The girls took the bags and stared at me in fear.
"We are definitely not bad people so you don't have to worry."
Afterwards, I introduced the girls to my family members. Their faces looked priceless when they realized that we are a family.
I could see it on their faces, they were thinking what kind of gangster family is this?
The blond girl seemed the braver one as she asked me about our powers.
"The things we killed I call them Deviants and our powers we gained them from the Blood Crystals.
You see every Deviant possesses one of these." I took out a crystal and showed them. They were unconscious when I gave it to them before so they would have no idea.
"After you eat it, you awaken a power, as for our powers that's a secret of ours.
Also, you two should already possess a power, it's up to you to find out what it is."
Afterwards, I kept explaining to them about the things she needed to know. I had to keep my knowledge that my family and me knew to the minimum. Of course, I had told them you can gain a power of a kind, but not anything concrete like being able to strengthen it. I had to be careful as people with serious head problems shouldn't know it.
What I was most afraid of is some crazy guys gaining strong powers and trying to take human slaves. Not only would that make it harder for humanity to recover, but also not safe to be around people.
At the same time, we had lunch.
The two girls kept trying to do all kinds of things to work out their power. Amelia couldn't find out what hers was, but Crystals was Supervision. Which was quite good for scouting.
As for the reason why we couldn't figure out Amelias' power that was probably because she had a weird one. The chances that she didn't receive a power were quite minimal. Unless she was hiding it and didn't try to execute it on purpose. I had become more cautious of her.
It didn't matter whether she was saying the truth or not. What mattered is to be careful. In the world where everyone had extraordinary power and no law, the most horrible things could happen. Maybe it was just my old man's paranoia, but it's better careful than dead.
We walked out of the building; Some Deviants had already started patrolling the road we had just cleared. It seemed impossible to clear the road for a long time.
We put down our stuff on the ground and left it with the girls. It was not yet possible for them to carry all of our stuff on the move. Thus, we would just put it on the ground, clear the Deviants in front of us then come back and move our stuff to the front and then proceed.
We had to do it as quickly and as efficiently as possible as Deviants travelled. Some of them got off the main road some of them got on it. From time to time we would see some Deviants fighting or eating each other. A lot of them were sleeping but would wake up when we would get to around 5 meters from them. The stronger they were the greater their senses.
As we moved more and more towards the centre of the city. We had started noticing traces of fights and the Deviants were getting strong.
Logically thinking they should be evolving at the same time as long as they had enough food. But now it had picked my researches instincts. At first, it was the chief in the restaurant in the building that made me interested.
When I connected the dots, I had realized that just like humans' mutants weren't equal either. It was evolution after all and not every change went the right way. Natural selection, some of the Deviants just happened to evolve in a stronger direction than others.
For example, Deviants who grow a horn they won't know how to use it even if they had one. While if a Deviant evolved to the direction of quick hands-on speed or strength and such, they would clearly be stronger. It was like how Crystal got power of enhanced eyesight it wasn't completely useless for combat. But one had to know how to use it.
Actually, improved eyesight wasn't just seeing distance. It was overall neural ending improvement; her reaction speed had become incredible as well. Fishing bullets or if she was good at sword-wielding hitting the tip of the opponent's sword wouldn't just be a fantasy to her.
Anyway, besides the point, there was something strange going on. Like I said Deviants shouldn't really be becoming stronger like that. Anywhere with enough food and if their evolution wasn't particularly incredible. In the perfect scenario, anywhere in the world, they should have exactly the same strength at this point in the Apocalypse. But that's not how things were.
I couldn't find the reason why they were getting so much stronger as we moved towards the centre. It was pissing me off that I couldn't figure it out. One of the things I had assumed is that if a Deviant eats a normal human then they evolve faster. I could be completely wrong though.
Also, the fact that traces of humans we're getting clearer made me happy. But worried at the same time. We were finding man-made weapons on the streets; it was a sign that people moved towards the Centre at some point. One of the reasons is because of the ministry of defence.
Another reason is the army. We had seen the helicopters multiple times flying towards the Centre. They had probably set up a camp there. Maybe in order to protect the politicians that were situated there.
Three days into our travels we had reached the same river which we travelled away from. Or rather the main road went next to the river from this point on. This meant that we had to be extra careful.
