Ezren was so exhausted both mentally and physically that even walking felt impossibly hard. Yet he still forced himself to slowly walk forwards while staggering every few steps.
At multiple points he considered to just sit down and wait for his mana to replenish. Doing so would put him at immense risk of being found and killed by a mutation, but he found it hard to care right now.
It was just that everything felt so meaningless to him.
He tried to focus his mind on other more productive thoughts. He thought back to his horrible experience a few minutes ago and managed to draw a few new conclusions about his new existence as Sentient Mana.
His first observation was that he was apparently no longer capable of passing out. He drew this conclusion because he was almost certain that he would have passed out from the pain if he was still capable of doing so. This train of thought brought him to his second observation.
The pain itself had been way worse than he expected it to be, and it was a consistent level of pain over the entire time. Ezren had never been hurt too badly in his life, but he was certain that the influence of adrenaline should have suppressed a great amount of his pain at first. His pain should thus have grown stronger once he was out of immediate danger because there would have been less adrenaline in his body to suppress the pain. But that was not what had happened.
Instead, he had felt a consistent and great level of pain the entire time. This fact brought him to the conclusion that his body either could not produce adrenaline anymore or that adrenaline could no longer reduced the level of pain he was experiencing.
If he were to assume that his body no longer produced adrenaline, which was a hormone then that would imply the possibility that his body also stopped producing other hormones? Currently, he could not confirm whether his suspicion was right or wrong and had no choice but to add it to his list of unanswered questions, which had grown quite long already.
But merely thinking about the possibility that he might no longer be able to have children made him even more depressed than he already was.
Just then he noticed a familiar voice calling out to him
"Ezren what happened to you?"
He was surprised for a moment, then he lifted his gaze and noticed Alexia who was standing right in front of him and Sarah was sitting just a few meters further away.
'At least my plan of distracting myself from the fatigue worked out brilliantly. I didn't even notice that I was about to reach my destination.'
Then his exhaustion hit him like a train, and his knees buckled causing him to unceremoniously drop to the ground.
______________
A few seconds earlier.
"Sarah, if Ezren or I manage to catch a mutation would you be willing to kill it?" Alexia asked.
"I don't know they still look way too human for me, but I will try at least!"
"Great, with a bit of luck you might be able to choose a class that allows you to heal your leg." After a short silence Alexia continued
"We will need food and water if we want to survive until we find another settlement. I am going to search this train cart for food and water, just call me when something happens, and I will be back here in an instant." Alexia said while pointing at the train Sarah was leaning against.
Just when Alexia was about to walk towards an open window of the train cart, she heard Sarah exclaim "Ezren is coming back, look."
Alexia turned around and indeed there a few dozen meters away Ezren was staggering towards them. He was alone, meaning that he had not found any other survivors.
When he came closer Alexia could make out more details and noticed, that his shirt was drenched in fresh blood and that his left shoe along with part of his pants was missing. His head was hanging low as well, which made it impossible for her to see his face.
'What happened to him? It looks like his pants got ripped apart, but I can't see any injuries on his leg. His steps are unsteady as well, but I can't see any injuries at all.'
Once Ezren was close enough Alexia asked, "Ezren what happened to you?"
Ezren was startled as if he had not noticed her before she spoke to him.
Ezren then looked her into the eyes and then collapsed to the floor before she even had a chance to try and catch him.
She instantly rushed to his side to check him for injuries.
"Wha-" her question was cut off by Ezren who answered her previous question with a clearly exhausted voice.
"I encountered two mutations. I killed them both. I am not injured but very exhausted."
Alexia was lost for words. What was she supposed to do now?
Something had clearly happened to Ezren while he was away, but it was also clear that he had no intention of telling her what happened. Now that she could see his face, she noticed that his clear blue eyes, which had been shining, as if they could produce light themselves, had dimmed down a lot and were almost black now. His gaze, which had been strong and focused before seemed empty and unstable now as well.
Something had happened to Ezren while he was away, but he obviously had no intention of telling her about it. Alexia found herself in a tight spot, Ezren was clearly in a rough shape mentally and physically, which was quite weird considering that he was not injured at all, so she did not feel comfortable leaving him and Sarah alone. They would most likely die if a mutation found its way here and attacked them. But somebody had to go and continue searching for survivors.
While she had little hope she still asked:
"Ezren will you be able to fight off a mutation in your current state?"
"Unlikely." He answered without looking at her.
This situation was very bad. No matter how she thought about it there was no good way out of this situation.
'I have to choose whether I want to stay here with the two of them and wait for them to recover or if I go searching for other survivors and hope that no mutations show up here while I am away.'
