Spatial Manipulation System

Chapter 8 - Mutation

Dave and Hei Yu had no way of knowing that the superficial and pretentious rich kids they had left behind on the plane had so much depth to them that they had been hiding. Right now, survival was their priority as while the countryside was indeed as desolate as Dave was familiar with, it was not empty. 

There was not much humans living here and so not many to turn but what Dave never expected was that animals could be turned too. 

And just like that they met their first mutant, a zombie wolf. 

[Discovered Level 1 Mutant Crystal x1 Absorb?]

For a moment Dave found himself at a loss seeing the unfamiliar classification. Wasn't this just a zombie wolf? What made it difficult from a zombie human? 

With this question in mind, he returned to the car with Hei Yu and took the wheel while she sat in the passenger seat with her gun in hand. 

While they could indeed ram through zombies without a care for anything, that would potentially hasten the destruction of the car and they hadn't even seen Dave's farm yet. 

"Absorb" Dave gave a mental command as he held the Mutant crystal in one hand while steering with the other. Nothing could have prepared him for what happened next. 

[Storage +0.5 Cubic Meters]

[Evolution Progress +0.1%]

[WARNING: A MUTATION CATALYST HAS BEEN INITIATED TO THE HOST'S BODY, COMPLETE EVOLUTION AS SOON AS POSSIBLE TO AVOID UNPREDICTABLE MUTATION PATHS]

As soon as the notifications flashed and before he could even begin to think about the odd messages, he felt his whole body tremble causing the car to jerk along with his inconsistent pressure on the gas. 

Recovering a moment later, Dave felt a dull headache and chills from the wind on his skin. 

"Are you okay?" Hei Yu asked, gently placing a hand on his arm. As soon as their skins made contact, her eyes widened with a flash of concern and she exclaimed. 

"You're burning up!" 

"It's okay" Dave quickly replied, his focus still on the road as he could now see his family's property up ahead. 

Hei Yu stared at him a second longer than was comfortable before returning her wary gaze to the passing scenery, her gun at the ready.

Meanwhile, Dave considered the system messages he just received. 

The mutant crystal was different from zombie crystals in that it did not give Skill Points but instead hastened his evolution. He had always been curious about the [Evolving] status besides his stamina and the [Hybrid] status in his profile but he never thought too much about it since he had no lead to go off on. 

Now he had his answers, there were changes happening within his body. Changes he could somewhat understand. 

Normally, evolution would happen safely over a long period of time, a stable and steady mutation that would change his DNA. But with the introduction of a catalyst, his evolution or genetic mutation would speed up, however this introduced unstable factors and mutation paths. 

Unlike school biology teachers would have one believe, mutation was not a safe process but could infact result in a broken genetic sequence or an abnormal shift which could either result in death or a horrid change in the body of an organism. 

If he didn't want to die a horrible death or turn into some unrecognizable horror, he needed to find more mutant crystals and fast. 

Understanding this, Dave subconsciously compartmentalized. If there was anything he was good at, it was this.

If the problem was solvable, it would be solved, as long as he was calm or at least pretended to be. 

At this time, they had long entered his family farm and the tall wheat stalks on both sides of the road made a smile form on his lips as he recalled the fond memories he had as a farm child. 

The car soon came to a stop in from of a two-story farm house. 

"You grew up here?" Hei Yu asked as she looked around with a stunned expression.

"Why-?" she quickly stopped herself.

Dave glanced at her and smiled despite the feeling of weakness creeping up his bones. He knew she wanted to ask why he was living such a monotone life in the city if his family was wealthy. 

"A lot of our money goes to court cases in a fight with the city for property rights while the rest has to sustain the farm. I wonder what happened to the animals" he replied and his mind drifted as he glanced at the stables and cow pen a distance away. 

"Let's get out of the open" Hei Yu immediately reminded when she heard him mention animals and Dave nodded in realization. 

They headed up to the front door and Dave knocked gently on it before turning around to glance around at the free range grazing area. 

His mind drifted to his childhood days and he let out a soft chuckle which was immediately followed by the sound of a gun going off. 

Bang!

Stunned, he turned sharply to Hei Yu and saw her aiming her gun behind him where a horse with glowing red eyes lay on the ground with a bullet hole on its forehead. 

He recognized the horse and gaped but felt a creeping fear in the pit of his stomach when he saw those eyes. 

He turned around and knocked harder on the door, his urgency expressed in the force of his knocks. 

Hei Yu hurried to take the crystal and paused for a moment, obvious baffled at the new classification she got from her system but she hurried back to the porch with it and glanced worriedly at Dave who wore a grave expression.