There were evolved rats coming out of sewers, evolved fish jumping out of the river and then Evolved people. The amount of Deviants here was quite incredible, to say the least. If we had enough group of people we might have reached the centre on the first day. Now though, we were moving around four hundred meters a day. Although we were getting stronger at an incredible rate as well.
At this point, one in five Deviants had Crystals the size of a finger. Which meant they were quite strong as well. I had decided to call these Deviants second stage Deviants.
After killing and observing enough of them. I had started to notice something peculiar. Their blood had become less purple and more red. Only slightly, but I had observed the difference after seeing enough blood.
"Dad look at that." Archi said as she pointed at the 100 meters wide river.
I heard Archi say that to Jason as I killed the Deviant in front of me.
I looked to the side and from inside the river a gigantic Manta-Ray jumped out. It was at least 15 meters in width. The size of it absolutely shocked the shit out of me. I had seen one before in real life. The guy who was researching it said that the biggest they saw before was 9m in width.
I looked at the big monster. It had turned black in colour and wasn't blue anymore. It was clearly a Deviant one.
The real question is what it was doing here. Why would it end up in the part of the world, here suddenly?
Shocking happened it jumped out of the water and wasn't going back.
No! it flew straight towards the sky. It was a Manta Ray that could fly!
With the size of it could swallow half of an airplane. What a terrifying being! It cast a big shadow on us with its gigantic size.
If it continued to evolve it would turn in to such a monster only nuclear bomb would be able to kill it.
The speed at which it was flying was horrifying as well. In seconds it disappeared from our sight as it turned to the side behind the skyscrapers.
Cold sweat dripped from our heads. The pressure was quite terrifying. Against such a thing even with our current power we probably wouldn't be able to do anything.
"We are too weak… too weak, humanity is doomed." Jason said as he sat down on a car.
"We might not have the numbers or the power. What we have is human intelligence and cooperation." I said calmly as I got myself together.
"Grandpa is right, no matter how strong these Deviants get as long as we stay united, we will be able to survive." Telos said as he put his hands on his dads' shoulder.
"We need to start working harder, just waiting and eating crystals are not enough anymore. We will start doing hardcore training besides killing the Deviants from now on." The pressure I felt was immeasurable. We have to gain better control of our bodies and through that better control of our powers.
So far, we would be mentally exhausted from focusing on killing the Deviants for hours. Physically we wouldn't get exhausted no matter what because we were constantly eating the crystals.
We were afraid one us would make a mistake when we didn't have full focus, thus we only fought when we were at our prime of the day. This meant that other time was spent chit-chatting, taking naps, or practising the superpowers.
Army regiment had to be done from now on. 6 hours sleep, 4 hours killing the Deviants, 1-hour meditation, 5 hours of superpower training, 6 hours martial arts training. The rest two hours of the day would be spent on rest and mealtime.
Since all of us knew at least one martial art and Telos knew the most. We started teaching each other, Judo, Taekwondo, Karate, kickboxing and kendo.
Before this, I had only done Calisthenics and never did any professional martial arts training. Of course, except for what my daughter and my grandchildren would teach me a move or two for fun.
As for meditation none of us had done it before, except for when we felt like experimenting. All of us only did it once or twice before in our lives. That was because it was just too boring and tiring.
It was hardest for Archi to get into it because of her hyperactivity. That day was the toughest day of our lives. It was the first time any of us had done anything even remotely as intense.
Although actually, we had a lot of fun while doing it. It removed some of our tension at the end of the day because all of us felt stronger.
Especially meditation I couldn't understand it as something strange had happened. When I was meditating, I had this ethereal feeling which I didn't know was real or not. I could feel the energy in my body moving, or more like it was my pulse. The blood in my veins circulating from my bones where it was created. To my heart, then to my four limbs and my brain and then back again.
Although that was only for the very brief moment where I actually managed to stay clear of taught or rather ignore them.
It was one of those moments where I realized that I could feel my pulse get stronger. No, it was hard to explain, rather than stronger I felt like when I ate a Blood Crystal. Then I could feel my bones and my flesh everything becoming more powerful. I started to kind of understand how the Crystals worked. They would supply my bones with energy to produce the blood that was more powerful or contained more energy. This more powerful blood would then circulate around my body, ripping apart my flesh and evolving it, making everything stronger.
It was my body adapting to a more powerful source of energy by evolving.