Chapter 124

First of all, Jake tapped on the Missions tab, and the guy’s list of active and completed missions filled the screen. The Demon currently had only one active mission, positioned at the top of the list. Jake checked it out.

Objective: Use a scanner to locate and eliminate an ex-human morphus. Complete the mission within 24 hours to earn an additional reward.

Difficulty: Hard

Reward: 250,000 XP, 750,000 credits

Extra reward: Supply drop (x1) (Legendary)

Status: In Progress

The menu felt painfully familiar. During his time as a regular survivor, Jake had completed plenty of missions in exchange for rewards such as XP, credits, and supply drops, each filled with useful items.

For a moment, he stared at the information displayed on the screen. So, the guy squirming beneath him actually had a mission to track him down and kill him. He and his now-dead companion weren’t hunting him just for the hell of it. Instead, they wanted to complete their mission to earn impressive rewards: 250,000 XP and 750,000 credits were significant amounts of experience and currency, even for survivors at their level. Also, if they succeeded in finding and eliminating him within a day, they could even request a supply airdrop filled with legendary gear.

What the hell, Jake thought.

He just couldn’t wrap his head around it. How come these guys were given a mission to kill him? The answer came to him quickly: the System regarded him merely as a monster for survivors to hunt. He actually wasn’t all that surprised by that. Deep down, he had already suspected the truth, which was precisely why he checked the guy’s Missions list first. He just couldn’t bring himself to admit that he was viewed by the System as nothing more than a mere monster to kill.

One small consolation was that this mission had the highest difficulty. So at least the System did him justice, recognizing just how dangerous he truly was.

Then another thought came to his mind. Maybe his transformation into a mutant was some kind of glitch. Maybe he hadn’t been supposed to turn into a sentient mutant with unique skills and abilities when he was sucked into the Dark Void anomaly. So there were two explanations for what was happening: either the System simply categorized him as a mutant and assigned high-level survivors the mission to eliminate him, or he truly was a glitch, and therefore the System wanted him gone for good.

If it was the former, that was fine because it would only mean he could occasionally expect survivors to hunt him. But if it was the latter, it was really bad news because it would mean that the System was making an intentional effort to get rid of him and likely wouldn’t give up until he was gone.

A small piece of good news was that, at least, it seemed the System couldn’t just “erase” him out of existence. If it could do that, it wouldn’t have bothered to go through all the trouble of giving survivors the mission to hunt him down. So, it needed to use survivors to get the job done. He could handle survivors, even those whose levels greatly outmatched his. However, dealing with high-level survivors wasn’t all that easy, so he had to level up even faster than he had.

He could’ve pondered the implications of his situation further but decided not to for the time being. Before delving deeper into the matter, he first wanted to check the guy’s Diary. He knew entries appeared in a survivor’s Diary automatically—the owner of a device couldn’t add, edit, or remove them manually. On average, new entries appeared once or twice a day, describing notable events that occurred during that day. This ensured that everything found in the bandit’s Diary would be true.

For the next few minutes, he scanned through the entries in the guy’s journal. He learned that his name was Jovan. During the first days after the Collapse, he had met a guy named Arnaud, and since then, they had survived together. Jake wasn’t particularly interested in that, so he skipped most entries that described their initial days of survival. He did notice, however, that both of them were quite the pieces of work. Together, they ambushed and attacked other survivors, but they always targeted loners and only when they had some sort of advantage over their victims.

At some point, they were captured by gangsters from Los Demonios. They were given a choice that all the gang’s captives were given: either be forced to do labor for the gang or join their ranks. However, those who chose to join would have to prove their loyalty first. Unsurprisingly, Jovan and Arnaud opted to join and, for a time, they worked for Los Demonios, hunting down, capturing, torturing, and killing any other survivors the gang’s leaders directed them to. This wasn’t particularly challenging for Jovan and Arnaud, considering they weren’t the greatest people in the world to begin with.

Finally, they managed to prove their worth, securing their place in the gang. After officially becoming Demons, they were given long pieces of red fabric to wear at all times, like scarves, symbolizing their affiliation with Los Demonios. They also received a good vehicle and top-notch gear. On top of that, they were given spells that multiplied all the XP they earned, which explained why they had been able to level up so quickly.

