n

n

nAlthough they had defeated the unfairly strong minigun, Kairos and the others weren’t out of trouble yet. Everyone quickly gathered around Sydney, inspecting her condition.

nKairos quickly got her legs and arms, putting them in the proper places so that they could reattach once more. And thankfully, they did do so. However, the pace was much slower compared to before.

nSydney’s eyelids began to fall, like she was unbearably sleepy. However, Kairos felt it would be bad if she lost consciousness, so he called out.

n“Don’t fall asleep!”

nSydney blinked a few times, but her eyes still didn’t open up very wide. She seemed to be on the verge of falling asleep.

nKairos furrowed his brows intensely as he thought of possible solutions to her condition. Then, an idea he had come up with long ago resurfaced within his mind.

n“Open your status panel! I will help you add points into endurance.”

nFrom what he remembered from testing it a while ago, while adding points in endurance wouldn’t heal the injury, it would still increase their overall constitution without increasing the injury.

nIn video game terms, it could be seen as someone taking ten damage out of a one hundred shoppingmodehp health bar. Adding one hundred points to the total health wouldn’t change that the ten damage existed. However, it would change the fact that what was initially ten percent health missing, became five percent.

nKairos raised his finger, ready to press a button.

nIt took Sydney a second, but she did end up opening her status.

nStatus

nID: 423632551433

nRank: E-

nObjective: Survive

nProof Of Perfection Points: 0.3

nStrength – 4.8

nAgility – 4.4

nEndurance – 5.0

nWillpower – 4.6

nMana Capacity – 0.4

nMagic Affinity – 0.3

nSpecial Abilities: Gnawing Hunger (F), Temperance (F), Earth Spell (F)

nHide

nKairos’ eyes widened considerably when he noticed that she only had three tenths of a point available. He assumed that she must’ve added these points into her stats beforehand, though it confused him why she decided to spread her points across all the traits rather evenly.

nKairos’ finger decisively shot towards the plus sign next to the endurance stat.

nBut then it froze.

nPoints – 0.3 – 0.2

nHe saw the available evolution points go down, but he was sure that he didn’t do anything.

nAnd just a moment later, Sydney’s stats changed, despite nobody touching it.

nMana affinity – 0.3 – 0.4

nKairos narrowed his eyes and muttered.

n“What?”

nThough the points seemed to be automatically assigned to whatever position they wanted to be in, Kairos did not act immediately. Thoughts flashed through his mind one after another.

nHe remembered that Sydney’s stats were suspiciously low before after she had slaughtered an extremely large amount of bunnies when they had been assaulted by a horde of them.

nIn fact, just by looking at all the carcasses that littered the ground at the time, Kairos was fairly certain that Sydney had killed the most bunnies. Most of the carcasses laid out across the floor hardly had anything left of them, not even the bones.

nThe bloody mess underneath Sydney only told a small picture, as most of the carnage had been swallowed up by her.

nThis made Kairos think of the gnawing hunger skill. This seemed to be the source of Sydney’s strange regeneration ability.

nIt was quite clear that if an ability just gave one the ability to regenerate fully even from a near death state, that it would be a little unfairly powerful. Kairos would expect that sort of ability to be inborn, or an ability acquired under special circumstances.

nYet, from what he could tell, this seemed to be some conicendental mutation that Sydney got from the original transformation she had gotten from being exposed to a sliver of the red sun.

nKairos believed that it had some sort of relation to the grief she had from the death of Harold and possibly some other special features of her constitution. All in all, there were a myriad of factors that made it too hard to determine which exactly let her gain this ability.

nHowever, all of that wasn’t important.

nRather, the fact that she seemed to need these points seemed more crucial. Kairos pressed his lips together as he saw the points she had available go from 0.2 to 0.1.

nHe could still increase her endurance, but that may actually have a bad effect in Sydney’s case.

nSeeing as she was still regenerating, Kairos took a deep breath and shook his head.

n“Nevermind, it seems that the points are being used for your healing.”

nHe narrowed his eyes as he saw Sydney’s agility stat go from 4.4 to 4.5.

n“And they aren’t even wasted, as they are being put into your own stats.”

nAlthough Sydney still looked really tired, her body looked relatively intact. The thick layer of dark red blood that coated her clothes was rather concerning, but there were no visible wounds.

nHer last point disappeared, before going into her willpower stat.

nSydney parted her lips slightly.

n“Hun… Hungry.”

nNicole immediately stood up and saluted.

n“I’ll go get something!”

nAs she ran off, Kairos called out after her.

n“Get something that doesn’t need much chewing!”

nNicole gave a thumbs up without looking behind her to acknowledge she understood. Just a couple seconds later, she returned with some canned peaches and opened them up next to her.

nAfter opening it up, she was about to pick up one of the peach slices with her hand, but quickly stopped herself once she noticed how dirty and bloody it was.

nInstead, she took out one of the utensils she had, picked one up and then put it into Sydney’s mouth.

nSydney almost immediately swallowed it, not even bothering to chew.

nSeeing how quickly she ate it, Nicole seemed a little concerned about choking, but decided to give her another one anyway.

nOnce more, she swallowed it whole.

nKairos furrowed his brows.

n“I think it’s better if you just dump the entire thing in.”

nNicole let out a soft gasp.

n“Ah! O-Ok.”

