Apocalyptic Era: Starting from picking up a Bishoujo

I raised my right hand, palm facing up. When I activated my superpower, a massive amount of flames appeared out of nowhere just above my palm.

The flames converged in the middle to form a large fireball nearly half a meter in diameter.

Superpower is a concept found in many fantasy stories; some can stop time, some can dominate consciousness, and others can transform the body; some superpowers have complex mechanisms that take hundreds to thousands of words just to explain clearly, leaving the audience bewildered.

Unlike those either powerful or complex superpowers, mine was extremely simple.

In a word, it was "manipulate fire."

I could summon fire out of thin air and control it, or manipulate any existing flames in my field of vision. It was so classic that in any fantasy story with superpower battles as the theme, there was likely a character in the early stages who could manipulate fire. And whatever those fictional characters could do, I could do at least eighty or ninety percent of it.

The "fireflies" I had summoned earlier were essentially tiny flames. And the reason they could be used as scouting tools was, naturally, logical.

Normal flames require three elements to form: fuel, an oxidizer, and heat. My flames, however, appeared out of nowhere, needing none of those material conditions. Or rather, my spirit replaced all those material conditions.

My spirit was the fuel, the oxidizer, and the heat.

In other words, my flames were my spirit. The dispersed "fireflies" were dispersed "me," naturally able to sense the surroundings on my behalf.

At the same time, naturally, since they were flames, they possessed tremendous material destruction power.

I slowly lifted the blazing large fireball, which then collapsed inward, transforming into a glowing ball the size of an eyeball. Immediately, I pointed forward, and the light ball struck the solid concrete wall in front of me.

Unimpeded, without explosion, the high-density light ball effortlessly penetrated the concrete wall as if a spoon pierced through tofu, reaching the space outside the basement.

With the spiritual connection to the flames, I smoothly gained the view from outside the basement.

Then, I couldn't help but hold my breath.

There was nothing—

Outside the basement, there was nothing.

No earth, no sky; no color, no sound... only an endless darkness.

From the external view, the basement I was in appeared as a small concrete box floating in an infinite void, with nothing else around. Even controlling the light ball to go directly below, I found no substance supporting this "concrete box." Let alone other objects, even basic air and gravity were nonexistent.

It was like outer space, but even outer space has countless stars, harmful cosmic radiation to humans, and extremely thin cosmic dust, which in some sense is quite "lively."

But this place was different, utterly silent, a realm of nothingness.

It seemed as if all matter had met its end, this was a time and space that had concluded.

Loneliness, terror, suffocation.

The boundless void felt like infinite suffocation rushing into my airways. This basement was like a tiny speck in a vast post-mortem universe, and I was the only passenger on that speck, at any moment to dissolve into meaningless froth in the void, vanishing without a trace.

After a long daze, I dispersed the external light ball and view, sitting on the ground trying to gather my thoughts.

The direction of "returning to the real world via an external route" was definitely not viable.

Fortunately, although the outside was a void, the air in the basement did not leak out through the opening I had made. Although it's not difficult to seal such a small opening, especially if I entered into the "second form," which allows me to operate normally even in a vacuum.

Thinking positively, this phenomenon also allowed me to deduce another truth: in this place, some physical laws do not apply. This discovery could also be considered a kind of "exploratory gain."

So, what should I do next? Should I indeed research the conditions that produced these caves?

If the "fireflies" set in the real world still had a connection to me, I could try other methods, but now the connection was already severed.

It's ironic to think about it, when Changan came to me this morning, I was thinking that if Changan really encountered some bizarre event, I would have the opportunity to use my superpower to great effect, and explain my "ability setting" like a comic character during the process... But as life often disappointing, my superpower was utterly useless in this situation.

As they say, "all fear stems from inadequate firepower," but even with immense firepower, it seems there's nothing I can do about this situation.

Perhaps this was also an inevitable predicament, a destiny that was bound to come my way.

