He positioned himself just below the open hatch door, then turned and jumped high enough to slip through the opening. He landed softly in the center of the storage room. After lowering the hatch door, he stepped out into the corridor.
He first looked left at the doorway leading into the main area of the diner, which was covered by the piece of the roof hanging down from above. Jake chose not to exit through that doorway to avoid disturbing the hanging piece of roof. He had a feeling that if he constantly pushed it out of the way every time he entered or exited the corridor, the piece of roof might eventually detach and fall, exposing the doorway. He needed to prevent that from happening if he wanted to keep uninvited visitors from discovering his lair.
He turned his head to look at the other end of the corridor. It was blocked by the pieces of collapsed roof, leaving a wide gap in the ceiling. He walked to the pile of debris and climbed on top of it. Looking up, he saw the blue sky through the huge, ragged hole.
He pivoted, bent his knees, and launched himself upward, activating Gravity Leap. He slipped through the hole in the ceiling, soaring up in the air. At the peak of his jump, he caused his body to come to a controlled hover and quickly glanced around.
The roof of the diner was a dozen feet below him. However, he wasn’t willing to land there for fear of causing more destruction. He certainly didn’t want the intact sections of the roof to give in, collapsing into the storage room and burying the hatch door.
So he morphed his left hand into a grappling hook and launched it at the ground in front of the diner. Once the hook latched onto the asphalt, he retracted the cord, pulling himself toward the spot where the hook was secured. After landing, he retracted the grappling hook and morphed it back into a human-like hand.
Rising from his crouch, he looked around. There were no mutants in sight, but he knew it wouldn’t take long to find some. Picking a random direction, he set off. It wasn’t long before a group of walkers jumped out at him from a side street.
Dealing with them took little time and effort. He then stepped toward one of the bodies and hoisted it onto his shoulders. Then, he turned around and jogged back to the diner, the weight on his shoulders not slowing him down at all.
Once he was back at the diner, he took a moment to think. Should he enter through the front or the roof? He figured that climbing to the roof with the dead body draped across his shoulders wouldn’t be too troublesome. Activating Adhesive Secretion, he began to scale the side wall of the diner.
A few seconds later, he stood on the roof. He adjusted the position of the body over his shoulders before stepping toward the hole in the ceiling. Jumping down, he landed amid the debris. He made his way down the corridor and then into the storage room. After lifting the hatch door, he leaped into the glowing blue abyss below.
He was back in his lair. With the Mana Core now in the center of the basement, it was no longer dark. The glow from the mana orb cast a blushing light across the walls, illuminating the entire area. Jake approached the Mana Core, turned, and shrugged off the mutant’s body.
It dropped onto the black splotch of Corruption. Jake turned and looked down. The larva he had recently created wandered aimlessly around the Corruption. He expected the creature to move toward the dead body and process it, but that didn’t happen.
Get to work, buddy, Jake thought.
However, nothing changed in the larva’s behavior. It continued to crawl around the body lying on the Corruption, completely ignoring it.
When Jake issued a telepathic command for the larva to process the dead body, a system message suddenly flashed through his mind.
Non-animated Biomass cannot be processed. To generate Corruption, a living organism must be provided for your larvae to process.
This certainly complicated things. Neither a mutant nor a human would agree to be dragged into his lair, to be eaten alive by his larva—or whatever the creature intended to do with its prey.
Jake glanced at the mutant’s dead body sprawled on the splotch of Corruption. For a moment, he contemplated dragging the body to one of the corners of his lair. Ultimately, he decided there was no point in keeping the body, considering dead things seemed to be of no use to him at all.
Heaving the body onto his shoulders once more, he turned toward the hatch. Half a minute later, he was back on the street in front of the diner where he had just landed. He then crossed the street and entered a side alley.
He walked a few paces in and dropped the dead body behind a dumpster. He was determined to do everything possible to ensure the diner wouldn’t attract the attention of random humans passing by.
He returned to the street and took a moment to think. He needed to provide a living creature for his larva to process and spread Corruption. He considered whether he should go after a human. After all, even a walker—the weakest type of mutant—had become quite powerful since the city upgrade. It would surely be easier to catch a human than attempt to bring a walker to his lair.
If he chose to catch a human, he would target a member of Los Demonios instead of an ordinary survivor. However, locating a group of Los Demonios might take time, though. After all, the city was enormous, and while they were way better equipped than ordinary survivors, there were far fewer of them.
Maybe he should try to capture a regular survivor instead. This thought came naturally, surprisingly eliciting no sense of guilt. This caught him off guard. Was he gradually becoming a cold-blooded monster without even realizing it?
Jake wanted to conserve what little humanity he had left. However, it seemed increasingly difficult to cling to it. He realized that at some point, he might inadvertently give in completely to his monster nature. Worst yet, he might not even recognize it by that point.
On the other hand, was there even a point in trying to conserve what little humanity he still had? Jake didn’t know. He suddenly realized that he didn’t care all that much about it anymore.
He looked around, chose a random direction, and set off. He would try to catch a member of Los Demonios. And if no bandits were nearby—well, he would settle for a walker then… or perhaps an ordinary survivor. He decided to go with the flow.
After all, was there any reason to distinguish between various groups of humans? They were all just humans—prey to be hunted. Those thoughts no longer scared him. They had become natural.
As he prowled the overgrown streets of the city in search of prey, he grew increasingly convinced that holding onto his humanity might no longer matter.