Alex immediately rushed to his small room. He was far too excited. Awakening was the first milestone in someone's life. It was a way to be more than human. Control powers strong enough to overturn cities. It was evolution of life.
When someone partook the potion, the inactivated viruses inside would become active and actively bind to your body. The first change would lead to instability in your genes and it was this chance, that allowed people to obtain power.
That's why the grade of the potion and its quality mattered. Higher grade would lead to stronger instability and higher chance to obtain power. The higher the instability, higher the changes in your body. Longer the instability, the longer your body will go through evolution.
But instability was also dangerous. If something went wrong their was a very chance of dying. Playing with the building blocks of your body wasn't something simple. The higher grade potions would help her by actively protecting and repairing the body. In case of the worst F grade potion, it would only grant you few minutes of instability. These few minutes were rarely dangerous. But the time was so short that most of them would barely have any talents.
He had personally seen people with talents such as, ability to grow teeth, self cleaning nose and odourless sweat. If you are lucky you might get something like stronger memory or eyesight. But with these it was better to stay inside the city and work as a wage earner.
With S grade, he had heard rumors about elemental manipulation, extreme body strengthening, were creatures and so on. All of them having explosive strength.
The potion which he currently had was graded yet. Any modification in a potion would need to go through extensive animal and later human trials. It might take decades for a modification to successfully pass. The current potion was yet another home-modified potion. It was hard to say anything about its capabilities. All he could do was trust Steve. He had been friends with Steve for over four years and he knew him enough to know, that he won't purposely hurt him.
Plus Steve himself was Gene Pharmacist. Above all he had promised that the potion wouldn't at least hurt him. Worst case, he will probably awaken nothing. At least he hoped so.
But he couldn't immediately take the potion. Trying to awaken talent was a tiring process and required great amount of energy. Your body would require huge amount fo energy to evolve and also adapt to any power which you might have awaken. It was not rare for awakeners to die due to their own powers. Although over the past few decades it had almost vanished.
He first cleaned his tiny room. The room itself was barely 15 meters square, including the bathroom. The 3 by 5 room was almost completely taken by his cot. Fortunately, the cot was foldable, so at least in the day, he had enough space to move around.
The room had no window. A ventilator cum purifier pumped air into the room. Even this he had to buy through his own savings. Or else he would have simply died because of air poisoning.
One one wall hung an holo projector. Extremely expensive and probably his only luxury. The holo itself belonged to his parents and was one of the few things he had been able to save when bank took over the house. The reason the projector was so important to him was mainly due to the numerous family photos and videos saved in its drive. Probably his parents last memory.
On one corner was a small food dispenser. It dispensed small food pills which were rich in required nutrients but tasted horrible. Even shit tasted better. And he was saying this from experience. Besides it was a water condensor cum purifier.
Once the whole room was sweeped clean, he lit an incense in one corner. The incense was mixed with few other drugs and would have a slight anesthetic and halucegenic effect. It should help him numb whatever pain he would go through.
Everything settled he gulped down four food pills. These pills would have easily lasted him four days. In front of sat a bowl fill of more pills. The rich people would use Vitality Fluids to get enough energy to awaken. Unfortunately, like the awakening potion, it was extremely expensive.
He took out another tube from his bag. The tube was basically the street version of Vitality Fluid. Instead of purified essence of beasts, all it contained was purified concentrated beast blood and flesh. It was similar to Vitality Fluid except far more stronger. If Vitality Fluid was like drinking water, this was the acidic equivalent of it. The energy inside would rampage inside your body once drunk. But he only needed it to provide the final push for his evolution. The energy would probably be absorbed before it could do any more damage.
Attaching it to a sensor injection he attached it to his wrist. He wasn't sure if he would have the time to open and consume the tube. It was better to attach it to a sensor, which would sense his condition and immediately release the fluid. The sensor itself was made from scraps. Basically a heartbeat sensor, along with the basic health monitor system, all rigged to a tiny chip responsible for calculation. Every thing was found from scrap yards.
All done he took a deep breath and without any hesitation gulped the Awakening Potion down. The awakening potion was light amber in colour and the taste was very much like honey. He wasn't sure how did Steve manage to improve the taste. But it was good for him.
The moment the cool liquid entered his mouth, he could feel a slight current passing through his body. Those engineered viruses had now become active and we're now actively merging with his cells. Any dead cell or waste material was turning into energy to fuel their reproduction. Minutes past by and he could feel the current getting stronger. The viruses had rapidly grown and were attaching themselves to his every cell, right from his RBC's to the nerve cells. Unfortunately, it would take a long time for his body to completely evolve.
Suddenly, he felt a sharp pain go through his body. This was the sign that genetic instability had began. His genes were being modified. And now it was up to him to grasp the best talent he could get. A little known secret among Awakeners was that you could use certain catalysts to awaken certain skills. For example awakening in a hot area close to lava would improve fire related talents to awaken. Underwater would help water talents to grow. Certain beast cores would help beast related talents. The only reason he even knew about this was due to Steve's inability to not gossip.
He immediately took out a small fossil. The amber fossil had a tiny inch long core aloing with blood over it, in between. From what he could gather, the core was not complete. It was an extremely tiny part of a core, despite that its size was bigger than most cores currently in the market. Above all, the amber was dated back to the Jurassic era. The era when dinosaurs roamed the Earth.
And this was why he decided to use this core. None of the dinosaur was a weakling. And this was from a core which belonged to a dinosaur. An era where technically core shouldn't exist. Core exists only in monster beasts. So it could only mean that monsters did roam during the Jurassic era. So imagine a monster version of a dinosaur.
The amber was already cracked by him long ago. He immediately took it apart and removed the core. Without any thoughts he gulped down the core. At first nothing happened then all he could feel was pain.
His nerves were on fire. His body was burning. His mind had gone blank.
And between all this his body was getting destroyed and recreated. The flesh would fall of and new flesh would take its place. Bones were getting corroded and remade. All the injuries that remained throughout his 14 years were being repaired. He was being born anew.
And slowly his genes were combining with the data from the monster core in the amber.
The genetic material preserved in the blood was providing the template for his talent to awaken.
And slowly a monster talent never seen since Jurassic Era awaoke inside a fourteen year old boy.
A new era was going to began.