My superpower, though simple and brutally strong in a way that anyone could understand, couldn't predict the bizarre and ever-changing nature of the strange creatures. Even with a spear that could destroy anything and a shield that could defend against anything, there were still many things that were impossible to do.

I propped myself up on my knees and stood, pacing around and searching for other useful clues on the shelves.

In fact, the yellow cardboard boxes on the shelves weren't completely empty. They still contained some small items like cartoon stickers, plastic keychains, candles, and so on, none of which seemed helpful in the current situation. If it had been before, I would have been eager to take them as souvenirs of my visit, but now I had lost that interest.

To concentrate, I stopped maintaining the "Fireflies" that provided light from all directions and instead lit a candle I found on the shelf, placing it on the ground. The basement returned to darkness, and the single light source in the dark helped me focus and also reminded me of some past events.

Speaking of which, when I first awakened my superpower in the ninth grade, the catalyst also involved a candle...

People who have had near-death experiences often say that one involuntarily recalls the past when close to death.

Am I suddenly recalling the past now because I know I am going to die here?

Time still passed, second by second, and I didn't know how much longer it had been.

There was still no progress in analyzing my predicament.

Since I wasn't very hungry yet, it meant that dawn was still a long way off.

However, this place existed outside the time and space of the real world, and perhaps time here flowed according to different rules. The outside world might have already gone through more than a day, just like the classical tales of "watching the chess game and finding the wood decayed"; I had been abandoned by the world in this place beyond the universe.

Marxism says that man is the sum total of social relationships. At this moment, I was undoubtedly cut off from all social contact, not even knowing if I could return. If I died like this, it would be more like dying as a nameless animal rather than as a human being.

Perhaps influenced by the bizarre environment, I even had an even stranger thought—could it be that I had been a resident of this basement from the beginning, never having lived in the real world, and that my entire life up to now was just an illusion?

I felt my pocket, which contained the keys to my house, but this did not prove that I had lived in a house outside or even prove that the "real world" I remembered was real. A key is a concept that pairs with a lock, and without any locks here, this piece of metal could not be proved to be a key.

The same was true for my ID card and change; these things only had meaning within society. Once detached from society, they were merely materials with special shapes—just like me right now.

All meanings built on the concept of "society" had vanished here. Whether those materials or my personality, or even the clothes I was wearing, they all seemed to dissolve in this dim space, revealing the most primitive natural nudity.

In the strange shudder, I felt a tipsy emotion. In this realm isolated from everything, I was gradually transforming into some kind of heterogeneous existence I had never imagined.

Those who isolate themselves are either beasts or gods.

Incredibly, although I was full of fear, anxiety, and pessimism, I had no regrets or panic.

Because I had entered with determination and awareness.

I had mentioned before that one reason I sought adventures beyond reality was a strong curiosity to see what I would become during those times. Boldly put, I thought this could also be classified as a kind of "yearning for enlightenment." Now, facing difficulties, facing despair, facing imminent, solitary death... I seemed to finally find a more genuine self.

If it had been the everyday me, I might have felt proud, excited, and happy for the present me, but now I didn't have such fervent feelings.

It wasn't that I was swayed by negative emotions, on the contrary, I felt an unprecedented sense of release for the present me.

What a clearing of the clouds. No matter how many negative emotions surged in my heart, none could infect this pristine state of mind.

However, I would not say anything like "hearing the Dao in the morning and dying in the evening would be alright."

I am very greedy; this level of reward cannot satisfy my appetite.

I want to use my power to "clear" this predicament, to prove that I am not a character who would just casually die in adventures beyond reality.

Afterward, I want to return home to see Mazao again and eventually get her to spill all her secrets; I also want to explore the secrets of Luo Mountain and the demon hunters, to understand how the forces of supernatural power are distributed in this world. There are countless more things I want to explore.

— So, the question is, can I really do it?

Just as negative emotions couldn't infect my clarified state of mind, even a released state of mind couldn't deny an objectively existing impasse.

Because I was calm, I knew clearly.

Perhaps this was where my adventure would end.

My adventure was ending just as it had begun.