Chapter 554

Jake wasn’t sure what he was seeing. Apparently, the System had just assigned him a mission to protect the group of survivors fighting in the street below him. That much was obvious. But the mere fact that the System wanted him to help them was definitely strange. Something like that had never happened before.

Sure, he had previously received various quests from the System, but definitely not like this. The quests and tasks he had received before had been related solely to him, making him conduct mutation research, gather rare biological samples, or hunt down particular types of monsters in exchange for unique genetic rewards.

So why did the System even care about him helping these humans at all? Why did it give him a mission to protect humans? It had never shown the slightest concern for anyone else’s survival. All the missions and quests it assigned were always related to killing mutants, not protecting someone.

Another interesting detail caught his attention. The objectives he had previously received from the System had always been called quests, tasks, or challenges. He had never received anything called a “mission”. Since he became a mutant, the System had never replaced the term “quest” with “mission”. If anything, “mission” sounded much more like something intended for humans, carrying a different implication.

So maybe that was it? Maybe the System had confused him with a human again, mistakenly giving him a mission that was normally supposed to be completed by humans.

The fact that one of the rewards was an epic loot box only seemed to support that theory. After all, loot boxes contained items, but for him, only genetic rewards truly mattered, such as new abilities or valuable genetic material he could use to improve his creatures. Whatever the epic loot box contained, he had a feeling it would hold nothing related to his mutant nature. Most likely, it would be filled with equipment, weapons, or other resources that would be useful to ordinary humans but practically worthless to him.

In the past, especially during the first several weeks after he became a mutant, the System had seemed confused about how to classify him, wavering between treating him as a regular mutant or a human. There had been moments when it behaved as though he were still an ordinary person, only to contradict itself shortly afterward by acknowledging his mutations and rewarding him accordingly.

That strange inconsistency had gradually become less frequent, but perhaps it had never disappeared entirely. If that was the case, then this mission might simply be another mistake, just a rare glitch caused by the System still being unable to decide exactly what he was.

But then again, he remembered that humans received missions only through radio transmissions. They never received missions out of thin air. Instead, after hearing a radio transmission about a mission, they would receive it on their PDAs, where they could either accept or refuse it before it was added to their objectives. That was the way the System had always operated.

So it seemed highly doubtful that the System would suddenly change the way it worked. But if it wasn’t the System that had offered him the mission, then what could be the reason he had just received one? Was there some other force at work?

Jake then remembered what Mick had told him about the mysterious group of individuals he had come to call the Whisperers. Mick didn’t know much about them, but he had learned that they had been awakened from stasis a long time ago and had since learned to manipulate the System in subtle ways, bending its rules without openly breaking them.

It was the Whisperers who had given Mick an overpowered ability that nobody else possessed, allowing him to create all kinds of powerful and useful devices far beyond what ordinary humans should have been capable of producing. It was also the Whisperers who had helped transform him from a human into a morphus. Without their intervention, he would have perished in the Dark Void anomaly into which he had been pulled as a human.

Perhaps it had also been them who had allowed him to access a dungeon in the second Dark Void and later helped him return to the real world. At the time, those events had seemed too convenient to be mere coincidence, and now, looking back, they fit the same pattern. The Whisperers always seemed to appear at pivotal moments, nudging events in a particular direction before disappearing again.

So perhaps it was the Whisperers who had just tinkered with the System to give him this mission. After all, Mick had once told him that the Whisperers constantly watched what was happening across different parts of the world, quietly observing events from behind the scenes. They always seemed to pursue some agenda of their own, though what that agenda actually was was hard to tell. Every time they intervened, they did so with a purpose, yet they never explained their motives or revealed the larger picture.

They had given Mick an overpowered ability to invent all kinds of advanced devices and devastating weapons. They had transformed Jake into an equally overpowered mutant, saving his life in the process. And now, assuming it really was them who had assigned this mission, they apparently wanted him to save these humans. It was an odd request, especially coming from a group that had never seemed particularly concerned with individual lives. If they were interfering again, there had to be a reason beyond simple charity.

