Chapter 455
Jake plunged the spinning blade of his chainsaw into the chest of the ravagespawn that had just charged at him. The jagged teeth of the chainsaw chewed through the monster’s flesh with brutal efficiency, spraying dark ichor in all directions. A moment later, the rotating blade burst out from the creature’s mangled back. It was still alive, though.
But not for long. Jake revved his second chainsaw and sliced clean through the monster’s thick neck, severing its head from its shoulders in a merciless arc. Before the mutant could even slump to the ichor-soaked ground, he spun on his heel, ready to engage the next snarling beast lunging at him.
The ravagespawn moved toward him from all directions. He was standing in the middle of what had once been a huge four-way intersection. Now, everything was coated with a thick layer of pulsating, organic matter. Across its surface, the creatures emerged one after another, shaping themselves from the strange material before closing in on the center of the intersection where he stood.
Several of the ravagespawn approached the shardflare he had planted there not long ago. He had made use of
Remote Control
, the upgrade that, instead of causing the projectile to detonate immediately upon impact, allowed him to mentally delay the explosion and trigger it at will. The explosion tore several ravagespawn apart.
A fresh group of monsters rushed past another shardflare, completely ignoring it. This time, Jake didn’t bother making use of
Remote Control
, though. He knew a shardflare automatically detonated a few seconds after striking a surface, and since he had thrown that one about a minute ago, it was due to go off any moment now.
Just as he thought so, the shardflare exploded, tearing apart several nearby ravagespawn.
However, there were still lots and lots of them all around him. He morphed one of his hands into a drill and drove it straight into the ground. The spinning construct ripped through the organic layer and bit into the earth beneath.
He immediately employed
Stunning Impact
, the upgrade that allowed him to trigger a localized earthquake at will. The ground shook, and all the monsters around him were struck with a
Dizzy
debuff, leaving them stunned and barely able to stand. Jake wasted no time exploiting their brief disorientation.
He leaped back to his feet, transforming his hands into
Rotary Blade Launchers
and firing circular saw blades at the unsteady monsters. Thanks to the
Auto-Aim
upgrade, he didn’t even need to take careful aim anymore. The rotary saw blades subtly adjusted their flight path, compensating for imperfect aim or a target’s sudden movement. So all he needed to do was simply point his hands in the general direction of his targets, and the deadly whirring projectiles would zero in on their marks on their own.
Jake continued to fight the ravagespawn, mowing them down in droves. He made use of nearly every weapon at his disposal, utilizing various useful upgrades as well.
At one point, when a particularly powerful monster emerged, he snagged it with his grappling hook and activated the
Shock Line
upgrade, sending a surge of electricity through the monster and temporarily stunning it. With the creature immobilized, finishing it off cost him almost no effort.
After leaving the Spartans’ base, Jake had been moving through Dead City for a few hours. He didn’t head straight for the meeting location with Mad Mick, though. Instead, he fought as many ravagespawn as he could along the way. The reason was simple: the System granted him generous amounts of XP for defeating these monsters.
Back in New Hope, the amount of XP he gained from the ravagespawn wasn’t much different from that earned by fighting regular mutants. Here in Dead City, however, the rewards were far greater. The likely explanation was that the Ravage Contamination had reached its final stage of development here.
So, instead of making a beeline for the meeting location, he busied himself with fighting various groups of ravagespawn. In just a few hours, he’d already leveled up three times, from 172 to 175, earning a total of 15 skill points. But he didn’t bother allocating them yet, focusing instead on simply gaining more experience.
At some point, he encountered an anomaly hovering a couple of dozen feet above the center of a four-way intersection. It had a challenge linked to it, which was pretty straightforward: stay alive for thirty minutes while fighting ravagespawn. He also had to remain within the intersection’s center because leaving it would mean instant failure.
The reward for completing it was skill points: 50 on Easy difficulty, 100 on Medium, and 150 on Hard. Jake accepted the challenge, selecting the Hard difficulty, and that was what he was currently doing: fighting waves of ravagespawn coming at him from all directions.
The rewards were definitely impressive, far beyond what he had expected. Earning 50, 100, or 150 SP for Easy, Medium, and Hard difficulties was a surprisingly high amount. He didn’t know whether every challenge in Dead City offered such incredible rewards or if he had simply been lucky to find this one.
But one thing was for sure: during his time in Dead City, he would definitely be able to level up many times.
Jake continued to fight the monsters. While he didn’t have much trouble dealing with the ravagespawn, they still occasionally managed to inflict some injuries on him.
However, thanks to the
Bloodlust Fury
upgrade, killing an enemy with chainsaw attacks restored a percentage of his health, and each consecutive kill amplified the health restoration. So while he did take some damage, any wound he received healed almost immediately after he used his chainsaws on the ravagespawn.
As Jake took care of a fresh bunch of monsters, a system message flashed before his eyes.
Challenge Complete! You have just received 150 SP.
The challenge was finally finished. In addition to the skill points, he had gained a hefty amount of experience. However, since he had leveled up just before accepting the challenge, the XP he had just earned wasn’t enough to level him up again. Still, he was only slightly short of reaching another level.
