It took him just a few minutes of brisk jogging to reach his destination. He slowed down when he made it to the section of the city where huge crevices crisscrossed the streets. Some of them could be crossed without much trouble by simply stepping over while some of the others were so wide he had to leap over. When he was a survivor, he had a hard time navigating this area. One time, he even nearly fell into one of the crevices. As a mutant now, he didn’t have any problems traversing this part of the city. His inhuman agility and remarkable acrobatic abilities allowed him to easily navigate through the area, leaping over the gaping cracks with ease.
Jake came to a halt at the edge of a particularly wide crevice, peering down into the dimly lit depths below. The huge crack revealed the intricate maze-like network of the sewers. Previously, as a survivor, he discovered two kinds of creatures lurking in those tunnels. The first were large rat-like beings with elongated snouts and red eyes, often moving in groups. The second one was a massive terrifying creature resembling a hybrid of a bear and an alligator. This creature seemed to be a loner, navigating the sewers on its own. The rat-things would scatter in fear at the mere sight of the daunting bear-alligator.
That was basically all that Jake had learned about the sewers and its inhabitants when he was a human survivor. He remembered being terrified when he nearly fell into one of the crevices. The thought of finding himself in the dark depths of the sewers where rat-things and bear-alligators lurked in the darkness filled him with dread. Now that he was a mutant, he wasn’t afraid anymore. He was planning to descend into the maze-like network of underground tunnels to see what they had to offer.
He stepped a little closer to the edge of the crevice to gauge the depth of the drop. Leaning over, he peered into the darkness. It wasn’t too deep, so Jake was sure he would be perfectly fine if he jumped in there. Especially considering he’d hardly received any damage when he fell off the roof of a ten-story building. The drop to the sewers down below wasn’t nearly as high as that.
Now that Jake remembered about falling off the roof and the subsequent clash with a group of survivors, he paused. The Dazed negative effect had long since faded out, but some of the bullet wounds still hadn’t healed up completely. If he’d rested for some time after the fight, his body would solely have focused on healing itself and mended his wounds by now. But Jake hadn’t given it such an opportunity. After the battle, he searched through the dead survivors’ stuff for a minute before breaking into a run to this part of the city, giving his body no time to rest.
So while some of the bullet wounds had already closed, some of the worst ones were still healing. Jake decided to wait until his body completely recovered. He lowered himself into a sitting position and looked at one of the wounds on his side. He could see a bluish energy seeping out of the hole. Deep inside the wound, embedded in his obsidian flesh and enveloped by the bluish glow of mana was a bullet. Jake watched it slowly disintegrate into nothingness, being seemingly dissolved by mana contained within his body. After that, the wound sealed shut entirely, halting the leakage of mana and leaving no trace of a scar on his body. A few more minutes later, the rest of his wounds healed up as well. Jake was now fully recovered and good to go.
He got to his feet and with a thought, pulled up his mana count. The exertion from leaping across rooftops, engaging in combat with survivors, and mana loss from the wounds he sustained greatly depleted his energy reserves. Despite this, he still had a sufficient amount remaining, so he wasn’t at risk of running out of mana in the next several hours. However, he was going to need to replenish this magical energy sooner rather than later. Hopefully, he would come across some mana consumables in the sewers down below.
With that in mind, he stepped to the very edge of the gaping crevice. He glanced into the semi-darkness below one more time before jumping down. The descent was brief, lasting less than a second. He landed in the middle of a dark tunnel, splashing dirty water everywhere, bending his knees to absorb the impact. Straightening up, he surveyed his surroundings. Sunlight filtering in through the crevice above provided enough illumination to see by. The distant areas of the tunnel where the crack ended were engulfed in total darkness. Jake was unfazed by it. Enhanced Senses allowed him to see in the darkness pretty well.
Shallow, murky water trickled along the tunnel floor. It was so dirty it was almost black. The stench of the sewers was overpowering, but it didn’t faze him in the slightest. Had he remained human, he would have struggled to bear the stench, risking throwing up the contents of his stomach. As a mutant, the foul scent didn’t affect him at all. His anatomy had changed drastically after his transformation into a morphus. Unlike most of the living organisms, he no longer even had a stomach, or any other internal organs for that matter.
As far as he knew, he was simply a piece of some obsidian-like elastic material, molded to resemble a human form and animated by the magical energy contained inside his body. As long as enough mana circulated within his strange body, he would remain alive. However, if his mana reserves were ever depleted, he would turn into a lifeless piece of obsidian-like material. This was a fate he was determined to avoid at all costs.
He cast a quick glance back over his shoulder and saw that the front and back ends of the tunnel appeared identical, both shrouded in darkness. Aside from the gurgling sounds coming from the putrid water below him, the sewers remained eerie quiet. Yet Jake knew that somewhere deeper within the labyrinth of underground tunnels lurked its upsetting dwellers. Picking a random direction, he set off to explore the sewers.