Mutagen

<strong>Day 41 – 8:32 PM – Apostles of Contemporary Times Monastery, Barangay Anoling, General Nakar, Quezon</strong>

With the precious head of Adrik on his hand, Mark returned at the second floor of the Monastery building. He immediately took out a [Physical Crystal] and let it absorb the mutation the leader of Death Valley Settlement had gained from becoming a Mutator. It was the ability to dragonify himself and transform to a creature that resembled a dragonewt with black scales.

Adrik's ability was similar to his son's and thus proved Mark's theory of relatives having similar abilities after becoming a Mutator. It was the same for Emika and Mikio that he met before. The father of the two kids also turned into Mutated Infected that looked like a moving tree.

Mark immediately decided to take Adrik's ability and secure it. It was because unlike most Mutators he saw before, it could be said that the [Dragonification] ability of the Volkov father and son were high leveled.

After observing and taking abilities of Mutators for some time now, he started to differentiate the mutated abilities in different tiers.

The first tier was those with partial mutations outside their bodies. The Mutators with abilities that only involved a part of their body was in this tier. People like SP02 Agbayani back in Firenze Subdivision with his ability to harden his arms from his hands to his elbows were obviously just a mutation that only involved a small part or few parts of his body. However, there were exceptions to this that belonged to another tier.

For the second tier, it involved those with mutations that covered a huge part of their bodies especially inside. Examples were those that had body strengthening, agility mutation or those that were able to spit corrosive liquid. Mark could also be considered to belong to this tier as his mutation involved his blood.

In the third tier, those with full body mutations belonged. A good example of this was one of the Mutators among the survivors that arrived at his base before. That person was able to release fire from his whole body. Chameleon, the leader of the crime syndicate in Cavite also belonged to this tier. However, although Mark thought that Mutators with full body mutations belonged to this tier, only those that could not transform into something else were included.

The fourth tier on the other hand included those that were able to transform. Abbygale, Karlene and the Volkov father and son belonged to this tier. In a sense, these were the strongest tier but it did not mean that there was any weak tier among the four tiers. It was just that Mutators with transformation ability usually had more than one abilities granted by their mutation making them quite stronger.

For the fifth and final tier, those with permanent transformations belonged here. For now, only Laelaps, Fein and Chaflar were the ones Mark knew of that could be listed under this tier. In his theory, it was more apparent in animals but he was not sure if it would not be applicable to humans at all.

In any case, differentiating the Mutator abilities in these tiers made it easier for Mark which ones to prioritize in taking their abilities. Like Adrik's ability, he had many options of how to use it. He could either give it to anyone trustworthy under him or find another animal that he could tame and turn it into an existence similar to a dragon like Chaflar. However finding a suitable animal would surely be hard. The chances that Chaflar was a unique creature even before it became a dragon was not zero and was actually rather high.

Furthermore, Mark really needed to prioritize which abilities to take. It was because despite that amount of heads of Mutators he collected, not all of their abilities could be harvested. It was due to the fact that the [Physical Crystals] in his hands were not enough. [Mutagen Stone] was quite a rare item after all and he needed two stones for every [Physical Crystal] he could create. Counting the [Physical Crystals] he had now, it was around fifty excluding those that were already occupied. That was already a lot but was still not enough to take the abilities of several hundred Mutators.

The only reason he collected all the heads of every Mutator he killed was for him to be able to choose which ones were good after this fight.

In fact, there was a lot of those heads that would become rejected just for the fact that Mark did not know their abilities. It was the reason why Mark was watching the Mutators as they fought before taking action. Although he was the type that wanted to end things as fast as possible, he needed to make the Mutators use their abilities in front of him  so that he would be able know their abilities. Mark had no way of knowing what kind of abilities they had after all if he did not saw it.

As for the abilities he had already put into the crystals without knowing what they were, Mark just kept them for future purposes, like giving a gacha reward to people in his base that was able to give enough contribution. In the best case, he could give the crystals with unknown abilities to animals and kill them after learning what ability they received. However, it would cost double the amount of [Physical Crystals] since he would need another crystal to retrieve those mutations. They were not like psychic abilities after all.

With all those complicated things in mind, Mark retrieved the [Black Dragonification Physical Crystal] and returned outside. He needed to finish up the work although most of the people from Adrik's entourage had already escaped due to the very unfavorable situation. Even though they did not want to lose the paradise they had, they would rather escape that keep struggling in a fight that could push them to death.

In any case, if they really escaped, they would not be of concern to Mark anymore as long as they did not appear in front of him anymore.

