The Eternal Winter - Book 1 - Chapter 44 - New Instincts (Patreon)

                                                                                                   The hallway

Cynthia reaches for the handle of her sword, only to pause as she realizes that she can’t exactly overpower Alex and she doesn’t want to hurt him either. But luckily for her, Alex simply ignores her as he stands up and runs off straight past the entrance to the main hangar.

“Hey, wait up!” Cynthia shouts while chasing after him.

Thanks to Alex’s inhuman body though, he is a lot faster than her now. So he gets far ahead of her before stopping at the sight of a wendigo, to which he immediately jumps at and begins to tear apart with his claws and teeth without even giving it a chance to finish walking through the door it was passing through. He then absorbs its energy and moves on to find more prey, all while Cynthia is trying very hard to catch up.

“Please, just-” Cynthia says, pausing as she sees the wendigo corpse before trying harder to catch up and finishing, “Slow down!”

Alex ignores her as he suddenly beelines it for a particular room and smashes open the door, just to turn around and begin running down the hall again, leaving Cynthia looking confused. But once she makes it to the room and looks inside, she immediately understands after seeing the civilians and soldiers that they had separated from before cowering in the room.

“Don’t mind us,” she casually says and quietly closes the door, just to continue chasing after Alex again. Meanwhile the people in the room just share confused and frightened glances with each other now that they’re left on their own again.

Eventually, after killing three more frozen ones and absorbing their energy, with his wounds slowly healing over the hunt, Alex finally begins to slow down until he stops entirely, collapsing on the floor unconscious. It then takes Cynthia several seconds to catch up, and when she does she lets out a sigh and picks him up with a grunt.

“Just as reckless as always…” she mutters before glancing behind her at the trail of pale bluish-red blood Alex had brought along with them. “Messy too.”

After that, she looks around for a suitably secure room and enters it, closing the door behind her after setting Alex down with a breath of relief.

‘Guess I’ll be sitting here for a bit,’ she thinks to herself as she pushes a large crate to block the door before sitting next to Alex.

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                                                                                         Alexander North

The first thing I feel when I regain my consciousness is a brief, splitting headache that fades away as soon as I realize it’s there.

I let out a low groan, causing something next to me to begin shifting, followed by the sound of Cynthia’s voice, “You’re finally awake?”

My eyes shoot open as I remember what had happened, but that turns out to be a bad idea as they begin to sting and I have to close them again. But I slowly inch them open after that bit by bit, until I find myself sitting on the ground shoulder to shoulder with Cynthia in the middle of a storage room for food and supplies.

“Wh-” I begin, only to cough as I realize how dry my throat is. “What.. happened..?”

Cynthia looks at me before getting up and stretching, making me wonder just how long we were sitting there. She then say, “When you lost consciousness, your body sort of went on a killing spree for anything with that energy inside of the monsters. But after you got enough to heal, you just sort of conked out.”

I stare at her in silence.

That’s not good.

“Terminal, I thought you stated that my changes didn’t have anything mental amongst them outside of the instincts?” I ask out loud, my throat having recovered in the time I was staring at her.

/ Notice \

Answer to User’s Query – User is correct, the changes have made no mental influences outside of your base instincts.

\End of Notice/

I frown at that, only for a creeping thought to enter my mind, making me ask, “Terminal, were my previous actions instinctual? And if they were, then are there any other drastic changes to my instincts that I should know about?”

A few seconds pass in silence before the terminal answers.

/ Notice \

Answer to User’s first Query – User is correct. User will instinctually do whatever it takes to survive that user can do while unconscious when unconscious and injured without any energy to use in regeneration. This does not include making detailed plans or doing anything outside of what a wild animal could do.

Answer to User’s second Query – User has already learned about all of their instinctual changes other than this newly found one.

\End of Notice/

I narrow my eyes at the terminal.

Well that’s… both good and bad I guess. I have no control over what I so, so what my body thinks might save me might just make my situation worse. But it might also save me.

Either way, it would be best to avoid falling unconscious while out of energy.

“It should be fine,” I tell Cynthia in response to the curious look she’s sending me before climbing a little wobbly to my feet, only to steady myself with Cynthia’s help rather quickly. I then walk over to the crate blocking the door, just to pause and glance at Cynthia as I ask, “By the way, what happened to the large monsters? And what about my captain?”

She reaches down to grab her helmet from the floor and puts it back on – why it was off in the first place considering how cold she must be is beyond me – before looking at me and answering, “The other monsters were still fighting the last time I saw, but while we were running, I thought I’d heard the base commander’s voice coming from the third hangar. So the base commander and the other captains might’ve joined in their battle.”

Interesting. “And my captain?” I repeat while moving the crate away from the door.

“He said something about you hunting him if he stayed close and then said to tell you that he’d be looking for the rest of your squad to make sure they’re okay,” she says as she walks up to me, stopping next to the door.

Okay, that’s good.

I turn to the door and say, “Let’s go then.”

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