I got down and woke everyone up. We did morning exercises, usually, Archi and Telos would go for a run, but it wasn't really possible in this situation. Thus the two of them just skipped rope for a while and had a shower.
It was Apocalypse so there was not much for them to do. There was no internet and no TV, the only thing they did was use their powers all the time to try and do some crazy stuff. Although they would get exhausted quickly and then have to eat a huge amount. Things weren't looking good, the consumption of our food was quite insane. All of us were sporty people not to mention the fact that using our powers would exhaust us as well and then we would have to eat even more. At this rate, ten years' worth of food might get consumed in just a year.
I fear of what will happen to humanity in one year, but it was not time to be perplexed about that. Sunlight had been nagging that we should go hunt the Deviants. It seemed that youthful look was definitely attractive to her. She didn't even care about her morals anymore.
Did she ever think about the possibility that these Deviants could be turned back? I don't know, but clearly, she didn't care. She saw monsters that were not humans anymore and had the urge to kill them. They were like annoying flies to her now. People can be scary when I thought about it. Although we weren't a normal family in the first place. I've been nagging them about the Apocalypse since they were young.
Meanwhile, Jason had been spending a lot of time worrying about his parents and family, unfortunately, there wasn't much he could do. Rushing to them would be suicide. I had told him that if we eat a lot of those crystals we might become really strong and be able to save them. I thought that putting his anger and effort into killing the things would be better. For now the idea of living safely would take his attention from it.
After breakfast and all the morning routines, we went outside really carefully. I had realised a shocking thing. The grass seemed to be shining and had grown by at least 5 centimetres in just a day. It was not possible not to see it. It's as if it has been three weeks of growth in one day.
I looked at the tree I had planted in the back yard next to the pool. The tree looked lush and energetic like never before, the leaves were shining green.
Vines had started growing around my house as well, they were at least 10 cm tall. I carefully observed it for ten minutes and could almost swear I saw it grow bigger in real-time.
It seemed that the growth of everything had accelerated or they were evolving, mutating.
After that I observed the situation we were in more clearly.
To kill the deviants will be hard. There were around three in total on the road in front of our fence and a few more were walking more to the side. I talked to my family and we decided that we should be able to handle them.
I shot a bolt with my crossbow piercing the head of the Deviant. As if nothing had happened the Deviant looked around and saw us. It let out a strange sound as it rushed towards us. Unlike the first Deviant that we killed yesterday, this one jumped over the fence right away. The two other deviants looked around crazily as well, they spotted us and sprinted at us like mad.
All of us shot out with our crossbows at the one deviant. We tried to weaken one of them before dealing with the other two. We stood around 10 metres from the fence as that was the distance from our house to the fence in the front yard. It was quite a distance so we had a couple of seconds.
With our crossbows, we targeted the deviant's legs and managed to cripple the first one. After that we threw the crossbows to the side and got our swords. Stabs seemed to be completely useless against them so spears could only be used in very specific situations. Blunt and cut attacks were a lot better against the Deviants.
I rushed at one of them and slashed my sword at its neck. The force of my sword plus the force from his sprint made it easy as butter to cut off the Deviants' neck. Its head flew off spinning in the air while its body flew past me and dropped on the ground. I moved to the side at the same time or I would have been knocked down by the Deviants body.
While the others dealt with the other Deviant. The Deviant targeted Telos and tried to jump on him like a vampire about to grab him and bite on him. Telos being adept at the battle just ducked out of the way and the Deviant hit the wall behind him. After that Telos just cut its head like nothing. Telos swordsmanship was clearly a lot better than mine.
At the same time I looked at the Deviant on the ground, it couldn't stand up and was crawling towards me. I unclipped my baseball bat from my tool belt and went to smash its head in.
Just like that we quite easily killed the two Deviants. They were strong and fast but they were too stupid. They could only make up for their intelligence with numbers. Unfortunately, we had numbers and strength and intelligence.
After that, I took out the crystals from the Deviants as it was quite easy, as now that I knew they were located in their heart. With a small cut on the chest, I put my hand in and took out the crystal. Although my hand was covered in purple blood it wasn't that bad, my gut was quickly getting used to the gore.
