While closing in on the supermarket the crowd became denser. When Phobos and the girls entered the store it was already packed full. Although they could barely get in with a cart each, it was hard to navigate.

Walking through the aisles that were already quite bare Phobos and the girls packed anything that was even remotely needed. They tried to focus on essential things but most of them were already gone. Especially things like toilet paper were gone and not a roll was left. Thankfully they had sufficient supply in the restaurant.

When they got to the freezer area it was mostly untouched. Although the cold mass is huge and it does defrost slower the produce was starting to do so. People wouldn’t take up their precious cart space with frozen produce when they knew that they didn't have a way to keep it. They would focus their sights on either fresh produce for immediate consumption or non-perishable food.

While they were gathering supplies it wasn’t calm around. There were scuffles here and there and they could hear screaming and arguing all around. Phobos and company were mostly undisturbed because they were targeting unwanted products. There was only one small situation when they were in the hygiene section.

When Anna was gathering female hygiene products another female started arguing with her but Phobos intervened and gave way to the female and deescalated quickly. He didn’t do it because he was scared of conflict or anything but it was just troublesome. The girls had already gathered half a cart of hygiene products so they would suffice for the time being.

On top of that, he didn’t put much value in what they were gathering here. At most, it was a stopgap measure. He believed that the people in the group were capable enough to find other sources of supplies when needed. At least he believed in Eve and Hera. What they were gathering here were just immediate necessities.

So there was not much reason to make small matter into a big one. Overall Phobos wasn’t that satisfied with the trip to the superstore. Although they were walking away with four carts full to the brim it wasn’t that much for a group of seven. At most the supplies would last two weeks more. The only good things were the hygiene items.

Phobos was walking in the lead towards the van and wondering if they should make another trip but they would have to split their manpower and he wasn’t comfortable sending them in without his protection. Although it wasn’t that barbaric inside however incidents were called such because they were unlikely. On top of that, he was dissatisfied with the efficiency. There was no reason to take the risk.

While Phobos was musing and he had walked close to the van but had to stop. There was a person that could only be described as a “dude” standing in front of the vehicle. He was wearing a tank top and without even speaking gave the vibe of someone who believes himself too much. He came in front of Phobos and was obviously looking for trouble.

“How about you leave the keys for the van to me and I will leave your bones unbroken. Or better yet give me the pleasure to break them and get the key anyway.”

Phobos was dumbfounded at what was happening in front of him. The whole purpose of him breaking the car engine was for such a situation not to happen. He had not foreseen that somebody wouldn't even bother to check.

The dude in front of him was all raring to go. He started transforming with his supernatural power that was apparently able to make him something like a stone man. His skin started growing a stone-like exoskeleton all over his body. There were a few lackeys behind him that started cheering him on as he did that but they were not important.

Phobos watched with interest as that was only the second superpower he had seen that had obvious physical signs. The first was Eve but that was too extreme of a power so he didn’t gather much information about superpowers.

If Phobos had to guess he was more inclined to believe that it was more common to awaken abilities like the dude in front of him. But he didn’t have to so he reserved his opinion and would collect more data to make an accurate observation.

The exoskeleton that grew didn’t look that thick. At most, it was two to a maximum of three centimetres in thickness. Phobos didn’t know about its hardness or toughness but felt that he was about to find out. So he took the sword that was always under his armpit and unwrapped the “sheath”.

The dude was a little surprised that Phobos took out a sword but as he was confident in his supernatural power he felt invincible. So he started changing toward Phobos with no fear.

Anna and the girls had already back out far enough so Phobos wasn’t worried at all and swung his sword freely. He didn’t do his best on his first swing but the dude that was hit in the arm staggered a few steps back.

However, the dude saw that the sword had only done a shallow line of damage that didn’t even reach his skin so he reinforced his belief in his ability. He concentrated for a moment and the damaged part started repairing itself. When he was done he laughed loudly towards the sky and charged again.

Phobos wasn’t worried at all, he was even bored. This swing was a random light swing that wouldn't even qualify as an attack in Phobo’s standards. That being said the power inside the swing wasn’t small. Before the catastrophe, such swing would qualify as the full power strike of a swordsman who had at least five years of training.

Phobos could cut through the dude's arm with no problem. Moreover, he could have killed him at least hundreds of times while he was repairing his exoskeleton and being immersed in his inner drama. Phobos didn’t feel like playing with the dude so he decided to finish this farce fast.

Phobos took a stance and while the dude was charging and readying to swing his arms, Phobos made a simple stab with the most aerodynamic trajectory. It happened in the blink of an eye. Most people didn’t see anything, they just heard a crumbling of rocks and then the screams of pain of the dude.

