Ambush

As Lucas continued with his tests, he felt he was being watched and looked around. Even after a few seconds of searching every corner, he found nothing relevant. So he came back with his tests.

His blood experiments tackled every kind of problem he could think of. It took him only a few minutes to learn to wrap the knife in blood, but he soon wondered what use it was. Visually it was very beautiful, the knife now appeared to be made of red paint, constantly having little ripples on its surface.

To verify its usefulness, he first removed the scarlet liquid from the knife, returning it to its original state. Then he walked towards a post, which miraculously was still standing, and stabbed it with his knife.

After the blow, the post received a crack approximately 1cm deep and some pieces of the post came off, not increasing the depth, but the crack width. That physical strength was unbelievable! The pole was made of concrete and the weapon was a regular knife. Definitely, a human, even being muscular, would not have that strength in the arm.

Lucas wasn't muscular either, but after all the blood absorption that had taken place, his muscles began to define. It wasn't as noticeable as he was wearing a sweatshirt.

After analyzing the knife cut without the blood, he covered it with blood and struck the post again. To his surprise, looking at the new cut, he saw that the crack didn't get much bigger, it was just about 1.5cm deep. However, that wasn't what shocked him; was that this time, the post did not release debris. The cut was clean and smooth, like a hot knife in butter.

"Wow, that was… interesting. It doesn't increase strength, but sharpness. The liquid form of the blood would logically weaken the cut, cushioning the impact, but that wasn't what happened. I think because I increased its density, the cut was clean." Lucas thought.

He finally understood one of the uses of his mutation, it could involve sharp objects with blood to sharpen it. However, he was not satisfied with this alone and continued with his experiments.

About two hours passed and the young man finally finished some of his experiments with his mutation. There weren't many, as he still had to look for food, however, the few were quite explored, removing any doubts he might have.

Finished his experiments, he went looking for food. Following Ruby's tip, he searched for restaurants near highways and BRs, where there was a better chance of finding them. As he walked he could still hear the voices, grunts and roars coming from the center of town. The screams chilled him, they were extremely disgusting. Plus, there was the smell of blood, but when it came to the smell, he was getting used to it.

The search for restaurants turned out to be very difficult. Virtually all the buildings and houses were destroyed and bodies littered their interiors. Lucas wondered why that was, after all, if it was mutated beasts or mutated humans that had caused so much death, because there were pieces of meat lying around? Wouldn't it be much better if they devoured all the meat? Why would they leave food behind?

These doubts filled his mind, but he could do nothing but theorize about it. His main theory so far was that there was a certain energy inside these victims, which the predators wanted and therefore, by devouring it, there was no longer any need to eat the rest of their bodies.

Unfortunately, this theory was not perfect. If there was that energy in the victims' bodies, then they were mutants and being mutants, they would have 'powers' that could be used. Even he, someone who had spent his entire life in the hospital, managed to kill two human mutants on the same day he woke up. What would people who train martial arts be like then? Or that they at least had experience with fighting?

There were many other questions, but the one that confused him the most was why he saw so few living beings. There was no sound of birds or even rats. It was very quiet, the only sound present belonged to the animals and humans in the center of the city.

After more than an hour looking for any sign of a restaurant or grocery store, he finally found a relatively intact establishment that looked like a restaurant. The building had only the first floor and the ground floor, its color was originally beige, but now dyed in some places by blood, it gained some brown stains. The entrance originally had a gate, however it was now on the ground.

Entering, Lucas saw that the chairs were still in place, the tables had few cracks, and the floor was mostly broken. He then went to the back to look for groceries.

It wasn't messed up, it looked like there wasn't a world catastrophe a few days ago. As soon as he found some food, he noticed something very stupid of you. Where would he keep them? He didn't bring his backpack or even a bag. He cursed himself mentally, turned around and went to search the rubble for some backpack.

It was only after twenty minutes that he managed to find a decent backpack. He then returned to the establishment and filled his backpack with food. Realizing that the agreed time to return was approaching, he hurried on and returned to the car.

Along the way, he even tested some of his theories about his mutation, but nothing too long. As he tested, he became distracted from his surroundings and didn't notice that some shadows were following him. Even though it was almost noon, the figures weren't very visible. They hid in the rubble and didn't give much chance to see them.

Lucas, who was 'playing' with the blood on his hand, suddenly felt uncomfortable. However, he thought it was the effects of wasting too much energy on the tests and simply stopped and continued his walk.

When he was about to enter the street where the car was, an extremely uncomfortable feeling hit him. At that point, he realized something was wrong and drew his knives. Unfortunately, he was too slow and in the next moment a vertical cut hit his back.

The cut hit the backpack on his back, dropping both Lucas and the food. With that, it was possible to see who or what was attacking him.

The attackers were four-legged creatures, their fur was black and their body was almost like that of a dog. The only difference was in his ribs. There were bones sticking out of them, forming an unrecognizable face, you couldn't tell if it was human or animal, but now wasn't the time to think about it.

He got up and took a deep breath. Now was the time to show the results of his tests with his mutation.