nShe then put the can next to her mouth and tilted it, letting all of the peaches fall in. Sydney made a gagging sound, making everyone a little concerned, but all of the peaches traveled down nicely.

nKairos looked at her intently.

n“Do you need more?”

nSydney took a few deep breaths and shook her head.

n“I-”

nThough she was still speaking, Kairos’ eyes suddenly snapped to the side.

nIt was because Sydney’s points had changed.

nPoints – 0.0 – 0.1

nThen, a moment later, it went back to zero. Sydney’s skin originally had a few leftover cuts, but they quickly disappeared.

nThen, her strength stat increased.

nSydney furrowed her brows, even blushing slightly because of embarrassment.

n“Ah, I feel… hungry again.”

nKairos muttered.

n“You are able to gain points through eating.”

nSydney’s eyes widened considerably.

n“E-Eh?”

nChase raised an eyebrow.

n“That does seem to be the most likely case.”

nTori gasped.

n“Wait, how is that fair?”

nSam simply chuckled.

n“This is quite ironic, considering you were never a glutton before, Sydney.”

nSydney laughed weakly.

n“It isn’t healthy to eat more than what you need, after all.”

nKairos turned to Nicole.

n“Could you get some more food?”

nNicole broke out of her stupor, jumping slightly.

n“Ah, yes!”

nKairos nodded and paused for a moment.

n“…Thanks.”

nNicole smiled a little and ran off to get more. She soon returned with a couple cans of peaches and opened them up before giving them to Sydney.

nShe ate them as greedily as before.

nThis time, it didn’t increase after one can, but after another, it went up by a tenth of a point.

nSoon after, that one disappeared as well as another stat was increased.

nKairos sucked in a cold breath.

n“…Sydney, do you feel like you can cast either the gnawing hunger ability or the temperance ability?”

nSydney blinked a few times before shaking her head.

n“No, but I do feel like I can cast the earth spell.”

nKairos nodded with his chin in hand.

n“It seems like those two abilities are passive, activating on their own. My guess is that your gnawing hunger ability lets you convert food you eat into evolution points and also use those points to heal yourself. Though even when healed, you still gain stats.”

nHe furrowed his brows, thinking of all the numbers. Though he could only work with rough estimates, he could already come very close to answers with just a rough estimate in math class.

nIt was just something that came naturally to him, letting numbers flow through his mind peacefully.

nKairos took a deep breath.

n“As for the temperance ability, it should have something to do with abating your hunger. I think it might make you need to consume less food… as well as fewer points when using your gnawing hunger ability. Or it might be giving you more points, but regardless it is increasing the conversion ratio.”

nHe blinked a few times.

n“In other words, this ability perfectly compliments your other one, enhancing both of them at the same time.”

nSydney’s eyes widened significantly.

n“W-Wow…”

nKairos hummed.

n“Well, while we are still here, I guess you should eat as much as you can. Just leave a bit for us to carry along later.”

nSydney shakily got up to her feet and nodded.

n“If my abilities really work like that, then I should take advantage of that.”

nKairos nodded.

n“First eat the stuff that will either spoil soon or is not calorie dense.”

nSydney let out a small sigh.

n“Alright.”

nWith that, she headed off to begin eating. Chase couldn’t help but smile bitterly.

n“…Something like that really makes me jealous.”

nKairos rolled his eyes.

n“You were able to cheat out mana early and even got a special bow. Don’t you think you don’t have the right to be jealous?”

nChase chuckled.

n“Yes, yes. But if we ever do find a large food source, then she will become quite frightening, no? It wouldn’t be a stretch to say she may soon surpass all of us.”

nKairos shrugged his shoulders.

n“Well, at least she will be on our side.

nChase smirked.

n“Yes, thankfully I am not on the opposite side of her…”

nTori pressed her lips together.

n“…I wish I had some sort of special ability like that.”

nKairos waved his hand dismissively.

n“Once you evolve, you will be able to use up your points to get your own ability too.”

nTori smiled brightly.

n“Heh, yeah.”

nBut then, she pouted.

n“…Why can’t I evolve, still?”

nKairos rolled his eyes.

n“Just have a little bit of patience.”

nTori sighed.

n“I guess there’s nothing else I can do.”

nSam was looking at Sydney intently, before shifting his gaze towards the corpse of the minigun. Kairos noticed this and seemed to guess his thoughts.

n“If Sydney eats too many monsters, I am fairly confident that she will turn into a monster. It’s not like she couldn’t, but doing so would be too risky. We should avoid it if possible.”

nHe sighed.

n“Plus, it is rather… bad for the mind to eat the corpses.”

nKairos said this because he remembered one of his past experiments. Just sticking his hand into the corpse of a monster increased his evolution energy. So naturally, eating should increase it by quite a bit more.

nSam chuckled and scratched the back of his head.

n“Alright, alright! But I didn’t even say anything.”

nChase smirked.

n“I admit I was thinking of that too.”

nKairos waved his hand.

n“Anyways, we should get back to eating our own fill. Ah, and let’s also start a fire, the thing we were trying to do before.”

nSam laughed.

n“That was quite crazy, wasn’t it?”

nNobody was against that, so they went to work. Kairos collected some of the clothes he could find scattered by and made a small pile with them. Then, they all had a nice warm meal, making them refreshed.

n