After all, Mark had bigger things to think of now, literally.

The moment Mark got out of the building, the Mutator Whale and the horde of infected were entangled in a battle similar to a scene in a series where the protagonist was a normal person that travelled by boat while the attackers were dwarf sized humans.

With their huge numbers, the infected tried to swarm the whale but they were severely shaken off by the agitated whale. On the other hand, the whale used its huge body to trample over its enemies.

Then, a fat infected tumbled towards the whale. Mark found the infected familiar. It was actually the fat man he had killed a moment ago. Since he did not know the fat man's ability and also found the man disgusting beyond measure, he left his body intact after killing him. It seemed that leaving his body was a good decision though.

The fat man which now became a huge bellied mutated infected ran with awkward looking movements due to his severely bloated stomach. It looked like his body was about to burst as it slowly kept on expanding.

With a huge strange looking infected, it was impossible that the whale would not notice it. It raised its right front foot and smashed it towards the infected. That was a huge mistake the whale made.

As the whale's foot made contact with the mutated fat man, his body burst into a disgusting explosion. Black smelly liquid scattered over a large area and a large part of the body of the whale was splattered with the liquid.

UWWWWWOOOOOOOUUUUUU!!!!!

The whale started to trash around while loudly wailing in pain. It trashed around too much that everything around was trampled and buildings around the monastery got smashed into pieces. Mark even had to rush back into the building to retrieve the unconscious girl and left the building just before it fell into smithereens due to the whale's struggle.

That black smelly liquid started to release smoke as it corroded everything it touched. The flesh of the infected, the grass, the concrete, the vehicles, and even the whale's body was being melted by the liquid. Although the amount of that black liquid slowly reduced as it corroded things, the damage in the surroundings was still severe. Not to mention that the whale started to roll around and lose balance as its right front foot and a large portion of its underbelly slowly melted.

With such a good chance, Mark did not want to miss it. Mark went down to the ground with the girl in his arms and released quite an amount of the mental energy to attract the Mutator Whale once more. As he wanted to, the whale struggled up despite it already one of its feet and was still in pain just to get to Mark. The other infected were also the same as they detected and saw Mark.

However, that was another mistake everyone, the whale and the horde of the infected made.

In front of Mark was the area where most of the black liquid splattered and a large hole was already visible on the ground. Once the infected and the whale entered that hole, they submerged parts of their bodies on the highly corrosive liquid and their bodies started to dissolve once more.

The whale trashed around once more and rolled in pain but since it was already inside the large hole filled with the black liquid, it ended up smearing more of the liquid on its body.

Soon, the whale was already dying even without Mark doing anything.

Because of its actions, a large amount of the black corrosive liquid melted a large part of its body. Not only its armor but a large chunk of its body was melted. The only part left intact was its head and its tail. However that tail was already detached from its body after the part before the tail had already melted.

Now, it was time for the finishing blow.

Mark took out the [Lightning Mental Crystal] and prepared. Due to the weather, it was the most suitable one to use but also the most dangerous since it could also affect Mark and the girl. As such, he made his way to a dry covered area nearby which was a small tool shed that managed to survive the onslaught.

Then, Mark activated the crystal.

Due to the storm, not only that there was quite an amount of electric charge in the clouds but the amount of psychic energy in the air was rather thick. As Mark activated the crystal, the clouds in the sky began to swirl which also surprised Mark.

Then…

THHOOOOM!!!

CRACKLE!!!

The sword of judgment fell from the sky tearing everything into burnt pieces. A several meter wide lightning fell from the sky and hit the whale. Not only that it decimated a large part of the body of the whale but a huge amount of electricity scattered on the wet surroundings. The horde was heavily struck by the current and the whole horde fell after their brains were fried.

Another damage that happened was that the already escaped and already managed to get quite a distance away were struck by the numbing wave of electricity that travelled through the rain drops and rain water on the ground. Many fainted while most of them felt numb on their bodies and were not able to move properly.

Finally, the coast was clear and Mark stepped out of the shed. He started to move his body strangely as he shook off the numbness he felt. There was no way for him to expect that what he did would have that much strength. In any case, his goals were achieved now. The Death Valley Settlement was already gone while the whale was also killed.

Being the reason for the existence of the storm, the rain started to cease with the whale's death.

Taking out a [Mental Crystal] Mark started to take the psychic ability of the whale which allowed it to call forth a storm.

It did not take long and the glowing [Mental Crystal] finally had a glowing grayish-blue colored orb inside it.

However, as Mark was about to take the crystal back, it suddenly flew away to his surprise.