"Genes determine everything." This is the famous saying of Dr. Olivia Sullivan.
Sixty years ago, at the end of an old era, Dr. Olivia was an expert in genetics and biology. He approached science with equal zeal and madness as he did himself. Unable to find enough volunteers or test subjects to practice his genetic research, he turned to himself instead.
Over ten years, countless gene fragments were implanted in his body. These genes worked together, mixed with each other, and mutated. In the later stage, Dr. Olivia's body became a genetic battlefield, with countless genes always fighting and mutating, trying to eliminate or control opponents. As the carrier of genes, hundreds of deadly viruses could be found in the doctor's body at any time. Dr. Olivia was no longer genetically human.
In his later years, Dr. Olivia believed that he was no longer a human being, but an apostle of the gods. Especially when his genes underwent a series of recombinations, finally forming a mysterious, stable, and brand new genome.
At that time, the doctor's left hand could condense an unusually high temperature, enough to ignite alcohol. This was a temperature that the human body could not bear at all, but the doctor's left hand was not injured afterwards.
"This is the left hand of God!" Olivia stared at his left hand, uttering his second famous saying known to the world.
In the following year, the doctor's ability to control high temperature gradually stabilized, and the temperature at which condensation could occur continuously increased. The doctor recorded the preliminary stable genome and the experience of controlling high temperature, and divided the data into three parts. Two parts were saved, and one part was prepared for publication, announcing his results to the world.
On the day of the doctor's press conference, the war broke out without warning.
The instant high-temperature flames and shock waves destroyed everything, including the doctor who thought he had the body of the gods. However, the doctor's short but shocking speech was sent to all corners of the world through the airwaves.
The brief war ended as abruptly as it had come.
The surviving people began to come out of various shelters and ruins, looking at the unrecognizable world in horror. Some caring people still remembered Dr. Olivia's speech and found the safe left by him. The safe that contained the crystallization of pre-war technology was safe and sound, and the data inside was also intact. This information was the first-level ability of the spell-like domain: the prototype of flame. All human abilities started from this.
Ten years later, in this turbulent era, various abilities spewed out like mutated insects. Some of these abilities were very stable, some had very short effects, and some even brought fatal results. Moreover, it was discovered that those people who survived in the wild and in the ruins and were exposed to radiation all the time did not need to artificially carry out tangible genetic recombination, and various abilities began to appear.
After categorization, aggregation, systematization, and a series of quarrels, all kinds of abilities with clear definitions and stable effects were finally summarized into five major ability domains: spell-like, combat, perception, psionic, and mysticism.
Spell-like was the general term for various energy manipulation abilities. In order to commemorate the doctor who was a magic paranoid during his lifetime, the earliest discovered ability domain was named Spell-like. Combat was the general term for all kinds of combat offensive and defensive and mobility capabilities. The perception domain, as the name suggests, included all abilities to detect the known or unknown world. The Psionic Domain was a collection of various control abilities, the most common and popular of which were all kinds of weapon operations, from the most basic cold weapon operation, ordinary firearm control, sniper specialization, etc. to advanced complex weapon system command.
Finally, there was mysticism, a field of abilities similar to tasteless. Almost all vague abilities that cannot be classified could be thrown into it. In mysticism, the core ability was luck, all kinds of luck. However, those who invested a lot of evolution points in mysticism often did not get the luck they imagined. They neither discovered rare mineral deposits, nor obtained huge wealth or superhuman abilities out of thin air, and in the end, they died no less than those who majored in other ability domains. There was once a person who did discover gem veins, but ended up being chopped into meat paste by greedy mobs. As time went by, fewer and fewer people practiced mysticism.
Of course, the distinction between domains was not so clear, rigid, or insurmountable in reality. With the passage of time, more abilities were emerging, and many new abilities were difficult to simply classify. A specific ability domain, and some abilities required the cooperation of multiple ability domains to appear.
At this time, the former lunatic Dr. Olivia had been honored as the father of the ability domain. The doctor opened a door with his god's left hand, adding chips for the survival and continuation of the human race in the harsh world. However, until now, people still don't know whether the road behind this door leads to heaven or hell.
As the survivors in various bases woke up from the halo of their abilities, they discovered in horror that everything in this world was no longer stable, including genes - the genes of all living things. All creatures, including humans, were changing rapidly. The evolution and mutation process that took thousands of years in the old era had been condensed in just a few years in the new era. The cognition of the world accumulated by humans for thousands of years was collapsing at an alarming speed.
