Chapter 558

Jake was annoyed.

Ever since he had been turned into a mutant, he hadn’t experienced much emotion. Joy, sadness, satisfaction, compassion, all these emotions and feelings were greatly dulled for him. They were still there, buried somewhere inside him, but it often felt as if they were separated from him by a thick wall. While he could experience them once in a while, it didn’t happen all that often, and on those rare occasions when he did, they were usually greatly subdued, barely strong enough to leave much of an impression on him.

Negative emotions, however, like anger, for example, were a different matter. Anger could be provoked in him pretty easily.

While he had long since learned to control his inner beast, his monster side, it was still deep within him. It wasn’t something he could simply get rid of or ignore. It was a part of him, buried deep beneath his human consciousness, patiently waiting for an opportunity to emerge. And his inner beast was wrath and bloodthirsty lust. It craved violence, destruction, and bloodshed, caring little for anything else.

Most of the time, it remained in a deep slumber. Jake could go days, weeks, or even longer without feeling its presence. But whenever he experienced anger, his monster side began to stir. At first, it was barely noticeable, little more than a faint stirring somewhere in the back of his mind. But the longer he felt angry and the more intense his anger became, the higher the chance his monster side would awaken.

And once that happened, it would immediately seize control of him, controlling his actions. Once that happened, putting it back to sleep would be quite a challenge.

The longer his monster side remained in control, the higher the risk that his human side, his consciousness, his thoughts, everything that kept him human, would be completely erased. And if that happened, there would be no coming back. Jake would become a full-fledged monster whose only instinct would be to attack everything in sight, tearing apart anything that stood in his way without the slightest trace of hesitation or reason. That was something he absolutely could not allow to happen.

To prevent it, he always tried to keep his head and not let anger boil up within him. While he was mostly well accustomed to keeping his anger under control, it wasn’t always easy. It required constant awareness, especially when something, or someone, kept pushing his patience.

And despite his better judgment, during the fight with the crystallized mutants, his anger was slowly boiling up within him. At first, he had managed to ignore it. He focused on the battle, on keeping the humans alive, and on dealing with the crystallized mutants threatening them. But every passing minute made it harder to keep that anger buried. He could already feel his inner beast stirring beneath the surface, waiting patiently for him to slip.

He was doing his best to prevent the humans from being torn apart by the crystallized mutants. He even summoned his crawlers and wingclaws from the Leviathan to make sure not a single one of the humans was killed in battle. He went out of his way to protect them, directing his creatures toward the battle and making sure they intercepted any crystallized mutants that got too close to the humans.

Some of his creatures fell in battle, and he himself was wounded a few times. The crystallized mutants were constantly attacking him, while those clusters of green crystals kept launching bolts of aether energy at him from a distance as well. More than once, Jake had to twist his body or leap aside at the last second to avoid being blasted by another bolt of energy.

But for all his trouble, the humans kept attacking him and his creatures, even though neither he nor his creatures made any aggressive moves toward them.

Sure enough, he knew that humans who encountered him for the very first time would take him for what he was, a terrifying-looking and overpowered monster. With his monstrous appearance and the sheer number of creatures under his command, it wasn’t exactly difficult to understand why they would be afraid of him. And those who got to know him a little better… well, they had every reason to believe that their first assumption was more than correct. He was a monster. There was no getting around that fact.

Still, in this particular situation, he was clearly trying to help these humans out of their predicament. He was fighting the same enemies they were fighting. He was protecting them. He had even gone as far as to summon more of his creatures specifically to make sure they survived.

Yet for all his trouble, the humans kept attacking his creatures. Jake was well aware that they didn’t know him or why he was actually helping them, or even if he was actually helping them at all. From their perspective, there was no reason for them to trust him. For all he knew, they could have been thinking he was simply trying to prevent the crystallized mutants from slaying them so he could have them all for whatever nefarious plan he might have had in mind.

He couldn’t exactly blame them for being suspicious. Still, understanding their reasoning didn’t make it any less annoying.

He just couldn’t help but feel resentful every time one of his creatures collapsed under heavy gunfire from the humans he and his creatures were trying to protect. He could feel his irritation growing each time another crawler or wingclaw was cut down by a barrage of energy weapons, especially when those same creatures had been shielding the humans from the crystallized mutants only moments earlier.

And even when the battle was over and his creatures began to retreat, those sonofabitches kept firing at their backs! That was what really pissed him off. His creatures were retreating. The crystallized mutants had been dealt with, and Jake had already ordered his creatures to pull back. Yet the humans continued firing, their weapons spitting energy into the backs of his retreating creatures that had just saved their lives!

Jake felt something stir deep inside him. He could feel the familiar sensation building in the back of his mind, that faint stirring of something far more primal than simple irritation. His inner beast had noticed his anger. It was awake now, at least partially, and it was patiently waiting for him to give it an opportunity. So despite doing his best to remain calm, his anger had been rising until he was about to boil over.

He needed to calm down. Jake knew he needed to calm down. But he just couldn’t. All the anger that had been building up over the past several minutes wasn’t going away that easily. And the humans keeping firing at his retreating creatures weren’t helping the matter at all.

But before things could get any worse, their leader shouted at them to stop firing. Luckily, his people obeyed, and the gunfire finally ceased.

Jake didn’t move. The anger was still there, simmering beneath the surface, but without the constant barrage of gunfire feeding it, he managed to keep it under control. His inner beast stirred once more before settling back down, and Jake silently thanked whatever luck he had that the humans’ leader had enough sense to stop his people before things escalated any further.

For a moment, he stood still, watching the humans who surrounded him from every direction. Every single one of them was pointing their weapons at him. But that was fine. He was well used to it. The mere sight of guns pointed at him wasn’t going to tick him off.

