Chapter 42

We arrived at the Safe Zone with relative ease. Thankfully, the Undead roaming around at night wern't as many as one would expect. But that’s only natural. The Undead preserve their strength and use the darkness of the night to rest. Not from exhaustion, but from the effect of the sun. It doesn’t outright kill them, but the sun exhausts their abilities the longer they are exposed to it.

Nighttime is good for the undead to rest, but soon, it’ll be their best time to hunt.

The facilities of Dilbert’s Safe Zone seemed to be improving daily. Many of the people who were nothing but mouths to feed a couple of days ago are now actually working their assessment off training and practicing. That’s all thanks to one thing.

One of the recruits got his first ability, something ordinary like a Dash. Skill. And due to that, it helped the morale and made everyone try their best to gain abilities and skills of their own.

The system rewards hard work, and they’ve been working hard ever since. After all, there is safety here, food water, and no danger from the monsters. But they all know that if they don’t grow strong to protect this sanctuary of theirs they will lose it.

Today marks one week mark after the integration. And also the day that Harry Simons had come back. And next to him was a small kid, with ponytails and a stuffed bear she held on tightly to.

“I see that you found her,” I said as I approached the two.

“Yes, your information was on point… I also made it in the nick of time, it was too close for comfort, far too close…” he said.

There was terror in his eyes but I suppose he made it safely so it was worth it.

I went down as I slowly rubbed on the head of his daughter, “Lydia,” I said smiling.

The girl didn’t reply and slowly backed away hiding behind her father’s leg.

“Well, I was never popular with kids anyway,” I replied sighing as I stood back looking at sergeant Harry Simons eye to eye.

“I did my part of the deal, are you going to do yours?” I asked.

“I’ll help as much as I can… but,” he said as he looked at the people in the courtyard.

“Do they even need my help?” he asked.

Seeing them doing jumps that would have been Olympic records before the apocalypse, and sprinting faster than any human being could even dream to achieve Sargent Simons was stupefied.

“That’s not even a fraction of what humanity is capable of. And especially you,” I said as I tapped on his chest. “The potion you drank, did you feel its effects?” I asked.

He nodded.

“I’ve grown far stronger than before, enough that I’m afraid of holding my child… I don’t need sleep as much as I used to, an hour of sleep is enough to fully invigorate me. Not to mention food and drink are no longer something my body demands constantly,” he said.

“That potion helps the body further optimize the performance, it’s not that you don’t need sleep or food and drinks, but it’s that you only need less of it to achieve optimal function. It’s a miracle drug, but it’s not enough for what is to come. You still need to improve your body. Anyway, you can head over to the security personnel, you’ll first join in on the training, and once you achieve adequate results, you’ll be the one training them. After that, we’ll start hunting,” I said.

The sergeant struck both feet together, as he sharpened up like a stout oak tree. A salute and a loud shout, “Sir, Yes Sir!”

“Euh… I’m not used to military salutes but yeah, go, have fun,” I said then turned towards the gate.

“Lucas, another hunting session?” asked one of the tower guards.

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“Yeah, I still need to train harder than anyone else don’t I, I can’t let the newbies show off in front of me,” I said smiling.

“Good luck Lucas.”

“Yeah, I’ll be going out of town for this one, it’ll take me a few days to come back. So make sure to notify Mr. Dilbert,”

“Sure thing!”

I nodded at the man in the tower and headed out.

Seven days, and still nothing. The people from the government didn’t even dare come again since the last time. Either they were truly afraid, or perhaps they were too preoccupied with the shit that’s been happening all over the world.

Recovering civilization is not going to be a job that can be done in a day or two. But that’s not my worry. For now, I’ll need to do something incredibly stupid, but it’s going to be incredibly helpful to me.

In the past few days, I’ve been trying to understand my Feast Ability. And I come to some conclusions.

Feast currently is only able to store three skills.

The skills in question must be of different monsters. It cannot eat more than one skill per monster.

Once the skill limit has been reached, I can’t add another skill unless I overwrite another one.

