Danny walked down the dirt road that led to the farm in the distance while paying careful attention to his surroundings. The open fields granted a good visibility of the area, meaning that Danny would be able to spot any enemies incoming from a good distance, but he still kept his guard up anyways.

About a week had passed ever since Danny made use of the crystals for the first time. Even so, Danny had not travelled very far during that time. There were a couple of reasons why that was the case.

In the first place, Danny was not in a rush. Throughout his trip down south, Danny kept his eyes wide-open for any opportunities to take advantage of. Anytime he spotted something he deemed worthwhile, Danny would then detour from his original route to inspect or deal with it.

If he found any groups of zombies that he could take on easily, Danny would make a beeline for them and deprive them of their crystals. Otherwise, if he felt that the threat was too big, Danny would take the long way around to avoid getting tangled in any unfavorable fights.

Danny also took special care to keep a healthy stock of supplies. He made sure to keep his essentials topped up whenever he found a decent enough place to loot. Even if he left a lot of good stuff behind, Danny didn’t mind one bit.

Danny had a very clear goal in mind already, so he would simply mark down the spot on his map as a place of interest to return later in case he wanted to gather more resources. Just because he didn’t need them now, it didn’t mean they couldn’t be useful later on, so he made sure to keep his map updated and add markers when needed.

Secondly, Danny was on foot, so how far he could travel in one day was fairly limited from the get go.

True, Danny could very easily find a car or a motorcycle in working condition that would be able to carry him farther if he just looked around a little bit. He did indeed consider this option, but discarded it in the end.

Vehicles were noisy in general. Given that he wished to remain undetected for the most part of his trip while also not being in a rush to get anywhere specific, cars didn’t appeal that much to him.

On the other hand, the extra carrying capacity of a car also didn’t hold that much value to him. The soul gems themselves weighted very little and were easy to carry given their diminutive size. Also, Danny also wasn’t trying to stock up on as many supplies as he possibly could, so he didn’t need a car to lug them around and could instead travel light.

Since the few disadvantages outweighed the advantages that getting a car would bring, Danny simply ignored the many chances he had to get one during his trip.

He did get his hands on a mountain bike he spotted at one of the houses near his starting point though. However, as luck would have it, not even two days after getting it, Danny managed to flat one of its tires, which forced him to discard the bike and made the whole debacle best not spoken of.

Therefore, most of Danny’s time was spent travelling on foot and managing his resources like this, but that was fine with Danny. After all, his primary goal was to empower himself not to get to his destination as fast as possible.

Although scouting was also important, it was secondary. That didn’t mean that Danny had abandoned his plans of checking out his surroundings though. Just that the two things had different levels of priorities. Besides, as the saying goes, slow and steady won the race.

Danny was in it for the long game. So, if by going slowly he diminished the chances of anything nasty out there spotting him while he was out there exploring, it was something Danny definitely wanted to spend his time on and was very content on doing.

Hordes of undead were just one of his concerns, what Danny truly wished to avoid were the demons and other invaders for as long as possible. He had no idea where they were on the planet, so it was prudent and reasonable to take a measured approach going forward until he wasn’t so weak anymore.

“Well, weak might not be entirely accurate either.” Danny smiled at the thought of his progress this last week.

Danny had been experimenting with the soul gems without stop during those days. By now, Danny thought he already had a good grasp on the optimal time delay in between consumptions to make use of the crystals as fast and efficiently as possible.

To be fair, it had been quite easier to find the ratio than Danny initially expected. He had been quite lucky on that front.

If he managed to time it right, Danny could safely eat three of the crystals in one single day with minimum unpleasant side-effects. Each ingestion spread apart by eight hours from one another.

Otherwise, he could also take two crystals in quick succession, but his body would take more time to recover in that case.

After an entire week of ingesting soul gems, Danny had already started noticing the changes his body was undergoing. It wasn’t something completely mind-blowing like becoming superman overnight, but it was still quite substantial.

Danny barely felt tired anymore when running and mid-fights. Also, he didn’t have to put most of his power behind a swing of his hammer to take out a zombie in one hit anymore, with just one hand, each swing of his hand had become all the more lethal to the creatures. Added to that, the increase in his reflexes, eyesight and stamina allowed him to now take up to four to five zombies at the same time with ease.

