Chapter 20 - Skill Upgrade

300 meters away from the apartment complex, was a popular tourist attraction before the apocalypse, it was a huge greenhouse which houses numerous plants.

Right now, it is covered with crawling stems that surrounded it, the stems had closed eyelids on it that seem to move, as it something is trying to break out. Several common aberrants, Quicks, revenants and some other kind of aberrant were surrounding the greenhouse. The common traits of them is the flower which stood erect on their heads that pulsed with a faint blue light.

[Common Aberrant(possessed)]

[Level 5 Revenant(possessed)]

[Level 3 Quick(possessed)]

[Level 4 Boogie Aberrant (possessed)]

Some distances away from the greenhouse, Zen stood on a roof as he looked at the sight before him, the system prompt made him frown but his frown deepened with the complaints coming from beside him.

"If you would get cold feet, why did you come along?" Zen said in a low voice which made Raven to cease speaking.

He had allowed her to come along, because she had threatened to scream if he did not, and Zen did not want that. Sakura and Xi just had the opportunity just had the opportunity to rest properly, and if Sakura wakes up to find him sneaking out, he won't be able to budge her into not following him.

But on their way here, since they killed less aberrants, more revenants and Quicks, Raven has been complaining about her instincts this, instincts that. As soon as she saw the greenhouse, she began to bug Zen about them returning back.

"I'm just concerned, how do we get through all those aberrants down out, there are about millions of them and there is even a new kind" Raven muttered in a low voice.

"Just shut up, I'm not a death seeking idiot, besides I have my summon, that makes us three... If push comes shove, I still have another summon to use" Zen said as he frowned before he sighed as he rubbed his creasing brow. 'ugh women! '

"Oh... Then how do we deal with those stems, I'm sure they are not just stems, it's surely an aberrant of the plant nature" Raven said as she looked at Zen with a provocative glance.

"When we reach that bridge, we would cross it..." Zen said as he threw Raven a side glance and jumped down from the roof. A black circle appeared beside him and Nyct came out with a solemn look on his face.

"Save your apologies for later, kill the aberrants before you, I need you to have killed about half of them before I'm done..." Zen said before he ignored Nyct, disappearing from his location and appearing behind some Quicks, before they could react, they had been cut down.

Nyct did not waste any moment as he began his own killing. Raven who was still on the roof, looked at Zen with bewilderment, and she looked at Nyct closely, she noticed her records could not determine the level of Zen's summon.

"Just who are you?" She saw how Zen killed aberrants, his expression unfazed like he was just cutting down ants. Looking at a teenager who definitely younger than her brave dangers in order to grow stronger, Raven felt something inside her break.

"I can't have myself be looked down by a kid..." She said as she summoned her shortswords and held them in reverse grip, "...I wonder how it would be to conquer someone strong as you, Zen"

Unknowingly, Zen had unconsciously awokened Raven's dark side, seeing her perverted smile as she chuckled before she jumped down from the roof and began to kill.

Inside the green house, it was filled with twisted vine tunnels which lead to it's center. The center had a human dressed in lab coat, the gender can not be specified due to the plant stems that came out of it's body. The head did not have any hair, but it's face was chubby with rosy cheeks, but it's empty eye socket revealed that the body was already dead but was being controlled by a plant.

On the heart side of the chest, instead of a beating heart, an opened flower was there and faint blue stigmata was being released from it.

"We have some rare visitors, how nice" A female voice said and it came out from the mouth of the head.

"...I wanted a new body, the humans settled 300 meters would have made a significant choice but I had to wait and increase my strength" the voice said again.

One of the eyelids of the stem outside opened and an eye with blue pupils and black cornea was viewed, it looked at Zen, Raven and Nyct slaughtering the aberrants around.

"The horned human is too strong, I might not be able to subdue him, I'm not interested in a woman's body, then you will do" the voice said as the eye stopped at Zen who was cutting down aberrants with no emotion on his face.

"He's weak, I'll make do with that"

Zen who just sliced through a revenant, paused while panting and his perception picked up someone's gaze on him from a direction. He took a look and was stunned. One of the eye on the stem was opened and it was looking at him.

When Zen stared at the eyes, he felt his mind go blank for a moment before he regained his composure and stepped back dodging a stream of black green liquid, which immediately melted the ground he had been standing at.

Zen felt his back go cold, no matter how many times he dodged, he still felt how dangerous those boogie aberrants were.

[Boogie Aberrant - a class of aberrants with huge chubby bodies with several pores on them which release toxic gases 5 meters around them. They have slow movement but can spit out toxic liquid which has the ability to melt a human even to the bones]

Zen had cursed when he had read the description, but when he remembered his stats he sighed with relief, but he was not happy with the way his vitality was reducing due to being exposed to the toxic gas whenever he killed one.

He checked his vitality stats.

[Vitality - 301]

Once you come in contact with the toxic gas, you would lose 500 Vitality points. The gas did not damage your health but your vitality, and the d*mn boogie aberrants explodes when they are killed and Zen had almost died three times. Even if he had life caches, he would not risk it, dying was not a good feeling.

"Eldritch" Zen said in a low voice as several black tendrils emerged from his back and encased his body in black armour, the armour had purple lines running through them. Instead of normal gauntlets, his had claws as fingers.

Small black tendrils spread to his head covering his head creating the head of a bull-horned wolf head.

*RAAAAWWWWWWRRRRR!!*

Zen's roar was heard around the area as the aberrants paused. Even Nyct and Raven stopped as they head the roar.

The aberrants began to surge towards Zen's location which surprised Raven. Nyct did not linger as he resumed his killing as he moved in Zen's direction.

Zen who was looked at his surroundings with his wolf eyes, he noticed that he had grown taller, he was standing at a height of 7 feet, a little lower from the boogie aberrants that were at a height of 8 feet.

[All stats increased by 5000 points]

Zen looked at the aberrants that were attacking him and his purple eyes gleamed, he lunged forward and began to kill. A bloodthirsty aura was being released constantly unknowingly the more he killed.

He ignored a prompt that had appeared in front of him as he was too concentrated on killing the aberrant before him.

[Due to the interference of the Emperor's Ring, Berserker's Bloodlust has been upgraded to Emperor's Bloodlust (S)]

[Emperor's Bloodlust (S) - against a large number of enemies, you will receive a 500% of all stats, for 5 hours]

[If you defeat everyone before the 5 hours, you will lose your rationality as you would need to destroy or kill in order to calm your bloodlust and retain your rationality. After the 5 hours is up, you will enter a state of weakness for 1 day]

What do you think of this Chapter?