“Argh!” Miles fell to the ground from five meters with a loud impact, this time, luckily, Coin realized what was going on, canceled the orb, and turned it into orb form. Or Miles would go into an endless cycle and would die in the most tragic way ever.

“Thanks, buddy,” Miles grunted and rose from the ground with an aching body. His bones were stinging on his flesh. “That is the downside of the Strengthening Serum. It increases my muscle density, but my bones and skin are still pretty much mortal, creating an imbalance. Although I can take a jump as high as five meters, if I were to fall from it, the impact would break all my bones. Luckily or unluckily the last serum of G-Tier will fix that issue.

The Fourth Serum was a milestone in progress. The serum not only reshaped the muscle overall but also broke down bones and skins to make the body stronger from toe to head. It was for that reason why most people were afraid of using it. Even people at Form-Rank would hardly use the serum while Energy was capable of lessening the pain, because breaking down and reconstructing the body hurt matchlessly.

Even the over and over tearing and healing of muscles wouldn’t be as drastic as breaking bones and recreating them. One could easily test it. If a hard metal were to hit a person’s calf, the pain on the bone would hurt more than a knife stabbing into the leg. Bone pain was a lot more than flesh.

But Miles had no other alternative, and ever since he used the first serum with nothing but his flesh, he set on this path. If he couldn’t break through the barrier separating mortal humans from super humans that might begin in Form-Rank and further, he would always be mediocre. He couldn’t accept that.

After resting for half an hour, Miles started to work on the last orb once again. This would be his first-ever pinnacle-tier orb creation, and he was a little apprehensive. The success rate so far was 50 percent, and the last orb he created shifted the balance towards success making it 3 to 2. So by logic, this merging would end with failure. But he had to go through with it.

He placed two orbs in two different boilers and cut a fist size of minerals one being wind and the other lightning. He placed the minerals on top of orbs and set the workstation. Now all he had to do was wait.

While waiting, he started to look into the news through Coin’s virtual screen. The walking dead was getting more and more restless. They spotted a new kind of walking dead with great agility and caused a patrol team to perish. The army was pressured to clear out the close perimeter of the wall by the parliament, but the army wasn’t willing to test their soldiers with the unknown.

It has been years since the walking dead appeared, and the reason why the Army hasn’t cleared them yet was that high-tier soldiers couldn’t easily leave the walls of Unity. Miles wasn’t clear on details, but he knew from his father that leaving the walls would usually create more trouble than leaving them alive.

The Walking dead was also free labor. There were still many open portals outside of the walls, and the walking dead would battle with monsters all the same. They were also great hunters against evolved animals.

The most efficient way to clear out walking dead was ranged attacks, but with their great number, it was just too bothersome. Since they couldn’t use nuclear weapons, and honestly, the area in walls was enough for the population, so humanity was reluctant to venture deep into the dead world to clear out the walking dead. After all, there were many great dangers still unknown to humanity lurking in the dead world.

Unity couldn’t reach everywhere, thus they couldn’t seal or close all portals. There wasn’t any portal opened to F-Circle or beyond yet, and all of them opened to G-Circle, but theoretically, it was possible for it to open higher-tiered circles, so sending soldiers into Dead World would be lethal.

Secondly, the number of the monsters at this side of the portal was unknown, and soldiers would be prone to ambush if they were to approach portals without great caution. There were a few handfuls of Crown-Rank and maybe several hundreds of Devote-Rank hunters in Unity, and even if they were all to assault the enemy at the same time, the millions of walking dead outside of the walls would drown them in a mass of flesh, ignoring the other dangers and consequences.

So the best tactic was the war of attrition. Humanity had the upper hand, so they were killing their enemies slowly. After a few more decades, the world would be free of the walking dead once again. Not like they could reproduce, right?

But this new type of walking dead changed the plans. In normal cases, walking dead would only linger outside of the wall, and when there was a great number of them, patrols would trim them down. But this agile walking dead was able to amass others to charge against walls. It was also able to fight against Form-Rank soldiers without taking any injury. So parliament was forcing the army to take action before it was too late.

Miles raised his head from the virtual screen and looked at merging liquids. Unlike the last time, the color this time was light purple with a tint of light blue. There was a lion head floating on the orb. Miles asked Coin to charge it and a mask similar to Lion Mask appeared on his face.

Unlike the original, this one wasn’t cartoonish but life like a lion head covering the whole head.

“Let’s test this baby.” Miles thought and shouted. The air cracked with lightning and with the wind before a typhoon of two elements appeared in the air. The typhoon sucked out Miles most of his stamina, and he felt his body was giving in.

“What the hell is this?” He felt so tired.

“Orb is using energy to charge the attack again. Even more drastic! If I have to guess, it is because it is ultimately close to Frenzy-Rank, and does not work only by electricity, and with energy as well.” Coin explained his ideas.

“I guess so. But I didn’t know Frenzy-Rank orbs would be so dangerous. I feel like I haven’t eaten for days.” Miles panted on the ground as he looked at the typhoon now wrecking the wall of the abandoned factory. Miles heaved a sigh of relief that he was facing that direction instead of his workstation.

Grader competition is just around the corner, and I have confidence in winning now. Although I will be merely at the peak of the high-tier, with three dual elemental orbs, I should be able to fight against Quinn with my other techniques.

Her superpower bestows her unprecedented speed, but I am not slow either. With the boost of armor’s lightning element, my speed shouldn’t be slower than hers.!

Miles looked at the factory for the last time before closing the workstation with linoleum. This part of the city wasn’t popular at all, and rarely would people come here. So, Miles could only use this place for the time being.

He built cameras and some other alarming devices to alert him as soon as there was a sign of intrusion, but it would only work when Miles was on Earth. When he was in the portal world, signals would be blocked, thus he would have no way to know. This factory was a calculated loss.

Maybe I should test my strength before I participate in the preliminaries.