Kain once again severed his connection for the 4th time. He had come a long distance from the mesa as each time he was able to maintain the connection a bit longer. The first run lasted 8 minutes and the run that just ended was 14 minutes. His time was increasing each time. The more important thing was that the stability of the connection was vastly improved. The importance of having a stable connection was that he had less need to refuel with ration pills and his endurance remained high even with what was considered to be strenuous activity.
He looked around where he was and still noted that he hadn't come across any zombies ever since he left the mesa. He tried to get his bearings and saw that he had traveled a third of the way to Naren City according to his map. He was just about to reestablish the connection to his power, but then he noticed that the trees that appeared just around the bend were vivid pink and purple along with slivers of a bright green color.
Curious, Kain walked up to the trees and saw that there were 3 of them all huddled together in a close group. He reached out his hand to touch one and, as expected, he felt the familiar stream of power, but a negligible one. However, as he was absorbing the tree, he saw slivers of green in the stream, which separated and formed a glowing green orb within his body. It started out as small as a grain of sand, but by the time he finished absorbing the tree empty, the small orb had grown to the size of a tiny pebble. He had no idea what the purpose of this green pebble was, but he decided it wasn't poison as it just hovered there in his body. His cells barely even registered the piddly stream of power from the tree as it was fully absorbed within seconds. He went on to the other 2 trees and absorbed them as well and his green pebble became the size of a marble.
Not feeling or seeing any difference after absorbing, Kain just shrugged his shoulders and moved on. After travelling for 10 minutes, he finally stumbled on a group of 15 non-evolved zombies. They roared at him and Kain quickly downed 3 of them with his borrowed dagger. He once again barely felt any different absorbing the streams that came into the dagger, so he just outright ditched using the dagger and grabbed the next zombie by the neck. He finally felt a sizable flow of power stream into him as he moaned in pleasure, and this time he also saw some slivers of green in the stream as well, which separated and joined the green marble. He quickly threw away the pale, shriveled zombie and then punched the next one. Surprisingly, the punch absorbed just as much power as the zombie he had grabbed.
By the time he had punched away the zombie, the pack had surrounded him and bit Kain all over and tried to grapple him down to the ground. However, Kain just stood there as solid as a statue, and their bites could not exceed the tensile strength in his skin. As the zombies were biting and chewing futilely, Kain didn't immediately try to kill them off one by one. Since they couldn't hurt him, he focused on trying to absorb from the zombie currently latched on to his forearm. It didn't work, but Kain didn't give up and kept focusing his will and desire to absorb the zombie on his forearm. Finally, as the 10-minute mark passed, he saw the zombie on his forearm shrivel and then fall off his forearm. Another zombie took its place and this time he focused again and the time to absorb through his forearm fell to 9 minutes.
As he was starting to feel hungry and was going to use a ration pill, he felt the green marble release a green light onto his cells. More importantly, he felt his hunger fade away! After shining for a while, it seemed to shrink a small amount. Kain excitedly yelled due to the development and decided to earnestly seek out every way to increase the size of the green marble. He continued absorbing the zombies all over him and also focused on pushing the stream back into the zombies to figure out how to eventually gift powers he had to others. He was so focused, he forgot as the time passed by.
The last zombie was finally absorbed off his thigh and Kain saw that 2 hours had passed. He felt invigorated, as he felt his strength had boosted up quite a bit. The green marble was slightly larger as well. His absorption times decreased and his ability to absorb from various muscles on his body increased across the board. Kain happily rushed forward to find more zombies.
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In a narrow closed off ravine, a group of 10 jackals were feasting on the mutilated corpses of 5 people. There were 2 corpses that were picked clean on the ground and one zombified person with only the upper portion of their body left. The zombified person was dragging itself toward the corpses on the ground.
Suddenly, a figure jumped from the top of the ravine wall and squashed a jackal flat into a gory mess, and then quickly hamstrung one jackal. The other jackals quickly yipped and scattered back to the entrance to the ravine, before slowly inching forward when they only noticed one human prey.
The figure was Kain and he smiled as he noticed that the jackals didn't give up. He dashed forward faster than the jackals could react and quickly killed 3 with his dagger, before the rest understood they were no match and ran away.
Kain didn't chase after the jackals and hurriedly checked the recently deceased corpses and none of them were Barton or Desmond. Although he was saddened at the demise of whoever they were, he was more relieved that his friends weren't among the dead. He took a look at the crawling zombified corpse and the jackal that was still alive.
Hmm, this is the first time I came across a zombified human after I gained my ability to absorb. Would I be able to drain this zombie's previous human power? Only one way to find out. Kain placed his hand on the forehead of the crawling zombie and felt a stream of power enter into his body. Kain no longer moaned, as he became adapted to the streams of hundreds of zombies he absorbed prior to reaching the ravine. As the zombified human shriveled and finally ceased to move, Kain realized it worked and he gained a new power, which was wind control. He intuitively spun his finger in the air and a small current of wind twirled around his finger. That was the current extent of his new ability, but with practice, it should become much stronger.
Kain quickly moved on to the yipping jackal zombie. This time he would use a finger instead of the whole hand, as he didn't want to fall unconscious. Upon placing his finger on the jackal's forehead, he felt the stream come through, and he wasn't launch away like with the squealer. It may have also been because he absorbed a few streams through the melee weapon kills earlier. In any case, he slowly absorbed away new powers from the jackal, and it was heightened sense of smell, hearing, and pack mentality trait. He had an idea of what the pack mentality trait entailed. Kain guessed that if he became close to someone, he would be able to guess their intentions and thoughts. It would prove very useful in group battles with other teammates.
Kain walked over to the smashed into paste jackal and tried to absorb, but nothing happened as expected. The target had to be alive to absorb. He quickly went over to the dead human corpses and looted them of anything useful. He looted around 100 ration pills and some credits and placed them in his pocket dimension. He then increased his mass to smash open a large pit in the ground, and then threw all the corpses in and buried them.
Kain then connected to his newfound jackal powers and used his heightened sense of smell and hearing to scout out a large vicinity around him. He located a few targets in several different directions. He checked his map and saw that he was practically closing in on Naren City. He still didn't sense any living humans unfortunately, but maybe when he moved closer to the outskirts, he would finally sense the living. Kain was getting addicted to collecting powers and wouldn't even sleep when night falls to continue his hunt. He would be fine getting around in the dark using just sound and smell. Why would he even need to sleep when everything here was practically a recharge station? Kain smiled as he dashed off towards his first target.