Look, there is a row of afterimages passing outside the barbed wire fence. It is a rabbit with red eyes, long ears, and a docile temperament that is relying on speed to escape from predators. But no one can guarantee that this animal is faster than a leopard today, or what it will become next year.
"William walked cautiously through the deep cave, his footsteps light and soft like a nimble cat, moving silently. The thick hooded cloak and bandages all over his body kept his scent and body temperature from leaking out, making it difficult for dangerous underground creatures that rely on their sense of smell or infrared vision to hunt him.
He held a thick triangular steel pipe with sharp edges and corners in his hand. The front end was ground very sharply, making it a terrifying weapon that could be swung and stabbed straight. The modified rifle and pistol were carried on his back and hidden under the cloak, respectively. His pistol was powerful but poor in accuracy, although its power could be doubled in cave passages. The problem was that in this deep and quiet passage, gunshots could travel very far, which would signal monsters within a few kilometers that he was coming.
William's eyes glowed with a faint blue light that changed with the ambient light and darkness, making the scenery in the passage clearer and clearer. This was the ability that appeared at the third level of visual enhancement in the perception domain, low-light vision. In this cave, several electric lights were arranged at the N11 base, illuminating more than 100 meters near the base. These lights were a project left over from the last exploration of the base. The electric lights, no matter how deep they went, were destroyed, and the base wisely did not send additional personnel to repair and restore them. However, for William, who had low-light vision, as long as there was a little light, he could see the surrounding scenery clearly.
William was now walking in the dark passage. The occasional glowing moss in the passage and the faint glow of sewage were enough to activate his low-light vision. At a corner, William suddenly stopped in his tracks, retracted his whole body into the cloak, and slowly disappeared into the darkness.
There was a low rustling sound from the cave, and a ferocious, one-meter-long gopher appeared. The disproportionately large nose holes on its head were constantly moving towards the sky, and its small eyes were dim. It seemed to have degenerated almost. Dire gophers and their cousins, the ground-dwelling dire rats, were almost indistinguishable a decade ago but were now almost divided into two species.
William, who was quietly crouching in the darkness, suddenly moved! The triangular steel pipe pierced out like lightning, piercing the upper end of the Dire Rat's nose, piercing through the upper and lower jaws, and firmly nailing it to the ground. The nose was the most important point of the Dire Rat, and it screamed frantically. Its four short, thick, and sharp claws desperately grabbed the ground, and the gravel splashed. In a blink of an eye, it dug a hole in the hard rock.
William held the upper end of the steel pipe tightly with his left hand, but his seemingly slender arm was as unshakable as a rock. The Dire Rat, whose vital organs were badly injured, couldn't hold on for even a minute. Its body convulsed violently, and then lay motionless on the ground.
William slowly pulled out the steel pipe, turned the Dire Rat over, and saw that it was a female rat. Male dire gophers acted alone, and when females appeared, they were always followed by a male.
William quickly moved a few steps sideways and stood in the center of the passage where the ferocious gopher appeared. He squatted halfway with his front legs and rested on the ground with his back feet, and raised the steel pipe horizontally, aiming at the deep and dark passage. Almost at the moment when he leveled the steel pipe, a gust of wind suddenly gushed out from the passage, and a thicker and more ferocious male gopher suddenly jumped out of the darkness and bit William in the air!
The steel pipe remained motionless, and with the momentum of the ferocious gopher, the sharp tip of the steel pipe penetrated deeply into the gopher's throat, passing through the internal organs, and almost breaking through the anus.
William let go and took a few steps back quickly, with a light and quick posture, as if gliding on water. With a click, the ferocious gopher almost used all its strength to close its giant mouth and bit hard on the handshake of the steel pipe. Although its incisors could gnaw through almost all rocks, they were still not as hard as this thickened steel. With the sound of clicking, the steel was immediately dented, and the male rat's teeth were also shattered. The male rat charged too hard, and after falling from the air, it slid several meters on the rough ground before rushing in front of William.
William raised his right leg and stepped on the male rat's head. The male rat squeaked and wailed and struggled, but its head could not be lifted from the ground at all. As long as it exerted force, the body pierced by the steel pipe would feel unbearable pain. Even though it was severely injured, it still struggled for more than a minute before it stopped breathing. William's handsome eyebrows moved slightly. To him, these vicious gophers had more tenacious vitality than they did a few months ago. Such a rapid mutation rate made him feel very uncomfortable. Therefore, this new era is called the era of turmoil.
