Hiroki only stayed on the floor for a little more time as his knee was completely healed and his body was full of so much energy he felt like he was going to explode.

So, to use this energy, Hiroki walked over to the corpse of the brutish Zombie and squatted next to its corpse, "You big bastard, bet you didn't think you'd die again today, did you?" Hiroki lightly whispered as he smirked at the crushed head of the Zombie.

But Hiroki quickly caught this behavior of himself and thought about why he was like this?

He should be much more distressed by this, right? This Zombie was once a Human as well and apart from the green skin and dead eyes, it could easily pass for a Human who lived in a Gym. So, why was he so remorseless when he looked at the gore?

The answer soon came to him in a flux of information in his head which collected in front of him in the form of one of the screens he was becoming so familiar with lately.

[Awakened Human, Kurosawa Hiroki, has the Unique Trait [Superior] which enhances his Mentality - just as it boosts his body's prowess - so he will adapt much quicker to traumatic sights than a normal person]

Hiroki was starting to like these screens. He looked at the meaning of this and wondered about his own behavior for the last 5 minutes or so and he couldn't help but see that this 'Trait' was in effect. How else could he be so calm after going up against such a monster?

With his evolved mentality, Hiroki simply pushed the possible worries out of his head and replaced it with a weird self-confidence, like he was the only creature who would survive; The Apex.

But he soon curbed those thoughts, arrogance wasn't something he needed in any amount right now.

Suddenly thinking about how the screens seemed to answer his questions, Hiroki thought about something before calmly speaking, "Can you show me a status screen or something?" Hiroki felt a bit embarrassed with speaking to nothing and felt that he seemed like a madman.

Luckily, however, a screen started to build itself in front of Hiroki, placating his worries about himself being crazy. But it didn't help much as Daichi couldn't see the screen and indeed did think that Hiroki was rambling like an idiot.

The screen appeared in front of Hiroki and he looked intensely at the screen.

[Name: Kurosawa Hiroki]

[Title: The One Who Adapts Survives]

[Race: Modified Human]

[Virus Mutation: 0%]

[Rank: 0]

[Unique Traits: Accelerated Metabolism(?), Adaptive Metabolism(?), and Superior(?)]

[??? Gained: N/A]

Hiroki was surprised at some of the terms used. Virus Mutation? Modified Human? Was he just like that Brute Zombie? As he started to worry, his new mentality came to his rescue and calmed him down. The main thing that calmed him down was that he was still classed as a Human and despite having a Virus in his system, he didn't feel any weird urges to eat brains or people.

Also, what guarantee was there that he had the same Virus as the Zombies?

All these reasons slowly brought him back to a calm state of mind and Hiroki looked at the (?) next to each of his traits with a curious look on his face. Would this tell him what his traits were? Hiroki thought this was the right line of thought and pressed on the little virtual symbol.

He could probably guess what the abilities did, but what would it hurt to know more about his abilities?

[Accelerated Metabolism - The user has an accelerated metabolism, rendering them resistant to weight gain, illness, injury, and accelerating their healing speed. Also comes with the added benefit of enhanced reflexes, enhanced thought process and heightened Kinetic Vision/Visual Acuity]

[Adaptive Metabolism - User possesses a supernaturally adaptive metabolism, which allows them to withstand virtually any toxin/pathogen via gradual exposure, survive incredibly harsh conditions and recover at amazing speed from otherwise lethal damage. They can build up their physical abilities to potentially infinite levels through increasingly harder training, and develop powerful elemental resistances via gradual exposure. This flexibility extends also to their brain cells, allowing them to learn at an accelerated rate]

[Superior - The holder of this Trait is just naturally much better than the average member of their species]*

( *Author Note: All the Awakened have this trait. )

Hiroki looked at his abilities with widened eyes.

He wanted to stand up and cry out in joy to the heavens, thanking them for giving him such suitable abilities. But he was so happy he'd gone full circle and felt an overwhelming calm smother his excitement and joy.

