Chapter 391: Chapter 379 - Experiments With Hybrid Runes
By the time Zeel awakened, the desert had somehow gotten even hotter…
He didn't think it was possible, but the heat had nearly doubled from what it was before…
Even his skin that could withstand bladed strikes had blistered a little, but this was mostly due to being buried by the sand…
Zeel hopped to his feet, jumping nearly two meters into the air with that simple act…
Without the nanites to calibrate his strength, Zeel had to keep his physique in check nearly all the time…
He could restrain his strength at times, with events that came naturally… like killing and hunting…
Zeel sighed and rubbed his temples, only then noticing that his hair had grown a bit out of control during his time in the Information Dimension…
Usually, the nanites would restrain such useless hair growth, but now, he would have to use what the humans called a 'barber'…
Thankfully, a scissor would also do just as well, and the tool could double as a method for killing…
He was nothing if not efficient…
"Another headache…" Zeel cursed, wondering what other problems were bound to pop up before he could even find his way to a settlement in this Universe…
He closed his eyes and stuck his tongue out of his mouth…
Unlike a normal human's tongue, Zeel was a bit more discolored, leaning towards the whitish-silver of his hair…
One of the side-effects of his soulmate being an Apollonian…
Usually, such irregularities were kept in check by his nanites but…
Zeel sighed, only now realizing just how much he had depended on his nanites… even his keen senses were hard to focus without aid from the nanites…
Still, even without the strong senses of before, Zeel was forced to adapt by concentrating on one sense at a time…
He long suspected that he was no longer in 'The 100' Universe, but being a Homo-Superior meant you had to be more than 500% sure at all times…
So, Zeel used his tongue to taste the faint particulates in the air…
Something not everyone knew was the fact you could tell a lot about a world from the dust particles in the air…
Dust drifted from continent to continent on Earth, and while Zeel could no longer tell which continent the dust originated from, he could detect the taint of radiation on such dust…
And luckily, he detected no radiation on the tip of his tongue…
This meant his current area had not been irradiated within the past thousand years, making it impossible to be a place bombarded by nuclear bombs like 'The 100' Universe…
Well, the radiation would fade after around ten thousand years, so either ten thousand years had passed, or he was no longer in 'The 100' Universe…
Zeel was leaning toward the latter theory…
Knowing shifting into a different Time-Zone would be detrimental to his health, Zeel opted to find another method to protect himself…
Honestly, Zeel couldn't use his abilities as efficiently without the nanites, but he could somewhat approximate…
All the information was ingrained into his natural instincts…
Zeel spun around and took a deep breath, rousing his Divine Energy onto his fingertips, and soon, a flash of black lightning flickered to life…
It felt like a quarter death, a quarter speed, and half unknown…
Without any warning, Zeel directed his finger at a random place in the sand, not sure why he chose that specific place but allowing instinct to guide him nonetheless…
A couple of seconds passed with nothing happening…
Zeel frowned in disappointment…
He expected an Ancient Temple to be unearthed from the ground, or a long-hidden Artifact to reappear…
After all, if there was anything to throw at him, the world would often place the burden on his shoulders, so he expected at least some small repayment…
Or, in this case, an advance for services to be rendered…
"Was I wrong…" Zeel murmured, but not a second after his doubt appeared, it disappeared entirely as something slid from under the sand…
A meter-long brown rattlesnake slithered to the surface of the sand, but the small creature did not live very long…
It writhed and spasmed until it stopped moving altogether…
Zeel watched with great interest until the snake ceased all movement, the breath of life exiting its small body…
The creature presented similar symptoms to all mortal beings that had entered Seth's Death Dimension – Hysteria…
Zeel examined the black lightning flickering on his fingers and smiled half-heartedly…
Previously, his transparent lightning could kill a rhino in a single flicker, but now, his lightning potency was significantly reduced…
But, apparently, what it lacked in strength, it made up for with a new feature – inducing hysteria in those struck…
With one test finished, Zeel moved onto another "[Warp]…" he whispered, concentrating his awareness on a spot nearly ten meters away…
There was a sudden shift in space, and Zeel opened his eyes to notice he had indeed warped ten meters from his previous location…
