At the end of Jade’s tests, his shirt, bulletproof vest and hoody were no more, his shorts had essentially become panties and his shoes were now just pieces of leather strewn on the ground.

‘I can probably make some loin cloth from the lion’s skin’ he thought as he ran towards the lion’s corpse. This action caused the remnants of his shorts to be ripped to shreds, rendering him completely naked.

No insects had gathered at the corpse although it had been 2 days since the lion died, Jade thought ‘The corpse must be a foreign material to our planet. That must be why no bugs have gathered around it’

Jade tried to tear the lion’s skin with his strength but it didn’t budge ‘I guess I’m no Samson’ he thought as he filled his upper body with energy and tried again… the skin still didn’t budge, which shocked Jade ‘The lion was this tough? If I didn’t shoot into the mouth I’m sure it would have survived anything my sniper gave without a scratch, what a monster’ Jade thought as he re-evaluated his method of tearing the lion’s skin.

He looked at the lion’s claws, which were now as long as long swords, and thought ‘If I can take the claw, I’ll be able to cut its skin with it’ Jade thought as he approached the claw, he tried, in an effort he knew was futile, to pull the claws out of the finger… it didn’t budge.

He went back to the building he was in and took the sniper. He set the sniper to shoot a focused plasma beam. He then used the beam to burn the spot where the claw connected with the lion’s paws, after which he pulled out the claw with no problem.

He thought ‘As expected, the claw isn’t attached as firmly to the body as the skin is’.

He filled his upper body with energy as he proceeded to use the lion’s claw to cut its skin. The skin cut but it required a lot of effort, Jade looked at the black claw, as he remembered the lion having a greenish aura around it when he saw it at the prison.

He extended his energy into the claw, it lit up with an orange aura, Jade used the aura enhanced claw, finding it more suitable to use as the skin tore away easily. He thought ‘This is so unusual, I’ll have to experiment with this to know how aura works’.

He burnt the fat and tissues under the fur with his sniper; he set the shot to a dispersed plasma beam. Gasoline wasn’t used much in 2082 as most of its functions had been replaced by electrical devices that could do the same.

Soon after he had himself a loin cloth, which he tighten with a rudimentary belt around his waist, and a vest that was made by cutting holes for his head and arms into a piece of skin. He couldn’t make any other piece of clothing as he was no tailor.

He tore the rest of the lion’s skin away from its body, in hopes that he would be able to find a tailor that could work with it. He fashioned a sack out of a big part of the skin and used it to carry the rest of the skin along with the claws.

Jade looked at himself and thought ‘I’d make a great fashion model, even though I look like caveman Santa, I’m still rocking the look’.

He looked at the corpse of the sphere and found it too battered for any use. ‘I can’t carry all this blood, the skin of the lion is already very heavy’ his stomach grumbled after the thought ‘and I’m hungry’. The time was 6:45am when he had this thought.

He went to the hotel building he was previously at and took his sniper and his luggage. He ate all the food that he had bought but he wasn’t full still. The food also tasted bland, not unsavory just bland.

He thought ‘What the hell? How am I not full? I ate so many calories. And why is the food so bland?’. Even when he licked raw salt or sugar it tasted bland like it had been diluted in water even though he was eating them raw.

He pondered for a while before thinking ‘Maybe I should try the lion’s meat? If everything tastes so bland it must be because there aren’t enough nutrients. Or to be more exact my body now requires more nutrients to function’.

Jade went to the lion’s corpse and with one of its claws, cut some of the meat, put some spices and roasted it on a cooker he found in hotel… The meat didn’t cook even after being on the cooker’s maximum temperature for 30 minutes, which felt like years to Jade, who had a heightened perception of time, it just kept giving off smoke.

He thought ‘As expected of the great lion-san he can’t be cooked with a mere cooker…’ He pondered for a while, then he got a bright idea ‘If I put energy in the cooker it should be able to increase the heat depending on how much energy I put in’

He poured energy into the cooker to heat it up, which just ended up over heating it and making it explode, the explosion cooking a side of the meat a bit, but not harming him.

‘Hmm, it seems that when I introduce energy to a system it doesn’t convert to the energy forms present in the system proportionally. Heat seems to always take priority. If it did it proportionally the atomic and molecular bonds should also have been strengthened and the cooker shouldn’t have exploded even if it got hot and I also shouldn’t have overheated when I used it on myself’ Jade thought.

He went back to his sniper as he thought ‘What kind of monster have I become, using a sniper to cook, what is this world turning into!’. He set the sniper to shoot a dispersed beam shot, and cooked the meat with it, in about 5 minutes, some parts had cooked. He ate the meat in delight as it tasted great compared to the food he had eaten before as his tongue sensed the superior nutrients in the meal.

Jade proceeded to cook more of the lion meat and eat as he thought ‘The meat even tastes way better even though I didn’t do such a great job cooking it… I have changed on many levels; monster meat now has to be my staple food’

He completely consumed the lion, when he had only one battery and 2 gas cans left for his sniper. He had underestimated the power of his new digestive system, the IP told him he had an increased anabolism and metabolism but he hadn’t expected that he would be able to eat the whole lion.

He dipped his finger in the silver blood on the floor and put it on the tip of his tongue… the taste, horrible. He spat it out and cleaned his tongue ‘I guess, I’ll put some of it in a bottle, since it has its uses’ he thought and after he stuffed the scattered pieces of the sphere’s corpse in his bag.

As he looked at the empty junction and at the bones of the lion laid bare he thought ‘Now there’s no denying it, I’m a monster, who would call me a human, after seeing this carnage. It took eating a monster many times my size to make me full’

While cooking the lion’s meat Jade noticed that the silver blood, which it was sometimes covered in, when heated up, hardened to sticky form, which hardened to a rubbery substance, after it was exposed to air for some minutes ‘It’s totally like glue’. He tested the strength of the glue and found it amazing as he needed to use energy to deform it.

He took parts of the lion’s black bones, cut them into shape with the aura enhanced claw and glued their edges to the claws with the lion’s blood. He worked tirelessly as he was already full and by 3:32pm he had created 47 rudimentary weapons; 18 spears, 17 swords and 12 daggers, which he wrapped and put in his bag along with some unused bones. He put some silver blood inside empty dispenser bottles and kept them in his bag. When he was done his bag was as big as a bus.

He looked at himself and laughed while thinking ‘I look like some sort of cave man Santa, bringing weapons and meat for the kids’.

He walked the streets as fast as an Olympic sprinter, heading west while singing “You better just pout, you better just cry, you better just shout, I’m telling you why. Caveman Santa’s coming to town. He knows when you are sleeping, he knows when you’re awake, he won’t care if you’re good or bad so my dude you’re fucked both ways. You better just pout, you better just cry, you better just shout, I’m telling you why. Caveman Santa’s coming to town”