Chapter 125
It took a couple of hours for Jake’s eye to grow back. It was great to have full vision again. As for the fingers he’d lost, they had regrown long before that. When he finally stepped out of the building where he had sought refuge, darkness was beginning to set in. The night would arrive in just a few hours.
He spent some time fighting monsters and searg for mana. At some point, he leveled up to 40, earning 5 skill points to allocate. He hid in the darkness of a narrow alley and summoned his stats. As he had pnned, he acquired all four avaible upgrades for the Mind Reader ability.
Upgrade Options:
1 - Allows you to hear sounds within a target’s memories.
2 - Sharpen the crity of memories to create more vivid visualizations.
3 - Allows you to absorb long memories within just a few seds of real time.
4 - Allows you to instantly access key moments in a target’s memories.
Si was an Unon ability, it had frades instead of three, and all of them were extremely useful. Thanks to the first one, he could finally dis sounds while viewing someone’s memories. This would be particurly useful, as it would allow him to listen to versations that took p a target’s past.
The sed upgrade improved the overall crity of memories, while the third one allowed him to watch lengthy memories in just seds of real time, which was extremely useful. He recalled how, during his exploration of the helicopter pilot’s memories, the man had pulled a gun on him. If he hadn’t been warned about that through Feral Instincts, the pilot could have shot him. With the sed upgrade, he could absorb long memories in mere seds, fast enough to prevent his target from taking any a while he was engrossed in their memories.
The fourth upgrade was incredibly useful as well. Thanks to it, he wouldn’t o watch all of a target’s memories, but instead, he would instantly be able to jump to only the important ones. bined with the third upgrade, viewing someone’s memories could be doremely quickly—probably in just a couple of seds of real time.
Jake then checked the status of this ability.
Mind Reader: Rank I (60%) (Upgrades: 4 of 4) (Unon)
He had watched the memories of Jovan and Arnaud, advang his Mind Reader ability by 20% each time. To upgrade the ability to Rank II, he o use it two more times.
Jake couldn’t help but notice that there wasn’t a single upgrade for this ability that allowed him to delve into someone’s memories for more than just a few minutes in. So far, he could access only about fifteen minutes of a target’s most ret memories. He suspected that the depth of access was governed by this ability’s rank, meaning he o advance Mind Reader to higher ranks to explore deeper into a person’s mind.
The only way tress this ability was to use it on somebody, and sure enough, the person had to be alive. This posed a bit of a problem for him. Survivors wouldn’t just let him grab them by their heads—or any other parts of their bodies for that matter. They would resist and attack him, and he wao avoid unnecessary frontations.
Then an idea came to him. Could he use this ability on a sleeping person? Would it work? It seemed worth a try. He figured he could probably touch a person’s head lightly without waking them. He decided to give it a shot at some point.
He still had one skill poio allocate. After giving the matter some thought, he decided to use it to purchase the final upgrade for Cws to make them longer. He remembered that he previously hadn’t wao increase their length, because longer cws were less practical for tasks beyond bat. However, in the end, he decided to acquire the upgrade. After all, he only used them in bat, and when he, for example, o piething up, he morphed his cws bato normal hands anyway. Therefore, there was no reason not to acquire this upgrade.
He then reviewed his current stats.
Name: Jake Turner
Race: Ex-Human Morphus
Evolution Stage 2: “Savage Ast”
Level: 40
HP: 100%
XP: 35/5125
SP: 0
MP: 43,125
Body: 32
Mind: 30
Magick: 30
Cws: Rank III (17%) (Upgrades: 4 of 4) (Unon)
Swords: Rank II (13%) (Upgrades: 3 of 3) (on)
Bded Tentacles: Rank I (96%) (Upgrades: 3 of 3) (on)
Mind Reader: Rank I (60%) (Upgrades: 4 of 4) (Unon)
Smashfists: Rank I (78%) (Upgrades: 3 of 3) (on)
Enhanced Senses: Rank III (19%) (Upgrades: 4 of 4) (Unon)
Enhanced Agility: Rank III (24%) (Upgrades: 4 of 4) (Unon)
Enhanced Intelligence: Rank III (25%) (Upgrades: 4 of 4) (Unon)
Enhanced Reflexes: Rank I (98%) (Upgrades: 3 of 3) (on)
Enharength: Rank I (35%) (Upgrades: 3 of 3) (on)
Enhanced Regeion: Rank I (47%) (Upgrades: 3 of 3) (on)
Feral Instincts: Rank I (26%) (Upgrades: 3 of 3) (on)
Enhanced Durability: Rank I (19%) (Upgrades: 3 of 3) (on)
So he had finally acquired all the upgrades for his current skills and abilities. Once he collected more MP, he po purchase some new ones from the sed se of the Geic Development Interface, which had bee avaible after his evolving into the sed stage.
Jake then opened his eyes, morphed his hands into cws, and looked at them. They were definitely longer now, but aside from that, they hadn’t ged. He reverted them to normal hands ahe dark alley. Since he decided to use Mind Reader on sleeping humans, he chose to stay at street level instead of going to the rooftops. He spent the rest of the evening and the first half of the night searg for mana ables.
During his search, he accumuted over fifty thousand MP. He could now buy two or maybe even three skills from the sed se of the Geic Development Interface. He decided to level up first so he would have spare skill points to allocate to his attributes if it became necessary to purchase skills that caught his eye.
It was now the middle of the night, and most survivors were likely fast asleep. The regur world reset had already taken pce, so there were plenty of freshly respawned monsters around. This worked to his advantage, making it easier to search for survivors’ hideouts because as he knew from experience, mutants never respawned in buildings where humans sought shelter for the night.
Most of the buildings he entered had ex-humans inside, so he quickly left them. Eventually, he found a structure that seemed devoid of mutants—at least the living ones. He noticed the bodies of dead mutants scattered around, along with plenty of spent brass gs littering the floor. Clear footprints were visible in the yer of dust c the ground. He followed the tracks to one of the upper floors, where he found himself in a long corridor lined with closed doors oher side.
He crept down the corridor, carefully listening for any sounds—like sn—that might reveal the presence of sleeping survivors on this floor. It didn’t take him long to hear something, but instead of the sounds of sleeping people, his acute hearied several voices engaged in versation. He froze, croug low to the floor.
He could tell that the sounds of versation were ing from a slightly ajar door a few yards down the corridor. Judging by the energy in the voices of those talking, they weren’t going to sleep anytime soon. So instead of waiting for them to turn in, he decided to leave the building and search for anroup of survivors.
He was about to turn around and head back to the stairs when he suddenly realized that the survivors were actually talking about him! Intrigued, he decided to stay a little loo listen in on their versation.
