Chapter 504 - 428: Everyone Awakens
Chapter 504: Chapter 428: Everyone Awakens
The seven researchers in Morhaven developed a potion with no side effects, but the awakening rate was only fifty percent.
The potion’s main ingredient was Flora Bloom’s spiritual water.
Flora Bloom told Sepherdine, the base’s public leader, about this. She made it clear that he should distribute it to the base’s ordinary population in his name as the leader.
However, the condition for receiving it was that one had to be an ordinary person who had participated in zombie-clearing operations. ’Simply put, anyone who lacks the courage to face zombies would be useless even with a superpower.’
After Sepherdine released this news within the Morhaven base, he was initially dismissed as a scammer. ’A potion? Who knows if they’re just going to use us as test subjects?’
However, Quinn arrived just then, leading his own faction to meet with Sepherdine.
Most of his team members were ordinary people, and they had all participated in several clearing operations outside the city.
A fifty-percent awakening rate was a significant opportunity for ordinary people. Though Morhaven was relatively peaceful, its residents were hardly idle. Aside from a small number of people who had taken up studying farming techniques within Morhaven, the rest either went out hunting or joined zombie-clearing teams in nearby cities. This way, they could earn Crystal Cores and simultaneously increase their chances of awakening.
Needless to say, the people of Morhaven were highly motivated.
And so, one week later, over fifty percent of Quinn’s team suddenly awakened as superpower users. Quinn’s faction, which was already one of the largest in the base, instantly became the foremost power now that half its members possessed superpowers.
Only after some probing inquiries did people learn that Sepherdine hadn’t been lying. The base had truly developed an awakening potion. Even though the success rate was only fifty percent, just trying gave you a chance.
A fifty-percent awakening rate meant that for every two people, one was guaranteed to awaken.
Everyone living in Morhaven was buzzing with excitement. People who hadn’t participated in zombie-clearing teams all rushed to join the teams in nearby cities.
With the drive to awaken, their ferocity in battle against the zombies was unstoppable.
As waves of these people participated in zombie-clearing operations, a small fraction of them managed to awaken on their own after returning to Morhaven, without any need for the potion.
As for those who hadn’t awakened, after receiving the potion, half of them successfully awakened as well.
When Sepherdine came to Villa Three to report the awakening results to Flora Bloom, it left her deep in thought.
Those who successfully awakened using the potion all manifested superpowers from one of only three elements.
Water Element, Fire Element, and Metal Element.
This led Flora Bloom to suspect it was related to her Space Spirit Water.
’I myself awakened three different elements because of my space. The spiritual water is a product of that space. Could that be why the potion, made with my Space Spirit Water as the main ingredient, can only awaken these three elements?’
’In that case, if all seven tracks of the vortex in my sea of consciousness were filled and I awakened all seven superpower elements, would a potion made from my spiritual water then be able to awaken any one of those seven elements at random?’
A year passed, and Polly turned one. Morhaven seemed like a sanctuary, isolated from the rest of the world, with no trace of the apocalyptic disaster. The only exception was out at sea off the Bund, where the Eye of Earthly Fire lay. There, several new mountain ranges had risen from the water.
These new peaks, along with the original ones, grew ever higher, soaring into the clouds. Every day, even when the sun reached its zenith, only half of its disk was visible.
Daylight hours were reduced from the original twelve to just seven.
If this was the case in Morhaven, the situation in other cities was likely even worse.
Still, over the past year, humanity had scored a minor victory in the fight against the zombies.
This was because Morhaven’s superpower awakening potion had been administered to everyone in the base over the year, resulting in more than half of the ordinary population awakening superpowers.
Furthermore, it was also sold and transported to the Argent base and several other bases that had requested aid via their communication stations.
For the bases that had been fighting non-stop since the apocalypse began, the awakening potion was a game-changer. With the resulting increase in superpower users, humanity’s overall situation suddenly stabilized.
This was especially true for the Argent base. As the most populous major base, superpower users were now commonplace, and its overall strength had grown several times greater than that of Morhaven and other small to medium-sized bases.
And so, having grown powerful, those great family factions began to covet the awakening potion.
The Morhaven base’s awakening potion had no side effects. Some people in the Morhaven base had even tried it ten times without awakening.
Later, they concluded that a person could use the awakening potion up to three times. If they failed to awaken after three attempts, then it was impossible for them to ever awaken.
However, even with a fifty-percent success rate, many people still failed to awaken after taking the potion. And these people were hesitant to try it again.
’Three chances. If they all failed, their hopes would be shattered.’
After the ordinary people in Villa Three took the awakening potion once, only two failed to awaken. One was Selina. Perhaps because she was still weak from childbirth, her physical condition was much worse than others’, making her the only ordinary person left in the Villa Three complex.
The reason she was the only one was because the second person who failed to awaken, Joel Bloom, suddenly awakened a superpower of his own the very next day.
Moreover, it was the same element he had lost in his previous life: the Control System.
What made Flora Bloom a little uneasy, however, was that whenever her younger brother, Joel Bloom, used his Control Ability, his every move radiated the same Death Energy as that man in white.
However, after checking him repeatedly, Flora Bloom discovered that the Death Energy not only caused him no harm but actually made him more proficient at controlling zombies.
Joel Bloom’s Control Ability was also a branch of the Spiritual Ability type. But unlike Caleb’s Spiritual Ability, Joel’s control was only effective on zombies.
A zombie that had been controlled by Joel Bloom was like an imprinted subordinate. He only needed to control it once, leaving a trace of Death Energy in its body. Afterward, even if he withdrew his spiritual power, the zombie would still obey his commands.
So, after a month of special training with Lex Cross and Sherman Lynch in the zombie-infested cities around Morhaven, Joel Bloom was dispatched on a mission to a small base that had sent a call for help.
Accompanying him were Neal Wallace, Shelly, and Irvin Holden, who had awakened a Fire Element superpower. Shortly after, they used the local communication equipment to inform their base that the zombie-clearing mission was essentially complete.
The success of Joel Bloom’s first mission gave him immense confidence. He went on to lead teams in one battle after another against the surrounding zombie hordes.
His unique Control Ability allowed him to achieve easy victories without needing to deploy any of Morhaven’s other superpower users, and he even managed to amass a horde of no fewer than ten thousand zombies.
When Selina, the only non-superpower user in the Villa Three complex, worked up the courage to try a second time, Flora Bloom stopped her.
The reason was that Flora was waiting for the seven researchers to improve the potion’s success rate. She wanted to wait until it reached at least ninety percent before letting Selina try it again.