Chapter 55

  He’d never experienced suteement in his entire life as he did at that moment. Fighting the group of survivors and sying them one by oed him much more than he’d ever thought it would. Even though the Dazed ive effect was still affeg him, the survivors struggled to take him down. He felt somewhat dizzy and couldn’t think as clearly as usual. Due to that, he moved slower than before, which allowed his oppos to nd hits on him every now and then.

  Despite bullets ripping at his mutant body, he was unstoppable. While he could feel the shots inflig some damage on him, it wasn’t nearly enough to take him down. His body was defiougher than he’d believed before. Mana was seeping from some of his bullet wounds but at a rather slow rate to be w about it. Even though the Dazed effect slowed him dowill moved too fast for the survivors to keep track of his movements.

  The fierce joy of the hunt and the lust of killing the humans were overp him. Hunting prey had long since bee natural to him. However, until now, he’d only hunted down and sin mutants. Battling humans, as it turned out, was airely different matter. Humans were smarter, which made them way more dangerous oppos than mutants. As a result, battling them was way more iing aing.

  Besides, ex-humans never dispyed aions. They never showed a hint of fear even when fag immi death. In trast, humans valued their lives. They didn’t want to die and showed a range of emotions in battle such as fear, anger, and fusion. This group of survivors hadn’t expected him to be much different from the typical dumb ex-humans they usually entered. The sudden realization that they were dealing with a much more formidable oppo instilled sheer dread into them. And Jake found himself enjoying it quite a bit. The taste of their terror intoxicated him.

  He slew them one by oil there was only o, a young woman named Elena. However, she seemed to have reached her breaking point. She wheeled around and bolted away from him. Jake had always kept her in his field of vision, so he was aware that she hadn’t even fired a single shot at him, paralyzed with horror. Not that it mattered to him. While she raook a moment to finish off the wounded survivors without any that she might escape. pared to him, humans were so freaking slow. He knew no matter how far she ran, catg up to her would be a simple task for him.

  He killed off the two remaining survivors, one named Maria and another named Marcus. After that, he gave his full attention to Elena, bursting into a sprint after her. The moment she realized he was chasing her, she burst into tears. His acute sense of hearing picked up the sounds of her sobs as she stubbornly tried to flee from him. She either na?vely believed she could outrun him or simply hoped so. But that wasn’t going to happen. He was quickly catg up to her and was going to poun her from behind in a matter of seds.

  Being a morphus, Jake never experiehe rush of adrenaline, which was exclusive to human physiology. He was no longer human, but as he just found out, there was a dark side within him that seemed to mimic the effects of adrenaline. His transformation into a mutant hadn’t deprived him of his humanity. Jake had believed that despite his altered appearance, he was still human on the inside. But the transformation had had a deeper impa him than he’d initially thought.

  After his transformation, a dark beast was born within his mind. It’d been in deep slumber, which was why Jake hadn’t even been aware of his newly acquired dark side. Until now. The joy of sying the group of survivors and the sheer terror emanating from them awakened his inner beast. It was in trol now and craved even more blood. And it was going to get what it wanted pretty soon.

  When one of Elena’s feet snagged on a cluster of weeds, she pitched forward, nding face-first on the ground. She looked bad saw he was almost on top of her. To her credit, she didn’t give up. She quickly got to her feet and tio run. Jake could catch up with her easily. But he froze instead. When the woman fell and gnced back at him, he seemed to have snapped out of it. He realized what he was doing. What he’d just done.

  He’d sin four survivors. By itself, it didn’t mean mu. When he was human, he’d killed his fellow survivors too. But it was always in self-defense. So the fact that he’d just killed four survivors in cold blood didn’t mean much by itself. They attacked him, leaving him no choice but to defend himself.

  What troubled him was how much he enjoyed killing them, relishing his superiority over inferior, weak humans. But it wasn’t his real feelings. It was the dark side newly unveiled within him. Even now as he watched Elena run away, all he wao do was tio chase her, to poun her, to tear her to shreds with his cws—

  Jake forced himself to stop thinking about it. In his mind, his inner beast screamed at him to resume chasing the esg prey. But he didn’t want to. He couldn’t let his inner beast trol his as. He had to exercise a tremendous amount of willpower to sile. It took him a few moments, but eventually, he mao get a hold of himself. His inner beast seemed to get back to its slumber, and Jake no longer felt the lust for blood. He could finally think clearly and was in full trol over his as and thoughts once more. It was such a relief.

  When Elena gnced over her shoulder aime, Jake was already gone. He let her run away auro the massacre he’d caused. For a moment, he stared at the mutited bodies of the survivors he’d sin. The otion he felt at that moment was what scared him even more than the fact he’d butchered them so brutally. At that moment, he realized that the transformation into a mutant had ged him much more than he’d initially thought. He’d ged not only physically but mentally as well, and it was sg the hell out of him.

  He didn’t want to turn into a bloodthirsty killing mae. He had to trol himself. He had to keep his inner beast in check. Jake promised himself he would resist his dark side. He wouldn’t let himself turn into a mindless mutant akin to the typical ex-humans. He was going to save whatever humanity was left in him no matter what.

  With that settled, he quickly searched through the dead survivors’ things. They had various ons, ammo, ed food, bottled water, and whatnot. None of these things were of any use to him. Each of them had a PDA, but all the devices were locked. As a survivor, he had at some point upgraded his PDA, unlog a feature that let him hato other people’s handheld puters.

  However, now as a mutant, he couldn’t do that anymore. Even his Enhanced Intelligence skill didn’t help in that matter. Perhaps ter, when he allotted more points to Mind or acquired some additional mied skills, he would be able to hato PDAs with the force of his mind, but at the moment he couldn’t do that.

  None of the dead survivors had any mana ables on them either, which made seo Jake. Why carry such items in your backpack when with a simple mental and, one could absorb the energy stored within a mana able? Survivors probably absorbed the magical energy from mana ables as soon as they found them, much like Jake himself had done during his time as a survivor.

  The realization that he hadn’t received any experience points for killing the four survivors further solidified his decision to refrain from hunting down and killing humans from now on. They had nothing to offer him anyway: no XP, no mana, no nothing. To avoid getting into a fight with humans and risking waking his inner beast, Jake decided to avoid dealing with survivors as much as possible.

  After that, he looked around to orient himself. Before the Pulsar magical anomaly pushed him off the roof, he was on his way to the part of the city that lit with huge crevices. He sed his surroundings and realized he wasn’t far off from his intended destination. So there was o scale the high-rise rooftops. Turning to face the correct dire, Jake transitioned into a brisk run toward his goal.