Chapter 98

  For the few days, Jake adhered to the pn he’d devised some time ago—sc for mana at night and hunting for XP in the sewers during the daytime.

  At night, when the world was brimming with mana ables replenished after a fresh reset, Jake discovered many mana items while the majority of survivors rested during that time. This allowed him to accumute signifit amounts of mana. During the daytime, he hunted down the uling dwellers of the underground tunnels: mutated rats and devourers. The former were a strange bination of rats and kangaroos, possessing the size of the tter. Devourers resembled alligators but had the size and body structure of grizzly bears.

  The sewers were a truly terrifying pce. Some parts were dimly lit by light filtering in from cracks above, while others were enveloped in plete darkness. The repugnant stench permeated the sewers, following him wherever he went. Dirty, stinky water flowed dowunnels, reag as high as his knees in some pces.

  But the scariest part about the sewers was their inhabitants. Mutated rats were quite weak when alohey were hardly ever alohough. Most of the time, they baogether in groups that ranged from a few creatures to dozens. Their strength y in their numbers. While the mutated rats generally steered clear of the exceptionally rge and powerful devourers, on more than one occasion, Jake witnessed a rge group of mutated rats take down a devourer.

  As for the devourers themselves, they were loners. They were huge and powerful, which robably why they saw little be in grouping up with their own kind. They were s and dangerous Jake sometimes even had trouble dealing with them.

  All of those were likely the reasons survivors never ventured into the sewers. Not once did Jake enter a human being in the dark tunnels uhe city. He erfectly fih that. This meant that all the XP the sewers had to offer beloo him alone. So far, the sewers were the best hunting grounds for XP he’d ever found.

  After eaoal world reset, all the mutants in the sewers were revived, much like the ex-humans iy above. During each sweep of clearing out the sewers, he would pass by the massive doors that led to a dungeon known as The Maze of Torment. The reended level for entering the dungeon was 15-20, but to unlock the door, he needed a Skeleton Key. He still didn’t know where he could find one, so getting into the dungeon remained impossible for now. It was a little disappointing, but he figured that eventually, he would stumble upon a Skeleton Key somewhere.

  So, Jake’s routine sisted of searg for mana at night and killing mutants for XP during the day. Once he had cleared the sewers of all mutants, he would return to street level to hunt down ex-humans for additional ks of XP. To avoid any potential enters with survivors, he navigated the city by moving across rooftops. He would leap from one rooftop to another, work his way down from the top floor to the ground level, killing all the mutants along the way, and theurn to the top of the building ao the roof, repeating the process.

  During these days of intense grinding, Jake leveled up multiple times, progressing from twelve to twenty-three. He allocated two skill points to the Body attribute, improving his body’s resistao damage with eacrease. Body appeared to be the most important attribute for him. He also assigwo points to Mind, sharpening both his intelligend senses.

  In the initial days after his transformation, Jake hesitated to increase Magick because he was unsure of the usefulness of this attribute. However, ter on, he discovered that Magick was actually very beneficial. This attribute helped his body manipute mana more effectively. Each point ied in Magick reduced the amount of mana his body ed during processes like healing, transf his hands into cws, and other simir as. At some point, he even began thinking that Magick robably even more important than Body, which was why he ied the several skill points into Magick, increasing this attribute to 5.

  Jake also used some of his skill points to acquire new upgrades for some of his skills and abilities. Skills were passive and stantly active while abilities o be activated with a thought. He currently possessed three abilities—Cws, Swords, and Bded Tentacles—and four skills—Enhanced Senses, Enhanced Agility, Enhanced Intelligence, and Enhanced Reflexes. He’d obtaihe st skill a couple of days after the tower-climbing challe hadn’t acquired any upgrades for it yet.

  Jake sidered Cws his primary on because he used it the most and was most fortable with it. This ability currently had two upgrades: reduced transformation time and increased strength. The third upgrade was to increase his cws’ reach, but Jake didn’t see much reason to obtain it. He liked his cws the way they were. They weren’t meant to keep his e bay. For extended reach, he could rely on his swords, which he usually used when fighting bde-wielding enemies like sshers.

  While his cws excelled in bat, they proved less practical for other tasks. When he o pick up an object or crush a mana able in his fist, he found his cws unsuitable and had to transform them bato normal hands for such as. Increasing the cws’ length would only make non-bat tasks more difficult. Moreover, increasing his cws’ length could also diminish some of his bat capabilities. He often used his cws to tear ks of flesh from his enemies’ bodies. He articurly partial to ripping the rynx out of an ex-human’s throat. Increasing the length of his cws could foil this move because the extended length might prevent him from closing his fiightly enough.

  As for Swords, his sed bat ability, Jake had acquired an upgrade for them to make them stronger a while back. Some time after the tower-climbing challenge, he acquired two more upgrades for the ability: oo reduce the transformation time and ao increase the length of his bdes.

  In the past, he had acquired two upgrades for Enhanced Agility, the first one increasing his rea time in bat and the sed one improving his acrobatic abilities. Retly, he’d also obtaihe third upgrade, whihanced his body coordination. This improvement increased his sprint speed and enabled him to make rapid direal ges while sprinting, which was useful iain situations.

  The Enhanced Reflexes skill he’d retly obtained worked extremely well in bination with the upgrade for Enhanced Agility that increased his deftness in bat. Thanks to these two, he was now so skilled at dodging and evading enemies’ attacks that everemely fast and agile ex-humans like sshers or chasers struggled to nd a hit on him. There were now no mutants that could pose any kind of threat to him at all. Evee enemies no longer posed much of a challeo him.

  Jake was currently on the roof of a ten-story building, where he’d defeated ae ex-human moments before. He’d just leveled up from 23 to 24, earning a skill point to allocate. Closing his eyes, he summoned his stats.

  Hey everyone! I just wao tell you that since we missed a few days, there will be a neter released tomorrow, followed by another one ing out on Sunday! Both will be automatically released at our usual time of 4:33 PM EST. Thank you for your tinued support and happy reading! :)