Hiroki thought these abilities were so good for him because if the ability he gained was something technical and hard to figure out he wouldn't be able to use it to its full potential. But the Traits he had now were ones that could be pushed further purely through hard work and fighting against either strong opponents or harsh conditions.

These abilities were perfect for a person like Hiroki who loved fighting and was also oddly hardworking at training his body and martial arts as much as he could.

Meanwhile, as Hiroki looked over his status, Daichi was looking after his sister who was currently coming to in a very dazed and groggy manner.

"Ino, you okay?" Daichi's worried expression came back when he saw the blank look in his sister's eyes, "Ino!" but with that sharp shout, Ino's eyes came back into focus and she looked confusedly up at Daichi.

"What...happened...?" Ino voice was slurred and Daichi thought the possibility of her having a concussion was very high.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

"You idiot," he smiled down at her as he saw that other than the possibility of a concussion, she was pretty much fine and only needed to rest, "you ran to Kurosawa-san after he was hit and that thing picked you up and threw you all the way over here. You must've hit the door or the wall because you passed out instantly," Daichi shook his head with a weak smile on his face.

He looked down at the blood coming from her nose and pulled out a handkerchief and started rubbing away at the quickly drying blood.

As he was doing this, he heard Hiroki standing up and stopped his actions, looking back at the infamous delinquent turned savior. He looked at Hiroki with a suspicious face as he could've sworn that he'd definitely heard the tall teen's spine break when he hit the wall but here Hiroki was - Standing up as if that never happened.

Daichi decided to make sure his sister was safe and sound before he got to questioning Hiroki about what happened to him. So, Daichi got back to wiping up all the blood off of his sister's face and once he did that he gently and delicately picked her up and carried her to the living room.

Hiroki, who'd stopped looking at his status, went back over to the Brute Zombie as he smelt something weird over there.

Looking down at the creature he'd killed, Hiroki smelt a scent he never thought he'd smell from a Zombie; Something delicious, like premium meat. Instantly, Hiroki's throat felt incredibly dry as he spotted a piece of pure red meat that seemed to glow.

Hiroki felt his entire body demand that he ate it but obviously, the teen felt disgusted by such thoughts.

But as he felt more and more ravenous, he couldn't help himself and he picked up the piece of meat. He didn't eat it but instead suppressed himself for the moment so he could inspect it.

As he studied the piece of meat, Hiroki realized that he felt a sort of familiarity with the red flesh. This revelation caused his brow to scrunch up as he thought about where he'd seen this before.

He thought and he thought but he came to the conclusion he hadn't seen this before. So, instead, he started to think that it was an instinctive knowledge brought about his status as an Awakened or a Modified Human.

Hiroki was really debating on whether to eat it or not. On one hand, if he did eat it and nothing happened, then so what. But if he did eat it and it caused him to become infected like the Zombie, his earlier fight to protect himself and the twins would be useless.

But as he thought about it, that wasn't why he didn't want to eat it. His new body seemed incredibly sensitive to danger - its instincts were much keener than his previous Human body - so it would crave this meat if it would hurt him in any adverse way.

No, what he was worried about was Daichi and Ino seeing him eat the meat and thinking he was a monster like the Brute Zombie.

Hiroki was a pretty resilient guy when it came to things like people judging him. Just take his appearance, for example, he scared people into thinking he was a bad guy before he even opened his mouth; so he didn't care what people thought of him.

But there was something potentially harrowing about having people think you weren't Human anymore and that you were just a monster.

Having these thoughts, Hiroki saw that Daichi was now in the living room, facing away from him and putting Ino down on the sofa to rest. Hiroki saw this as a chance to test what would happen if he ate the flesh, so he instantly shoved it into his mouth, hoping for the best.

Instantly, the flesh seemed to crawl down his stomach as if it had sentience and threw itself into the stomach acid in his stomach.

