Author's note:
Animal= Animals from Earth.
Monsters/creatures= refers to the mythical creatures that appeared.
Hope you guys like the chapter. Let me know if there are any mistakes as I am extremely, extremely sleepy right now and have no idea on how this chapter turned out!
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I decided against drinking the blood from that massive tiger, as I could clearly see that its ability of increased size wasn’t something I wanted. What if I got as big as a giant and couldn’t go back to my original size? I would be a huge target wherever I went!
Instead, I turned around and left the tiger alone for now. I would have fought against it and experimented a bit but it was a better idea to go for smaller creatures right now. I could easily overpower ogres, but it took me about 5 minutes to kill off a single of that abomination creature, which meant that I was probably still far too weak to take on this huge tiger. I would certainly come back to the tiger later…
For now, I headed off to the closest department store to get myself a backpack. Along the way I could see a lot of different creatures, both in the sky and on the ground.
The avian creatures looked more or less like birds, but they weren’t any species I had seen or heard of before. Most of them were much larger in size then normal birds that had been present on Earth before, the largest of them having a wingspan of well over 20 feet while the smallest of them had a wingspan of around 8 feet or so. There were a lot of different species too, some with brightly coloured feathers on their body while others had scales instead of feathers. However, they all looked similar to birds, and I couldn’t see any dragons or wyverns or those sort of creatures… I guess they would stay away from cities and live near mountains like in the stories…? Let’s hope that’s the case because I am sure if a dragon were to show up in this city I would become its meal in a heartbeat!
The roads below were now covered in a thick layer of dried blood. There were a few corpses and body parts lying around here and there but mostly the roads were devoid of dead bodies. The animals and monsters were probably responsible for ‘cleaning’ up the roads…
The animals themselves were too few to see, only a few stray dogs, cats and rats here and there. These animals were probably the ones smart enough or had strong enough abilities to have survived for so long because the roads were ruled by monsters.
The most common monsters I could see were things I could only refer to as trolls. They were around 12-15 feet in height with huge round bellies and dull-gray skin. Their arms though were normal for their body, not like how stories usually depict trolls as having long arms that drag along the floor. They had seriously small heads for their massive bodies, and were extremely ugly to look at. They were walking around completely naked, though their large bellies thankfully prevented me from the view of their private parts. I dropped lower for a closer look and immediately had to rise back up again because of the disgusting smell! It was seriously horrible! To the point where I would gladly smell a mixture of poop, rotten eggs and vomit instead of their smell!
I flew as high as I could and breathed the clean air deeply for a few minutes before calming down. I then flew in the direction of the department store once again.
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About 40 minutes later I was once again up in the sky, this time with four large backpacks full of canned food, a few clothes and syringes I got from a pharmacy. I tried to take more backpacks through telekinesis but they were spotted by the avian creatures who started attacking them and ripping them to shreds. Thus, I resolved myself to carrying four backpacks only, one on my back, one on my stomach and one in each hand. My super-strength ability made it quite easy to carry all this weight around and as I was wearing or holding all these things I could use my hide-presence over them to turn them invisible so they won’t be attacked by the avian creatures.
For some unknown reason, when I tried to use hiding presence on Carmen earlier when I was holding her it didn’t work. Perhaps it only works with non-living things…? I’ll experiment on it a bit later…
It had taken me longer then expected to find canned food as most of the stores I went to had been stripped clean of all food, indicating that there were probably survivors in the city. Either that or the monsters here really liked food from Earth and had eaten it all… Though with the ever-present food supply of dead bodies I don’t think it was the monsters who had taken food from the stores…
I was soaring up in the sky and looking at the different monsters around the roads, some fighting with each other while others were simply ignoring everything else, when suddenly I saw a bunch of trolls running in one direction excitedly. Curious to see what was going on, I followed after them.
There were about 30 or so trolls who were running towards a food store. At first I was about to turn around because I thought they were just going after food, but then a guy came out of the store carrying a few bags. He saw all the trolls running towards him and panicked, dropping all the bags.
