"Hunt successful..." Silas sniggered while gritting his teeth in extreme pain. As his arms slowly healed the burn marks, he slowly sat back up.
"Hiss!!" He frowned, feeling the extreme pain still simmering throughout his body, but it was healing back efficiently with time, and with those darkened expressions, his eyes fell over the pearl in front of him.
"This thing is almost the size of my palm." How do you consume it? Surely I can't just put in my mou--"
Silas was just thinking, but questions to his answers were already there in his mind; after a momentary look of surprise, a little cheeky grin emerged over his face as he grabbed the pearl, and seemingly instantly the bright, shiny pearl transformed into plain ash, which flew up in the air, vanishing into nothingness.
And while that happened to the pearl, for Silas it was a blessing; he felt a surge of vitality run across his whole body; he could feel warmth inside his body turning into steam; suddenly the rate of healing and regeneration he was feeling got accelerated by several times.
His skin had suffered second-degree burns across his whole back and arms, which was supposed in to take about a dozen minutes to heal back, but the moment he consumed that pearl, the pace of regeneration was boosted so much that all his wounds, including the burns and dislocated right shoulder, all of it healed back within 3 minutes.
"Effects are generous..." Silas noticed with a satisfied smile, "I guess my Regeneration Skill must have evolved to Tier 3 now."
"Gruff!"
"Ruff!"
Silas was just celebrating his joy, but just then the two pups joined in the celebration, pouncing over him, licking his face in excitement after a battle victory.
"Hahaha!" Silas giggled, "Easy there!" He chuckled while attempting to grab those little pups, but they were simply too fast, jumping around his whole body. Giving up, he stood back up.
With his hoodie all burnt up in ashes, his upper body was exposed to the cold air of midnight; it would have been a chilly feeling, but a few burning trees around him kept the warmth.
And then there was also a rush of adrenaline as he watched the scenery in front of him, a radius of several dozen meters wet with blood and flesh is the Giant Pearl Serpent, its organs lying all over the place and whatnot.
'Consumption can greatly enhance the growth rate of wolf pups.' Silas noticed the information, and his eyes moved back to the pups, who were looking at all this meat with light in their eyes.
"Go ahead..." Silas commanded with a sigh; the moment he did so, his pups flashed like some bolt of lightning and started consuming all the exploded corpse of the serpent, starting with the biggest chunk of its body containing its head and upper part of its body.
'It's in the trait of the wolves that they will grow as much as they consume. I think from now on I will let these two consume whatever creature we hunt down after taking out the precious rewards out of its body.' Silas nodded, and after finishing up the job, Silas quietly returned to his room just as the sun was about to rise again.
"I'm damn tired..." he muttered as he lay flat on the bed along with the two pups on his back and under his arms like a cushion.
And by the time he woke up again, it was already afternoon.
"You woke up quite late?" his mother remarked as Silas arrived downstairs while still yawning in exhaustion.
"The days are just tiring," Silas replied, and grabbing a glass of water from the kitchen, his eyes once again moved over the streets outside, where his eyes fell over a bunch of people gathering their belongings in their cars.
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"What are they doing?" Silas questioned as he observed about 5 families doing that; his mother glanced outside, seeing that sight.
"Oh?" she sighed. "They are leaving the place. You know what happened with Mr. Smith yesterday; last night someone's pet cat in house number 56 also turned into a monster.
Thankfully this time, the monster didn't create a riot like last time. The owner has somehow trapped it inside one of their rooms. No one has the courage to kill it, so the owners themselves left the house along with their neighbours.
For now they have moved to another neighbour's; the world is changing since the rain of meteorites that night. The animals and birds and whatnot are turning into monsters; some people have already started to abandon their pets in the family; a girl killed her pet hamster last night because she was afraid it would turn into something like that.
I don't know what the world has come to..." she sighed deeply exhausted, Silas just frowned hearing all that and placing the empty glass in the platform his eyes moved over towards the house, "But where is the father?"
"He went out to discuss things with other neighbours. We have news that some apartment in a skyscraper is being sold; we also plan to move there. The risk of monsters must be less than what's here in the place surrounded by woods." As she said, the memories of the sight of uprooted trees and enormous holes all over the woods flashed over her mind.
But Silas, on the other hand, was taken aback by all this load of information. 'The world is changing fast!' he remarked.
Silas frowned and, equipping a sports T-shirt, questioned, "Where are they discussing things?"
"At Miss Brown's house, her brother lives in one of those apartments, so they are—"
"Thanks, Mom!" Silas instantly left the house, making his way over to the other side of the road in a rush; from right over the entrance, he could see plenty of people had gathered inside the house.
Along the way he observed way more families were leaving this place than what he expected initially; the whole street was full of dozens of cars loaded with luggage ready to leave.
'Everyone is desperate, huh... To think they all will leave their homes just like that?!' Silas's expressions darkened, and finally he arrived in front of Miss Brown's house.
*Knock! Knock!*
Mrs. Brown opened the door, seemingly surprised to see Silas there. "Oh, my boy?" she exclaimed in surprise while Silas's gaze fell over the crowd gathered inside the house.
"I also wanted to join..." he stated. Mrs. Brown, though a bit surprised, welcomed him inside before closing the doors. Silas took a corner to stand as the conversation continued inside.
"So as I was saying! We need to move fast; the government's capacity to help is very limited right now. They have sent the military to keep citizens safe over the city. We also need to move over there fast; it's just been a day; that's why the prices of apartments are still low, but with time, as news will spread, the prices will skyrocket to millions of dollars!"
"I also agree; this place is surrounded by woods. You all saw those holes and uprooted trees below the cliff, right? I swear there is a gigantic snake living there; we can't stay here..."
"It's like an apocalypse has descended upon us..."
"And you never know what monster will appear before us and when?!"
The atmosphere inside was grim and serious the moment the conversion continued again, and the danger was real, but at the same time, they were on a mission opportunity.
'Humans don't adapt to dangers; they try to escape. That's in our nature.' Silas frowned. 'No matter what measures we take, it won't protect us by normal means against those monsters. Even the Giant Pearl Serpent I fought, I don't think anything less than missiles would work against something like that...
The monsters are divided into 12 grades, from the lowest being grey, yellow, green, blue, orange, pink, purple, silver, gold, black, and white, to crimson being the highest.
The Giant Pearl Serpent I hunted was green, and the Hound was yellow. These are just low grade, but as time progresses we will see higher grade monsters.
There is a possibility even nukes will be useless against those; right now we have the opportunity to grow stronger and tame some beasts while they are still weak; in the future, just survival will be difficult if we don't make a base for survival right now. I know it's dangerous, but getting hurt is better than getting your whole race extinct from the face of the planet!'
Silas's expressions grew serious, and finally the man decided to step in, 'The words I say will definitely face opposition; they will call me crazy, but someone needs to risk it for the survival of all, right?'
Silas sighed, and as he stepped up to say his words, suddenly his voice was overshadowed by a loud screech that rang across the whole neighbourhood.
"Scrrrrraaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!"
All the windows and glasses suddenly shattered by sheer roar, everyone was instantly shook, their bodies were paralysed for a moment with their minds in a blank state; those who were standing fell over their knees in shock.
Only Silas managed to endure the screech and instantly rushed out of the door into the streets, where he noticed a huge tiger-like beast standing over the roof of a house, smashing its paws on the roof while screeching again and again.
"That's not a nice kitty..."