Gu Jun could feel light spilling out of his brain. Thankfully, no one was around, or else he’d no idea how to explain why he had become a living torch.
“Urgh...” His heart suddenly started to palpitate as the world spun around him. The darkening sky inversed with the asphalt road, and the trees around him seemed to be moving. His heart squeezed with pain, making it impossible for him to breathe.
After five consecutive days of endless work, the man’s heart was working overtime. It felt like he was going in for a cardiac arrest.
Just as Gu Jun was about to topple to the ground, a great wave of energy burst through his heart like a fountain, and blood coursed smoothly through his veins again.
“Ah!” A deep breath travelled down Gu Jun’s nostrils as his heartbeat slowly steadied itself. With every subsequent heartbeat, he could feel his ventricular muscles tightening and strengthening. He could sense the overworked organ coming back to life. If he did not know any better, Gu Jun could have sworn he had been given a heart transplant on the spot. After the pangs of nausea and heart palpitation receded, Gu Jun finally had the time to look through the reward notifications in more details.
“You have obtained a new ability, Strong Heart!”
‘Strong Heart...? Well, that would explain what happened earlier.’ Gu Jun pressed his hand over his chest. Perhaps it was just confirmation bias, but he could feel his heart beating stronger. ‘Is it a cellular change, or have I been given an extra aorta?’
With these questions, he opened the system’s ability window and saw that there was a new ability other than Hands of Dexterity.
“Strong Heart
“Rarity: ★★★
“Maximum Level: 3
“Current Level: 1 (0/50000 Mastery)
“Introduction: A strong heart will be able to help no matter the situation that you find yourself in. As a medical practitioner, a strong heart is necessary as you face more unsettling situations and perform higher risk surgeries. Strong Heart is a rather rare ability. At its maximum level, it can provide you with the ability to maintain a steady and calm mind in all sorts of situation. To increase the skill mastery, you have to face challenges that can stimulate your heart head on.”
‘This is perfect...” Reading the details, Gu Jun’s heart raced. ‘This is an ability that came at the most opportune time!’
He was reminded of the several times his heart had almost stopped recently. His heart had gone beyond its limits and stressed his physical body greatly due to triggering multiple illusions. They could be drawn down to the same reason; he had exhausted too much mental power in a short amount of time. He understood that gaining access to and utilizing spells, facing those abnormal and darkness creatures, and getting involved in dangerous incidents would continue to take a toll on his mind and body. He knew that his heart would prove a problem for his continued exploration into the unknown. Gu Jun was hoping his body would adapt to the situation as he slowly ventured into the darkness, and now that hope had come true, albeit not in the way Gu Jun had predicted. He was attempting to ease his body into the darkness slowly and prayed that his physique could adapt to it, but with this ability, he could now embrace the darkness easier and quicker.
“A strong heart.” Gu Jun was overjoyed. The naming was a bit on the nose, but it did not take away from its usefulness. As long as the heart would not go into cardiac arrest when he triggered an illusion, encountered anomalies, or casting spells, then it could be named a determined heart, a super human, a thumbs up heart for all he cared.
Gu Jun was itching to give the ability a try, so much so that he had forgotten how drained he was when he dragged himself out of the autopsy building. But since there was nothing sitting around that could figuratively ‘shock’ his heart, he moved onto studying something else about the ability details. He remembered to increase the level of Hands of Dexterity from one to two. It only required five thousand mastery, and from level two to three, it required 30,000 mastery. But to increase the level of Strong Heart from one to two required 50,000 mastery points. The requirement was about ten times that of the Hands of Dexterity.
Gu Jun opened and closed his fingers. Even though the system had pointed out that the Hands of Dexterity had reached the maximum level, Gu Jun felt like there were still ways for him to improve it. That was because after the long autopsy, he felt like he had a clearer mastery of his hands.
“Oh well, so be it.” He chuckled self-deprecatingly. He was like a walking magnet for the occult and unknown. He was sure challenges to his heart would come even if he tried to avoid them. After studying the new ability, Gu Jun continued to access the other mission reward. ‘Looks like the system is still on my side.’
He now realized how ludicrous it was to think the system would orchestra a revenge of the lab rats.
He could feel another instrument appearing in his pocket. He reached in to touch it. It was dissecting forceps with a clear Carlot design. Every instrument was important in the process of autopsy. Some procedures needed to be done with forceps, so this was a good thing. On top of that, this might help him trigger a new illusion.
But compared to these two rewards, the other three proved more difficult to comprehend to Gu Jun. They were all immaterial and only existed in his mind. He closed his eyes and tried to focus. He could see the three new objects floating in his mind alongside Landon’s blueprints and Raybundy’s three diary pages. The new objects were respectively a diary, a letter, and an incomplete spell book page.
At first glance, the diary appeared rather thin but well kept. The cover had some patterns that were reminiscent of the foreign civilization’s aesthetic. The letter was placed inside a parchment envelope. The handwriting had become quite blurry. The parchment spell page... When Gu Jun turned his eyes to this, his heart started to race. If not for the Strong Heart, he would have needed emergency resuscitation right about now.
The word of ruination technically could not be counted as a spell, and the spell that summoned the Malformed Banyan Disease was formed in darkness and did not come with a manual, so what Gu Jun needed now was the knowledge on how to cast spells. And now, there was a page from a spell book sitting before him!
Even though it was incomplete, it should be able to provide him with information that he desperately needed. This would help aid in the situation where their enemies were more familiar with the spells than they were.
However, Gu Jun was the kind of person who would save the dessert for last. He was the kind to go for the bitter before the sweet. So, in his usual manner, he turned toward the diary and the letter. With a command in his mind, the diary instantly pulled near to him, and the pages turned on their own.
‘The watcher? What does that mean? Is it a kind of occupation?’ Gu Jun gave it a quick skim. The diary was about two hundred pages long, but only fifty pages were filled. The others were blank yellowed pages. He noticed that all fifty pages were all written in the foreign language, undeniable proof that this was a diary from the foreign world. He turned back to the first page but failed to find the name of the owner.
Gu Jun moved to a relatively clean spot down a nearby tree. He sat down and started to go through the diary.
“Today is the first day I reported to my post as a watcher. I was responsible for the night shift. Each infected home was assigned two watchers, one in the day and the other at night. I have great dissatisfaction about this because I know that is far from enough. If something happens, a single person is definitely not enough to handle it. But I know the watchers are stretched thin as it is. There are too many infected families... Regardless, the greatest question on everyone’s mind is how and when this epidemic that could turn a normal human into zombies invaded a small town like ours.”
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