“AAaaAaaAAaaa....Impossible… Impossible! This can not happen. Ack. AaA. My stone skin can withstand the beating of twenty people with bats. What is your little sword? How the fuck did you do that!”

The dude didn’t know what happened but when he came to, the sword had pierced through his arm and stuck in the ground. If he was a little more rational he would realise that if Phobos was capable of piercing the strong parking lot cement that his power wouldn’t be much of an obstacle.

“Stop whining. I purposefully missed any important part of your arm so it's just a little pain. It's a small lesson to wake up. That you have awoken some shit power doesn’t mean that you can be lawless. It means that you have to be even more careful as you never know if your counterpart is a scarier monster than you. This is what people like you don’t understand. The law of the wild isn’t that there are no laws. I mean it's in the name. It just means that the law is laid in life and death. Be grateful that you met me today and not yesterday because if you did you would be dead.”

Phobos felt like he had to tell two words to this brain dead. Just because he woke up some shit power he immediately thought to abuse it and get what wasn’t his to take. It was the same mentality as some hypocritical officials that his father was forced to work with.

He almost never cared what others did but when someone infringed and tried to take away something that didn’t belong to them and harmed the original owner it got on his nerves. Stealing and robbing were the simplest examples.

Intrigue and decent he hated more. Some people tried to defend it with the survival of the fittest or that being able to get it regardless of the method showed their ability. To this Phobos could only scoff. Going up with those methods only shows that you are a lowly human being. That the system rewarded you for that doesn't mean anything.

Phobos is usually quite stoic in the sense of things he can control and things he can not but that doesn’t mean that he liked everything. He also had his own dislikes. There are three main ones. The first is restricting the freedom of someone with no just cause.

Whether it is psychological or physical restriction he does not appreciate it. In the bounds of the law, people should be able to do what they want. This is one of the reasons he doesn’t appreciate money. They are a form of social shackle that limit humanity as a whole. Of course, he is aware that it’s not fundamentally money’s problem but a human problem. As long as humans are in need of resources to survive there would be a restriction on a fundamental freedom. Human beings are flawed creatures that are bound to be restricted by their sole existence.

Even if people were to begin to be content with the bare minimum for survival and there was no need to work that wouldn’t be true freedom as you were restricting yourself in a material point of view. Phobos was aware that his idea was hyper idealistic but that was the point. If there were no ideals there was no path to progression.

The second point he hated was when someone intentionally harmed another. This was simple to understand but difficult to implement. Even he was at fault in this category. Although Phobos wasn’t quite himself the day before he did what he did. There were no excuses. Even at this moment, he was doing it.

Although he was taking the path with the least casualties whilst achieving his goal it was inevitable to hurt people until the situation normalized. He didn’t have much choice in this situation. One would be to give up the car and supplies and try again somewhere else but there is no guarantee that something similar wouldn’t happen.

And if he continued to shrink in his shell like a turtle at some point it would lead to his self-destruction. That is why he had a mentality to follow the path of least destruction.

The last thing he hated and hated the most because it was the easiest to avoid was lying and deception. It is really simple if you promise something, do it. There is a really easy way to avoid it. Just don’t promise, don't tell the lie and nobody could fault you for whatever you decide to do. There isn’t even the need to tell the truth, just don’t tell anything. Such a simple truth and nobody follows it.

Phobos wasn’t that invested in those dislikes. It was just something that when he saw it irked him. After all, he was too lazy to care about what people did but when it's in front of his face it did bother him a bit.

Looking at the dude that was still screaming on the ground Phobos was hesitant if he wanted to kick him a couple of times but followed his principles and took out the sword. There was a bit of blood flowing from the wound but no arteries were cut so there wasn’t major leakage.

In Phobos’s mind, an awakened being should have a better physique than a normal person so he felt that such a wound would heal in a week or two. Moreover, the dude on the ground should be able to grow stone on the wound to do a makeshift bandage.

Taking his attention from the dude on the ground Phobos looked at the lackeys that followed him but when he did he only saw their running backs. They had begun escaping as soon as they saw that the situation was not right. Phobos didn’t expect much more from them but they could have waited to drag the dude away.

He signalled the girls to start packing the product and he bypassed the dude that was still whimpering on the ground and went to repair the engine. It didn’t take long for Phobos to fix the van and the girls to be done and they were on their way.

Just as they were pulling away from the parking lot Phobos heard some commotion around the supermarket. He looked in the side mirror and barely detected that some mutants had entered the crowd and had started to slaughter people there. If Phobos was still there he would take care of the mutants and do some heroic deeds but as they had already left and he didn’t feel like turning back. There was no need to put the girls in the car in undue danger.

