Mystical Journey

Garen stood up from his desk. Blowing out the lamp, he walked to the window, and drew the curtains with a whoosh.

Looking down from there, he saw the corpse of yet another Unihorn Lizard in the shadows by the walls. The body lay face down, a large, basketball-sized red sarcoma on its abdomen.

Garen felt for their connection, and discovered that these were the Deep Swamp Croc parasites' eggs.

He looked at the parasite eggs carefully, and noticed that they were faintly growing bigger. Pulling his gaze back, he drew the curtains closed, turned around and left the study, stepping his way down to the first floor.

The first floor hall was wide and empty, and a window on the right had been broken. The cold air blew in through the hole, making the curtains rise and fall, rise and fall.

Clearing out the bones and body bits out of the corner, Garen brought a large bucket of water out of the store room, and started cleaning the house from top to bottom. He used a wet cloth to rub the furniture down, and used a mop to clean the floor, especially the place at the corner where they used to keep the bodies.

After cleaning everything once, using up several buckets of water, and spending half an hour of time, Garen finally called it a day.

"This will be my long-term base from now on." He breathed in the clean air, feeling satisfied. Without the rotting stench of bodies and the pets' foul breath, he felt instantly lighter.

"The stuff in the store room can last me several years, and then I can go out hunting for Unihorn Lizard every few days, and use that as my source of meat."

He was completely unbothered by the bacteria brought by these Silver mutants. With his body, he didn't need to worry at all about most bacteria. If any harmful substance entered his body, he would be able to sense it immediately, and then he could use his powerful blood chi to mass produce the relevant antibodies and white blood cells to swallow the bacteria right up.

Garen remembered clearly that this uproar had actually gone out of Obscuro's control, or perhaps they never intended to control it from the start. Stronger mutants kept appearing one after the other, the infections grew worse, and humanity's living space was constantly getting invaded, the population decreasing dramatically.

Perhaps this was the perfect world Obscuro wished for. Survival of the fittest, natural selection, the weak had no choice but to die. They discovered a power that even they couldn't control, and chose to release it, attaining their motive of destroying all existing order.

Throwing out all the miscellaneous rubbish, he made the Blue Back Lizards act as rubbish trucks, carrying the waste to a domestic trash landfill in the distance.

Garen took a relaxing bath, and then changed his clothes.

The Blue Back Lizards had the ability to dig into the ground, so he let the three Lizards dig from the floor of the kitchen itself. When one got tired the other would take its place, until they find an underground water source.

As for Garen himself, he did one round of secret technique training in the first floor hall, had breakfast, and then returned to the second floor to continue researching tactics.

The Deep Swamp Croc would occasionally go out hunting, bringing back Unihorn Lizards for food and parasitic purposes. Within three days, the parasites increased from two to five. If it weren't for the fact that two of them failed, it might even have been more.

The Resonance Hawk would fly out on its own once in a while. The gigantic bird with a wingspan of four, nearly five meters was like a fighter jet. It flew out here, and soon came back all covered in wounds, a Unihorn Lizard in its claws for food. It would even share with the other two Grey-feathered Hawks.

Every time it flew out, Garen could sense his potential points leaping twice or thrice. Evidently the Resonance Hawk directly faced off with two or three Unihorn Lizards at once. Unlike the Deep Swamp Croc that snuck out at night for stealth hunting, it fought head-on, and could actually succeed in its hunt when outnumbered. And its wounds weren't all that serious either, allowing it to recover very quickly.

This greatly increased Garen's approval of it.

In almost three days' worth of time, Garen's potential points had gone up by six whole points. He immediately put them all onto evolving the other two Grey-feathered Hawks. One of them succeeded, but the other unfortunately failed, wasting three potential points.

The two Resonance Hawks built a nest on top of the villa together, the second one still afraid of the first Resonance Hawk. Garen named the first one No. 1. It was the largest Resonance Hawk that also evolved the fastest, and its intelligence was equivalent to that of a two-year-old child, so it could even carry out some simple orders. Garen put it in charge of the other Resonance Hawk and the Grey-feathered Hawk. Together, they were in charge of surveilling the movements around the villa.

Garen didn't know what the situation was like in the inner city. He stayed safely in the villa, continuously working on his power. The Deep Swamp Croc and the Resonance Hawk kept on killing all the monsters around them, and his potential points could be continuously increased without any danger as well. As long as he didn't purposely reveal himself, he wouldn't attract a large scale attack from the monsters.

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Afternoon

Garen sat quietly, eating the mashed potatoes he made as he stood by the wall of the villa's side yard.

In front of him, Resonance Hawk No. 1 was facing down the Deep Swamp Croc. The two beasts glared at each other ferociously, about to launch into a terrifying attack at any moment.

The Resonance Hawk stood on the ground, its wings flapping constantly and bringing up gusts of winds.

The Deep Swamp Croc tossed its tail, soundlessly sprawled onto the ground, waiting for an explosive strike.

Garen held his plate and spooned the mashed potato into his mouth, watching the battle quietly.

He had never observed the Resonance Hawk's abilities closely. This was the perfect opportunity, he planned to let the two beasts compare against each other, to see exactly how their true powers match up.

The two beasts stood off for a while, and then the Deep Swamp Croc suddenly pounced. It didn't open its mouth to bite, instead crashing into its opponent with brute force.

Bam!