XP: 241,225 / 248,500
Jake then quickly checked the third section of the
Genetic Development Interface
. There were only three remaining skills he had yet to acquire.
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Skill: Rigging
Requirements: Body 140, Mind 230, Magick 215, Enhanced Intelligence (Rank V)
Cost: 90,000 MP
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Skill: Foresight
Requirements: Body 265, Mind 235, Magick 310, Enhanced Intelligence (Rank V), Feral Instincts (Rank V)
Cost: 140,000 MP
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Skill: Psychic
Requirements: Body 290, Mind 350, Magick 325, Enhanced Intelligence (Rank V), Mind Reader (Rank V)
Cost: 175,000 MP
–––––––––––––––––––––––––––
These skills were quite demanding in terms of attributes, so Jake spent all the skill points he had earned over the past several hours on improving them.
Body: 255 → 290
Mind: 218 → 323
Magick: 300 → 325
He now only needed to increase
Mind
to 350. To do that, he would have to allocate 27 points to that attribute, which meant leveling up six more times. Afterward, his attributes would stand at
Body
290,
Mind
350, and
Magic
325, meeting all the requirements for the remaining three skills and allowing him to purchase them. Once those were obtained, he would have acquired all the skills and abilities from the third section of the
Genetic Development Interface
.
From there, he could focus on maxing out these skills, advancing them to Rank V, and obtaining all their upgrades. Jake knew that the requirement for evolving to the next form was developing at least one of his lairs to Rank X. Therefore, he didn’t necessarily need to purchase and max out every skill from the current section of the
Genetic Development Interface
.
However, that was just what he liked to do. He preferred to max out every single one of his current skills before evolving to the next form. While doing so, he could also focus on developing his two main lairs, the ten‑story one and the Apex Hollow, to Rank IX and eventually the final Rank X.
And once he maxed out all his current skills and lairs, he could then move on to evolving to the next stage and see what it had to offer. With this plan set firmly in his mind, Jake pressed on toward his meeting with Mad Mick.
But as he began to move again, his
Feral Instincts
suddenly warned him of… something. They told him he was being watched and might even be in potential danger, though they didn’t reveal what kind of danger it could be. Then, the sensation vanished as abruptly as it had appeared, as if his
Feral Instincts
weren’t even sure if he had been in danger to begin with.
Jake quickly swept his gaze across the area, but nothing suspicious caught his eye. Sure, new swellings were already forming on the organic matter all around him, but they hadn’t yet matured into monsters. Whatever his
Feral Instincts
had tried to warn him about definitely wasn’t a fresh group of developing ravagespawn.
This wasn’t the first time a sense of being watched had washed over him in the past several hours.
Shortly after leaving the Spartans’ base, he had received a similar warning from his
Feral Instincts
. But when Jake looked around, he saw no immediate danger anywhere. And over the next several hours of his journey through Dead City, his
Feral Instincts
gave him similar warnings a few more times.
Each time, it was the same: the ability would alert him to some threat, only to immediately call it a false alarm. And every time Jake scanned his surroundings, he found nothing. It was definitely strange, almost as if the ability was malfunctioning. But Jake knew that wasn’t possible.
He continued moving through Dead City until he finally reached the meeting point Mad Mick had given to Catalina’s people. It was just another four-way intersection. Jake took a position at its center to look around. He spotted nothing of interest.
The sun had already begun its slow ascent in the sky, bathing the streets in morning light. Jake continued scanning his surroundings, noticing nothing except the pulsating, organic matter of the Ravage covering every surface. There was no sign of Mad Mick, no indication he’d ever even been there.
And it definitely seemed like an odd place for a meeting. There was nowhere for humans to hide from the Ravage. Perhaps, when Catalina’s people flew into the city, Mad Mick had given them these coordinates because he assumed they would reach him quickly.
Still, it was strange that he had chosen this exact spot. There was no subway entrance nearby, so where did Mad Mick expect to hide while waiting for Catalina’s people? Standing exposed was out of the question, as the Ravage Contamination tended to spawn monsters immediately after it sensed the presence of humans.
It was definitely strange that Mad Mick had chosen this location. Jake was even starting to doubt whether Mad Mick had ever been there. Perhaps he hadn’t intended to meet Catalina’s people at all.
The Commander had warned them that Mick wasn’t entirely sane, and while Jake had initially been skeptical about almost everything the Commander told them, he was beginning to think that perhaps Mad Mick was as crazy as the Commander claimed.
In any case, if Mad Mick had ever been to this place, he certainly wasn’t there now. And Jake wasn’t sure where he could be or how to find him.
Suddenly,
Feral Instincts
gave him the same warning it had numerous times before. Jake scanned his surroundings and immediately spotted someone. About thirty yards away, in a narrow alley formed by two tall buildings, stood a figure.
Jake was tall and generally humanoid in shape, though his arms were longer than those of a human, and his posture was slightly hunched. The newcomer, by contrast, was shorter and far more human-looking, with the powerful physique of a bodybuilder.
But it wasn’t human. Its skin was obsidian-black and textured, and its large eyes were a solid, unbroken blue.
Even without summoning the figure’s description, Jake already knew who it was.
It was another morphus.
It was D.