Jake stared back at the humans in silence. He then decided to use this moment to use Mind Reader on them again. He had been using the ability on them before, but then the humans had been attacked by the shamblers, so he had stopped viewing their memories to help them deal with the crystallized mutants. So there was still one more month of their most recent memories that he hadn’t examined yet, and now that the battle was over, he finally had the opportunity to finish.

He focused on the humans and activated Mind Reader, letting the ability reach into their minds. One by one, he went through their memories, quickly skimming through the events they had experienced over the past month.

He didn’t really expect to find anything particularly special taking place during that time, however. But to his surprise, something interesting had indeed happened during that very month. Jake’s attention immediately focused on the memory. The information was certainly unexpected, and it raised several questions in his mind.

So, after he finished viewing the humans’ memories, he decided to ask Mike, the leader of the group, some questions about what he had just learned. He retrieved his electrolarynx from his inventory. However, he had barely pressed it to his throat when Feral Instincts suddenly warned him of danger, informing him that one of the clusters of green crystals was preparing to launch another bolt of aether energy at him.

He immediately moved, twisting his body to the side just as the bolt of energy shot toward him. The attack passed harmlessly by, missing him by a narrow margin. But the moment he dodged the crystal’s attack, one of the humans opened fire.

An energy shot struck his hand, disintegrating not only the electrolarynx he was holding but his fingers as well. He stared at the stump of his arm for a second.

For a moment, Jake tried to remain calm. The anger that had been building up inside him had subsided somewhat while he had been examining the humans’ memories. Focusing on their thoughts had given him something else to concentrate on, allowing the simmering rage to fade into the background. But after the human took a shot at him, it immediately resurfaced.

While the loss of the electrolarynx wasn’t a big deal, now that he had lost contact with Catalina, who might have been dead by that point, and the Spartans as well, who also might have been gone for good, creating another device might be a little harder than it had been before.

Still, it wasn’t that big of a deal. He could manage without it. But losing his hand hurt. Of course, he knew it would regrow in no time flat. His body was more than capable of replacing lost limbs. Still, it was annoying.

For a moment, Jake just tried to calm his anger, not allowing it to overcome him. He was trying to push down the irritation that was rapidly turning into something far more dangerous. He knew what was happening. He could feel his inner beast stirring somewhere deep inside him, responding to his anger like a predator waking from its sleep.

He needed to stop. He needed to calm down. However, despite his best effort, he lost. Hardly able to control himself anymore, Jake charged at the human who had just fired at him.

For a second, the humans were stunned. To their credit, they came to their senses almost instantly. Their weapons were raised, and they opened fire on him, trying to prevent him from getting to his target.

Energy shots tore through the air around Jake. Several struck him, but they did little to slow him down, let alone stop him completely. He simply pushed forward, ignoring the impacts as he closed the distance between himself and the offending human.

A second later, he slammed into the human, sending him crashing onto the ground. The impact was hard enough to make the pavement crack beneath the man.

Jake didn’t give him a chance to recover. He immediately straddled the fallen human, pinning him to the ground beneath his weight. His fist rose as his fingers fused together and morphed into a powerful drill.

The human stared up at him, his eyes wide in horror as Jake drew his arm back. The drill whirred to life, the high-pitched whine filling the air as the drill reached full speed. All the human could do was stare at the spinning bit that was about to plunge into his face.

But before Jake could bring his drill down, a familiar piece of system text suddenly materialized before his eyes.

Mission Complete: Help the survivors survive the mutant attack.

Reward: +255,350 XP

XP: 1,881,010 / 2,010,000

Extra Reward Earned: Epic Loot Box

Immediately, the exact location of the loot box became known to him. It was almost as if someone had simply placed the information in his head, giving him a perfect sense of its location. He now knew exactly where he could collect the loot box, even though he still wasn’t sure what kind of reward he could find inside it.

A bolt of energy zipped inches past him, forcing Jake to instinctively duck his head. Now that he had received the reward for completing the mission, he could slay all these humans without losing anything. The mission was complete. Whatever happened to the survivors from this point onward was no longer his problem.

However, the system message popping up at that exact moment somehow helped soothe his anger a little bit. But the humans didn’t know that, of course, so they kept firing at him.

Another series of energy shots streaked through the air, forcing Jake to move. He decided to use this moment, while he could still control himself, to escape. He jumped to his feet, leaving the person lying on the ground beneath him unharmed. The human looked understandably confused, as if he couldn’t quite understand why he wasn’t killed, why the pitch-black had suddenly changed his mind.

The humans surrounded him from every direction, weapons still trained on him. There were too many of them to simply walk away, so Jake employed Gravity Leap, propelling himself upward and forward with a sudden burst of force. His body shot into the air. For a moment, he sailed over the humans, their startled faces briefly visible beneath him. He cleared the group and landed farther down the street, his feet hitting the ground with enough force to send small fragments of crystals skittering across the pavement.

He immediately hit the ground running at full sprint. The humans kept firing at his back, energy bolts streaking past him and occasionally striking the ground nearby. But the farther away he got from them, the wider their shots began to miss him. Soon, the gunfire became little more than a distant barrage behind him.

He continued to run away from them, leaving them without an explanation of who he was, where he came from, and why he had helped them in the first place. He didn’t particularly care. The hell with them.

He kept running until the survivors behind him disappeared in the distance. Only then did Jake slow down, allowing himself to come to a more relaxed pace. He glanced around, taking a moment to get his bearings. The location of the epic loot box was still perfectly clear in his mind, as if he had always known where it was.

With nothing else keeping him here, he turned in the appropriate direction and headed toward the location of the epic loot box he had just been rewarded with. Whatever was inside, he hoped it was worth all the trouble he’d gone through to save those humans.