Chapter 56

  It took him just a few minutes of brisk jogging to reach his destination. He slowed down when he made it to the se of the city where huge crevices crisscrossed the streets. Some of them could be crossed without much trouble by simply stepping over while some of the others were so wide he had to leap over. When he was a survivor, he had a hard time navigating this area. Oime, he even nearly fell into one of the crevices. As a mutant now, he didn’t have any problems traversing this part of the city. His inhuman agility and remarkable acrobatic abilities allowed him to easily navigate through the area, leaping over the gaping cracks with ease.

  Jake came to a halt at the edge of a particurly wide crevice, peering down into the dimly lit depths below. The huge crack revealed the intricate maze-like work of the sewers. Previously, as a survivor, he discovered two kinds of creatures lurking in those tunnels. The first were rge rat-like beings with elongated snouts and red eyes, often moving in groups. The sed one was a massive terrifying creature resembling a hybrid of a bear and an alligator. This creature seemed to be a loner, navigating the sewers on its own. The rat-things would scatter in fear at the mere sight of the daunting bear-alligator.

  That was basically all that Jake had learned about the sewers and its inhabitants when he was a human survivor. He remembered being terrified when he nearly fell into one of the crevices. The thought of finding himself in the dark depths of the sewers where rat-things and bear-alligators lurked in the darkness filled him with dread. Now that he was a mutant, he wasn’t afraid anymore. He nning to desd into the maze-like work of underground tuo see what they had to offer.

  He stepped a little closer to the edge of the crevice to gauge the depth of the drop. Leaning over, he peered into the darkness. It wasn’t too deep, so Jake was sure he would be perfectly fine if he jumped in there. Especially sidering he’d hardly received any damage when he fell off the roof of a ten-story building. The drop to the sewers down below wasn’t nearly as high as that.

  Now that Jake remembered about falling off the roof and the subsequent csh with a group of survivors, he paused. The Dazed ive effect had long since faded out, but some of the bullet wounds still hadn’t healed up pletely. If he’d rested for some time after the fight, his body would solely have focused on healing itself and mended his wounds by now. But Jake hadn’t given it su opportunity. After the battle, he searched through the dead survivors’ stuff for a minute before breaking into a run to this part of the city, giving his body no time to rest.

  So while some of the bullet wounds had already closed, some of the worst ones were still healing. Jake decided to wait until his body pletely recovered. He lowered himself into a sitting position and looked at one of the wounds on his side. He could see a bluish energy seeping out of the hole. Deep ihe wound, embedded in his obsidian flesh and enveloped by the bluish glow of mana was a bullet. Jake watched it slowly disie into nothingness, being seemingly dissolved by mana tained within his body. After that, the wound sealed shut entirely, halting the leakage of mana and leaving no trace of a scar on his body. A few more mier, the rest of his wounds healed up as well. Jake was now fully recovered and good to go.

  He got to his feet and with a thought, pulled up his mana t. The exertion from leaping across rooftops, engaging in bat with survivors, and mana loss from the wounds he sustained greatly depleted his energy reserves. Despite this, he still had a suffit amount remaining, so he wasn’t at risk of running out of mana in the several hours. However, he was going to o replenish this magical energy sooner rather than ter. Hopefully, he would e across some mana ables in the sewers down below.

  With that in mind, he stepped to the very edge of the gaping crevice. He gnced into the semi-darkness below one more time before jumping down. The dest was brief, stihan a sed. He nded in the middle of a dark tunnel, spshing dirty water everywhere, bending his ko absorb the impact. Straightening up, he surveyed his surroundings. Sunlight filtering in through the crevice above provided enough illumination to see by. The distant areas of the tunnel where the craded were engulfed in total darkness. Jake was unfazed by it. Enhanced Senses allowed him to see in the darkness pretty well.

  Shallow, murky water trickled along the tunnel floor. It was so dirty it was almost bck. The stench of the sewers was overp, but it didn’t faze him in the slightest. Had he remained human, he would have struggled to bear the stench, risking throwing up the tents of his stomach. As a mutant, the foul st didn’t affect him at all. His anatomy had ged drastically after his transformation into a morphus. Unlike most of the living anisms, he no longer even had a stomach, or any other internal ans for that matter.

  As far as he knew, he was simply a piece of some obsidian-like estic material, molded to resemble a human form and animated by the magical energy tained inside his body. As long as enough mana circuted within his strange body, he would remain alive. However, if his mana reserves were ever depleted, he would turn into a lifeless piece of obsidian-like material. This was a fate he was determio avoid at all costs.

  He cast a quice back over his shoulder and saw that the front and bads of the tunnel appeared identical, both shrouded in darkness. Aside from the gurgling sounds ing from the putrid water below him, the sewers remained eerie quiet. Yet Jake khat somewhere deeper within the byrinth of underground tunnels lurked its upsetting dwellers. Pig a random dire, he set off to explore the sewers.