Chapter 561

What Jake had found in the loot box was a single item, specifically a weapon. And he quickly realized that this particular weapon had been designed specifically for him. It looked like a large revolver with a long barrel, giving it the appearance of an old Wild West revolver, like the Smith & Wesson Schofield.

While the gun’s overall silhouette was reminiscent of an Old West single-action revolver, it also looked quite different from one. The proportions were somewhat wrong, and there was something about its design that made it look less like a conventional firearm and more like a weapon from a completely different world.

Just like Jake’s own body, the gun’s frame was made of pitch-black material, which seemed to absorb the surrounding light. Also, it didn’t have a cylinder, at least not a regular one. Unlike regular guns, this one didn’t use bullets. In place of a cylinder, the gun had some kind of round, transparent reservoir that looked like a mana marble. Only it was completely empty when Jake first found the revolver.

He quickly learned that he could fill the revolver with mana from his own inner reserves whenever he held the weapon in his hand. With a simple mental command, mana flowed from the pool in the center of his body, through the channel inside his arm, and right into the revolver. He could actually feel the mana leaving his body and traveling through the weapon before finally reaching the reservoir. It then traveled through the gun and into the transparent sphere, gradually filling it with a bluish glow.

The revolver could hold up to 10,000 MP. When Jake pulled the trigger, a certain amount of mana was taken from the reservoir to form an energy projectile that was then fired from the barrel. Each shot consumed 1,000 MP, so the revolver could basically fire ten shots before its reservoir needed to be refilled with mana.

However, with a mental command, he could charge a shot with more than 1,000 MP before firing. Sure enough, the more mana he used, the more powerful the next shot was. There was no complicated process involved, either. He simply had to decide how much mana he wanted to put into the next shot, and the revolver would do the rest. And if he didn’t issue a mental command specifying how much mana he wanted the gun to use, it would simply default to the standard 1,000 MP required for a single shot.

After experimenting with the revolver for a little while, Jake learned that he could charge a shot with all the mana held in the reservoir, all 10,000 MP. As a result, the subsequent shot was extremely powerful, strong enough to immediately shatter an entire cluster of aether crystals. The difference between a regular shot and a fully charged one was immense.

As for the regular 1,000-MP shots, a single well-placed shot could take out a regular crystallized mutant without much trouble. The projectile was fast, powerful, and, perhaps most importantly, incredibly easy for Jake to use. He didn’t need to worry about ammunition or manually reload the weapon between shots.

The fire rate of the weapon was basically equivalent to the speed at which he could pull the trigger. Unlike single-action revolvers, this one didn’t have a hammer, and all Jake needed to do to discharge the weapon was pull the trigger. There was no need to cock anything or perform any other action between shots. As long as there was enough mana in the reservoir, he could fire as quickly as his finger could move.

As for reloading the weapon, he could refill it with mana with a simple mental command, and it took just a second to fill the revolver with 10,000 MP. There was no need to stop and fiddle with the weapon or even take his eyes off his surroundings. As long as he was holding the revolver in one of his hands, transferring mana into it was very easy.

Since he currently had over 700,000 MP in total, it meant he could fire more than 700 shots with the revolver. However, while that might seem like a lot at first, exhausting all the mana stored within his body surely wouldn’t be a good idea, considering mana not only served as sustenance for him but also as energy to fuel his abilities. His mana pool was the most important resource for him, so he couldn’t use it simply as ammunition.

And considering how fast he could fire the revolver and the fact that he could even use up to 10,000 MP in a single shot, he actually needed to be wary of how many shots he took and be very careful when using the gun. It would be easy to get carried away with a weapon like this. After all, when every pull of the trigger could release a devastating attack, there was always the temptation to simply keep firing.

The revolver was of Epic rarity, so it could progress from Rank I to Rank V. The revolver had its own experience bar, which was filled when he killed enemies with it. When the revolver upgraded from one rank to another, it unlocked a new upgrade, five in total, that could be acquired with skill points the revolver earned whenever it progressed from one rank to another.

Jake found that aspect of the weapon particularly interesting. It meant this gun was not only similar in appearance to his own body, but it even had a System of its own. The gun basically worked just like one of his regular abilities. It had its own progression, its own experience, and even its own upgrades. The more he used it, the stronger it could potentially become.

The revolver was called the Aberrant.

So, all in all, it was clear that this gun had been made specifically for him, not for humans. Even if a human survivor came across this weapon, they wouldn’t have been able to use it, as they simply wouldn’t have been able to fill its reservoir with mana. The weapon was literally useless to anyone who couldn’t manipulate mana the way he could.