I’ve been hunting solo for a few days, I also got back to the sewers, I killed the crocodile there, it wasn’t that hard. Especially since it was in an enclosed space, I just choked it to death with some smoke bombs and Mana Crystal-infused grenades.

These grenades aren’t that difficult to make and were pretty common back in my days.

I got the ability to ‘Harden’ which can protect my whole body with crocodile scales. It improves my defenses, enough that a sharp sword can break upon contact. The problem with this ‘transformation,’ is that I become incredibly slow.

Which isn’t helpful in the least. I become a sitting duck and it can only last as long as my ‘Mana’ isn’t depleted.

Sadly I can’t see my current Mana level because the system isn’t fully online, and will only fully show the person’s status screen once the first integration is over.

Anyway, the biggest issue with Feast is Dark Hunger. A status alignment that’s pretty damn overbearing.

As long as I don’t use Feast abilities, I’ll never suffer Dark Hunger, but once I use them, I’ll be on a timer. The abilities that I’m using consume… ‘Satiety’ isn’t a stat, but it’s the closest thing I could name to this effect.

Once my Satiety bar is depleted, Dark Hunger takes over. The being, slime, or whatever is in my hand will start devouring me to dissipate the Dark Hunger.

Meaning, if I can’t eat something, I’ll eat myself, which is pretty damn annoying.

Right now, I have three abilities, Chomp, Grappling Hook, and Harden. Three unique abilities only monsters have.

Low-tier undead doesn’t have any abilities, that’s for now though.

Feast abilities are limited also. Even if my satiety bar is not depleted, and I have the resources to use Feast, if the ability itself is on cooldown, it won’t manifest. Which is also annoyingly problematic.

Another thing is, Feast is the only ability I’ve ever seen that can level up.

After eating the Crocodile, I managed to level up Feast.

[{Feast}Has leveled up.]

Current Level 2

Resources needed to use the consumed skills have been reduced.

And that was it.

No more details. No more storage slots, just resource reduction. It isn’t the best, but not the worst.

Now, I’ve been thinking the past few days about how to use something like this and arrived at a very dangerous idea.

Many monsters have powerful abilities, and by hunting two, relatively weak monsters. I can turn this ability I have into something that can break the power system.

A cheat ability.

The theory was already present in my past world. Many tried it but no one succeeded due to one thing. The inability to fully integrate a skill with oneself.

The theory is simple. There exist two monsters that have something close and similar to Feast.

The First was a Doppelganger. This one can copy a creature’s abilities the moment they’re face to face. They can freely copy their skills no matter the number of skills. Sadly, they cannot mimic a creature’s form or build if it was a higher tier than them.

Because the theory was, if a person wanted to become a dragon for example and use dragon’s breath, they needed the [Dragon Breath] skill. Along with the Dragon’s Physic. A doppelganger cannot copy a dragon’s physic because it’s far superior to the doppelganger’s abilities. And it cannot use Dragon Breath because it doesn’t have the ‘Body’ of a dragon nor its lungs to release such a powerful breath.

In my past life, there were a few ways a person can have the same skill as a monster. But those who tried copying a Doppelganger’s ability to mimic skills all died due to the skills they used being incompatible with their bodies and ended up burnt to a crisp the moment for example someone tried to copy a dragon’s breath.

This dismayed everyone from trying this method.

The second monster, however, is your simple Mimic monster. A very simple creature that can take the shape of a box, chest, or anything it ever consumes, then once an unwary Hunter tries to open it. The mimic will eat the person.

Mimics have many tiers and some of them can even mimic a person, the only problem for mimics is, they only mimic the person’s physic. They cannot mimic a person’s abilities. Yet if they eat something, they can take the shape of such a thing.

However, for a mimic to eat a dragon and takes its shape, the sun has a better chance of rising from the west.

Mimics are fairly easily identifiable monsters once people get used to them, and their sentience is so low a bag of rocks has a better chance of getting a Ph.D. than a mimic.

Now, considering these facts. My [Feast] can consume three abilities at once. What would happen if I consume a Mimic’s ability to change Form? And a Doppelganger’s ability to Copy skills?

Well…

That result is what we can call… a broken overpowered skill.