Mystical Journey

"How are you!" Garen was stunned and instantly crouched down to hold onto her body. Her pulse was beating rapidly; her body was emitting a strong radiation contamination.

"Radiation…" She struggled to let out a weak voice.

Garen blanked out for a bit before turning towards her.

"Can you endure such a high radiation? I actually expected this day to come, but I didn't expect it to be this soon. Be careful! I will begin now."

East Perrin nodded her head. She knew that no matter what happened, she would be reformed by Garen and became just like Fanny. Her life was in Garen's hands. Once the mutation broke out, she would lose herself entirely, but how much worse could this be compared to before? Like it or not, Garen would be the leader. There wasn't a single person who would not follow every single one of his commands. Without him, they would have been dead long ago.

Garen held his hand out and gently pressed it onto East Perrin's left breast. With a blue, soundless fleeting flash, it ended. She did not even feel a thing.

The Distorted Seed Parasitism swiftly entered the heart and became one whole with the myocardium straight away.

Within seconds, East Perrin's breathing slowed down, her heartbeat rate decreased rapidly. A vast amount of Cold Radiation radiated from her heart, which was taken as the center and towards every part of her body, swallowing the vicious radiation virus.

"Well… Good." Just approximately ten seconds and she could speak already, "There's still Sinno and the others. They might not be able to hold on much longer."

"Alright, I'll go straight away!" Garen nodded, "This move was supposed to be the last resort. I did not expect to use it this early."

"Whether we're controlled or not, you're our leader anyway. So what's the difference before and after the reformation?" East Perrin sat up, not bothered by the fact that Garen could see her naked upper body. "Go. We have long entrusted our fate to you."

Garen sighed and stood up. East Perrin did save him once back then. However, he had a different attitude towards this girl and felt things differently when it came to her, just as if she was another Celine.

He could feel the heat of East Perrin's gaze on him. Turning around to avoid her gaze, he left the bedroom to get out of this place.

After stopping by a few other bedrooms, sure enough, Fanny was sound asleep, drooling everywhere while the others were showing various degrees of symptoms of the radiation disease that was worsening by the second.

Garen gave them the choice, the decision to reform.

Not surprisingly, nobody objected. During times like these, even the most selfish young men were filled with gratitude towards Garen.

Everyone had their hearts focused on Garen.

Batch after batch of Distorted Seeds, the radiation disease was finally wiped out. However, everyone had become the host of the Distorted Seed Parasitism including the two children. As long as they do not trigger the Distorted Seed, nothing would go wrong. Besides the ordinary, their immune system and physique were enhanced three times. Strong flakes of resistance appeared and their Willpower increased by three times as well. They all had become terrifying monsters who could just lose their sanity and go on a killing spree at any moment.

Garen had warned each and every one of them on the ways to activate the Distorted Seed. It was very simple -- just break down into utter despair and anger, then they would automatically activate the mutation and become killing machines. The other method was for Garen to activate the Distorted Seed's mutation manually.

Once the hidden problem was solved, the people under the mountains returned to their ordinary lives. Malone stopped coughing and was back to rearing fishes all day. Under Garen's command, a few lucky Big Wild Wolves brought back a mutated creature which was a type similar to sheep but had two heads instead. This was a mutation caused by the radiation. The two-headed sheep had stout horns, strong impact force when it ran, and an astonishing combat force. It managed to injure three Big Wild Wolves before it was brought back dead.

This enormous sheep was at least two hundred kilos heavy. Both of the children helped to skin it and air-dried a part of its meat so that it could be made into dried meat. Whereas the other part was given to Garen who used his Cold Radiation to freeze it before storing it temporarily. It was to be eaten in the future.

Yet, if it was before the reformation, it would have been worrisome to feed normal people with food which had undergone the Cold Radiation. However, they were now under Parasitism so it did not matter anymore. The Cold Radiation would actually benefit the hosts of Parasitism, causing them to feel more comfortable as if they had existed in an environment of their optimal temperature and humidity.

The Resonation Core Control that Garen made according to the control chip was completed by imitating the Crystal Derivator. Using condensed biological rubber, he made a transparent Rubber Ball Controller that seemed like a crystal ball. He named it The Black Sky to commemorate the Totem World's contribution towards the technical core of The Black Sky Research Organization.

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East Perrin carefully marked a scratch on the wall. With this, she had kept track of how long they had been in the summit.

"This is our twelfth day here."

In the basement, everyone was gathered there to listen to East Perrin speak, and that included Garen.

East Perrin was making a summary report of all aspects in this duration of time.

"After twelve days, our food supply should still be able to last us for another month. Whether if it's the frozen water which was made by Mr Garen beforehand or distilled water from the lake, we have sufficient water," She paused, "our biggest problem right now is that we are running out of energy batteries!"

"This is a problem I've been worrying about since earlier on as we didn't bring much energy batteries in the first place. The flying ship was stored with too many essential supplies, so we had no choice but to cut down our burden by reducing the energy batteries on board. Having such a problem now is unavoidable." Malone nodded in agreement in his seat.