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I kept on watching calmly. If the guy had some sort of useful ability, I would try and help him out, if he doesn’t then too bad, he is an idiot for coming out here for food alone anyways. Weird… I thought after the whole ordeal with Carmen and the others I would grow a heart, but instead I was going to let the strength of a person’s ability decide if I wanted to save him or not… Same old heartless me… *sigh*
The guy was now fumbling around trying to pick his dropped bags. He really is an idiot, trying to secure food first instead of running away with his life! The trolls were almost on him when suddenly he vanished!
I blinked, shook my head and looked again, but the guy really wasn’t there anymore! Some type of ability that lets him turn invisible....? The trolls were now snarling angrily and started to fight among each other trying to find the guy, but he was nowhere to be found.
I observed all my surroundings and found the guy hiding on top of the roof of the store! How did he get there so fast? Perhaps he moved at a fast enough speed and I lost track of him…?
Suddenly the guy vanished from the rooftop once again, appeared in front of the trolls, picked up the remaining bags quickly and vanished once again! This all happened in around 3 seconds! The guy wasn’t turning invisible, or moving too fast… he was teleporting! There can’t be any other explanation!
The reason why he was all alone and tried to secure the food before running away dawned on me. He was probably sent here by a bunch of survivors to gather food, and he knew he could always teleport out before the trolls got too close to him!
I looked all around me, using my improved eyesight and observation abilities to their fullest, but couldn’t find any sign of the guy. I tried using heat-vision to maybe pick him out, but there were just too many creatures all around giving off their heat signatures, making it extremely difficult for me to pinpoint where the guy was.
One thing was for certain though, I want that ability! No matter what I have to get it! It is such a useful ability to have! Any time I find myself in a tough spot I can immediately teleport out!
The problem was that I had no idea where the guy went. I couldn’t even be sure if he was still in the city! For all I know, his teleportation had no limitations on distance travelled and he could have come from another city, or even another country just to get some food! Though the most probable thing would be for him to still be in the city, as it would be logical for him to first get food from nearby his surroundings instead of travelling to different cities. I just have to find him…
I looked all around once again but couldn’t find him anywhere. My stomach was grumbling again so I headed for my apartment to have something to eat and think about what to do.
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I was once again soaring in the sky. I had something to eat and had come up with a plan. The guy was searching for food, and I had seen a lot of stores stripped clean of food and there was a high chance that most, if not all, of the stores had been picked clean by either the teleporting guy or their group of survivors. There could always be the possibility of him not having to do anything with the other stores, but for now this was a good starting point. My plan was to see if I could spot some type of pattern in the stores picked clean of food.
Human nature would have made it so that the guy would always try to get food from the nearest place possible so he could feel safer by being closer to his base, therefore it is highly likely that his base would be somewhere close to the stores which have been cleared of food. Based on this assumption, I’ll try and narrow down an area where all the stores have been completely cleaned out and start my search from there. Hopefully this will work, otherwise I’ll have to think of some other method to track him down…
I started my work. I went from store to store and tried to make a pattern which could show which stores were picked clean and which weren’t. It was slow going, and it took me the whole day to finally figure out that there was a particular area where all the stores had been completely picked clean of food. Some stores were only missing food, while others also had missing clothes, cutlery and miscellaneous other stuff like toilet paper, toothpastes, blankets, pillows etc.
The stores missing the most stuff would naturally be the stores which were closest to the survivors, though if those survivors would include the teleporting guy or not I couldn’t be sure…
It was getting late at night so I decided to search the area I had pinpointed tomorrow. The area which I had narrowed down was still quite large in size, spanning nearly 8 square blocks, and would take a considerable amount of time for me to go through.
I ate, took another shower with water manipulation and went to bed, excited with the possibility of gaining such a useful ability!
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P.S. Sorry for another chapter without much action. Lots of action starting from next chapter I promise!