Chapter 34

  After Jake regained sciousness, he was astoo discover that he was alive and well. His body was no longer racked with pain, and the weariness had vanished. He felt refreshed. For a few moments, he remained on the ground, gazing up at the blue sky peeking through the opy of trees. It had been evening when he lost sciousness, and now it was midday. He had been unscious for over twelve hours. Jake sat up and gnced around. He was still in the park, surprised that no mutants had attacked him during his prolonged slumber. He turned his head to the side, gazing through the trees to his left. In the distance, he could see the clearing and the Dark Void looming ahead. The bck hole remained suspended above the ground at the ter of the clearing.

  While Jake retaihe memory of what had happened yesterday, a faint glimmer of hope remaihat it had all been a dream. That hope shattered as soon as he brought up his arms to look at them. His arms appeared bed, as if charred. The texture of his skin was coarse and uneven, resembling the rugged surface of tree bark, with small burrows etched into its surface, adding a unique and intricate pattern to its overall appearance. Having no clothes to ceal his form, Jake could see that his entire body bore the same obsidian-bck, rough-textured skin, not just his arms.

  What the hell happeo me?

  As Jake rose from the ground, he examined his body more closely. Despite maintaining a humanoid form, he was no longer entirely human. The obsidian-bck, rough-textured skin c his body felt incredibly hardeo the touch, devoid of any soft spots. Despite its rigidity, his new skin was estid flexible, allowing him to move freely despite its toughness.

  He had no visible reproductive ans, and when he reached up to touch his head, he discovered he had her a nose nor ears, and not even a mouth, making his face feel ft without all these facial features. He did have eyes, though. They were quite rge, extending to the sides of his head and providing him with ara twenty-five degrees of peripheral vision on each side. His only blind spot now was directly behind him. His expanded field of vision was the first thiiced upon waking, yet it didn’t strike him as odd. It felt normal, which was why he didn’t even think about it until now, as if he had always had such vision and was well aced to it.

  It was at that moment that he realized something else. Despite g ears or a nose, he could still hear and smell. Not only that, but his senses were far superior to what they were before. He could see, hear, and smell much better than ever before the transformation. Distant sounds seemed closer now, and he could see much farther, dising more details in the enviro. He could hear the rustle of foliage stirred by the wind and the faint movements of ex-human mutants shuffling through bushes nearby. Even though he couldn’t see them yet, he already kheir approximate positions and how far they were from him, just from the sounds they made. His enhanced sense of sight enabled him to dis finer details in his surroundings, such as the texture of the bark orees standing at a distance from him. Additionally, he could now detect various sts that he hadn’t even been aware of as a regur human being. It seemed that all his senses had been signifitly enhanced.

  As he took a few steps across the ground, he became aware of another ge in his body. He moved noticeably faster and was mile now. He could hear the soft thump of his feet thanks to his enhanced sense of hearing, but he was certain that a regur person wouldn’t be able to hear him move at all. Moving with feline-like agility, he traversed the foliage, barely disturbing it. He paused as a thought struck him. Turning to the left, he made his way to the edge of the trees. Stepping out from the bushes into the clearing, he gazed at the bck hole of the anomaly h above the ground.

  He took a few more steps closer to it and stopped again. He couldn’t feel its pull anymore. He remembered what happeo the ex-human leaper after it got sucked into the Dark Void. The anomaly had enhahe mutant before ejeg it. Following that, the leaper was no longer influenced by the anomaly’s pull. After upgrading the ex-human, the Dark Void wasn’t ied in it anymore. It appeared the same rule applied to him. The anomaly had drawn him in, transformed him, and theed him. Now that it was finished with him, its pull no longer affected him.

  So it seemed he had been transformed into a mutant. Recalling the Dark Void’s description, he khat the anomaly could enhance ex-human mutants inter versions of themselves, with regur humans uo survive the process. Despite the odds, he had mao survive everything within the anomaly and had been turned into a monster, a ge that he suspected was irreversible.

  He found himself p how he had mao survive in the Dark Void. Was it his high Luck attribute that had pyed a crucial role? Recalling his unlikely victory in the game of ce despite the odds stacked against him, he sidered the possibility that perhaps his Luck had pyed a role in his survival in both instances. Oher hand, he couldn’t help but wonder if his survival within the Dark Void was due to a system glitch.

  Ultimately, he cluded that the specifics weren’t all that important, at least for the time being. The key foow was figuring out his steps.

  The prospect of spending the rest of his life as a frightening mutant should have evoked fear or at least sadness in him. Yet he found himself devoid of these emotions. Instead, he weled his new reality with a surprising sense of calm. e to think of it, he was now much calmer and more fident than before. He found his thinking sharper, too. It must have something to do with him being a mutant. In addition to the enhanced agility and senses, he seemed to have gained an inhuman mind as well, which allowed him to trol his emotioer and think more clearly.

  He looked around the clearing, notig that the belongings he had as a survivor were o be found, and he currently had nothing on him. It was uandable. All his ons, equipment, and rucksack had been lost during his tumultuous jourhrough the dark void as he was teleported from orange location to another. His clothing had been pletely dissolved into nothingness when he was trapped within the pod filled with the acidic liquid that only affected his garments, leaving his body unscathed. That was fine. He highly doubted he would need any of those things now that he was a mutant.

  It made him ponder what would happe. Was he now just one of the average ex-human mutants? Was he now nothing more than the prey to be hunted down by survivors for XP? It felt unfair. Sure, it was a good thing that he had mao survive the transformation, but being the prey after havihe hunter was an unfortuurn of events.

  Before Jake could pte the matter further, he heard the rustle of foliage behind him. With astonishing swiftness, he spun around to face the source of the noise. He couldn’t see the enemy yet, but his enhanced hearing picked up on a creature making its way through the foliage toward him. It didn’t take long for the ex-human walker to emerge from the trees. The mutant halted at the edge of the clearing upon spotting Jake.

  For a moment, the mutant just stared at him, seemingly unsure of what he was and whether it should attack. A thought crossed Jake’s mind that perhaps now that he was a mutant himself, the other ex-humans wouldn’t harm him, mistaking him for one of their own. However, as soon as he thought that, the walker screamed in rage before charging toward him.