The Endgame Chronicles (by Hugh White) novel Chapter 79

Chapter 79

“Gifts are mostly divided into the common enhancement types,” Hayley explained, “like speed boost, strength boost, and the elemental ones–metal, wood, water, fire, and earth.

“Then there are the rare variant gifts, like lightning, ice, healing, and mental abilities, plus a few really obscure ones you only hear about when you actually meet someone who has them.”

Hayley didn’t hold anything back when she explained it all to Leonard.

Why should she? He was one of her people now, not an outsider. Besides, teaching him this stuff would help him level up faster later on.

“All gifts start at the beginner level,” she went on, “but they grow stronger the more you understand and train them. No matter how they’re ranked, there’s always a hierarchy. Variant gifts usually have higher potential than elemental or enhanced ones.”

In her last life, Hayley had been just an ordinary person who never awakened a gift.

It wasn’t a big deal at first, since gifts didn’t make much of a difference early on. Hayley was ruthless and sharp enough to make a name for herself even without one.

But later, the gap between the Gifted and regular people became huge.

She ended up stuck as a small–time squad leader in a minor base.

If she’d had even one gift, she could’ve at least made it to the upper ranks.

Because of that, she’d never learned much about gifts at all.

Gifts could supposedly be strengthened, but she never figured out how. All she knew was that it probably had something to do with crystal cores.

Back in her old base, crystal cores were basically the main currency everyone wanted them. She had tried studying them herself and could feel the energy inside, but as an ordinary person, she just didn’t have the resources to go any deeper.

There was a sharp crackle as the tires rolled over debris.

Hayley pulled the truck to a stop under an overpass.

She spotted the corpse of the level–2 mutant zombie, jumped down, and dug around its skull until she found an egg–sized crystal.

“This is a crystal core,” she said.

“I know that,” Leonard replied. “When I was in the special ops unit, our orders were to collect these.”

Hayley’s eyes lit up. “Wait. You were specifically sent to gather these?”

Leonard nodded.

Their mission hadn’t been the usual rescue operation. It was a hunt.

They’d been ordered to fight deep in the infected zones, take down as many zombies as possible, and help rescue teams when they could. Even after the rescue teams left, they were told to keep fighting.

Command never gave them permission to pull out.

+25 Bonus

Banus

Nobody knew what their superiors were really after.

Then, everything went south–they were ambushed, barely made it out alive, and ended up finding Hayley.

As Leonard spoke, Hayley frowned, lost in thought.

So the military had already discovered crystal cores that early?

In her previous life, Base K1 had always been one of the most powerful in the East. They struggled with food supplies, sure, but everything else there was top–tier, especially their Gifted.

The Gifted trained at K1 were stronger than anyone else’s. Could that have been because they’d started studying crystal cores so early?

“Let’s head back first,” she said.

“Got it.”

Leonard climbed into one of the big trucks they had brought earlier, while Hayley drove the armored vehicle towing the fuel tanker. They made their way back toward their base.

It had been a productive day.

When they got back, Hayley told Leonard to go catch a fresh chicken and a fish for dinner.

He didn’t hesitate for a second. He practically ran to do it, grinning like a kid who had just been told they were having barbecue for dinner.

Meanwhile, Hayley went back into the shelter to study the points system and the crystal cores more carefully.

She opened her system interface and traded in all the cores she’d collected today, except for the one from the level -2 mutant zombie.

In total, she had gathered 16 new crystal cores. In addition to the 44 cores she’d gotten from Liam earlier, she now had 60 crystal cores in all.

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