The first choice would prevent them from gathering a larger group thus decreasing their survival chances in the future. The second choice on the other hand risked the lives of both of her companions and Alexia was not sure if she could bring herself to leave them here without protection.
While she was still agonizing over the impossible choice, she suddenly heard the familiar sounds of breaking bones and ripping skin. This would usually cause her to be afraid and to curse her bad luck, but it was exactly what she needed in the current situation.
A second later she spotted the approaching mutation.
Without hesitation she ran towards Ezren and picked up his hammer. Ezren did not react to her taking away his hammer which she interpreted as silent consent, not that consent mattered in the current situation.
Then she turned around and ran towards the mutation. While running she tried to infuse her life force into the hammer but failed. It felt like there was a wall which prevented her lifeforce from entering the weapon. She did not know whether this was an issue caused by the fact that this weapon was artificially created by Erzen or if she was simply unable to infuse her lifeforce into anything but her own body.
But it did not matter right now. The only thing that mattered was the enemy in front of her and her allies behind her.
Then not a second later she arrived in front of the mutation. This mutation must have been a young woman who was more than a head shorter than Alexia before she mutated.
From her previous experience Alexia already expected that the mutation would either try to grab her first and then bite her or it would just try to bite her. And as she predicted, the mutation tried to wrap her arms around her torso to grab her.
'These mutations have no intelligence left, which makes them very predictable.'
Alexia managed to dodge to the side and easily avoided the mutation's hands. Then she lifted up the hammer and brought it down on the mutation's left shoulder. The precise strike obliterated the mutation shoulder rendering its left arm useless.
The mutation quickly turned around to try and attack Alexia again, but she had already retreated outside the mutations range. The mutation charged at Alexia again and Alexia repeated the same actions as before destroying the abominations right shoulder in process.
All of her movements were planned and executed perfectly. After the mutation's third charge Alexia managed to break its lower back which paralyzed the mutation's legs.
Now that the mutation could no longer move Alexia carefully broke its lower jaw to take away its ability to bite. Then she grabbed the helpless mutation and carried it towards Sarah.
While Alexia was carrying the mutation she noticed that Ezren had stopped looking at the ground and stared at her instead. She could even notice a small spark of blue light find its way back into his dark eyes. Sarah on the other hand looked at her as if she was some kind of alien and even tried to instinctually crawl away for a second.
Once Alexia arrived beside Sarah, she dropped the mutation to the ground and handed her the bloody hammer.
"Here is your chance. The mutation can no longer fight back, and you even have a weapon. This is the easiest kill you will ever get. Can you do it?"
Sarah was trembling all over her body and she looked like she was about to throw up.
Alexia tried her best to give Sarah an encouraging look, which didn't work out too well since her face was dripping with blood from the mutation.
After a second Sarah closed her eyes, took a deep breath and slowly used her trembling hands to lift up the hammer. Then she brought the hammer down onto the mutation's head with all the force she could muster. A moment later she could feel the disgusting sensation of breaking bones through the hammer. A blue window flashed before Sarahs eyes.
[You have killed a level 0 'Unstable Mutation']
Not a second later Sarah threw up all the precious food that was still left in her stomach.
While Sarah was throwing up, Alexia was quite confused since she too had gotten a message, that she killed a mutation. This could only mean that her contribution to it's death by wounding it had caused the reward to somehow be shared between herself and Sarah.
Alexia decided to ignore this for now and instead started to pull the disgusting corpse away from Sarah while talking to her in a soothing voice. She hoped that that would be able to calm Sarah down a bit. Thanks to Alexias help Sarah managed to compose herself after a short while.
"What classes can you chose? Did you get an achievement for being in the first 1% of people to reach level 1?" Alexia asked excitedly after Sarah managed to calm down.
"Sadly, I did not get any achievements. My class choices are 'Water Mage', 'Fencer', 'Pharmacist' and 'Victim'. The first 3 are Rank 1 and the last one's Rank is Unique."
'That's interesting. 'Water Mage' and 'Pharmacist' are pretty easy to understand. But I have no idea what a 'Fencer' is and a having a class named 'Victim' sounds awful.'
After thinking about Sarahs choices for a second Alexia looked Sarah in the eyes.
"I think you should choose Pharmacist. It is the only one which could potentially heal your leg. It is very important that we have at least one person who can treat injuries in our group anyways. And I am sorry if I sound harsh, but I don't think that you have any talent for combat."
"It's alright. I know that I am not and will never be good at killing and fighting. I would rather be someone who saves lives and if my own life can be the first I save by healing my leg then it is even better.
I choose 'Pharmacist'"
Alexia waited for a moment and then asked:
"What skills did you get?"
"I just got one skill, and it is named 'Medication Substitute'"