Leo found himself standing over the dead body of the young man, he could not remember everything that had happened fully, but he could still feel it vaguely, the sensation of a beating heart pulsing within his hand.
The old him would have thrown up at the sight before him, but his body reacted in a way it never had before, his nose twisting slightly as it picked up the sickly sweet scent of blood.
'What the hell, since when has blood been sweet?' He argued with his own senses.
His mouth began to water, and his stomach growled faintly in response to the scene before him.
"Curses, why is this looking edible?" He asked himself as he forced his head to turn away from the corpse. "What the hell was that thing that took over me?"
He did not know how to react to being an awakened, and if other awakened also underwent the same transformation, then they hid it perfectly. But he felt that this was different, he was something not entirely human, and also not truly awakened.
He fell to his knees and groaned painfully.
'Why the hell is this so frustrating?' He asked himself.
As if to mock him, he heard the familiar soft chime again, causing his mood to darken instantly. A second later mystical texts materialized before him, before becoming disturbingly familiar.
[You have slain a legacy bearer of the demon rank]
[You have received four soul fragment]
"What, I can get rewarded for killing other humans?" He doubted the words forming inside his mind.
Then his jaw dropped heavily as the realization escaped his lips in a ghastly tone. 'A legacy bearer… that buffoon was a legacy bearer? Of the demon rank. That explains why he was so confident in all his nonsense.'
The thought of everything that was happening around him was still a very strange concept, and he had to decide what to do next, and more importantly, get away from the scene of such intense gore.
But could he really accept what was happening within him?
Leo could tell it was going to get dark soon, leaving him with a mixed storm of emotions. Before leaving, he noticed the bag the man had brought with him and searched through it for valuables. Aside from the bare necessities every superhuman carried, the only thing that stood out was a map scroll.
Leo wasted no time taking it along with him and fleeing the scene. He had started the day with a clear goal in mind, and now all he had done was create more problems for himself.
In times like this, when he was lost and on the verge of giving up hope, he thought of the only thing that gave him strength, his little sister's beautiful smile.
But with what he had just become, would he even be safe just being by her side? There was a chance he could kill her just as he had killed this man. The image of his beautiful sister bathed in her own blood, a hole torn through her chest, threatened to surface in his mind, but he forcefully pushed it down.
His stomach growled as the sweet aroma of blood flooded his nose once more. This time, he felt he might actually succumb to his instincts and feed on the corpse of the young man he had so brutally killed. Leo hurried away and walked back to where he had left his bag earlier.
Since he could not go back without paying the gate fee, and because he had already planned for a much longer journey, he knew he would have to stay in the wild at least until he could control himself.
The timeframe he had set for himself was two weeks, the exact time remaining before his sister's twelfth birthday.
Reaching his bag, Leo first wiped as much blood as he could from his body before having a light snack of the boiled potatoes he had brought with him. In Hellscape, one of the most unanimously known foods was boiled potatoes. They were usually pre-boiled without seasoning or salt and contained a high amount of starch that kept hunters filled with vitality. These so-called boiled potatoes were tasteless, but easy to procure and essential for survival.
Leo took a few bites and chewed diligently before swallowing the dry substance, needing several sips from his water bottle just to keep it down. As he ate, he felt his body rejecting the bland food, his mind drifting back to the corpse of the man he had killed.
To distract himself from the unhealthy thought of devouring another man's body like a five-star meal, he summoned the string of text that signified the abilities bestowed upon him by the great sphere.
Name: Leonardo.
Title: Awakened.
Pack: —.
Lunar Core: Awakened.
Soul Fragments: 4/500.
"Four out of five hundred?" He muttered to himself, his tone turning cold.
He was perplexed by what would happen if he reached five hundred soul fragments. Would he rise to the ascended rank?
But one thing made absolutely no sense. Normally, people consumed the cores of beasts to gain "core fragments" in order to break through to the next stage of evolution. Did that mean he had to consume the souls of not only beasts, but anyone he killed, to increase his "soul fragments"?
If that was the case, then Cassandra Hearth must be nearing full accumulation of core fragments, an incredible feat considering she had only been in Glory Base for a few months. He had been there for over a year, and he had barely begun his journey.
"There's still too much I don't know… and I'm already so far behind," He said as he took another bite of the boiled potato, his tongue simply rolling it down.
He wondered how many core fragments people like Goliath and Clint Larring had accumulated. For the first time in his life, he truly acknowledged the gap between himself and his peers, and more than that, he knew he would have to work far harder if he wanted to catch up, and surpass them, if that was even possible.
One thing still remained unclear to him, however. "Does consuming beast cores still have the same effect on me?"
If it did, then he had more than one path to becoming stronger, and in Hellscape, having multiple methods of growth was a rare luxury. But if it did not, then he had lost a crucial advantage.
As the sun set down the horizon, Leo prepared himself for the night, but to his surprise, he found it extremely difficult to fall asleep. His senses grew sharper in the darkness, and so did his violent impulses. Yet the memory of his loving sister waiting for her brother's return kept his mind anchored to his sense of self.
Still, he feared how long that would last.