"So how are we going to solve this problem? After our discussion, all of you can cut down on your electrical appliances and use just a few of the battery collectors to charge your energy batteries. However, this is just a temporary solution as energy batteries have their life expectancies -- a limited number of charges. Moreover, we've been using second-hand batteries which won't even last long. If going to the wasteland is still a choice, we'd still have a chance. There are so many abandoned energy batteries there, I'm sure we can find something decent and replaceable, but we don't even have this path anymore. So, what do we do?"

"We did meet a few other groups earlier on. Is it possible to trade with them?" Fanny frowned, "Maybe search for the other groups that are gathering defense points and have a trade?"

"That would be hard, but still a plan," Garen nodded.

"What about inside the ancient ruins?" Sinno asked in a hushed tone.

"Don't bring up that hell of a place. Even the thought of it still gives me chills. If it's just a mutated monster standing in front of me, I can still face it. But that creature didn't know when to land a blow and it only ran! It was hell!"

"That bad?" Sinno asked in disbelief.

"You weren't there so you wouldn't know," Fanny did not want to think about it anymore.

"There's still one other way, in which that would also be our only last way," East Perrin said lightly, "the Underground Rebel Army has not only the complete energy batteries' Production Thread but an extremely powerful force. However, those people are exceptionally ferocious and their purpose is to fight against the domain. Also, not forgetting that they looked down on us radioactive people in this area. I've been there once. People like us are deemed as low-grade people. It was horrible. So after being there the first time, I never wanted to go back again."

"Actually, there are some of the Rebel Army who are the nicer ones," Malone spoke softly, "but the ratio is too darn small. This probably won't work."

"Seems like everyone is out of ideas…" Garen smiled lightly. "So let me add something right here. I may need a large amount of different biochemical fluid these days so I would need everyone's help to come, help me harvest and store them."

"You didn't have to say that, we actually noticed it already. While we were out, we observed the distribution of plants and insects that you need. Malone has already transplanted some over here, on the summit," East Perrin answered with a smile.

"Huh? Transplant?" Garen paused.

"Yeah, moved up to the summit together with the soil." East Perrin nodded, "The drones I released reported that approximately thousands of Predators were seen in the distance. Those Predators seemed to have begun waves of transferring and their motive is still unknown. Therefore, to take precautions, we have already started various preparations."

"What?" Garen asked calmly.

"Besides transplant, we have also used the Big Wild Wolves to investigate the population distribution of the Predators. One thing we can confirm is that recently, there has been almost thousands of Predators migrating towards our direction and it is very likely that they might attack us. The others are still moving towards different directions, so we're still unsure of those that are further away but that's all for the ones that are near us now."

East Perrin simply explained.

"In our investigation details, we found out that the first wave of Predators that are most likely to migrate towards us is the Level Three Predators who had failed to chase after our Flying Ship."

"Level Three Predators?" Garen frowned lightly. He had seen the powers that these creatures possess. Even just a human mutation could reach the level of a Level Three Pilot steering a Level Three Mech; they were not easy at all.

"Can we at least estimate their date of migration?" He raised his head and asked.

"That I'm not sure, but we shall investigate it ourselves," East Perrin replied. The Big Wild Wolves had yet responded to such a complicated message. They could only send people over to investigate through the drones, but they were lacking energy batteries for the drones so they could only go over it personally. Although it was slightly dangerous, they could risk this bit just to evade a bigger danger.

"Water supply is not a problem at the summit. We can drink and rinse directly from the lake water. Food supply can still last for another month. Regarding warmth…" East Perrin laughed and everyone started laughing. They were no longer afraid of the Cold Radiation emitting from Garen, not to mention the cold temperature.

"So we're safe for now," she finally concluded.

"Let me know when you have news regarding the Predators then," Garen nodded and said, "I will be busy, so East Perrin and Malone are in charge of everything. Everyone shall assist the both of them. That shouldn't be a problem, right?"

"Of course," East Perrin nodded whereas Malone smiled and signaled an "okay" with his hand -- a hand sign he learned from Garen.

"Sinno, you shall be responsible for educating the two children then," Garen cast a glance towards the two kids by the side. Both of them had gone through the pain of losing their home. They needed way more perseverance and guts than the other kids. With that, they should be considered as talents in the making.

"I have arranged a Willpower training method for you to study. Just remember not to leak it out to others. Of course, everyone in the summit is free to learn but this cannot be leaked to the public. If this was leaked, it would be a big trouble as some people might need to be responsible…" Garen straight away took out the training method of the Crouched Eagle Talon and placed it on the desk.

Since the Black Flood Party had given up on him, they had treated him as a sacrifice. Hence, he would not hold back anymore.

During mass productions of the chip and the breeding of the Big Bad Wolves, he did not have much combat power. If he could arm the power of his underlings together, the strength formed would actually turn out to be powerful.

In particular, East Perrin who had a Level Three Willpower herself. She just had no knowledge of some of the pure Willpower sudden assault techniques. However, all these were written in the book by Garen already. This small booklet contained all the techniques of the Crouched Eagle Talon.

With the Willpower sudden assault techniques, East Perrin's combat force would not only surpass Garen but if they were to fight against each other, Garen's Willpower would be destructed instantly. Even against Level Two Predators, one pierce of her Willpower and she could defeat the enemy instantaneously. This was the advantage of the pure Willpower technique. It was also the reason why it was so rare, because it really is very precious.