Simply put, Danny was faster, stronger and had more endurance than ever before. Just like Tutu had promised, he had become more.

Danny was amazed at his growth and expenses in equal measure.

By now, he could completely understand both the greed other races had for the mysterious substance and why Tutu called his method of using the crystals the dumb way.

To put it in perspective, Danny had eaten over twenty soul gems so far to reach this initial level of development. That meant that over twenty people had to die to fuel the growth of his power to this point, and Danny was not nearly close to done.

So far, Danny had just started to dabble on the intricacies and mysteries held by this new source of energy. Danny didn’t know how far and to which heights those crystals could bring him, but Danny knew he had barely scratched the surface.

If Tutu’s strength and power were any sort of indication, then he still had a very long path ahead of him, and Danny doubted that Tutu stood at the pinnacle of power of his race. Otherwise, why would he even be here all by himself?

In any case, Danny was just starting. He would have to depend heavily on the soul gems to keep gradually increasing his power in the near future. His expenditure will only grow as time passes, from dozens to hundreds to thousands.

“And all that just for a single person.” Danny thought, flabbergasted at the enormous foundation needed to elevate just a single individual.

What about a whole tribe? A whole world?

Even if Tutu did mention that the demons had more efficient ways to utilize and extract the soul power from within the crystals available to them, in the end, how much more efficient could it possibly be?

Better efficiency could only shorten the gap so much. How many civilizations had been brought to ruin in order to move gears of progress of the demons and other invaders?

“It will never be enough.” Danny sighed as he thought helplessly. Just this one week of making use of the soul gems already showed him the incredible allure and seductive potential these shiny things held.

The more the crystals gave in terms of benefits, the more convinced Danny was that war and conquest were the only diplomatic routes possible when discussing their ownership.

When two different groups of people contend for a limited resource that is capable of improving themselves as a whole AND of extending their lifespan on top of that like the soul gems, there can be no peace. There can only be violence and bloodshed.

It truly was a struggle for supremacy. An eternal bloody road of ascendence.

At the very least, Danny didn’t have to deal with the temptation of killing his fellow humans in order to keep climbing higher the bloody mountain of power with the abundance of dead walkers around. That had to count for something, right?

What would he even do if this ruthless course of action was the only one available to him to improve his strength? Would he do it if that was the sole way to increase humanity’s survival chances during the coming wars?

Danny shook his head to clear his head of those treacherous thoughts. What ifs have no influence over the present nor the future.

He already had crystals readily available to him all around. He just had to employ a little bit of effort to collect them, so there was no point in worrying about what could have been if circumstances were different. He already had enough problems as is without conjuring other imaginary ones.

Speaking about crystals, despite what one might imagine, Danny was not swimming on them. Although his stockpile did indeed swell ever since he started heading south, the fast rate of consumption of one every eight hours put a heavy strain over his income as well.

Danny’s pouch now contained about a hundred pieces of the stuff, which would in turn be enough to sustain his current speed of expenditure for another whole month.

A hundred soul gems were no small sum to turn his nose at, but it also wasn’t an absurd amount of wealth. Danny would have to keep doing his best to collect them so that he could keep moving forward without pulling any stops.

He was off to a solid start, but that was just it. A start.

However, the consumption of crystals and his personal stash was not the only resource issue Danny had to worry about. Whatever the soul gems were doing to his body in order to empower him, also ended up giving Danny quite a larger appetite.

He had been going through his provisions way faster than he had expected originally.

Initially, his backpack could fit inside enough provisions that should have lasted him for two whole weeks when full, however, now that he was going through them way faster, his bag storage space could only store enough to tide him for half that time.

Danny had also been unlucky in his last attempts at looting so his pack was starting to feel way lighter on his shoulders than he would like it to be.

It wasn’t to the point that his supplies had completely run out yet, as Danny still had enough for about three more days inside his backpack, so he wasn’t desperate or anything of the sort, but he would feel more at ease once he managed to fill it up to the brim once more.

That was why Danny was approaching the farm at the end of the dirt road he was currently travelling. He hoped that he would manage to find some decent loot in the place and maybe even some better gear.