Jyera World Apocalypse

While an ice age had covered all of Jyera for almost two months, Lucien followed his new daily training schedule from the comfort and warmth of his apartment… Some improvements and renovations were made so that he could complete a total of 5 new daily missions.

As previously promised, the System had already begun repairs to the incomplete communication system between System Carriers and would now be incommunicado for many months. Therefore, Lucien was alone and absorbed in his new and repetitive tasks.

The first mission was physical training; every day, he performed a series of physical exercises that led him to complete exhaustion. Although he thought this type of training would no longer be effective, Lucien was certain that during this mission, his stamina and strength as a level 2 mutant had been completely depleted, so that the exercise would have a greater effect. Because of this, he felt muscle pain daily after this series of exercises.

The system's response to this specific exercise was that a strong base was necessary to acquire greater resistance and strengthen the mutant body… Although Lucien believed the system had another hidden motive, he still went ahead without complaining; after all, it also kept his mind occupied from all the traumatic events that had happened two months prior.

The good side of these exercises was that Lucien had gone from being skinny to having gained muscle in places he never thought existed after only two months of practice. He also seemed to have entered puberty and was growing at least one or two centimeters every month. According to the system, this happened to all mutant children; it was part of the new adaptive process of this new race of "superhumans."

After each daily physical exercise, he earned up to 100 Creation Points and 50-100 UP Points. This applied to the other four missions as well. Furthermore, after significant achievements in any of the missions, level 3 crystals were obtained as additional rewards.

Mission number 2 was an extension of the first. In it, Lucien practiced his archery, trained with daggers and knives, and practiced hand-to-hand combat. Nothing was very different from before, but Lucien now had a new weapon he acquired through a new recipe: a spear.

The biggest difference between the previous and current training was that the system generated holographic images in his vision, with movements he needed to repeat tirelessly until his mastery of martial arts reached perfection. The art with the spear was the one he was least familiar with; therefore, it was the most exhausting of this second mission…

The third training was called resilience training. In it, Lucien was forced into a very hot or even very cold environment and had to resist as much as possible. To reach the first environment, several crystal heaters increased the ambient temperature, while to reach the second environment, he only had to turn off the heaters in a room and let the outside cold invade.

During this grueling training, Lucien always had to endure the extreme climate while performing tasks that required logical reasoning or even delicate tasks that needed great care during execution. This not only demanded great resistance to pain caused by cold or heat, but also left him mentally exhausted.

The fourth mission was something that caught Lucien by surprise; it was something he thought he would never have to do again!

Studying!

His studies had resumed through a series of online classes stored within the system, and even advanced higher education courses and subjects were imposed on him by this mission. The primary objective of this mission was to ensure that his knowledge was not limited to that of a child at the end of elementary school. The second objective of the mission was to take advantage of the increased intelligence of a mutant human to accelerate his studies, introducing at least one or two higher education professions.

Completely disheartened by this fourth mission, Lucien found some comfort in sharing the burden and daily passing on some of these lessons to his friend and former classmate, Nina. After all, she also needed to continue her studies so as not to fall behind… But after Nina discovered that her Universal Force was related to the wind, the girl showed little interest in anything beyond that…

As for his former nanny and childhood crush, Laura, she was a little older, and therefore Lucien only discussed her academic studies a little, but it seemed that her father was ensuring that she continued her studies through the profession he mastered…

Through Laura, he also received daily updates on Madame Serena's mental state, and although she was still grieving, she had been busy keeping the father and daughter well-fed. What freed Laura from those obligations, since her father was terrible in the kitchen…

The system's final mission, although also a kind of lesson, was the one Lucien paid the most attention to. After all, if he really wanted to help the people of Jyera during this apocalypse, he needed to memorize this knowledge…

Most of it was about certain catastrophic events that happened in certain cities during the first apocalypse, things like wars between humans over simple things like fuel and sources of drinking water. In addition to teaching him certain signs and warnings of possible sabotage by alien enemies. Among these many topics were also preventative measures for the greatest mutant threats he might encounter…

In today's class specifically, the topic was the "Children of Winter," a topic to which Lucien paid close attention because he had thought he was safe with all the zombies and monsters hibernating, but that wasn't the case…

[With the arrival of Jyera's terrible apocalyptic winter, being exposed to the horrifying icy winds could mean instant death for an ordinary human, and even level 2 mutant humans couldn't withstand more than 3 or 4 breaths. The only ones who could withstand the terrible climate unwaveringly would be level 4 mutants. But there is no being that has reached that level in Jyera yet…]

Lucien thought for a moment and wanted to ask what powers a level 4 mutant would have, but remembering that this was a recorded message from the system, he continued listening…

[For level 3 mutants, their bodies are stronger, and there is a slight tolerance to climate changes. But this tolerance was limited to only a few minutes, with level 3 mutant humans being on the weaker side, lasting a maximum of 10 minutes. Some level 3 mutant animals could last up to 20 minutes if exposed, depending on their type, with mammals and birds being the best in the cold, and reptiles being the best in extreme heat. While level 3 zombies are in the middle when it comes to resistance time, being between 10 and 20 minutes, depending on the type of mutation they undergo when evolving…]

Lucien reflected and nodded; after all, it made sense since reptiles were "cold-blooded" creatures and needed a warm environment to regulate their temperatures, like snakes and lizards. But there were always exceptions, and it was impossible to determine what kind of change each species would have after evolving to levels 2 and 3…

[But there were 3 exceptions to this rule in winter, the first being winter and polar animals. Accustomed to the cold environment of various low-temperature regions, including the poles of Jyera, these animals that managed to reach level 3 would continue their hunts normally during the current ice age without hibernating, and were the greatest threat to the humans who lived in these regions…]

Lucien remembered the bears, lynxes, and polar wolves, as well as a few other animals that lived on the continents north of Jyera's capital.

[The second most resistant type to cold was the level 3 mutant humans. But not just any level 3 mutant human; it was a very specific type of human who mastered one of the types of Universal Force related to ice or weather. There were also some humans capable of using barriers and generating fire or heat, but this second type depended on energy expenditure, unlike the first two, which could have passive resistance…]

Lucien still lamented being a level 2 mutant human… Why didn't the system let him practice his Universal Force sooner? After all, he was home after all…

"That way, both Laura and Nina will be stronger than me when winter ends and I find them…"

[The last type of winter creature was the rarest, yet the most problematic of all, a level 3 zombie that, upon reaching that level, underwent a mutation or adaptation related to ice or climate…]

The system's tone when referring to this type was quite serious, because all level 3 zombies, as explained in other lessons, were threats capable of causing an entire city to be evacuated…

While Lucien continued his lesson and listened to more details about the last type of winter creature, he didn't know that less than a kilometer from his house, a zombie of this type was about to evolve. Endangering not only Lucien himself, but all the human survivors hiding from the cold in the coastal city of Kaelor…