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One entry in Jovan’s diary detailed what he knew about Los Demonios. Which wasn’t much. At some point, he and Arnaud spoke with other Demons and learned a little about the gang’s origins. Nobody knew for sure, but there was a rumor that Los Demonios hadn’t originally formed in this city. The gang leaders were high-level survivors who had arrived via helicopters from somewhere else. That was essentially all Jovan, Arnaud, and other regular Demons knew about the gang’s leadership. Those who refused to join Los Demonios basically became slaves, forced to work for the gang. However, not all of the captured survivors were allowed to do labor for the gang. Some of them were taken somewhere, but nobody except for the gang’s leaders knew where exactly they were sent or what happened to them afterward.

This morning, Jovan and Arnaud were contacted by one of the gang leaders, who went by the name Skullface. He informed them that he would assign them a mission, which they needed to complete within a day. They could keep the cash reward but had to hand over the legendary reward to one of the gang leaders. So, as it turned out, it wasn’t Jovan who was initially assigned the mission to kill Jake, but one of the gang leaders nicknamed Skullface. It meant that survivors could pass missions on to others, a fact Jake hadn’t been aware of during his time as a survivor.

Jovan and Arnaud spent the first half of the day driving through the city, trying to track Jake down. They knew that failing this mission would not be accepted. Skullface had warned them that if they failed to complete the mission within 24 hours and secure the legendary reward, they would face severe punishment. Los Demonios was an extremely violent gang with harsh rules. Unfortunately for Jovan and Arnaud, they were unaware of how fast Jake moved, and the mission’s description hadn’t mentioned that Jake often traveled across the city using rooftops. By the time they arrived at his last known location, he was already long gone, and they had to track him again.

This explained why Jovan and Arnaud were so infuriated with Jake—not for any personal grudge, as he had previously assumed. The longer they searched the city, the more frustrated they became. They knew that if they didn’t locate and eliminate Jake before the day ended, they would be in serious trouble. And that was the final entry in Jovan’s diary, written just a few hours earlier.

While there were still some unanswered questions, Jake had definitely learned a few new things—both about how the System viewed him and about Los Demonios. He now realized that he had to remain constantly alert for other survivors who might be hunting him down. One of the leaders of Los Demonios, Skullface, would most likely pass the mission to kill him on to someone else once he learned about Jovan and Arnaud’s failure. Without understanding the System’s motives regarding him, Jake couldn’t guess how long this mission would be active or how often it would resurface and be assigned to other survivors. As a result, he would have to remain vigilant and always keep his head on a swivel for trouble.

Jake wanted to open the Map app to check what places of interest Jovan might have pinned, but before he could do so, the screen suddenly went black. At first, he didn’t realize what had just happened, but then he noticed that the guy beneath him had stopped squirming and was now completely motionless. Jovan had finally bled to death.

With the guy now dead, the device couldn’t be unlocked anymore. Even though Jake knew that, he picked up the dead guy’s hand and pressed its thumb against the screen again. Immediately, a message appeared across the display.

The device cannot be unlocked because its owner is dead.

For a moment, Jake considered taking the device with him. He still hoped that he would eventually learn some skill or unlock an upgrade for Enhanced Intelligence that would allow him to hack into survivors’ PDAs. Carrying Jovan’s PDA all the time would be inconvenient, but he could always stash it on a rooftop and come back for it later if he actually managed to learn how to hack it.

However, a new message suddenly appeared on the screen.

The device will revert to its default settings in 59 seconds.

So, there was no point in taking the PDA with him. Now that Jovan was dead, the device was set to perform a factory reset and erase all its data. This would allow a survivor who had lost their own PDA to use it if they stumbled upon it since all the progress a survivor made in this game-like world was backed up in the System itself while PDAs were merely used to access and view that information.

After Jovan’s PDA completed its factory reset, Jake attempted to register as a new user, but no response came when he tapped the screen. It was expected, considering the System regarded him as a monster rather than a survivor. With no reason to keep the device, Jake dropped it and got to his feet. Without glancing back at Jovan’s lifeless body, he turned and leaped from the truck bed to the road.

He assessed his wounds. The two fingers he had lost were already beginning to grow back, which came as no surprise. After all, during the tower-climb challenge, he had lost two fingers in a fight with a slasher—his first encounter with this type of mutant—and they had regrown pretty quickly. Now that he was much stronger and possessed useful skills like Enhanced Regeneration, he was confident that the fingers Arnaud had shot off would regrow even faster.

He touched the ragged hole on the left side of his head and found that some of his flesh had already regrown. He was fairly certain that the eye he had lost would likely grow back as well, though he couldn’t tell how long it would take. So for now, all he wanted to do was find a quiet place to rest and allow his body to recover. He quickly scanned his surroundings and broke into a brisk jog away from the pickup truck and the two dead Demons.