When going back a lot of mutant activity could be felt. Most of it was concentrated in the buildings and no one bothered the van that was cruising on the streets. But the screaming that resounded was harrowing. Phobos saw that Alice and Megan were shaking a little in the back. Even Anna, who was a lot more mature and stable, was a little shaken.

Phobos didn’t feel anything. Although he didn’t like people hurting each other, that was only because it was unneeded and uneconomical not that he was emotional about it. It was more of a disdain for the barbarism not empathetic feelings.

He had nothing to fault the obviously barbaric mutant attacking humans. It would be the same as faulting a wild predator for securing its prey. Even if that prey is human it was just trying to survive. A person could feel sad for the human but couldn’t really fault the predator. It was just doing its daily routine, it didn’t have any malicious intent. It most likely didn’t even have the capacity for it.

When they got to the restaurant there was a situation. The front door was broken into and was hanging only crookedly. Phobos, however, wasn’t worried as he saw that Hera was fixing it at the moment. He got out of the van and got close.

“What’s going on?”

Hera calmly looked up at him from where she was unscrewing the hinges. “Nothing boss, some mutant creature. Eve said that you met them as well. The gun took care of it in two shots. Nothing special. But I will have to change the door hinges.”

“Well, do your thing.” Phobos passed by her and continued on in the restaurant. Looking in he saw that the main hall was a mess again. They had cleaned up from the barricading yesterday but today it looked like a drunk went around knocking things around.

Of course, the mutant corpse in plain sight would correct that assumption. It looked like it broke through the door and charged in a straight line through all the stools and tables. However, it had gotten halfway through the hall and was put down. Phobos went closer and saw two bullet holes on its head.

One of them was dead center on its forehead. It was stuck right in the skull but it didn’t seem to penetrate deep. The second bullet was what killed it. It had gone right through the eye socket. As it didn’t have the thick skin and skull to protect the brain it was a perfect weak point.

Phobos didn’t linger much on the body and continued on but noted that signs pointed to a resurgence in the mutants. If his math is correct there should be a lot of mutants roaming around and now they were starting to show up.

He had one last job which was semi vital and then he could focus on whatever he wanted. Phobos was mainly doing it for his comfort, if not he would have delegated it and just waited for results.

He looked around and found the ladder which led to where Hera, Eve and Diana had set the solar system. Logically as Phobos was gone at most an hour they hadn't set up everything but there was a part of the roof already covered in solar panels.

Phobos went to one and started his work. His ability and his understanding of it had improved since yesterday so it was way easier for him today. First, he analyzed it carefully and then started improving it. There wasn’t much damage in the unit itself. It was mostly on the wiring.

It was perfectly feasible to restore power if someone tech-savvy took on the job. He would just have to redo the wiring and fix some diodes. Phobos however highly doubted it being implemented soon.

He hadn’t seen any attempts to control the populace and he could understand it. After all first and foremost people would try to protect their families. Even a cop would go home and protect his wife and children when there is such a large scale disaster. Especially when there is a constant mutant danger and no higher up oversight. If at least phones were intact there would be some hope for fast reunification but as things stand Phobos didn’t have much expectation.

If Phobos didn’t guess wrong he foresaw backtracking to a tribal structure. All the more likely with big disbalance in raw power with supernatural awakening. He had already witnessed a little glimpse of what's to come and he really didn’t like it.

Phobos didn’t like even thinking about it so he focused his attention back to his work. He was done with the solar panels that were already installed in just ten minutes. So he followed the wiring to the power distribution board. Phobos saw that Hera had already set up everything here.

There were even a lot of power banks already wired and mounted to the walls so his job was easy. He left his ability to do the work. He was still utilizing his brain to be more power-efficient but it was starting to be less and less a conscious effort. His subconscious was taking over and it was becoming easier for him.

Everything was going fine with the bigger parts but had a problem with the chips in the whole system. He doesn’t have the fine control to be able to improve them. Even his “vision” was contained in the micron. Something that required nanometer control was out of the question. Of course, that applied for only the most complicated chips but even for the simplest, he was incapable of direct improvement.

Phobos had circumvented wherever he could dealing with chips as with the car. He had basically made the van a purely mechanical one with the exception of the battery. It was like most cars before they were packed full of electronics.

In this situation, however, he didn’t have the option to ignore it. At the least, he needed the most basic power management module. Phobos sat down to think. He would have to figure out a way to make the solar system work. Although he could just pull direct power from solar panels to the whole building without regulations however he didn’t feel like it.