It had been two weeks since Alan, Abagail, and 'Hela' had left the destroyed facility, and not much had happened. For the most part, they had become nomads, wandering from one half-destroyed house to the other, eating whatever monster came their way. Mostly mutated versions of normal animals, things like goblins were relatively rare, surprisingly.
They were usually stuff like a rat the size of a dog, a dog with two heads, a bull with rhino horns, etc. They had also come across a couple of people. Not much interesting there, the first time they ran into people Alan had just finished killing the aforementioned bull with rhino horns, and he was covered in blood. Abigail had just been sitting by the side watching Alan fight while Hela was on her shoulder. The people just screamed 'Demons!' and ran soon after.
Since then anytime they saw people they would just scream something like 'It's the twin demons!' and then run away screaming. It was amusing the first time, but after 3 different times of Alan trying to talk to them and them just screaming and running, it was getting annoying.
Currently, Alan, Abagail, and Hela were resting inside of one of the less destroyed buildings, 'less destroyed' being four walls and a roof and not much more. Alan had been looking for the breach that all the animal monsters had been coming from. Something interesting that Alan had learned after his fight with the ogre and orc was that, once a breach got to a certain size it would spawn a 'champion' which would be gifted the breach's true bloodstone, he learned this after absorbing the ogre and orc because the orc had the bloodstone.
He hasn't absorbed it yet because he didn't need it, its power was 'greatsword mastery' and all it did was give the user a high level of skill with greatswords. For now, he didn't need it so instead he chose to attempt to dissect it, and see how it worked.
But before that, there were more important matters to stand to. Pulling the needle case out from his belt he opened it, there was only one needle left, the red one. The first needle he used, the gene-perfecting serum had a rather interesting effect.
[name:alan
Trait: assimilation
Blood stones: aura
Essence: 1760
Constitution:20%
Strength: 17%
Dexterity:15%
Intelligence:17%
Spells: essence bullet, shield, bind, curse, lesser enhancement]
His 'status' had changed, and now it showed how much of his 'potential' he had used, his potential being the limit of how powerful his body could become before falling apart. But that limit was far off so he didn't care about it for now.
The second needle, the refined essence of the failed test subjects had more, 'apparent', changes. Namely, a red circle mark on the back of his hand and the fact that said red circle would 'eat' any body parts it was fed unless it had already eaten them. So far it had 'eaten' the whole body of the large rats, two-headed dogs, Rino-bulls, a cat that could 'turn invisible' in the dark, and three different types of plants that could walk, all of which had varying effects ranging from increasing a stat to giving him a new organ, he could now photosynthesize.
Visually there was little to no change other than his nails being a bit more pointy and his hair being a bit longer, it down to his mid-shoulder now. Just as Alan was about to tell Abagail he was going to use the red needle, he heard a loud noise outside.
Putting the needle away and walking out the front to see a small crowd surrounding a man in his early to mid-20s holding a sword that was just a little too big for him and wareing patchwork leather armor. Once Alan walked through the hole in the wall that acted as a 'door' the man turned toward Alan and began to speak "Ah ha! Demon! I have come to slay you and bring peace to the people of this city! What do you have to say?" as he said this he raised the sword in a 'heroic' pose.
"Firstly, I'm not a demon. Secondly, leave or I will kill you." over the last two weeks Alan had become a bit more 'social' although it wasn't by much, the fact he didn't straight up kill the 'knight' was impressive nonetheless.
"enough! How dare you threaten me! I will slay you then enter your foul lair and slay your evil companion and bring peace to this city! After I will be known as the slayer of the twin demons Ha!" as the knight swung his sword in a wide arc, aiming for Alan's neck. Alan dashed forward into arms reach of the 'knight' before throwing a punch with his left hand, breaking the left elbow of the knight before shaping his right hand like a 'knife' and using his newly sharpened nails to stab into the knight's liver, then using his freed up left hand, be grabbed the knight's neck and snapped it, all before the knight could make response other than screaming in pain before going silent.
Waving his right hand to clean it of blood, Alan looked at the small group that had been following the knight before saying "I had no intention of killing him, he attacked first intending to kill me, I responded in kind. I am not a demon but I will fight back if provoked. Leave."
The shock of seeing their 'savior' so easily killed and the nonchalance of how it happened, mixed with Alan's emotionless face and blank eyes. for lack of a better word, scared the shit out of the group, causing them to run away.
Walking back inside after absorbing the knight's body Alan didn't even look at the sword that the knight used, for starters, he prefers to use his hands. It was also too big for him to use. There was also the problem of its quality, his rate of growth was too fast so he would outgrow the sword before he could get any value from it, so unless he got a weapon that could grow with him, he would stick to his hands.
Once inside he sat next to Abigail before speaking with a surprising amount of emotion in his voice.
"it is incredibly annoying when they come here yelling about their 'honor' and 'justice' when all they want is public approval. And I do not understand why they have such a fascination with swords, even to the point of using swords of the wrong size for them."
Abigail just looked up from playing with Hela and said "It still shocks me how fast you went from all robotic and emotionless to this, then the moment you talk to anyone but me you go straight back to being a machine."
"I had emotions then, they were just muted, The only exceptions were bloodlust and boredom. however, when I am near you I feel more emotion, even ones that I didn't quite understand. The reason why I become 'robotic' around others is because I do not feel the same emotions around them."
By now Abigail was completely out of it, the only thing she was concentrating on was the fact that Alan said 'The only person I feel emotion around is you.' Alan was used to seeing her like this by now, he couldn't really understand what was going on but he knew that she would start blushing and giggling to herself while staring into blank space sometimes. Sighing, Alan went back to what he was doing before he was interrupted and pulled out the red needle before injecting himself.