These past few days, I've been suffering from an intense migraine and aching wisdom tooth... so i scheduled an operation with the dentist for next week. Wish me luck.

Sorry for the delayed chapters lately. Truly, i really want to keep to my daily schedule, but the world is working against me. Aside from this head aches and tooth aches, there's been a lot of power outages lately. There was also a storm, and it flooded quite a bit in our place. My mother's also asking me to drive her to places everyday. *Sigh* Can't I just write in peace?

Anyway, here's your chapter. It's bound to have a lot of errors. Sorry about that.

Allen was back inside the lab room where he first got the implant. He was once again sitting on the chair with his top off. The cold atmosphere had not changed, and it felt like he was about to have a dental operation, except there was no dentist, only cold mechanical arms.

We’ll start the procedures just like before.

The old doctor’s voice came from the speakers, and a puff of gas sprayed from the exhaust beside the headrests. This caused Allen’s body to relax. It was a sedative.

It was the same procedure. The mechanical arms moved and injected a dose of fluid directly on his spine. A small rectangular device was then attached on his Third Thoracic Vertebra.

2nd Limiter successfully installed.

Congratulations, soldier. You are now a Class 2 Crystal Soldier!

Excitement could be heard from the doctor’s voice. It seemed like any progress Allen made was something that the doctor was looking forward to.

The window for distributing the Crynegry points appeared. He had 60 points to distribute. The same as the first time, he placed the points on the Ability, then distributed the rest on Health Regen and Rejuvenation.

Name: AllIsDead

Base: 19

Class: II

Rank: 0 (0/1080)

Vitality(0): 1000/1000

Health Regen(26): 230/sec (11.5 in combat)

Stamina(0): 100/100

Rejuvenation(26): 46/sec (23 in combat)

Ability(16): 6 Skill Slots

You have 2 unused Crynergy Points remaining. They will be added on your Crynergy Points next Class Up.

“Hmm?”

As Allen stood up, he felt something was amiss. A strange sensation was welling within his chest. At first, he felt a constricting pain. It was then replaced by a soothing sensation which then spread into his body.

“Wh-What happened?!”

The doctor exclaimed as soon as he entered the room. His eyes were staring wide at Allen.

“Are you okay?”

“I felt something weird for a moment…”

The doctor’s reaction was strange and Allen couldn’t help but feel a little worried. Following the doctor’s gaze, Allen looked down at his body.

“What the hell is this?!”

He, too, exclaimed in shock.

On his skin, very small shards of crystal were protruding. It was similar to that on the bodies of crystal beasts. The crystals broke through the skin surface, but didn’t show any signs of forced tearing. It was like they were part of the skin themselves. They were spread sparsely around the body, and it was indeed a very unnatural sight.

“Soldier, what is your name?”

The doctor asked a weird question. Looking at him, Allen realized that the doctor’s eyes were filled with wariness and slight fear. He was also standing by the door, assuming a stance that was ready to run away.

“CrySol II-0 Codenamed AllIsDead.”

Hearing his answer, the doctor let out a breath of relief and leaned on the nearby wall. He was filled with tension because of the situation and finally lost the strength on his body.

“What was that about?”

“I’ll explain.”

It was Eleanor, the doctor’s assistant and daughter, who volunteered to answer his questions.

“Father, take a rest for a while. I’ll handle things from here.”

“Okay. Just be safe.”

“Don’t worry. It doesn’t seem like his case is what we dread.”

Dr. Pheol nodded politely to Allen, then left the room. Eleanor walked toward him and gestured at the seat.

“Please, sit.”

Allen did as told, and sat back down on the chair. Eleanor pulled a stool from who knows where and sat down in front of him.

“How are you currently feeling?”

“Aside from a constricting pain in my chest from earlier, I’m feeling better than I ever did.”

She took down notes on a clipboard while glancing at the crystals on his body. After a while, the sound of pen scratching on paper ended, and she looked at Allen straight in the eyes.

“The process of implanting Living Crystals in the body of a human is a very complicated process. It had undergone thousands of experimentations before the current procedures used now were standardized. Despite that, the process still isn’t perfect and cases similar to yours would on rare occasions, although, those would end up in a tragedy as quickly as the symptoms appear.”

Seeing that Allen listened attentively, she took a deep breath as if to prepare herself on what she was about to say next.

“In those cases, the Control Segment and Limiters installed failed to work properly and caused the Living Crystal to run wild inside the body, infecting the human cells. It would then corrode everything, causing the human to lose intelligence and turn into another wild beast relying only on instincts. This is actually quite the opposite for the beast’s cases where they gain intelligence after the mutation, and until now, this mystery remains unsolved.

