Chapter 66: Time To Make Some New Purchases

"Boss!!... Boss!!!....."

"Hey!....why are you screaming and causing such a disturbance? Wait here; the boss is busy at the moment."

Somewhere else, in front of a closed room door, a burly-looking, muscular man is standing guard at the entrance, with the man who had escaped Harvey perspiring and out of breath, asking to see the boss.

"But... something terrible happened.... I have to report to the boss."

"Is that enough reason to disturb the boss’s time with the mistress? Just go and wait until the boss is done, unless you want to die."

The man calmed himself and slowly walked out to wait in the living room, and after several minutes, a toned man walked out, putting on a robe as he said to him, sitting down on a large sofa.

"So... what’s this terrible thing that happened?. Why’s it only you? Where’s Scorpion?"

"Boss....they.... They are all dead, boss!. It’s just the new guy and I who made it back."

"What?.... What the hell happened?’

"It’s those guys we’ve been tailing.... The group with the speedster....Boss..."

"They have guns!.... They have working sniper rifles, boss!"

The boss got quiet as his mind went into thought, as he asked calmly—

"Did you get a look at the guns?"

"No... we were too far away. We all were just dropping dead like flies."

"I see. Since all our guns have stopped working for a long time now.... It’s probably that one from the store...hehhehe."

"If they can afford that... just how many crystals will they be able to cough out?" The man intoned, voicing his thoughts aloud as a smile stretched across his face.

"Hey boss.... Those guys.... Those guys are dangerous. I don’t think we should be messing with them." The man murmured in fright.

"I don’t pay you to think, you fucking trash. Go and call everyone.... And you come along too; I want to hear everything that happened.... Leave nothing out."

Back at the state college, Brad and the newly joined crew of Marcus and his guys were still waiting on Olivia to divine Tessa’s current location.

Her class skill had a very long cooldown of twelve hours. And after she had carried out the divination, they locked onto Tessa’s last location. The issue with the skill is that location divination on the same person can only be done twice in a month, so they made plans around the hope that the new location would be where Damon and his group had taken permanent residence.

Olivia had a destination set; all that was left next was to organize a plan for how they would move out. And just like how Orcula and his group were sacrificed, the survivors in the basketball court were also set to be used as bait.

Breaking through the college’s grounds cost the lives of half the survivors there. And since not everyone can come along in a minivan with limited space; Only Marcus and one other of his crew with a useful skill joined the journey. This fact was a betrayal to the rest who thought they were going to break through and find a better place together; even to other members of Marcus’s crew.

Still, they got on the road as Olivia directed their path to where they hoped would be Tessa’s current location.

It’s been fifteen days since the trials began; large changes had occurred across the world. Mass starvation was rampant because survivors couldn’t afford provisions. The global survivor count was now at thirty-nine percent, with the continual everyday release of treasure box drops.... But that is only an opportunity for the strong and lucky.

One of the festering problems now is the factions beginning to form, consisting of groups similar to Brad’s, who either hunt or oppress other survivors using their strength as awakeners.

The second festering problem, and the most concerning, is the growing number of mutant hordes forming, as well as creatures that have been tagged as special-class mutants; these special-class mutants are beginning to appear more and more, and barely anyone survives their encounters with them and lives to explain what they experienced. It had become a focal point for the military as well as the growing strength of normal mutants who were slowly becoming immune to non-awakened powered attacks.

Damon rose from his sleep around the night of the next day. There were a few provisions sitting by his desk, left behind by Mildred, so he helped himself to them. The options for sustenance in the origin store were very limited, but the cost to upgrade the store was just too great for the moment, requiring fifty thousand origin crystals. It was ridiculously expensive, but still something that Damon should be able to do soon. For today, Damon had a few plans for where to spend his points before reinvesting.

Surface to say, he would have to set aside a generous amount so their growing group can have enough to spend on provisions as well as the awakeners improve their stats; he too would be improving his stats, even if it wasn’t working. There has to be a way to unlock the other class skills, and this, among other discussions, has been popular on both the regional and global chats. The theory was that increasing the stats to a certain state would allow one to unlock other skills, but no one has done it yet, or at least, no one has come out to claim they’ve done it.

"Hmm.... I have the crystals.... And they would just keep growing. Among other things, I should just start dumping more into my physique stat."

Damon made his decision; he would try to see if he could combat his course with more stat points than it can suppress, as well as try to unlock his other class skills, which he hopes would just be as useful as his first ones.

Right at that moment, Damon felt a subtle change in his liminal subspace, more impactful than all the previous ones, as he felt the slow expansion, confirming to him that his skill had refreshed, and looking at his balance—

[240,000 oc]

"Time to make some new purchases."