After arriving home, Jay removed the bandages from his face, torso and hands and put them in the washing machine to use tomorrow.
"Haa, I definitely should get me a vehicle~" Jay said after taking a quick shower and dropping onto his bed.
The way he had transported himself from his home, which was in the North Zone to the South Zone, was on foot.
Even though it was a bit far away, Jay didn't want to attract attention in any way.
Besides, since it was already very late, very few cabs would be willing to pick him up, not to mention that the way he was dressed wouldn't help him at all.
Anyway, even though he was physically and mentally tired, Jay was quite happy.
"Without a doubt...it's much better to go out and find hosts than to train on my own..." he said as he put on his sleeping clothes.
Although training had also given him benefits, it could not compare to the harvest of a single night in the South Zone.
He had not only discovered several things about the system, but he even completed a mission and doubled the parasites he had, all in one night!
"Haa, today was a good day."
Finally, Jay went to sleep, deciding that he would start researching everything he could about the system tomorrow morning.
***
The next morning, on a commercial street in the South Zone, where several stores were located and people were walking on the sidewalks, a young man of about 19 years old, with short gray hair, sharp teeth and a dangerous air around him was checking the surroundings, looking for something.
The people on the sidewalks seemed to be very cautious of this young man, some even changing sidewalks to avoid even getting close to him.
The young man was used to this, so he didn't really care, plus, he was on a somewhat important mission right now.
The reason this young man was feared by passers-by was because he belonged to a certain organization in the South Zone that was in charge of "protecting and keeping order" in some parts of the South Zone, this particular neighborhood fell under their jurisdiction.
The mission he had been assigned was to look for another member of the organization who had gone out on patrol the previous night, however, when it was time to report to the base, he didn't show up, even when they called him on his smart watch, it said the number did not exist!
Therefore, the boss, thinking that something bad might have happened in his territory, sent some members to look for Taylor, this young man being one of them.
Although he was somewhat unhappy with his assigned mission, after all, Taylor was considered one of the weakest, if not the weakest of all members, and what was worse, his personality sucked, so many members did not get along with him.
"Haaa, if it wasn't for an order from the boss, I wouldn't be looking for that asshole." he said as he scratched his head.
"...urgh..."
"!"
Just as he finished saying that, he heard a sound coming from one of the alleys in that street.
The young man put up his guard and slowly entered the alley. He didn't know if what was inside was the person he was looking for or if it was some monster that had snuck into town, but he kept his guard up anyway.
Although the occurrence of monsters entering the city was rare, it did not mean that it did not happen, specially in places like the South Zone or the outskirts of the city where the security was more scarce.
The alley was still dark despite being daytime, which added to the dumpster, the bad smell and the garbage bags in place, made it a good place to hide or conceal things.
As he entered the alley, the young man finally saw the cause of the noise and dropped his guard.
"So this is where you were..." said the young man, looking at Taylor on the ground.
"Urgh...my...my whole body hurts...f*ck...I feel like throwing up..." replied Taylor, feeling terrible.
Not only did his whole body hurt, but he was incredibly tired and nauseous.
"If you're going to drink yourself until you faint, at least tell us first, you idiot."
"Colt...? Wh-what are you doing here-OUCH!"
Taylor had tried to get up, but when he leaned on his arms, an incredible pain came over him.
"Come on, don't exaggerate...wow...what happened to you...?"
Looking closer, one could notice that Taylor's arms were swollen and purple, it truly looked very painful, his face also had signs of bruising, especially his chin.
What's more, his complexion was much paler and thinner than usual, his appearance was incredibly bad at the moment.
"I...ouch...I was attacked...it happened last night...when I was-"
"Save your strength to talk to the boss, if you were attacked, then this is serious..." Colt said with a serious look on his face, even though he didn't like Taylor, if he had really been attacked, it was an important issue since it could have to do with one of the other organizations of the city.
"Okay, uh, c-can you help me up?
"...Alright."
Colt then helped him up and they both walked out of the alley towards the base of their organization.
***
Back at Jay's house, he currently was in the living room, with the system interface open in front of him.
He had gotten up very early because he was really excited to find a way to unlock the system's functions or at least try.
"Hmm...no matter where I look, there's nothing..." Jay said with one hand on his chin.
Jay had been checking the system functions that were currently available to him for quite some time, but no matter how thoroughly or how many times he checked them, nothing changed.
"...There has to be a way...I refuse to believe that there isn't..."
Seeing that checking the available options did not work, he then switched to another method.
"System, I need information."
The next method he had on mind was to see if he could activate something by voice command, in fact, this idea had occurred to him a few days after receiving the system, after all, the system interface could be opened with a voice command.
However, at that time, seeing that he did not receive an answer, in addition to being busy exercising and doing other things, he left it aside.
"System, how can I improve the system?"
"I require information on how to unlock more functions."
"Tell me how I can unlock more features..."
Unfortunately, none of his words were answered, although this discouraged Jay a little, he did not give up, he still had several sentences to try after all.
'It looks like this will take some time...'
***
After half an hour, Jay had gotten bored of being in the living room so he had gone out to the backyard to exercise a little, although he could no longer raise his stats, it seemed like a healthy way to pass the time, plus he could also train the Phantom Trace.
"Question, system, improvements."
Of course, he hadn't stopped trying to get an answer from the system all this time, and even though he didn't want to give up, he was gradually running out of options.
"Open, system, question, blocked functions."
Then, just when he was about to try another method, he got an answer.
_____________________
Answer: The blocked functions of the system are due to the fact that the system is in its initial phase.
_____________________
"...I knew it could be done by voice command!" Said Jay, glad that his method had worked.
As for the system's answer, although Jay was already expecting something like this, it was good that the system confirmed it.
"Open, system, question, how to advance system phase."
_____________________
Answer: The requirements to access this type of information have not been met.
_____________________
"Heh...I also knew it wouldn't be that easy..." He said with a bitter smile on his face.
After that, Jay went into his house and started asking the system various questions, such as, "how to get more skills from the system," "how to get more original parasites," and so on.
And while the vast majority of those questions were answered with "The requirements have not been met..." he was able to discover some important things.
First, the reason he couldn't level up his statistics no matter how much he trained was because the system had acquired the limits of statistics using Jay's body as a base.
Which meant that the most Jay could get, according to his limits, was a grade (E+) body.
What was the solution?
Easy, since the system had acquired the limits of Jay's body, then all that was needed was the sample of a body that had a higher capacity or even better, that had broken those limits.
Second, another thing that had interested Jay since he got the system was his incredible speed of recovery, although it had been incredibly useful for training, that didn't stop Jay from wondering what the reason for this was.
The answer to this had to do with the first parasite Jay had encountered, the one he saw in his dream.
It turns out that when it entered his arm, it didn't just stand there and vanish, what it had done was actually fuse with Jay, greatly changing his body to make him a suitable carrier.
The reason why Jay had so much energy, could improve his body so quickly and was not harmed despite having dozens of parasites in his body was also because of that.
Although it was a surprising for Jay, in the end he resigned himself to the truth.
He...was no longer fully human.