"William had no intention of using the steel pipe that had pierced the male rat's body. He felt along the cave wall for a while and extracted a wire - the lighting circuit installed at the base, now disused. William cut off a two-meter-long section of wire, peeled off the paint in the middle, exposing the tough alloy wire inside. He wrapped each end of the wire around his hands and continued walking into the darkness.
Despite the dark and rugged cave, it didn't take long for him to find the lair of the dire gophers. There were over thirty vicious gophers, big and small, in the nest. The larger ones were almost adults while the smaller ones hadn't even opened their eyes yet. It was evident that these gophers belonged to three different litters, and based on the three-month adulthood of dire gophers, they could basically give birth to one litter a month.
"The fertility period has been shortened by another ten days," William silently calculated, feeling increasingly uneasy.
However, his bad mood did not affect his actions. Using the alloy wire, he snared a ferocious gopher in the air, then pulled and shook it, causing the gopher to fly back. Blood spurted from its neck and splattered against the cave wall. Once it fell, it couldn't get up again. The blood-stained alloy wire brushed against the ground once again, and seven or eight little gophers instinctively opened their mouths to bite. However, the alloy wire vibrated slightly, and their heads were almost sliced in half.
A minute later, the brood of dire gophers was completely eradicated. Dire gophers were creatures with a very strong sense of territoriality. With this litter of dire gophers gone, there should be no second litter of gophers within a kilometer. William took out a map, filled in the topography of the passage in the blank space, marked the location of the gopher nest, and carefully put the map away.
Walking a few hundred meters further along the cave, William stopped at a collapsed area. Behind the pile of earth was a hole that could only be passed by one person. On the other side of the cave entrance was a subway passage as complicated and deep as a maze, full of unknown dangers. Coming here meant the 500 yuan bonus had already fallen into his pocket, and on the other side of the cave, a genetically modified potion was tempting him. William half-knelt at the entrance of the cave, listening attentively.
The wind blowing from the subway passage was strong and weak, and there was a faint rustling sound inside. The air was very polluted and had low oxygen content, unsuitable for ordinary humans to survive. This was also one of the reasons why the N11 base could not explore the subway passage more deeply by itself.
William was certainly no ordinary human being. Whether William, who had a third-level ability in the Perception Domain and a second-level ability in Mysticism, could still be considered a human being was uncertain even to him. After killing the brood of dire rats, William felt the genes in his body start to move again. He had accumulated three genetic evolution points and maybe he could acquire another evolution point by exploring the subway passage.
Evolution points were a common term in turbulent times. The so-called evolution point was actually the space left for new genes after gene shock. More evolution points meant more space and also meant that it could withstand the injection of more powerful new abilities. There were various ways to obtain evolution points. Most of the naturally generated evolution points were obtained for unknown reasons. In addition, there were mainly two ways that humans could control - genetically modified drugs and combat.
Of course, after obtaining an evolution point, a specific genome was needed to form the corresponding ability. Within each capability domain, there were a number of identified capabilities. However, more capabilities were still shrouded in mystery. The evolution points obtained through battles were often accompanied by new abilities, and most of the time, these abilities were different from known abilities. Therefore, many fighters regarded their abilities as their greatest secret. When two ability users met and killed each other, there was a very small chance of obtaining the other's ability.
William closed his eyes, and the faint rustling sound outlined a clear image of a living corpse in his mind. They wandered aimlessly, their dark red eyes hungrily scanning everything around them. Unlike the zombies that often appeared in novels of the old era, the living corpses were thin, flexible, and agile, and even moved much faster than humans. Their strong muscles and flexibility allowed them to easily climb and move on walls and even ceilings. From a genetic point of view, living corpses could still be regarded as human beings, while those high-level fighters who had undergone multiple genetic modifications were farther away from being pure human beings.
Fifty years had passed since the war, and many of the living corpses now belonged to the second or even the third generation. They were faster, stronger, and better adapted to harsh environments than their parents. Many of these living corpses living in subway passages had evolved infrared vision to adapt to the often-dark environment.
William reconfirmed that there were no dangerous creatures clinging to the hole over there, then took out his pistol, lightly jumped into the subway passage, made another long jump, and walked quickly on the rails. He traveled fast, quietly, and never lost his balance on the narrow rails.