“We had lost potential soldiers that way. They mutate within 10 minutes after implant and we were forced to terminate them. Once the mutation process started, it is irreversible. That is the reason for the doctor’s reaction. Even I was surprised, but as I was the one assigned to observe your vital signs as the operation proceeded and ended, I haven’t seen anything out of the ordinary. There were no unstable fluctuations in the movements of the Living Crystals in your body. Why these shards have appeared, I do not know.

“I can not attribute this fully on the reason that you are able to assimilate 100% of the Living Crystals to your body. Based on the reports from other bases, nothing like this had occurred on their side. We can not trust this information completely, though, as they may be withholding information from us.

“Anyway, so far, there seems to be nothing wrong in the cellular level. You can proceed as usual. Just make a report to us here in the Labs as quickly as possible if you feel anything amiss. Also, make sure that you don’t let others see the situation of your body to avoid unnecessary panic.”

“I will. Thank you.”

“Take care, soldier.”

There was still time before the dinner with Natalie, so Allen decided to logout for a while and take a breather. He made a quick cup of coffee and browsed the Internet.

“Wha!?”

He almost sprayed coffee on the laptop screen as he read the forum posts. Almost all of the hottest topics and sticky threads were about the attack on Base 19 and the existence of a player who led the defense. There were a lot of theories such as a veteran player successfully making his way to Base 19 from the other bases and switch affiliations, or someone using a hack to raise their class and gain access to rare items for crafting powerful equipments.

“This is too terrifying…”

If they found out that Allen had just classed up to Rank II, the uproar would just increase in intensity. Reading all the posts, he finally understood the absurdity of his actions.

“I should lay low for a while…”

He mumbled and groaned as he scrolled through the heated conversations and theories. The most agreed theory was that he was a hacker.

“Sure, I know how to hack some systems, but I quit doing that stuff long ago…”

While reading the interesting arguments, he received a message on his phone. It was from Carl. He reminded him of the assignment that was due tomorrow. Allen completely forgot about it, so he sent Carl a reply telling him to do his part, and that he’ll owe him a favor.

With that done, he was about to login back into the game when another message arrived. This time it was from Lyka, and the message surprised him. She was interested in playing Hazard Frontier, saying that Carl was talking about it all day long and made her interested. Of course, Allen knew that was not just the reason. She had shown interest when she found out that he was playing the game the yesterday. There was no way she’d change her mind even if he told her not to.

Tomorrow, Allen only had class in the morning. He will be free the entire afternoon. He told her that he will pick her up after her class so they could go buy the game disk and teach her a bit about the game before starting out. When he sent this, she quickly sent back a message filled with smileys. This brought a smile to Allen’s face.

Back in the game, Allen woke up inside his workshop as usual. He stretched as he stood up then walk toward the terminal. As soon as he opened it, windows popped up and filled his vision.

New Skill learned!

Bestial Nature(Unique)(Passive)(Locked) - All your physical abilities enhanced by the are further increased. Like a beast, you are now more agile and your attacks are heavier.

New Skill learned!

Predation Instincts(Unique)(Active)(Locked) - Killing a creature infected with with this skill activated allows you to absorb the Living Crystal Energy from their body. This naturally increases your Living Crystal Energy. Ranking up will naturally happen without the need of accessing the Terminal. You can also Class Up using this method, although this may cause unknown side-effects. It is still recommended to undergo Class Up with the help of a professional. Consumption: 100 Stamina instantly consumed for skill duration of 1 hour. Cool-down: 5 hours.

Dash skill was modified to Bestial Movements!

Bestial Movements(Unique)(Active)(Locked) - Move instantaneously in any direction, or sprint over a long distance. You can also perform wall jumps, wall runs, or any other unique movements that can not normally done. Consumption: 5 Stamina per movement. No cool-down.

“What the…”

This was a bit too sudden, but Allen was able to link it all to one source. That instant when the Gray Vulpia pierced his chest, he felt something enter his body. It might have injected into him some of its own infected cells causing this change into his body. There was only one way to make sure, so he went back to the to confirm the situation.

“It seems like that is indeed the case…”

Doctor Pheol said after hearing Allen’s story. Eleanor was scanning his body for any possible mutations that they have overlooked earlier.

“I still don’t know why it would do that. Was there any reason for that beast to do so?”

“I’m not really sure myself, but that wasn’t the first time I encountered the gray Vulpia. During the mission to extract Vulpia blood, I first fought against it and lost. I then came back to fight it again and almost won against it, but we were interrupted by a pack of black Vulpia. I still don’t know why it would actually do this. It may have been trying to poison me, but that would still not make sense as it could have killed me then and there easily.”