The acid surrounded the flesh and started to burn it away, leaving only bright red energy in the stomach. This energy started exuding itself outward from his stomach and started to dive its way into Hiroki's cells.

Outside of Hiroki's body, in Hiroki's view, a new screen popped up in front of him.

{Skill Flesh has been ingested! Skill being picked from DNA of Flesh...}*

{Skill Picked!}

{Skill Bestowment Process...Underway...}

( Author Note: Anything with '[ ]' surrounding it is to do with Traits and anything with '{ }' surrounding it is to do with Skills. )

Hiroki could feel something being pushed into his cells while something else was pushed into his brain; information on how to activate the skill he was gaining.

Currently, however, he couldn't see what the skill was, nor could he look at the information to deduce what the skill could possibly be. Suddenly, knocking him out of his thought about his skill, another box appeared in front of him.

{Awakened, Hiroki, has eaten Skill Flesh. This Flesh can only be found in special beings or Variant Creatures and its main purpose is to serve as something people can use to gain skills. Even normal people can eat Skill Flesh and gain Skills, they just have a lower chance of getting a skill compared to an Awakened. Only one skill can be learned each Rank, so be careful at which Skill Flesh you devour and from what source it comes}

At first, when he read the screen, Hiroki was thrilled that he had a one-up on all those around him, including the Zombies outside but when he saw that he could only use Skill Flesh once per Rank, he started to mentally reprimanded himself.

Hiroki felt like ripping his hair out at founding out that he wasted his one skill slot on a possible waste skill from the Brute Zombie, something that could be killed by him when he'd only just gained his powers.

As he was trying to not slam his head into the wall nearest to him, Hiroki saw a box pop up, it said that he'd gained the skill finally. Hiroki pressed his finger against the expansion option on the box and read the screen that came into view.

{Awakened, Hiroki, has gained the skill {Body Hardening}(?)}

Hiroki looked at the skill with a little bit of hope in his eyes, the prospect of having a skill that could up his defensive power was incredibly mouthwatering after he experienced his body being broken earlier. He quickly clicked on the (?).

{Body Hardening - The user's muscles, bones, and skin are empowered by a mysterious energy and their durability is heightened by 4 fold. Enhancement is capable of scaling up with the strength of the body. E.g Someone with 150kg strength will be able to pull more out of this skill than someone with 50kg of strength.}

{Weakness - Hardening the entire body will take practice and hardening even small parts of the body, like the hands and feet, takes up a lot of physical stamina.}

Hiroki looked at the skill with a surprised look in his eyes. He truly didn't expect to get such a useful skill from such a stupid Zombie.

Looking down at his hand, he employed the information he'd gained from the bestowal and activated the skill on his entire hand.

Instantly, his hand turned black like coal and seemed to sharpen in places like a rock. It mainly sharpened around the knuckles but Hiroki didn't take notice of this as he looked at his fingertips and saw that his nails had extended into short, but sharp, claws.

The claws didn't gleam like metal but just looking at them, Hiroki could feel their cutting power and felt some cold sweat roll down the back of his neck. He was really glad he gained this ability and not someone who wanted to harm him.

But as soon as he had this thought, his body felt drained of energy and the black color left his hand and his body felt utterly devoid of energy.

Hiroki felt shocked for a moment as he thought about how the description really wasn't lying when it said it took a lot of stamina to keep the skill activated. Tired, Hiroki dragged himself into the living room where he saw Daichi sitting on the floor near the couch his sister was sleeping on.

Hiroki was glad that neither of them saw him eating the Skill Flesh. He'd have to eventually tell them but not right now where their psyches were still a bit stretched thin.

Hiroki sat on the couch opposite the one Ino was on and just collapsed back into the soft seat, but unknown to him, Ino looked through squinted eyes at Hiroki, a faint light of curiosity lit inside them.

She had seen what he did.