Universal Power System

Mako walked over to Bill to find him lying flat on the ground and breathing quite heavily as if he was gasping for air.

"Are you alright?" Mako asked with concern as he approached his best friend.

Bill decided to play a little practical joke on Mako as he didn't reply to Mako telling him that he was alright, but rather he just started staring at him with his eyes wide open and a serious look with no comment made by his lips.

Bill's sudden behavior caused Mako to panic as he thought maybe something was wrong and Bill needed help, making a face full of tension and worry.

However, he could only contain his laughter for a couple of seconds before he busted out laughing out loud at the Mako's priceless face.

Bill's laughter relieved Mako's heart as he confirmed that he was all okay and was just messing around. He was honestly in shock as he thought that maybe something had happened to him internally and that the patrolling officer would have to step in to save him.

Considering the intense fight and deep overwhelming emotions that he had endured, Mako was amazed at Bill still keeping up a brave face and hiding away his pain, but it didn't take a genius to figure that he was still in a lot of pain.

After making sure he was perfectly fine, Mako painfully walked over to Iris who was also lying on the ground, completely exhausted and clearly emotionally hurt.

"How can you still move?" Iris said as she was ridiculed seeing Mako approaching her.

"I can't move much as well, but I guess I exerted the least amount out of you three," Mako said as he knelt beside her and began checking to see if she had any injury of any kind, not that he would find any.

"Says the guy who released a literal tornado of red fire to kill that ugly thing once and for all," Iris replied sarcastically.

"Oh well, guess I just got a bigger energy reserve, but believe me I am on the cusp of collapsing myself, but first I had to make sure that both of you were alright before relaxing because I don't know the side effects of using that weird skill that you and Bill used," Mako explained to Iris as he was concerned about both of their eyes glowing during the fight.

Iris said that she didn't know about it either and that it triggered all on its own and provided her with an immense boost in physical strength and speed alongside her skill with the water ability.

Mako was skeptical about this power because he could say with almost certainty now that he also saw Erin's eyes glow which meant that this was something linked to their abilities, a hidden skill that they somehow tapped into too while in the heat of battle.

He decided to look into this further once they had all made it safely back to the shelter because right now he was only focused on making it back to the shelter and alerting Erin and Leon.

Even if Iris had received any kind of injury she could heal herself using her ability which would take her completely out of risk of any kind of infection or internal injury.

It was just that both Bill and Iris had used their Mutant Genes to the absolute limit, exhausting both it and their own energy reserves so much so that they couldn't even move a muscle.

Healing pills weren't going to be much help in this case as there were injuries to heal only energy to recover which could only be achieved by resting and consuming tons of food.

After making sure that neither Bill or Iris were in any kind of danger, Mako began the gruesome task of walking all the way back to the shelter in order to get Erin and Leon out and help them.

During the excruciating walk, Mako couldn't help but think back to the moment when the beast used its Love ability to manifest an illusion of his grandmother in front of him and make her do anything it wants in order to manipulate his heart and mind.

This was one of the reasons why high-level emotional abilities were considered very strong. It was because at its base all emotional manipulation abilities specialize in manipulating a person's hormones and chemicals in their mind to change their way of thinking and judgment.

The way that each emotional manipulation ability achieved this effect was different.

For example, It is easy for a fear ability user like Natasha to manipulate people by purposefully subjecting them to their worst fears, but in order to gain trust or admiration from someone was a whole different story in which she would have to extract every ounce of fear from their body while carefully allowing certain emotions to fill that void making it so that that person feels in a certain way.

The same held true for Love as well because it was a great ability that could make people more attracted to you or someone else and suppress their anger and sadness making it the perfect ability for a psychiatrist but it can also be used to mess with people minds as instead of supplying love, you remove it completely while allowing emotions such as guilt and sadness fill that void making the opponent incredibly vulnerable to attacks.

As these abilities evolved they could do much much more such as creating illusions like how the beast did or manifesting those emotions into energy like the red energy blast that the beast was able to produce.

It was definitely a great topic to study, something that Mako was eager to do once he had cleared the test and made it to military school. However, right now Mako was focused on another thing that he hadn't thought of up until now.

If that beast's high-level Love manipulation ability was strong enough to project an illusion of his grandmother in front of him the same way he had been having visions of her appearing and helping him in the past, Mako began to think.

'How was I able to see my grandmother appear before my eyes and help me whenever I was feeling cornered or afraid?' Mako asked himself.

'There wasn't an emotional ability user when I saved those two girls from the thugs who were trying to kidnap them whom I ended up killing after activating rage mode, but somehow she appeared right in front of me and consoled me, telling me that I was on the right path and that to not let the thought of killing someone stop him. How did she appear?' Mako said as he revisited a past memory of his grandmother appearing before him when he was sitting on Sophia's couch looking at the news of all those gang members being killed.

No matter how much he thought, he couldn't think of a logical answer that would prove these supernatural events as a hundred percent true. Was he dreaming? Was it really her spirit trying to communicate with him?

Mako started to go so deep in thought while he walked so much so that his brain completely ignored all the pain that his fatigued muscles were feeling.

After thinking for a while and still coming up with nothing, Mako decided to turn to the system for help. Ever since he had increased his intelligence, he realized that he had been neglecting the system a lot which could help him in figuring many things out.

After calling upon the user interface, Mako explained the situation to the system and basically asked it to explain how he was able to see these visions of her appearing and consoling him.

[Commencing full user body scan]

[Scanning for unknown or foreign energy signatures within the user's body]

[Estimated time of completion: 20 minutes]

Mako wasn't expecting the system to flat-out start scanning him but it was still better than nothing so Mako decided to just let the system do its thing as he had finally reached the shelter.

Mako quickly approached the front door and did the special knock to make Leon know that it was him trying to get in. As soon as he finished knocking, Mako heard the sound of earth falling into the ground and the door flinging wide open.

In an instant Mako was greeted by Erin and Leon who both had looks of crazy children who couldn't wait to know what their parents had gotten them for Christmas.

Since the last time, when Leon opened peepholes in the shelter, he was jump scared by the Dogleos suddenly switching their target to be the shelter, making him believe that it was his mistake and that the beasts were able to sense while in reality, they were targeting Erin up on the roof.

Learning from his lesson this time, Leon remained patient and didn't dare to open a peephole no matter how intense the sounds were coming from the outside but that left him going absolute insane as all he had was his own mind to accompany him and it was coming up with very weird scenarios what may be going on outside based on the noises he could hear.

Erin had only woken up, a couple of minutes ago and by the time Leon brought her up to speed about what had happened, they heard Mako's knock on the door.

Mako quickly collapsed onto the ground as his fatigued muscles had completely given up at this point. Erin and Leon rushed to help him but he politely denied their help telling them to help Bill and Iris instead who were still on the field, completely out of energy.

Mako also instructed Erin to use her water or Ice ability to cool down the hot crater of ash that he had created and collect all the crystals that they had earned.

Leon and Erin quickly understood the task and rushed out of the shelter to do as they were told while Mako dragged himself inside and rested his tired body against the wall of the shelter.

*Ding!*

[Body scan 25% complete]

[Estimated time of completion: 15 minutes]