The doctor and his assistant had shocked expressions on their faces. This was natural as they just heard him say that he almost defeated the gray Vulpia which was estimated to be a Class VII beast while he was still just a Class I. Obviously, they, including Allen, didn’t know that the gray Vulpia was weakening at that time. If it hadn’t Classed Up after that fight, it could have died from the wounds that it suffered during its fight with Allen, and it wouldn’t have been able to appear before them as a Class VIII beast.

“Anyway, you will need to come here at least once every 24 hours for a check up. We still don’t know a lot about your condition as this is a first for it to ever happen. So far, it had only brought you positive effects, but we don’t know when it will suddenly turn to bite against you.”

“Yes, I will, doctor.”

“Before you leave, let me get a blood sample from you, if that’s okay?”

Allen nodded in assent. Eleanor quickly took out the tools and extracted 500 cc of blood.

“Get a good rest for tonight.”

Eleanor said after storing the blood. Allen saw a glint of knowing in her eyes. She probably heard something about the dinner. How she got the information, Allen had no idea.

After leaving the , Allen went back to his workshop to check if someone had bought the things he put up on the . Seeing that no one had bought it yet, he sighed in dismay. He then browsed for any cheap outfit he could wear for the dinner. Bringing this combat outfit for a dinner date was a bit rude, although he was not yet sure if it was indeed a date, considering the Assistant Trainer’s personality. It was still better to be safe than sorry, so he continued browsing the things for sale.

Finally, he settled on a simple white buttoned shirt and black pants for only 400 credits. He changed clothes and looked forward to dinner.

…

…

…

While Allen was having a sumptuous dinner date in the virtual world, Lyka was rolling around in her bed while hugging her phone. Her face was flushed red, and a strange smile had formed. After a while, she stopped rolling around and started panting. With her current appearance, any man who sees her in that state might be unable to stop themselves and commit a crime. Calmed down, she finally noticed her bedroom door was open and Carl was standing in the doorway.

“Wh-wh-wh-wha—”

“Mom called for dinner but you didn’t come down so she told me to come pick you up.”

Carl said with a blank expression. He then turned around and down to the dining room pretending to have not seen anything.

Lyka’s face was bright red as she drowned in embarrassment. She didn’t know how much he saw, but judging based on his reaction, he should have seen enough to be able to blackmail a favor from her. With her shoulders hanging low, she walked down to the dining room as if resigned to a fate worse than death.

The next day, Lyka was excited. It was only the other day when she hanged out with Allen, but today they’ll be able to meet up again. Furthermore, he was going to pick her up at school. In her imagination, she could see the envious stares of her female classmates.

’Allen is pretty cool, after all.’

Of course, that was just her biased opinion. If Allen himself was asked if he was cool or not, he wouldn’t care enough to even provide an answer.

The bell rang that signalled the end of the class, and Lyka swiftly packed her things and left the room before the classmates could call out to her. As she arrived at the school gates, Allen was already there waiting for her. Her classmates saw this through their classroom window in the third floor. The male students who liked her shook their clenched fists in anger, while the female students started gossiping on who the mysterious man that picked her up was.

Filled with smiles, Lyka followed Allen as they took a bus ride to the mall and quickly went to the game shop.

“So, do you have any idea which base you will select as your starting point?”

“Base 19!”

“As I said earlier, Base 19 is extremely difficult. It would be better to start off in the central bases. You can even ask Carl to help you get around.”

“No! I hate Carl! He’ll just say he’s too busy leveling up to help me.”

Lyka’s bashfulness had disappeared and completely replaced with excitement. She had already bought the game disk and they were now on the way back to her home. Allen insisted on walking her home and explained some of the basic information about the game along the way.

“But Base 19 is not newbie-friendly. Even I had a hard time just trying to pick myself up at the start.”

“You’re doing well now, right?”

“Well… yeah. Sort of.”

“I want to play with you!”

With a bright red face, Lyka said that while standing in front of Allen. Right now, Allen actually felt proud for Lyka. This was actually the very first time that she was acting assertive on something that she actually wanted to do. Finally, he gave up and sighed.

“Alright, but I have conditions.”

“Okay!”

“No playing when there are exams.”

“O-okay.”

“No staying up late on schooldays.”

“Okay…”

“Don’t do a quest on your own.”

“Are you my babysitter?”

“…”

“Okay…”

“Always send me a message in-game when you’re online, alright? I want you to enjoy the game, too, but since you chose Base 19 as your starting base, you’ll have to stick with me so you won’t die and lose most of your game time waiting for your respawn.”

Lyka nodded. She was actually very happy after hearing Allen said to stick with him.

Soon, they arrived and parted ways.

“Create your character and I’ll see you later in the game.”

“Yes!”