The more he thought about it, the more plausible the theory seemed. The Whisperers were the only force he knew of that possessed both the knowledge and the ability to manipulate the System itself. Other than them, he had no idea who, or what, else could have given him the mission. As strange as the explanation sounded, it was still far more believable than the System suddenly abandoning its own rules for no apparent reason.

So if it really was the Whisperers who had just given him the mission, then it meant they were still around, still watching, and apparently still subtly influencing events from the shadows. What they were trying to achieve, and what their ultimate goal was, was hard to tell, though. They had told Mick that they needed help defeating some enemies of theirs, but they had never revealed who those enemies were, other than saying they were incredibly powerful. Whether those enemies were human, mutant, or something else entirely, they had never said.

There were no real clues as to whether they had been telling the truth or hiding something. Well, they were definitely hiding something, considering how little they had ever told Mick. Nearly every conversation they had with him had been carefully controlled, giving him only enough information to keep him moving in the direction they wanted. They had always remained vague, answering questions with half-truths or refusing to answer them at all.

Mick himself had never questioned them or inquired much about their motives. He trusted them blindly, convinced that they had given him the ability to invent all sorts of devices for a good reason and that whatever they were doing ultimately served a greater purpose. He had never seemed to consider the possibility that they might be manipulating him or withholding the truth. Jake, on the other hand, found that difficult to accept. Anyone with that much power and that many secrets deserved to be viewed with caution.

He couldn’t help but wonder if Mick was still alive and whether he was still in contact with the Whisperers. If anyone knew what was really happening behind the scenes, it was probably him. Assuming he had survived, perhaps he had learned more about the mysterious group. Or perhaps they were still keeping him in the dark, using him as another piece in whatever game they were playing.

Anyway, all those thoughts crossed his mind in just a couple of seconds. His mind raced through one possibility after another before pushing them aside for later. But there was no point dwelling on unanswered questions while those humans were on the verge of being slaughtered.

So he returned his attention to the panicked survivors scattering from the crystallized mutants that had breached their ranks. Their once-organized defensive line had completely fallen apart, replaced by desperate individuals running in different directions while the mutants relentlessly pursued them. The battle was about to turn into a massacre.

While he initially hadn’t been interested in lending the humans a hand, the mission he had just received changed things. Over two hundred and fifty thousand XP was a substantial amount of experience, especially considering he could earn it in such a short amount of time. It wouldn’t take him long to deal with the mutants attacking the humans. Compared to the rewards, the effort required would be minimal. It was definitely far more XP than he could earn by simply defeating a single group of crystallized mutants on his own. Even if the mission turned out to have been assigned under unusual circumstances, the reward was too valuable to ignore.

Besides, if completing it revealed anything about who had actually given him the mission, or why, it would answer at least some of the questions that had just begun swirling through his mind.

And gaining experience was becoming increasingly difficult. Mick’s chip was no longer active, so he was no longer receiving bonus XP every time he earned some. The steady stream of additional experience he had grown accustomed to had vanished, making every point of XP considerably more valuable than before. Advancing had become noticeably slower, and opportunities to earn such a large amount in such a short time were becoming increasingly rare.

So he wasn’t about to pass up the chance to gain such a hefty chunk of experience in one go. Besides, he was interested in seeing what the epic loot box contained if he managed to keep everyone in the street below alive. He was fairly sure its contents were intended for humans, but he was still curious. Even if the rewards turned out to be useless to him, understanding what the System considered worthy of an epic reward might prove valuable in its own right. At the very least, satisfying his curiosity was worth the effort.

So Jake quickly assessed the situation below him, his gaze sweeping across the chaotic battlefield as he took in the positions of both the humans and the mutants. He counted the crystallized mutants that had already broken through the survivors’ defenses, noted which groups of people were in the greatest danger, and identified the fastest route to intercept the attackers. Within moments, he had formed a rough plan. Then, without wasting another second, he sprang into action, joining the fight.