After taking out the crystals we moved outside to kill the others, but when we wanted to do that we saw something incredible. One of the Deviants was eating the other Deviants. One would think that maybe one of them was a normal human, but I could clearly see the deformities on both of them. One of them had a horn on his head and was muscly while the other was a woman who had really long nails. She kept stabbing the other Deviant with no results.
The woman Deviant was growling as if wanting to say to the other Deviant to fuck off. I almost felt like I was in a club for a moment and a guy was hitting on the girl. Only in this situation the guy was trying to kill her and eat her.
I was so shocked I looked at my daughters face. She was completely aghast as well.
She was thinking about what I was thinking. The Deviants ate other Deviants!
Now that I think about it, things were coming in to place. Usually, Deviants wouldn't sleep. I only noticed they would do that only after a big meal. I saw some Deviants sleeping before, but only now I realised that it was possible that they were sleeping because they ate other Deviants.
That was scary. These things were definitely not zombies, they were just another mutated race. My researcher's instincts were taking over as I wanted to observe the Deviant.
I and others were observing the sleeping Deviant for four hours as it slept on the street. Sometimes we would see it turn on the other side or suddenly start shaking. The muscles on the Deviants body got bigger and its horn became longer. Quite clearly when Deviants eat others they became stronger. Just how when we ate red crystals we would become stronger.
We all started feeling fear. We understood one thing. If they continued getting stronger then at some point there would appear a Deviant who evolved so much it would have god-like powers. It might regain intelligence and destroy the world. This meant if humanity couldn't keep up with them then everyone would be killed. This is the true essence of the Apocalypse, it was evolution!
Keep evolving! Keep getting stronger or one day you will be eaten by the Deviants!
This was the message the universe was giving me and I understood it clearly. I might even be one of the earliest people who saw this message. I saw this message all the way back 40 years ago!
Back then I was just a simple guy doing my PhD in Philosophy. I don't remember why, but that's around when I started believing that the Apocalypse was coming. The signs were clearly there, but no one could see it. I kept preaching about it as a Philosophy professor in Universities, but everyone called me a crazy old man!
Even though those youngsters and others called me crazy, I firmly believed in myself. Only once your beliefs are unshakable and your mind is firm can you achieve greatness.
No one was ever that nice to me in my life except one girl and no one ever believed me, except her. Now that she was in Heaven, I must carry on our plan of saving Humanity no matter the cost.
With all these crazy superpowers and stuff happening around. Maybe I could even revive her one day! How great would it be to be wandering around the world alive again!
I kept thinking about the first time I met and our first date. The moment when we saw Sunlight walk for the first time. Then I remembered our wedding day.
A tear wiggled by my wrinkly skin and dropped on the roof.
Now that I know the hope was slim the fire in my heart got reignited.
"Grampa are you alright?" Archi looked at me in concern.
I looked back at my Granddaughter as she put a smile on my face, "Grandpa won't ever let you die."
I patted her head and then looked at Jason seriously, "Now that we know these Deviants can clearly get stronger you know what that means."
Jason nodded, "It's either us or them. Let's go kill these bastards."
After that, we spent the whole day carefully hunting the Deviants and were able to hunt a total of 12 of them. This gained us 12 crystals. This had proved the fact that every Deviant had one without exception.
After Sunlight had absorbed one it was hard to understand what power she had gotten. There was basically only light coming out of her hand and that's it. Using general logic it should be the power of healing or light. It might come in use later, thus I told her to keep practising it.
All of us absorbed the crystals and could feel stronger and our powers got stronger as well. I had also started doing hard-core exercises. After absorbing the crystals my strength had grown by a large margin and it was getting easier and easier to kill the Deviants. Now I could effortlessly chop the head of one of them with just a swing of my sword relying purely on strength. My technique was completely horrible and I had no muscle memory on it, unlike Telos who was a Kendo champion.
Archi, on the other hand, had gained an increase in voltage and through her constant practising she was able to increase her control of it. Jason could lift heavier things with his mind while Telos was able to bend more earth. Their powers were getting stronger, but I wondered when they will actually become useful.