Gently reaching for the knob, Dave place a palm over it and released a small Spatial Blade cutting the locks. He pushed the door and hurried in anxiously only to freeze in the next moment. 

Hei Yu behind him was baffled and stepped sideways to see what stopped him in his tracks. 

"Who are they?" she asked. Didn't Dave say earlier that his sisters were far away in school? Who were these strangers with guns in his house then?

"Who are you?" a firm voice asked as a middle-aged man with a grey beard stepped forward, a hunting rifle in his arms aimed right at Dave's chest. 

"Where are my parents?" Dave asked, his tone deep and calculated as he stared coldly at the strangers occupying his house. His mind immediately conjured a hundred different scenarios, none of which seemed hopeful.

"Who are your parents? Identify yourself kid, why did you break our door?" the middle-aged man roared, raising the rifle to Dave's forehead, finger on the trigger, his eyes narrowing. 

Dave felt something within him snap and instantly, a blade formed mid air, slicing the rifle through the middle in two. The air rippled as a c-curved shimmer appeared in front of him and Hei Yu like a shield. 

A nervous finger among the crowd behind the man clicked their trigger followed by a subconscious response by the others, but as the bullets hit this bluish shimmer, they instantly disappeared as if vanishing into a different space. 

Dave's eyes flashed and a large horizontal spatial blade formed in front of the shield which he sent sweeping forward towards the crowd. 

"Dave!" Hei Yu immediately screamed forcing the blade to stop as Dave recovered his senses.

The large blade was right in front of the middle-aged man's neck having shaved his beard right in a smooth half. His neck had a very faint line of blood. If Dave hadn't stopped it, a millisecond later the blade would have gone right through his neck.

The red flash in Dave's irises slowly vanished as Hei Yu watched him with concern. She had seen that light and instantly recognized it as the same reddish light in the eyes of the Mutant beasts they encountered thus far. 

She opened her lips to ask but caught sight of the stunned crowd and restrained herself. 

"This is his family house, his parents lived here alone and we came for them. Where are the home owners and why are you here?" Hei Yu turned to the crowd and directly asked while pointing at a family photograph on a table in a corner of the living room.

Despite hearing her words, it took the group a moment to recover from the shock of what just happened. 

Dave let the Spatial Shield he just formed disappear while thinking to study it later since he could not recall having such a skill. He stared in anticipation at the middle aged man while fighting the guilt welling up within him. 

"A group of people came here just before you. They had three awakened with them and took the home owners with them. It seems they recognized each other. They didn't want burdens so they only took the couple and left us behind. We wanted to follow but they threatened to kill us so we barricaded the door and hid here." a woman among the crowd spoke up at seeing that the middle aged man was still locked in shock. 

"They knew each other?" Dave frowned immediately. 

"How did they look?" Hei Yu asked again, her eyes widening firmly as she felt frustrated at the woman giving out half information to an anxious and dangerous man.

"They all had hunting rifles and some of them had snipers, the three Awakened wore military khakis" 

"Uncle Mike and Joe" Dave muttered and heaved a heavy sigh of relief. 

A wave of weakness hit him and he instantly collapsed on the ground stunning everyone again. 

"Quick! Shoot him! He's turning" the middle aged man recovered in this moment and exclaimed. Seeing no one react, he quickly turned around and grabbed a gun from a teenage boy and was about to aim at Dave when he felt the coldness of a cylinder on his forehead. 

"Shoot him and you die" Hei Yu uttered coldly, her eyes frigid. 

"Are you blind? Did you not see his eyes? He's no longer one of us, he almost killed all of us!" the man expressed his frustration without reserve. 

"You are in his parents house with guns and his parents are nowhere in sight, what did you expect?" Hei Yu spat back. 

Leaning down, she lifted Dave with one hand and put him on her shoulders. Suddenly she turned around. sharply and fired two shots outside the door. 

Bang!

Bang!

The crowd trembled at the sound but stared outside at the two dead wolves on the porch in surprise then back at Hei Yu. 

The middle aged man frowned at this time.

"You are awakened too" he uttered, not a question but an observation. Her strength and speed were unlike anything he had ever seen. He hadn't even been able to follow her movement when she fired just now. 

"Quickly collect their cores and barricade the door, there's more coming" Hei Yu warned when she saw the ruffling wheat tops in the distance. 

The group immediately sprang to action and soon the door was closed and planks were nailed to barricade it since Dave broke off the lock earlier.