Unlike him, the humans could only deal with mana in a very limited way. All they could do was absorb mana from various types of mana items and then use it to cast single-use spells acquired from arcane scrolls. And that was it. They couldn’t directly manipulate mana themselves, at least not to any meaningful degree. Unlike them, Jake could absorb mana from mana clouds, control it with his mind, and now even use it to directly charge up the Aberrant.

So he spent some time simply wandering around Lastlight, taking out mutants with the Aberrant and getting the hang of the gun. He experimented with different firing speeds, tested how much damage the weapon could do with different amounts of mana, and even tried firing a few fully charged shots just to get a better feel for its upper limit. The weapon was incredibly satisfying to use, and Jake quickly found himself liking it more and more.

So far, however, it hadn’t gained enough XP to progress to Rank II. It seemed that, despite how many mutants he had already killed with it, the Aberrant still had quite a ways to go before it reached its next rank.

And at one point, when he was getting ready to leave Lastlight, he suddenly received a new mission from the System. The sudden notification caught his attention, and he paused for a moment to read through it. This mission was a bit different from the one he had received before.

The objective was to locate all the human groups scattered throughout the city and gather them in the very center of Lastlight, where the City Hall was located. For every human group brought there, the System would reward him with 250,000 XP, which was quite a substantial amount of XP. The extra reward was 1,750,525 XP, which would be given to him if he located and collected every single human group in the city.

Again, Jake had no idea why the System kept assigning him missions to help humans, but he didn’t really care. He wasn’t about to complain about it, considering he was being awarded a good amount of experience. He needed all the XP he could get, after all. As long as the System kept giving him rewards for doing something he could accomplish without too much trouble, he had no reason to object.

Unlike the previous one, this mission didn’t require him to save every single human, however. He only had to bring every human group to the city hall. So this time, he didn’t need to worry if some of the humans in the groups were killed in battle. As long as the groups themselves made it to the designated location, the mission would count them as rescued.

The first thing he did after receiving this mission was make his way to the City Hall to examine the area. When he made it there, he immediately understood why the humans needed to be gathered there.

The City Hall was an enormous complex consisting of two parts. The first was a large, rectangular, five-story building, while the second was smaller but much taller, extending from the middle of the first one. The two sections that made up the complex gave the entire building an imposing and expansive appearance.

The vast area around it was just an empty space where survivors could freely wander, set up tents, or build various machines or vehicles without running the risk of being targeted by aether crystals from outside the area. There was enough open space that hundreds of people could gather there without having to squeeze themselves together. The City Hall area was also surrounded by a tall and sturdy cast-iron fence, further adding to the feeling that the place had been designed to serve as a safe zone.

Sure enough, the City Hall square was filled with clusters of aether crystals when Jake first arrived there. They were scattered throughout the open area around the imposing building, some standing alone while others had grown together into larger clusters. So Jake took some time to shatter every single one of them.

The interior of the building itself should have been clear of crystals, as he already knew they never spawned inside buildings. Still, he entered it to make sure there were none. There was no point in bringing a bunch of survivors here only to discover that some hidden crystal had somehow managed to grow inside the building.

It took him some time to thoroughly check the entire premises, but soon the city hall area was completely cleared of crystals and was therefore safe and ready to admit human survivors. With that taken care of, Jake then set out to look for the human groups.

The first one he came across was Flynn’s team.

Since the group he had previously helped, led by a person named Mike, had destroyed his electrolarynx, he could no longer communicate with humans in his monster form. In his human form, however, he could talk without the device. So he decided to assume his human form before showing himself to Flynn’s group.

But even if he still had his electrolarynx, he would still have approached this group in his human disguise, given how the previous group had treated him in his monster form. He had already learned that appearing before humans as a monster wasn’t exactly the best way to establish friendly relations.

So instead of trying to make contact with a human group in his monster form and going through all the trouble of trying to convince them that he was only trying to help, it was much easier to simply meet them in his human form. Especially since he could move just as fast and retain his passive abilities, like Feral Instincts, even while disguised as a human.

As it turned out, Flynn’s group was in big trouble when he came across them. A group of mutants had cornered them, and the humans were struggling to hold them off. So Jake lent them a hand, making good use of the Aberrant.

The revolver crackled repeatedly in his hand as mana projectiles tore through the attacking mutants. Compared to using his monster form, fighting like this was somewhat different, but he was already quite comfortable with the Aberrant. He quickly picked off the most dangerous mutants one after another, giving the humans enough breathing room to finish off the rest.

After the fight was over, the bodies of the killed mutants lay scattered across the area, while the survivors gradually recovered from the fierce battle. The leader of the group, Flynn, approached him. He looked at Jake with a mixture of curiosity and caution before asking who he was.

“Name’s Mark,” Jake replied, giving the leader of this group the name of his alter ego.