'This should make the era a bit easier for humans. Due to the increased oxygen and the surviving wildlife, they will recover quicker and create the first Extractors faster.'
'With time, the Eternal Hunger and the False Hope will slowly be reintroduced, and the wildlife will die once again, but by then, humanity should have enough seeds to grow food in cities.'
Nick wanted to minimize humanity's suffering as much as possible, but humanity still had to suffer.
He didn't enjoy doing this, but it had to be done.
After giving his orders, Nick did his own job.
He inspected all of the remaining Barriers in the world and destroyed almost all of them.
It was important that humanity's technological progress wasn't too fast.
He left some bits of knowledge in dangerous places.
Some explorers had to be rewarded to motivate them to grow more powerful.
Nick decided to go with a high-risk, high-reward approach.
He also summoned some Zephyx Crystals and buried them in different locations to encourage exploration.
'Finding a crystal will make a person rich, which will entice other people to search for wealth outside as well.'
Nick also decided to cripple most of the machines.
They were unusable, but with a lot of research, they could be understood and repaired.
However, anything related to Star Energy and Pure Energy was expunged.
Humanity was not allowed to come into contact with any of that.
After dealing with his own tasks, Nick looked at the world.
The surviving humans still remembered the era, and they would tell stories of that era to their children.
Yet, over centuries, these stories would vanish and be replaced with legends.
In the end, the fifth era would join the other four eras before it.
Its secrets would only be uncovered by archeologists and researchers.
Most of the knowledge had already been lost.
The surviving humans remembered their lost technology, but they didn't know how to reproduce it.
The most advanced things they could produce were spears and the occasional sword.
Maybe some of them could even create a gun.
But that would be it.
Finally, Nick looked at Crimson City, his birthplace.
The megastructure had collapsed, and its rusty metal was scattered in the ruins below it.
It would take years to deal with the debris to uncover the ruins beneath.
Parts of the Outer City had survived, essentially creating another layer of ruins.
Nick took a deep breath.
A new era had begun.
A new dawn.
'This will be the last era,' Nick thought.
'I now have thousands of years to prepare.'
'First, I need a new underground city.'
'However, the Zephyx production is incredibly low right now, and if I suddenly start converting too much Prephyx into Zephyx to create the necessary materials, the aliens might suspect something.'
'I need Zephyx from a safe source.'
The next moment, Nick focused on the Null, which was still trying to kill him.
'It's a bit risky, but it should work.'
Then, Nick turned into the Null and summoned a portal.
An instant later, he arrived in front of the Null's biological prison.
As expected, he saw several sensors.
However, Nick had full control over his energies and Zephyx, and the sensors didn't pick up any disturbances in the area.
At this moment, Nick was inside the Earth's core, in a fortified room with tons of biological machines.
His perception stretched across the sizable room, but it couldn't stretch past the room.
The aliens were amazing at isolating someone's perception.
Yet, Nick just had to follow the flow of Prephyx.
He entered one of the tiny holes in the walls and passed by the Force Specter traps easily.
When he came out on the other side of the wall, Nick found himself in a familiar place.
The Nightmare's domain.
Since the Fiend of Darkness had been killed, Nick couldn't get to this place via the usual route.
Luckily,he could bypass the powerful defenses around the Earth's core by just directly teleporting to the Null.
When Nick arrived in the Nightmare's Domain, he saw something unusual but not unexpected.
One of the walls had parted to create a big hallway.
Several different kinds of aliens were traveling back and forth between the two connecting rooms.
'As expected, they are harvesting the Nightmare's accumulated Zephyx,' Nick thought.
He saw plenty of aliens with tentacles, but he also saw new ones.
There were bipedal aliens with claws.
There were floating eyes.
However, when Nick's eyes fell on one alien in particular, his mind went wild.
It was an alien that looked a bit like a mantis.
It had several legs, was very long, and was armored in powerful chitin.
Nick's instincts told him one thing.
This was the most powerful being he had ever seen in his life!
The amount of danger he felt coming from this alien was unreasonable.
Nick felt like this alien could kill him with the same ease as a Specter could kill a baby.
There was only one reason why someone with such power hadn't sensed Nick's presence yet.
Environment.
This place was filled with Prephyx, not Star Energy.
An eagle might have incredibly powerful vision, but its eyes wouldn't help it sense its surroundings when engulfed in murky and brown water.
Meanwhile, a catfish would be able to sense the eagle in the water.
The alien warrior was surrounded by Prephyx.
Trash.
It was surrounded by useless and disgusting trash.
This was not a healthy or fitting environment for it.
But Nick was a being that thrived and lived in this trash.
Nick focused on the weaker aliens and realized that he could read their minds.
He carefully did just that, and he needed some time to process the unfamiliar concepts.
'The Amorphous Race,' Nick thought. 'So, that's what they are called.'
'They always work in pairs.There are asymmetric pairs and symmetric pairs based on what is more useful.'
'The powerful alien standing over there is one of the two most powerful warriors in this outpost.'
'He is at the Early Tenth Realm.'
Yet, the most surprising thing was something else.
'They do not have emotions.'
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