Chapter 97: Investigation and Snakes
I didn't go back to the apartment but to the library.
I saw a "no food, no drinks and no pets" sign when I arrived together with Dante but I don't think that it applies to super-smart telepathic pets, so we just went inside.
We found the Hope with a bored face and the same guy from yesterday sorting some books to put them back in their place.
Hope saw me and wave her hand at me.
"Hey Spence, your girlfriend is over there reading old newspapers."
"Thank, do you know if she found anything?"
"She tried to describe what she was looking for, but the description was too general to get something from it, and I haven't seen all the newspaper get so even if there is something I can't be sure."
I thought a second.
"Dante, can you show her the image of pale guy?"
'Sure~.'
It was clear the Hope saw it and thought a second about it.
"I haven't seen him, but I'll keep an eye on it later."
At that time the other guy opened his mouth when noticed Dante.
"Excuse, but you can't bring your pet here."
"Oh… don't worry he will behave right, Dante?"
'Yeah~ you don't need to worry~.'
"See? I'm going to help Rose, see you later."
Dante made a light bow to the impressed clerk, and I could hear Hope laughing.
"Hahaha, you should see your face right now!"
Afterward, I heard her explaining to him that Dante can communicate normally, and was smart enough to know not cause any problems.
I saw Rose sitting in between two large piles of old newspapers. She didn't notice my arrival and kept passing the pages of the one she was currently viewing.
I moved behind her.
"Did you find anything?"
She smiled turned around to kiss my cheek.
"No… but there is a lot that I haven't browse through yet, how did everything go with Dr. Harting?"
"He was worried when I told him that there might be two politicians involved with the third party and will contact someone that might know more about them, but since she is in a hunting team, he can't contact her until she comes back. We are going to meet tomorrow morning to talk to her."
She nodded and sighed before leaving the newspaper she was looking at in one of the piles and took another one. She stretched a little before reading the next one.
I saw that the newspapers were about 20 years old. Hamilton wasn't going to be in there and even if we can by chance get some info about the pale guy he might not be around at that time.
"I don't think we can find something about Hamilton here, he is not older than 40 and probably wasn't in politics at that time."
"I know I'm just want to see if I can at least get the name of the council member. He is a lot older, he might have been around 20 years ago."
"I think we should let Hope take a look once we at least got the name, right now I feel like it's just going to be a waste of time."
"But what if Dr. Harting's friend lie to us or hides something?"
"With Dante there, she can't, also I'm not sure how much more time we until we have to go back, but I want to take a look at other things too."
She tilted her head.
"Humans are no the only enemy, I want to investigate a little more about beasts."
"Oh, I can help with that!"
"Of course, I think that probably you can figure out even more things than me, but first we need to learn more about normal animals and evolution."
She nodded.
"I think we should focus more on certain species too, so we can focus on something specific before we branch it to other species. We can start with Dante he is close, and if he learns with us, he can even understand the change he had."
"Mmm I'm not sure Dante is special, and some of his changes were done by the system."
"Yeah the system forced him to evolve as It does on you when you get a new ability, maybe the system uses a similar process to what the meteor shower did to everyone, the system can do it in a more focused way."
I focused on Rose words for a while it made sense. I nodded to her.
"Probably that's right, but we still have no idea about the exact mechanism, we should start with simpler species and changes. And then compare it to what the meteor shower did to humans and to what the system does with us."
"Then… reptiles??"
"That's a good idea…I was going to propose mammals, farm animals to be exact but the reptiles are simpler, and I have seen the improvement in specific areas already."
I couldn't start with the hardcore stuff from the start, so I started with improving my zoology knowledge about reptiles, Rose began to with a similar book to the one I absorbed to improve her basic understanding first.
I focused on understanding the physiology of snakes and alligators, that were common in this area.
It gave me the option to absorb the knowledge, but I had to decline.
Rose finished her book faster than me. She didn't remember everything in detail as Hope would, but she understood everything, and we started to look the physiology book together.
After reading the book with Dante's help, we started to point out the improvements we have seen so far. We focused on the snakes first since I have killed a couple that were F-rank, the normal snakes usually had a paralyzing poison that in high doses could kill in 24 hours but it wasn't something happened too often. Also, it had to bite you for it to work.
Two of the F ranked I saw could spit the poison at a distance. Also, I might be mistaken, but I'm sure that the amount of venom produced to spit was higher than the one that the books told.
We compared them to the spitting cobra and tracked the physiological differences we pointed the organs and glands that have an improvement according to what we learned so far, and we added potential growth that we haven't seen yet.
The other snakes I killed didn't spit, but there was one with the skin darker than the usual, and some of them moved a little faster, the dark-skinned one reminded me of the alligator. With Dante's help I focused and compared the way I cut the dark-skinned with the other snakes, and I got to the conclusion that the skin was a little harder. Without my enhanced touch, I wouldn't have seen the difference in the skin resistance.
We started to classify their potential powers and decided to create four categories for the moment that actually could apply to most the beast we have seen thus far.
The first were borrowed powers. This was when the power is a real ability from another species, regeneration similar to some lizards, or a chameleon type power, it could even be something like breathing underwater.
The second category was enhancement, and here we have the usual skin enhancement, speed, and reflexes, we add to this species-specific like an improved poison sac or glands that allowed them to create a higher amount of poison or make it more dangerous. The spitting part we weren't sure where to put them since we have to see the physiology changes to be sure if the evolved something that was already there, or they got something from another species that let them do that.
We theorize that most animals would have an enhance type power while the borrowed was possible and the closer the two species are to each other the more possible it was for them to get it. For example, it was difficult for an animal to the get photosynthesis, but for a snake to get camouflage it wasn't that weird.
From our experience we created two more categories even if this snake hasn't appeared yet, this types should be rarer, and we hope that they don't exist.
The special category was for mysterious powers that don't fall under the first two, for example, a mind-reading snake or a space controller that can teleport. It possible that they don't exist but we don't have enough information to discard the possibility.
The last category we thought about because of the sheep we saw.
The last category was legendary. Here we included those powers that in legends myths, or popular knowledge are given to an animal, for example, the sheep and sleeping abilities. In this case, we thought in snakes eyes and a lot of things that are given to them. Paralyze, fear, stone… or if you believe in even scarier creatures like a basilisk even death gaze might be possible.
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