The Deep Swamp Croc was actually knocked flat onto its back by the Resonance Hawk. It made a flip, revealing its white stomach. It tried to get up, but was immediately pressed down by the Resonance's Hawk sharp talons, trapped down to the ground hard.

The Resonance Hawk kept flapping its wings, generating a great force, keeping the Croc down and unable to turn over.

"What formidable strength." Garen narrowed his eyes, looking at the Resonance Hawk thoughtfully.

Among the Resonance Hawk's abilities, there was an icon for natural strength. This evidently manifested in its extraordinary strength. Even the Deep Swamp Croc was no match for it.

Garen began to understand. The Grey-feathered Hawk could only evolve to Form 3. As a creature whose original form was merely a wild animal, it wasn't one of those primitive totems that had been studied for a long time, and had extremely high evolution levels. Its evolution was more towards using the potential points to awaken its genetic potential, to find the strongest part of its genes and then strengthen and replicate it. In the end, it would be the strongest of its genes. This definition of strongest was evidently influenced by the direction the potential points took it in.

It might be a state that existed in the past, or a state it could evolve into in the future, anything was possible.

And within the Grey-feathered Hawk's genes, the strongest would probably be the Resonance Hawk's form.

The sound of the two beasts clashing quickly attracted the attention of a Unihorn Lizard to flew over. This Unihorn Lizard pounced down fiercely, directly grabbing for the giant Resonance Hawk.

This savage animal had a strange habit. They weren't afraid of dying, but they particularly liked tearing their prey into pieces. They enjoyed the sense of accomplishment from tearing prey into pieces, and instead focused less on hunting for food.

The Resonance Hawk's eyes went red, and it raised its head to face the Unihorn Lizard pouncing down from above, the sarcoma on its head expanding and beating.

Ba-thump! Ba-thump!!

The continuous heartbeat instantly spread, until even Garen could hear it from the side.

Ba-thump! Ba-thump! Ba-thump! Bump! Bump! Bumpbumpbumpbump…

The sarcoma beat faster and faster, faster and faster, until in the end it was almost a continuous sound, beating twice or thrice every second.

Bam!!

In the air, the Unihorn Lizard's eyes grew redder and redder, large bloody spots appearing all over the surface of its body. It fell head-first, landing heavily on the fence next to Garen and rolling onto the ground before it finally fell totally still.

Squawk!

The Resonance Hawk opened its beak and made a strange cry, walking over and biting down on the Unihorn Lizard, mercilessly pulling away a piece of flesh and began devouring it hungrily.

Garen also walked over to inspect the body. He just reached out his hand to pat it lightly, and judging from the echo, he could feel that something was wrong on the inside.

"Impressive! The heart burst due to the vibrations. No wonder the Resonance Hawk's first ability is called Resonance Burst. This is an instant kill!" Garen sighed inside. When facing such an ability, he believed he had a certain resistance to it. After all, this was a test of one's control over their own blood and organs. But if a few more Resonance Hawks showed up… His heart also gave a cold shiver.

He carefully observed the Resonance Hawk's state. This guy seemed rather down, and even the sarcoma on its head was dimmer, no longer the bright red it usually was. That meant it needed some time to recover.

Through their connection, he made it do another round of Resonance Burst, but the reply was weak, and he needed to wait for a reply.

Garen poured the mash into his stomach with a few gulps, put down the plate, and walked up to the Deep Swamp Croc.

This one was fully recovered, if still rather unhappy and hostile towards the Resonance Hawk.

Garen let it use Tackle on himself. The Deep Swamp Croc hesitated, and then performed the order.

It roared, and lowered its body, as though gathering power.

Whoomph!

It instantly turned into a black shadow, blowing up strong gusts of wind as it rammed into Garen, who stood still.

Garen steadied his feet. Just now the Resonance Hawk made it seem like this was very easy to dodge, so he wanted to see how strong his power was now compared to totems.

When he could really feel that unbelievably powerful wind blasting in his face, he mustered all the strength in his body, making it instantly grow up to two meters tall. The platinum aura instantaneously was absorbed back into his body, becoming a halo of platinum light around him.

"Red Jade!!" He pushed his hands out, his palms as clear as red jade, bringing an intense heat as he held it against the Croc's head.

Bam!!

The man and the beast both retreated two steps. Somewhat dazed, Garen pulled back his hands and stopped, at the same time motioning for the Croc to stop as well.

He looked at his hands, unharmed in the slightest due to the protection of the Totem Light. And because the Deep Swamp Croc also had a layer of Totem Light, carrying the same properties of a Totem Light attack, it managed to break through that layer of defense, and was only forced back by the pure momentum of it, remaining similarly unhurt.

But the black Totem Light on the surface of its skin was rippling non-stop, evidently the impact from that collision just now.

Such a collision actually had twice the impact of a one-sided attack on the relevant area.

Obviously, Garen's Totem Light was much stronger than that of the Deep Swamp Croc.

"It's too bad purely physical attacks would find it too hard to break through the Totem Light."

Garen did some calculations. He had finally returned to the very peak state of his previous life. If he used his body alone to face the strength of the Totem Light, and brought out everything he had, he could still only break past an elite Form 1 totem's Totem Light if he focused all his power on one spot for three attacks.

If he wanted to be a totem user using his secret techniques, he would still have a difficult journey ahead of him.