After that, the next few days passed by like a gentle breeze.
During the dayti, while we left the three wounded soldiers to recover in the station, Jericho, Marcus and I headed out toward the mall to begin our Ferin slaughter. And at night, when we got back ho — exhausted, with duffel bags filled with food — we ford a circle, which included Katie and her mother, and we ate, conversed a bit, laughed and slept.
Every day, we never headed back ho until it was nightti. And the reason for this was that hunting with Jericho and Marcus was genuinely fun, in a twisted kind of way.
And it turned out that, after so role allocation and drafting of proper hunting plans — which mostly favored — hunting beca smoother and easier than the first ti.
Jericho was the ranged fighter who shot light rays from a distance. Although he could also fight in close combat, wrapping light around his fists to engage in battle. Jerry’s control over his light powers gradually improved as he learned to wield and move the mana within him, increasing the output of his light rays.
Marcus, on the other hand, was a bit weird. He, along with , hunted the monsters ruthlessly and efficiently through close combat. Marcus’s mana grew abnormally, and he had the most mana out of the three of us. And the thing was that he never actively put in any real effort to learn how to move the mana.
According to him, he felt like he didn’t need to learn how to wield or control it, and that if he did try to ’learn,’ then he wouldn’t be able to use mana. Therefore, by not learning how to use it at all, his mind and soul itself beca attuned to the energy.
Honestly, I couldn’t wrap my head around any of his words. It all seed too... paradoxical for . Complex. And I hated complex stuff.
To , he used it instinctively. That was all I needed to know. I just loved the fact that his attacks grew stronger by the day.
While I also grew. On the night of the second day, while I tried to sleep, I felt a strange feeling within .
I recognized that feeling imdiately.
It was the one both Jericho and Marcus described; the one that moved through my veins like a slithering snake, heading toward my heart.
When I checked my status window after that encounter, I discovered that my mana points had reached 10!
I was right. 10 mana points were the threshold for any human to awaken their class. And it seed like the mana itself — that energy — was already in the atmosphere, and the body just absorbed it passively, or it accumulated within the body.
From that theory, I was able to discern that each individual might have a different mana absorption or accumulation rate. It explained the fact that the three wounded soldiers, even after two days, had 0 mana points. In fact, almost everyone in the station had 0 mana points. So had low MP, like 0.1 or 0.4.
The only one who had a fairly high amount of mana was... Katie. Her mana points were 2.3.
Honestly, I was quite shocked by the little girl’s passive mana absorption rate. But this only served to further prove the validity of my theory.
It ant that Jericho and Marcus were monsters. They reached the awakening threshold in just one day. Although I was a bit unsure if the ’mana’ beca available on Earth the day the apocalypse dawned.
Haaah.
Anyway, in the normal sense, reaching 10 mana points ant the awakening of my class. But I didn’t awaken any second class.
That reinforced the weight of the authority of the [Words of a Guardian] skill in my mind.
And as my mana points reached 10, every single day, I could feel the strange energy circulating in my veins, mixing with my blood. It was rather fantastical.
Finally! I could relate to Marcus and Jericho because they often discussed the movent and control of mana. And I felt sidelined, uninvolved.
Through Jericho’s guidance — not Marcus’s because the bastard was an instinctual genius — I began to control the mana in my veins, knowing how they felt, moved and ran through my body like liquid. I began to move and command it within .
The energy moved according to my will. Truly great.
On the fifth day, Marcus discovered sothing. He began to feel the mana in the atmosphere. He said it was everywhere, and in so areas, it was sparse. Areas like the station or tight, narrow streets. But in that mall, it was abundant.
Marcus decided to try sothing different that day. Since he could fully control the mana within him, he tried to control the mana in the atmosphere too.
But, according to him, it was too vast. And he couldn’t. But it showed signs of working, though.
Using all-seeing eyes, I checked Marcus’s mana points, and I discovered that it had reached a whopping 25! What the hell!
Jericho’s, on the other hand, was still 22. And on the next day, after we hunted, it increased to 25. And as his MP reached 25, he explained that he felt the sa thing Marcus felt the previous day. He could feel the mana in the atmosphere.
anwhile, even with increased stats from leveling up and the daily boon from my systems, my MP was still a re 15.6!
So annoying.
Currently, I stood still while clenching my new, black-blood stained weapon in one hand.
I let out a solemn sigh as I looked upward, gazing at the golden hues that poured down from the lone, setting sun.
Today makes it one week, huh.
I clenched my fist, feeling the mana surge within my veins as I smirked.
It certainly yielded results.
Around , mountains of Ferin corpses lay, riddling the entirety of this mall area with a thick, poignant sll.
I gazed at Jericho and Marcus.
Jericho sat on top of a pile of Ferins, his face sared black by the monsters’ blood, and his hands clenched as he calmly stared at the setting sun.
Marcus stood alone, eyes closed as he breathed softly, surrounded by the piles of Ferin corpses we had built through ruthless grinding for the past seven days.
Finally,
[Congratulations. You have leveled up!]
I stared at the floating notification.
"Ah, yes," I whispered.
The auto-heal comnced, nding the bits of my torn, scarred flesh. I’d grown accustod to it.
[Free stat points: 8]
Throughout the past seven days, I’d leveled up five tis.
Not to brag, but my stats were quite pleasant in the eyes of now.
I’ll allocate them later.
And the fact that I leveled up five tis should be enough to tell that there were a LOT of Ferins.
Thousands, if I was not mistaken.
And right now, under the epheral golden glow of the sunset, I could say that we’d killed them all.
"Well, gentlen," I cleaned my steel weapon, wiping the black blood on my pants as I walked.
Both their attentions snapped toward .
"Ti to head ho, eh?"
Jerry smiled, "Sure."
Marcus nodded. "It’s ti."
As I reached the duffel bags on the ground, I called out:
"Ashgrove."
The system appeared before .
Whoosh––!
On the interface of the system screen, a blue swirling current rotated. It looked like a mini tsunami unfurling in the middle of the system screen.
I didn’t give it much thought. The first ti I tried to experint with Ashgrove, rely summoning it made flinch. But now, it’d beco familiar.
One by one, I grabbed the three duffel bags, and I threw them at the screen.
The swirling current absorbed them imdiately.
I gazed at my plain steel pole weapon.
I got it after signing in on the third day. The first day was a dud. I got a plain white T-shirt! Ranked normal.
The 10x system multiplied the shirt and made it ten shirts. I almost cried. Maybe the system was telling to get dressed.
I wore it anyway and threw the remaining nine inside Ashgrove.
On the second day, I got a dollar bill, ranked normal. The 10x multiplier turned it into a 100-dollar bill.
So imagine the joy I felt when I signed in on the third day and got a weapon! A primordial-ranked weapon!
Although after the high of finally getting a weapon subsided, I began to feel like I was duped.
There was nothing primordial about this plain, steel-pipe-looking thing.
I just accepted it either way. My other steel pipe had been broken after all.
But then, staring at the description that hovered above the weapon.
All-seeing eyes.
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