Chapter 149: How Mutants Reproduced (2)
The small head, with a mark from the injury, peeked out, and a thin pale arm reached towards them. He wasn’t too scared of Ren because he could heal from most things.
Using his hand that didn’t have fingers, he pointed at the soup and said, "Can I have some?" He talked in a tiny voice, sounding like a young kid.
Ren looked at him but didn’t speak. He first gave more soup to Kestrel and then filled a metal can with what was left. He slid the pot over to the creature, keeping his distance.
Even though Ren was really strong and good at fighting, he didn’t always choose to fight. He knew that sometimes there were other ways to handle problems in the Polluted Zone. He used to be a leader who was really good at using things like tools, magic drinks, food, and other tricks to avoid fights.
The tiny mutant rushed over, grabbed the hot pot, and tried to pull it back to its hiding place.
He was so small and didn’t have a lot of strength, so carrying the heavy pot was hard. He tried its best, but some of the soup spilled as it pulled the pot along.
"Why is he taking the soup away?" Kestrel wondered aloud.
The little mutant seemed more interested in taking the food elsewhere than eating on the spot.
"It smells so good," the mutant replied, struggling with the heavy can. "My mom is sick. I want to give it to her. Maybe it’ll make her feel better, like it did for you."
The metal can was hot, and it burned the mutant’s pale, fragile hand. He flinched in pain, but the burn seemed to heal super fast.
Even though it hurt, the mutant didn’t give up. He shook its arm now and then because of the pain but kept going, holding onto the can tightly.
It looked like the mutant thought the soup had helped Kestrel get better and hoped it could do the same for his mom.
"They have moms?" Kestrel thought aloud. "Do mutants have babies?"
This was news to her. She knew that when people were exposed to certain things or when alphas had a psychic eruption, they could turn into mutants. But how these changed beings lived or if they could have more of their kind was something Kestrel and most people didn’t really think about.
In the Tower, no one seemed to care about why these mutants did what they did. People just saw them as scary monsters that were against humans.
Ren said, "In the Polluted Zone, which hasn’t changed in a long time, some mutants can reproduce. But it’s different for each type."
He paused, looking serious, "Some stuff you might see here could be a bit creepy."
As the little mutant continued pulling the can, it murmured, "I really love my mom. I want her to stay with me longer. But if she doesn’t make it, I’ll make sure nothing of her goes to waste." It said this with a kind of respect and honesty, like it was a promise.
Once the mutant was gone, Ren helped Kestrel, who was moving kinda slow, and put out the fire. They started moving again, using their DIY map-maker to know where they were going.
The tunnel was spooky. Water dripped, and there were weird noises from the wind. Every now and then, they ran into a surprise monster.
Deep in the maze, Kestrel saw something like a mutant daycare. There were about five or six baby mutants in a little cave room.
Two bigger mutants, probably their parents, watched over them. They poked their heads out — heads without eyes — looking cautious. They made warning noises at Ren and Kestrel but didn’t try to fight.
Ren skirted around them, silently and swiftly passing by. During this process, both sides were on guard, watching each other intently, but no conflict ensued.
The younglings, driven by curiosity, stretched their heads out from behind their mothers, twitching their noses and asked in their babyish voices, "What’s that?"
"It’s a human, not something good, very dangerous," the mothers pushed their heads back, whispering a caution. "Remember their smell and stay away from them."
The sides of the corridor were adorned with peculiar sculptures. They looked like hybrids of humans and various creatures, perched up high, looking down from their lofty positions. In the dark, the faint light from a flashlight flickered across their lifelike faces, making them appear like ferocious deities ready to awaken at any moment.
Between the statues, the walls were graced with intricate and beautiful murals. These were products of the old time’s high technology. Metallic lines in the murals would automatically light up as passersby moved through. These images were not crafted by hand but could autonomously record and evolve with the passage of time.
The two individuals, holding hands, advanced through the darkness, as if traversing a lengthy tapestry of history in a pitch-black corridor.
Kestrel’s fingers grazed the wall, and as they did, the murals lit up beneath her touch. The flickering images began to overlap with the fragmented memories she’d witnessed in her mind.
Previously, during her battles within the Polluted Zone against powerful psychic incarnations, amid that vast psychic cosmos, when psychic powers clashed, Kestrel often glimpsed fragments of the opponent’s memories.
These memories belonging to the Backbone continuously overlapped with the murals on the walls.
Kestrel witnessed many stories from the era of humanity’s great cataclysm. The descent of malevolent beings, humanity’s desperate resistance, the emergence of alphas and betas, joining forces to combat the monstrous non-humans.
One after another, Polluted Zones sprouted on the earth like spores, spreading, growing, occasionally diminishing.
She even saw, in one mural, a familiar Erdtree, witnessing Kaworu’s psychic power becoming corrupted, turning into the Backbone supporting the entire Polluted Zone. He then lost the will belonging to humanity, continuously consuming psychic power to nourish the crimson egg’s hatching.
Kestrel’s fingers paused over a brightly lit totem. It depicted an insectoid stone and a powerful psychic incarnation mutually invading each other.
The massive egg and the Backbone intertwined; a column supporting the heavens and the earth, with the egg representing the Polluted Zone itself. The mutants were its progeny and lineage, living in a tiny world held up by the Backbone and the egg.