Sadly, it was not in his desired direction, and his feet were buried in the desert sands when he should have completed his warp atop the sand…
Obviously, the three-dimensional map was not calculated with the accuracy he would have liked, but at least, he did not warp directly into the ground…
Zeel walked back to the previous location, snatching the snake from the ground in the process…
He once again concentrated and formed a Three-Dimensional map in his mind, deciding on a location ten meters to the right…
The air pooled and crackled around Zeel, and with a final stirring of the wind, he disappeared and reappeared ten meters to the right…
The first thing Zeel did was raise the corpse of the snake in his hands, examining the creature for any chance, and there was one – the corpse appeared darker…
As if the process of decomposition had hastened by a day…
At least, this confirmed he could teleport with something else as long as the mass was not too great…
"This was too easy…" Zeel noted, realizing that warping was one of his more complicated abilities, so piercing the spatial barrier should have taken more Divine Energy than it did…
The math was sound, but Zeel still felt like he was missing something – something very important and obvious…
But, once again, the small pang of hunger in Zeel's stomach warned him that any further Divine Energy usage would be left with some sort of backlash…
Experimentation had to be temporarily halted…
Ability Experimentation that is…
Zeel thought about all he had learned thus far, and committed the information to memory pending a more complete diagnosis…
Without any better idea of what to do next, Zeel started to walk in the direction his [Omni-direction] had indicated earlier…
It was his only real lead in the desert, and truth be told, he needed liquids and food…
Actually, Zeel had an idea of how to settle his liquids problem, but he wanted to wait until there were no other options…
"At least, I found dinner…" Zeel murmured, glancing at the rattlesnake clutched in his hands…
The meal would not be appreciated, but he had eaten more disgusting things in his life…
And hence, the long run, then occasional walking and running, then just walking, started in the direction of what was hopefully human civilization…
During his walk, Zeel picked up a jagged rock from the ground, and started making varying degrees of lacerations on his arms…
At first, he started with a slight slash, but eventually, he used the rock to tear his skin from his hands to his shoulder…
It took almost five hours to heal from such an injury, while a normal cut took about ten to fifteen minutes…
When his healing factor was confirmed, Zeel dislocated his wrist in several places, and frowned when he realized that his skeletal structure could not heal without proper alignment…
And he extrapolated, that even then, it would take a day or more to fully heal…
Basically, he had to avoid broken bones at all costs…
As a final test of his healing factor, Zeel extracted the venom from the dead rattlesnake and injected a large dose into his leg…
With the nanites, he was immune to all lower civilization poisons, diseases and viruses…
However, without the nanites, it was as Zeel feared – he was highly resistant to poisons, diseases and viruses, but not entirely immune…
Due to the snake's venom, Zeel felt his leg become a bit numb for nearly two minutes, and, of course, that was disappointing, even if he recovered with no complications…
The sun was about to set, and the frigid desert nights would soon take its place…
"Time to set up camp…" Zeel whispered, using his abnormal leg strength to kick some sand away in hopes of creating a relatively flat surface for camping…
This was not done for the heck of it, but because he required a flat surface to try his final experiment of the day…
Previously, he was unable to use Hybrid Runes because his Speed and Dimensional Shift Divinities were too chaotic and violent, but his Death Divinity was calm…
And if the divinities stabilized each other, his Divine Energy should achieve the frequency range with which using Hybrid Runes become possible…
About an hour later, Zeel had tested all the Hybrid Runes he could recall, and though it was majority successful, there were some restrictions dictating which runes could be used…
The first thing he discovered was one rune at a time…
The second thing was, the runes could only be written on solids and required solid materials as a catalyst…
The final thing was, some runes required a bit of help to complete the task…
Zeel discovered this by drawing a basic solidification rune in the sand, but the fine sand would not clump together until he used his hands to add some pressure at specific locations…
CREATORS' THOUGHTS 
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