"Upgrade the cap once again, system," Ning ordered with a cheery smile on his face.
ʀᴇᴀᴅ ʟᴀᴛᴇsᴛ ᴄʜᴀᴘᴛᴇʀs ᴀᴛ 𝕟𝕠𝕧𝕖𝕝·𝕗𝕚𝕣𝕖·𝕟𝕖𝕥
"Oh right," Ning thought. "I forgot about these skills. Should I improve them?" he wondered.
The heat in his body had already given him the remaining 5 Billion energy, so Ning slowly drifted down onto what looked like the roof of a building.
He seemed to have fallen into an urban environment. He scratched his face a little and ignored the area he was on for now.
Soon, he would go to meet some more people.
'What upgrade should I make first?' he thought. 15% was already added to all of his 4 such skills, so…
"Let's do physical for now. How much is it going to cost?"
"1 billion of the percentage's square?" Ning frowned. That required a bit of math that he didn't want to do at the moment.
'Let's see…' he thought. 'If I have to reach 20%, it will be 20 times 20, which is 400, times that with 10 billion, and I get 400 Billion.'
"Wait what the hell? 400 Billion for the 5% increment?" Ning asked.
"That's so damn expensive. I will have to wait years… wait no, 40 days for that," Ning was slightly surprised when he thought about it.
He had forgotten that he was now 10 times faster at collecting energy. "Well, I guess it's not so bad," he thought to himself.
"Can I buy them out of order?" Ning asked, scratching his cheeks.
'80%… that's 80 times 80, 64… 6.4 Trillion, huh?' Ning thought. 'Well it doesn't get extremely expensive, that's for sure.'
"Alright, I will buy those later then," he thought and stood up to leave the place.
"Before that, does this world have any unique energy? What's the dominant energy here?" he asked as he looked around.
"I see," Ning thought as he scratched his chest and stopped. "Hmm, Earth…was?"
"It has a unique energy now?" Ning was surprised.
"I see," Ning thought. "It must be fun being there right now, or horrifying."
His scratching continued, and he looked for a way down. 'Should I just fly? What if people see me?' he thought.
He wondered for a few seconds until he saw a set of ladders on the side of the roof to go down from.
Ning grabbed it and was about to go down when he finally saw the area he was in.
It was so… desolate. Ning had used this term to describe the mountain ranges, but even the cities looked the same.
From the buildings, Ning could see that he was in relatively modern society. But he couldn't hear anything.
No car driving, no crowd speaking. Not even birds chirped in the air.
'What the hell is going on here?' he wondered. He looked down to see if anyone was there, but was surprised to see that there were people down there.
In fact, there were many people down there, just walking around. Ning could see some metallic vehicles that should have resembled cars all around the road.
Most of them looked like they were from the scene of an accident. Some crashed into walls, some into electricity poles, and some into each other.
'Do these people not care?' Ning thought and quickly climbed down the ladder to a balcony of the sort.
He jumped into the balcony and found a door to go back down. Just as he reached the bottom of the stairs, he suddenly crashed into a girl, who fell back down.
"Are you okay?" Ning suddenly asked. Her long hair had covered her face, so Ning couldn't tell if she was in pain.
"Please, get up," he said and grabbed onto the lady's arm. When he did so, the lady grabbed him tighter as well and pulled on him to get up.
Ning slowly pulled her back up and let go of her arm. "Are you okay?" he asked again.
He didn't know what language he was speaking at the moment, but he was sure he was speaking one this girl understood. The system, after all, made the process automatic.
The girl kept on clutching his arm even after she was back up.
"Uhh… lady? Can you let go?" he asked, but she didn't respond.
'Is she deaf?' he wondered and tried to pull back his arm, but she wouldn't let go.
He reached for her fingers to pry it off of him. That was when he noticed how black the fingers were.
'What the hell?' he came to a stop.
At the same time, The girl pulled herself closer to him. As she did, her hair parted to reveal a black face with no skin and only rotten flesh.
She reached for his arm and bit it.
Ning felt the loose teeth try to bite his skin and fail.
"What the hell? Let go of me?" Ning cried and pulled his arm very quickly.
When he did, the girl's two arms came along with his own. He had accidentally ripped it off of her.
"Oh shit, I'm so sorry. Are you okay? Are you hurt?" he asked out of sheer instinct but stopped and looked at her face.
Her hollow eyes showed no emotion even when losing an arm. 'What the hell is she?' he thought.
As he did, only a single answer came to his mind.