Jake attacked another ex-human walker with his claws, shredding the mutant’s throat. Dark blood poured from the ragged wound as the mutant tumbled forward. Jake leaped out of the falling creature’s path and immediately lashed out at another walker. Over a dozen ex-humans surrounded him, but they were powerless against him. Among them were only walkers and leapers, and by that point, Jake was capable of dealing with these two types of mutants with little effort, if any. He felt like he could defeat them with his eyes closed.
After discovering the edge of the city, he’d been battling mutants for a few hours straight. At some point, he realized that with his Enhanced Intelligence now at Rank II, he could concentrate on combat and simultaneously think about something altogether different. He utilized this newfound ability to reflect on his progression. While he engaged in combat in a vast room of an abandoned building, he was thinking about his abilities and skills. Currently, he possessed one ability, Claws, along with three skills: Enhanced Senses, Enhanced Agility, and Enhanced Intelligence.
As he had noticed some time before, Claws progressed only when he used them in combat. When he simply wandered around with his hands transformed into claws, the ability didn’t progress at all. He currently didn’t have any other abilities, but he figured the same most likely went for other abilities, or at least for combat ones. The skills, on the other hand, seemed to progress all the time, albeit at a slower pace. This was due to his constant activity, whether traversing the city or battling mutants, all the while paying attention to his surroundings and pondering on various matters.
From the corner of his eye, Jake spotted a leaper coil its body as it prepared to jump toward him. His expanded field of vision allowed him to watch the mutant even without having to turn his head. He jumped to the side just as the mutant leaped toward him. His talons lashed out at the leaper, tearing deeply into the side of the mutant. With a wail of pain, the creature collapsed to the ground. Before it could even get up from the floor, Jake stomped on its exposed throat, crushing it underneath his hardened foot. The creature was still alive, its hands clawing at him but doing little to no damage to him. While the leaper thrashed around beneath his foot, a walker lurched at him, but Jake swatted its outstretched hands aside before slashing at its throat. With the walker dealt with, he finished off the leaper by stomping on its throat a few times. There were still plenty of mutants to deal with, and after a quick look around, Jake lunged toward the nearest one.
While he fought the remaining enemies, he thought about what he’d learned about mutants so far. There were two types of them, regular and elite. Most of the time, he had to deal with the former ones because the latter were less common. Regular mutants were pretty weak and usually didn’t have any special abilities. Elite mutants were stronger versions of regular ones and possessed at least one special ability.
The other day, Jake had leveled up three times. However, each level-up required more XP than the last to progress further. So it could be a good thing to start looking for more powerful enemies with higher XP rewards because it was becoming harder and harder to level up. He had spent most of the night fighting mutants but hadn’t leveled up yet. He was only level 8, but he found that mutants of higher levels, such as shamblers or whippers, already presented no real challenge for him. He would love to ignore low-level mutants and focus his attention on more powerful foes, but he was unaware of where he could find more of them. Shamblers and whippers were pretty scarce. He usually only encountered a few of them in a day.
Jake summed up in his mind what kind of mutants he’d encountered so far. A walker was a level 1 mutant and went for only 10 XP. A leaper was level 5 and worth 25 XP. Leapers were somewhat scarcer than walkers. Out of ten ex-humans he came across, nine of them were walkers and only one was a leaper. Both a shambler and a whipper were level 10, but the former one went for 50 XP while the latter one was worth 75 XP. Unfortunately, each of these two kinds of mutants was really hard to find.
In order to level up faster, he needed to find a location where the majority of enemies were bigger and nastier, rewarding with more XP. The city was huge, but he’d already explored most of it and everywhere he was, he encountered only these four types of mutants. In the Gameverse, a world governed by video game logic, this city appeared to serve as a starting location for new players. To find more powerful enemies, he most likely needed to progress to the next location, likely another city. But where was it and how could he get there?
A few hours earlier, he’d reached the outskirts of the city. He’d seen what lay beyond its limits—a seemingly endless wasteland. Before venturing beyond the city’s borders, he had to learn the location of the next city and obtain the means to get there, such as some kind of powerful off-road vehicle or perhaps some abilities that would enable him to easily move through the wasteland. By his estimation, he could currently get enough XP to level up once a day. However, he expected that after reaching level 20 or so, the rate of leveling up would drastically slow down. It would become really hard for him to level up in his current location, so by the time he leveled up to 20, he needed to have found the next location with more powerful enemies.
Finally, Jake finished off the remaining mutants. For a moment, he just stood in the middle of the room, looking at the scattered dead mutants. Despite killing so many of them in the past several hours, he had yet to level up to 9. He really needed to find a more efficient method of leveling up.
It was then that he remembered something. As a survivor, he’d once come across a section of the city where large cracks split the streets, revealing glimpses of the strange creatures lurking in the sewers below. He’d never learned what they were, because he’d never dared to descend into the city’s depths. Perhaps it was time to venture into the sewers. Being a morphus, he was no longer afraid to do so.
When Jake emerged onto the roof of the building, he was greeted by the rays of the morning sun. A new day had begun. He looked around, searching for the section of the city where the streets split by the huge cracks were. It didn’t take him long to remember where he needed to go. Turning to face the right direction, Jake broke into a sprint. Reaching the edge of the roof, he jumped toward the next building.