easily controlled by the alien octopuses. This is why there are suddenly so many alien humans!"

This was the answer provided by Austin, and it was the most logical from a medical standpoint. Over the past month, humans suffered a continuous and mass assault by these alien humans. From the initial physical assault to later when they started to use weapons. Yes, after consuming the human brains, the alien octopuses seemed to have inherited human memories and knowledge, including the knowledge on how to use human technology!

Under such circumstances, the industrial base near the surface crack was no longer defensible. There was only 11,000 plus humans that were surviving, and less than 2,000 of them were soldiers. Most of the people saved during the mass retreat were technicians, scientists, and doctors. Austin finally gave his order to abandon the base and relocate to another spot. They would bring all the transport vehicles, important materials, and fuel with them.

However, human beings realized a reality that sent chills down their spines. The planet’s surface was filled with cracks that led underground. The fissures were of differing sizes, but most of them… contained traces of the alien octopuses. These octopuses’ numbers were a lot greater than they initially envisioned; there were several million of them. They filled up the entire underground of the planet!

Their only weakness was sunlight. Theoretically speaking, the surface was somewhere they could never venture into, and that explained why the alien octopuses hadn’t infected the brains of any other lifeforms on this planet.

That was until the appearance of humanity… With the sperm and ovum bank that would allowed them to create tens of thousands of human beings, the surface was no longer a location these alien octopuses couldn’t venture to. Even during migration, the troop still managed to identify other human traces. They were obviously left behind by the alien humans. The signs of activity appeared around mineral deposits. In other words, the alien octopuses were collecting mineral ores, and they probably wanted to advance into civilization using human technology. Their main lifeform would be alien octopuses in human skin…

That was such a heart-chilling realization!

A few hundred of the living humans committed suicide out of despair. About twenty of them were soldiers…

The rest struggled infinitely as they looked for a suitable location to rehabilitate, but… did such a location really exist on this planet?

They didn’t realize this, but all of them had started to get accustomed to the smell of despair…

Just as Yun Si closed his diary with a sigh, suddenly, a few soldiers rushed into his tent. One of them yelled, "Doctor Yang, please come out and take a look, the Major is asking for you…

"In the sky, there is a flying object in the sky! It is not a human plane, it’s a UFO!"

Translator's Thoughts

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