With him being at level fourteen, killing these nulls posed no problem to him, but the problem came in the number of nulls that were coming after him. He might be strong enough to hold them back, but there was no way he could kill off all of them. His stamina couldn't handle it.
'According to my memories, nothing like this happened so early into the apocalypse, so why was it happening now?' Zayden thought. On his way to the gym, he saw the nulls coming out like a stream from the direction of the nursery.
'Maybe something happened there,' Zayden thought. 'I need to check there, but there's no way I can leave here unattended.'
[Level Up]
[Congratulations on Reaching Level Fifteen]
[Class Options Have Been Given]
The golden glow covered Zayden as he levelled up.
Classes were called the second stage of evolution. After a constellation has been contracted, the system wants to watch a person to see their growth path, so it waits until they reach level fifteen to watch their usage of the powers of the constellation and choose a correct path tailored to them.
In his previous life, Zayden never managed to get a class; this was mainly because he contracted a wrong constellation, and there was no path for him to proceed.
"BOOOM"
Right in the middle of the horde, golden light exploded, announcing the arrival of the rest of the team. Darian appeared beside Zayden.
"You guys stop the horde from reaching the gym, I'll try to stop it from the source," Zayden said to Darian.
Darian nodded his head as Zayden charged into the horde of nulls, killing every null that got in his way.
He charged through the horde of nulls, following their trail to figure out the source. Before long, he was at a split in the road, and the horde of nulls was coming in troves from the two roads.
They were not coordinated, more like they were being pushed towards the gym. It was at this point that Zayden could feel it; it was very faint, but it was there. It was like a cloud, a large cloud of darkness and emptiness that covered the area.
Following this feeling, Zayden kept walking forward, the feeling becoming stronger and stronger until he finally stopped in front of the nursery. The energy of darkness was so potent here, potent to the point that it could be inhaled.
Zayden took in a deep breath and walked into the nursery. As soon as he entered, Zayden could understand why the nulls were coming towards the gym unnaturally.
This place and the area around were filled with darkness, emptiness, which was what the nulls stood for, but as the law goes, opposites attract, and the same repels. Since this was the energy the nulls stood for, they were being pushed away, whereas due to the large number of people in the gym, the gym was like a beacon of life energy that was attracting the nulls in the vicinity.
The nursery that used to be filled with animals was empty, the stables were open, and an eerie silence was everywhere. Once in a while, the bones of animals could be seen on the ground, mangled flesh, and destroyed skulls.
"Something has been growing here," Zayden said. The fact that there were no animals and that he could see the skeletons of animals meant that they had been eaten. And the beast that could kill all those animals that were mutated would be very strong, way stronger than the current Zayden.
Before long, Zayden appeared in front of the source of the null horde. In one of the artificially created caves was a snake. The snake had pitch black scales. It was coiled around a large rock, with a length of about ten meters and a width of about three meters.
[Umbra Serpent]
[Level 23]
Just seeing the level, Zayden already knew that this battle was going to be the most difficult battle that he would face at this point in his life. Not to mention the fact that he was all alone. But the snake didn't seem to care about that as it whipped its tail toward Zayden.
It was fast, very fast. Before he knew what was happening, the tail was already in front of him. There was nothing he could do. Zayden could only bring his hands in front of his chest as he was sent crashing into the wall.
[HP: -25%]
Zayden couldn't feel his hands anymore; they were numb from the pain. Zayden looked at his hand and saw that there was some kind of corrosive energy on his hand, eating into it like acid.
"This looks a lot like my oblivion flux," Zayden muttered as he started studying it, ignoring the pain that was taking over his body.
The energy was dark, just like his oblivion flux, and it had the same corrosive property that his oblivion flux had. Zayden didn't have the time to continue studying as he jumped out of the way, barely dodging the tail attack of the beast. But the wall behind him wasn't so lucky. It chattered and slowly melted away.
And just like that, Zayden kept jumping every time, trying his best to avoid the attack of the serpent, at the same time trying to figure out a way to counterattack.
He couldn't use any weapons since he hadn't forged any weapons, so his only friends were his fists.
His fists were coated in his oblivion flux as he jumped out of the way, dodging another attack from the umbra serpent. Using the space between the time that it attacked and the time that it readied itself for another attack, Zayden threw a punch at the hard scales of the umbra serpent, his oblivion flux latching onto its body.
"The scales are so hard," Zayden muttered, jumping back to gain some space while monitoring his oblivion flux through his senses.
What he sensed made him widen his eyes. It was like the destructive energy of the snake suppressed his oblivion flux before eventually eating it up, making the snake very slightly stronger.
Zayden started analyzing what happened, even while dodging the attacks of the serpent.
It was like the snake swallowed up his oblivion flux. But that should be impossible since his oblivion flux was a very strong power, stronger than the weird energy that the snake was using. Then he recalled the description of oblivion flux that he got from flux manipulation.
Oblivion flux could take the form of any energy or thing that the user could imagine. This basically meant that the fact that the fact that the energy of the serpent could swallow up his oblivion flux because he was using it as a sort of energy that was inferior to the energy being used by the serpent.
'But the energy of the serpent has the same corrosive feature as my oblivion flux,' Zayden thought as he dodged an attack from the snake.
'Does that mean that my corrosive energy is weaker than that of the serpent?' Zayden pondered, then his mind started wandering, until he remembered the name of the serpent and the reason why the nulls were leaving this area.
"Darkness," Zayden suddenly shouted, "The snake is using the ability of darkness, and the nulls are running away from it. That means the energy I'm using is darknes.s"
Zayden suddenly felt a sharp burning sensation on his back as his flux coat became stronger. He didn't know it, but the second star on his back started glowing a bright silver color.
He felt a strong influx of energy and a higher form of control. The first form of comprehension was acknowledgement, and Zayden had acknowledged the energy that he was using and comprehended the first stage of darkness.