Daniel POV
“Is it safe to touch those chests?” Daniel wondered out loud. A nigh-on-all-powerful being wrecked their world but offered knowledgeable out of the blue. Who knew whether this held another sadistic “surprise gift.”
Alex simply walked to one of the cubes with a sledge hammer she found. Before anyone could say anything she swung down at the chest with impressive strength, a courtesy of her martial arts training Daniel thought seeing the cube shatter like the obsidian it appeared to be made up of.
Alisha tried poking one of the fragments only for the remains of the chest to begin morphing, and with a yelp, she ran back behind Daniel. He almost scoffed at his sister but decided he might have done the same. Daniel looked around frantically for any kind of weapon assuming the only kind of outcome would be violence. He groaned at how reckless Alex acted, but he knew that would be her reaction. She seemed to be radiating fury after all. Before Daniel could ask Alex act more cautiously, she charged forward with another vicious swing. She ended up hitting a large book.
”Well that’s unexpected.” Alisha exclaimed.
David nodded in agreement with everyone else. He felt almost certain that a monster would morph and jump at them with all intentions to rip them into shredds for chow. Alex handed him the book before sitting herself back down into meditation.
Daniel snorted, “All this for me?” He carefully turned the blank cover only to see lines of gibberish. Well looking closely, “the gibberish” looked like a dialect of persian. Daniel groaned, “this is going to take a while.”
After 2 days he finally managed to create a working alphabet. Dragging Alisha into the decoding made the process of finding consistencies with Persian much faster. Some leaps of logic were required but now on the third day he could finally read the damn book. They were so lucky the basement was flush with food, courtesy of Sam’s apocalypse obsession. He called out, “I’m done.” They couldn’t shake their mothers out of grief; but, seeing Alisha get Alex at full attention, Daniel began.
First of all you guys are fools for interrupting the morphing process. Where were you raised? In the wild? Anyways, do you wish to burn? this book or read?
Daniel yelled, “read” and fixed Alex with a withering gaze. It was strange that such an advanced piece of technology would offer the choice to burn something so valuable but he decided he would get back to that mystery later. Might be a translation issue but he didn’t care at this point, his patience turned into vapor the day before.
Scientists/scholars/wisemen first started researching Power? in observing a performance? between a captured a monster/aberrant and a criminal. The criminal swiftly lost with a slash that split him in two. Everything? else had no abnormal changes but the thermal data showed an extreme flash of heat that outlined the slash preemptively.
After 10 more performances/ executions/ experiments. The scientists have found a consistency between every kind of attack committed by a monster to be heralded first by a burst of heat in various strange shapes. Some criminals died immediately but others who had survived an attack have experienced their internal organs rearranging to create a hollow case much like the storage probably vacuole of plant cells but on a much larger scale? The new storage organ was attached to the end of the small intestine before the large intestine began.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
The first criminal successful in surviving the ordeal displayed the massive strength without an increase in muscle mass that should have corresponded. He made the to need to “psyche” himself up to achieve his feats using words he associated with strength. None of the monitors could see outside stimuli leading to the conclusion that whatever phenomenon was happening happened internally.
Not even a full day passed after beginning intensive internal monitoring before a clump of carbon was confirmed to be the contents of the new storage organ and the test subject’s feces were confirmed to be devoid of carbon. The clump grew in size before stabilizing when filling up the storage. The carbon appeared to be combusted and expelled as carbon dioxide but there was no explanation for where all the energy was going; there were no obvious energy signatures.
On a whim one of the scientists made an energy monitor registering all energies as different colors after nothing seemed to work and upon activation the display showed a chaotic symphony of colors cocooning the test subject. In reminiscence of the principle of uncertainty the colors were constantly changing. The monitor showed how this energy was momentarily mostly converted to kinetic energy supporting the test subject’s muscles.
This book includes all other similar test subjects in detail...
Daniel crowed with excitement, “We aren’t completely screwed!” The whole time his tone and volume increased with anticipation but the final sentence he read was confirmation for him.
Alex announced, “then what was the source of my earlier strength? Pretty sure it came from that weird black crystal in my mind.”
Startled, Daniel ask, “when did you ever get attacked by a monster?!”
”Remember when I went around the corner? The lizard tore a chunk out of the snake’s hide, flinging a bit into my face. Some of it slipped into my mouth and cut the inside of my mouth.”
”Then wouldn’t you have felt pain?”
”Oh I thought I was just cramping from practice the night before, so I pushed through. It stopped when I woke up so I forgot about it.”
Daniel was at a loss with Alex. He knew she was abnormally strong but this was at another level.
Looking at the other chests Daniel said, “we don’t know what those other chests will do so let’s try hitting them at a later date when we are in a safer situation.”
Alex chimed, “fine by me.”
Daniel was about to call it a night except he felt strangely hot and also like he was cramping. His last thought was how it would suck to die from basically a monster part cutting his face a little.