After Jake regained consciousness, he was astonished to discover that he was alive and well. His body was no longer racked with pain, and the weariness had vanished. He felt refreshed. For a few moments, he remained on the ground, gazing up at the blue sky peeking through the canopy of trees. It had been evening when he lost consciousness, and now it was midday. He had been unconscious for over twelve hours. Jake sat up and glanced around. He was still in the park, surprised that no mutants had attacked him during his prolonged slumber. He turned his head to the side, gazing through the trees to his left. In the distance, he could see the clearing and the Dark Void looming ahead. The black hole remained suspended above the ground at the center of the clearing.
While Jake retained the memory of what had happened yesterday, a faint glimmer of hope remained that it had all been a dream. That hope shattered as soon as he brought up his arms to look at them. His arms appeared blackened, as if charred. The texture of his skin was coarse and uneven, resembling the rugged surface of tree bark, with small burrows etched into its surface, adding a unique and intricate pattern to its overall appearance. Having no clothes to conceal his form, Jake could see that his entire body bore the same obsidian-black, rough-textured skin, not just his arms.
What the hell happened to me?
As Jake rose from the ground, he examined his body more closely. Despite maintaining a humanoid form, he was no longer entirely human. The obsidian-black, rough-textured skin covering his body felt incredibly hardened to the touch, devoid of any soft spots. Despite its rigidity, his new skin was elastic and flexible, allowing him to move freely despite its toughness.
He had no visible reproductive organs, and when he reached up to touch his head, he discovered he had neither a nose nor ears, and not even a mouth, making his face feel flat without all these facial features. He did have eyes, though. They were quite large, extending to the sides of his head and providing him with an extra twenty-five degrees of peripheral vision on each side. His only blind spot now was directly behind him. His expanded field of vision was the first thing he noticed upon waking, yet it didn’t strike him as odd. It felt normal, which was why he didn’t even think about it until now, as if he had always had such vision and was well accustomed to it.
It was at that moment that he realized something else. Despite lacking ears or a nose, he could still hear and smell. Not only that, but his senses were far superior to what they were before. He could see, hear, and smell much better than ever before the transformation. Distant sounds seemed closer now, and he could see much farther, discerning more details in the environment. He could hear the rustle of foliage stirred by the wind and the faint movements of ex-human mutants shuffling through bushes nearby. Even though he couldn’t see them yet, he already knew their approximate positions and how far they were from him, just from the sounds they made. His enhanced sense of sight enabled him to discern finer details in his surroundings, such as the texture of the bark on the trees standing at a distance from him. Additionally, he could now detect various scents that he hadn’t even been aware of as a regular human being. It seemed that all his senses had been significantly enhanced.
As he took a few steps across the ground, he became aware of another change in his body. He moved noticeably faster and was more agile now. He could hear the soft thump of his feet thanks to his enhanced sense of hearing, but he was certain that a regular person wouldn’t be able to hear him move at all. Moving with feline-like agility, he traversed the foliage, barely disturbing it. He paused as a thought struck him. Turning to the left, he made his way to the edge of the trees. Stepping out from the bushes into the clearing, he gazed at the black hole of the anomaly hovering above the ground.
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He took a few more steps closer to it and stopped again. He couldn’t feel its pull anymore. He remembered what happened to the ex-human leaper after it got sucked into the Dark Void. The anomaly had enhanced the mutant before ejecting it. Following that, the leaper was no longer influenced by the anomaly’s pull. After upgrading the ex-human, the Dark Void wasn’t interested in it anymore. It appeared the same rule applied to him. The anomaly had drawn him in, transformed him, and then ejected him. Now that it was finished with him, its pull no longer affected him.
So it seemed he had been transformed into a mutant. Recalling the Dark Void’s description, he knew that the anomaly could enhance ex-human mutants into stronger versions of themselves, with regular humans unlikely to survive the process. Despite the odds, he had managed to survive everything within the anomaly and had been turned into a monster, a change that he suspected was irreversible.
He found himself pondering how he had managed to survive in the Dark Void. Was it his high Luck attribute that had played a crucial role? Recalling his unlikely victory in the game of chance despite the odds stacked against him, he considered the possibility that perhaps his Luck had played a role in his survival in both instances. On the other hand, he couldn’t help but wonder if his survival within the Dark Void was due to a system glitch.
Ultimately, he concluded that the specifics weren’t all that important, at least for the time being. The key focus now was figuring out his next steps.
The prospect of spending the rest of his life as a frightening mutant should have evoked fear or at least sadness in him. Yet he found himself devoid of these emotions. Instead, he welcomed his new reality with a surprising sense of calm. Come to think of it, he was now much calmer and more confident than before. He found his thinking sharper, too. It must have something to do with him being a mutant. In addition to the enhanced agility and senses, he seemed to have gained an inhuman mind as well, which allowed him to control his emotions better and think more clearly.
He looked around the clearing, noticing that the belongings he had as a survivor were nowhere to be found, and he currently had nothing on him. It was understandable. All his weapons, equipment, and rucksack had been lost during his tumultuous journey through the dark void as he was teleported from one strange location to another. His clothing had been completely dissolved into nothingness when he was trapped within the pod filled with the acidic liquid that only affected his garments, leaving his body unscathed. That was fine. He highly doubted he would need any of those things now that he was a mutant.
It made him ponder what would happen next. Was he now just one of the average ex-human mutants? Was he now nothing more than the prey to be hunted down by survivors for XP? It felt unfair. Sure, it was a good thing that he had managed to survive the transformation, but becoming the prey after having been the hunter was an unfortunate turn of events.
Before Jake could contemplate the matter further, he heard the rustle of foliage behind him. With astonishing swiftness, he spun around to face the source of the noise. He couldn’t see the enemy yet, but his enhanced hearing picked up on a creature making its way through the foliage toward him. It didn’t take long for the ex-human walker to emerge from the trees. The mutant halted at the edge of the clearing upon spotting Jake.
For a moment, the mutant just stared at him, seemingly unsure of what he was and whether it should attack. A thought crossed Jake’s mind that perhaps now that he was a mutant himself, the other ex-humans wouldn’t harm him, mistaking him for one of their own. However, as soon as he thought that, the walker screamed in rage before charging toward him.