I Only Wanted A Class In The Apocalypse

Chapter 1930: The Black Mysterious Sphere

The vibrations were faint at first, but they were growing—a low-frequency thrum that seemed to bypass his ears and vibrate directly in his teeth.

Since his sensors were blind to the cause, he turned his focus to the insects. He tried to tap into their minds, tried to read their thoughts, attempting to see the world through their specialised senses.

”Tsk! Trying to read the mind of an insect is like trying to read a book while blindfolded!” Hye shook his head in frustration, his temples throbbing. He tried to parse their collective consciousness, but the attempt only brought him a sharp, stabbing headache.

He couldnʼt understand their thoughts, but he could feel their state of mind: they were growing restless. This wasnʼt the first time he had tried to read their minds, but this time, it felt different. They werenʼt just communicating; they were screaming.

”Time to pay your rent,” Hye growled. Since he couldnʼt send a human warrior out without witnessing a horrific death, he instead detached a vanguard of 5,000 insects. He commanded them to march forward at high speed to scout the path ahead.

As the purple cloud of scouts flew further away, the distance put a strain on him. He had to consume more bones to ensure the link didnʼt snap. But just as he was reaching for a third bone to stabilise the technique, the world shifted.

Rumble!

The faint, constant vibrations suddenly turned violent. The noise became audible—a deep, grinding sound that seemed to come from the air itself. Hye scrambled to the viewports, looking in every direction to spot the source of the disturbance, but his eyes found nothing. No mountains were falling, no volcanic eruptions, and no incoming enemies.

The violent noises were omnipresent. It felt as if the air itself was the origin of the vibrations. And soon enough, Hye would learn that his crazy hypothesis was terrifyingly accurate.

Rumble! Screech!

This time, the explosive sounds came much louder, far closer than ever! Without a single warning, Hye watched the five thousand insects he had sent as a vanguard all explode and die in a simultaneous burst of gore.

It felt as if something brutal and unseen had just hammered them into nothing, yet even with his eyes glued to the holograph showing the world around them, he didnʼt see a single projectile or enemy.

”Itʼs like…” Hyeʼs voice trailed off as he frantically replayed the shipʼs internal recording of the event. He slowed the footage down to a fraction of a second. He watched the insectsʼ chitinous shells buckle inward simultaneously, as if they were being squeezed by an invisible giant. ”Itʼs like something pressed over them, crushed their bodies without the need to attack… Wait...”

He suddenly realised his mistake. He had been searching the horizon, the ground, and the world ahead. He had been searching frantically everywhere except for one spot: the sky directly above him.

He instantly yanked the controls, rolling his ship upside down to point the visual sensors toward the zenith. And there, he finally spotted the nightmare.

”Youʼve got to be kidding me!!”

Far above in the high atmosphere, there was a looming, silent black circle—a void that didnʼt emit any sound or unleash any light at all. It appeared out of nowhere, a perfect disk of nothingness that had bypassed every visual warning system, save for those faint, tooth-rattling vibrations.

But the sensors from his ship were now screaming a clear and direct message: That thing was emitting a terrifying amount of atmospheric pressure over a colossal area. It was a gravity well, a localised sinkhole. This was the source of all the vibrations, the rumbling, and the insectsʼ instantaneous deaths.

”Retreat! Now!”

Without needing to understand the physics of that anomaly, Hye knew it was the harbinger of total annihilation. He instantly gave the mental command to his remaining ninety-five thousand insects, slammed the ship into a hard bank, and pushed the engines to their absolute limit, retracing the path he had just come from.

If he had been inside a big flagship right now, its slow speed would have sealed his fate. The ship would have been too slow to clear the radius of effect. Just minutes after he pushed his ship into a screaming sprint, he watched through the rear sensors as the area he had just escaped suddenly blurred.

An annoying, high-pitched screech erupted—not from a throat, but from the air molecules being torn apart. It looked like a giant, invisible hand was squeezing that part of the world, pressuring it with an irresistible, celestial force that flattened the very landscape.

Even the mountains below that black circle were levelled into dust in a matter of seconds.

Hye watched the destruction on his holograph, his breath coming in shallow hitches. ”Did this world gather every deadly natural phenomenon in the universe and place them all in one place?!!”

First, it was the scorching heat of the nearby star, then the electric insect swarms, and now that black pressure sphere in the sky. Hye didnʼt know what would happen next, but he was more prepared than ever. The terrifying reality of the Hescosʼ homeland was beginning to settle in: the environment itself was the apex predator.

”Iʼll scan everything,” he growled, circling wide around the deadly zone, heading as far away from the flattened wasteland as possible. ”I wonʼt miss a single spot this time!”

Even when he spotted the black sphere vanish as silently as it had appeared, Hye didnʼt lower his guard for the rest of the day. He kept a 360-degree scan active at all times, checking the sky, the ground, and even the drifting clouds. This paranoia made his progress slow to a crawl, but in this world, speed without awareness was just a faster way to die.

He didnʼt risk flying at high speed when the night cycle began. During the night, there was no moon to speak of, only different-sized stars that pulsed with a cold, eerie cyan light. He kept his speed low and his insects close, assuming that the darkness would bring out the true monsters.