242 Broken Pearl

I wasn't on the mood to walk too fast so after a couple of steps when we were about 2 blocks away from the housing complex I stopped using my power.

Unlike blink, my ability didn't teleport me forward but instead distorted the way space and time interact with me.

Rules Are Meant to be Broken was used to change, break or ignore the laws in a particular area for an extended amount of time, but to use this ability I didn't need to use such a powerful skill. First, the focus of this ability wasn't an area but myself, so it was similar to accelerate, and also the modification I'm applying to the laws was defined as bending by the system, it wasn't as extreme as in the skill. This coupled with the party system that allowed me to interact and apply some of these abilities to my companions made it possible for me to walk with any of them as I was doing with Rose.

There were no beasts on the streets. After the withdraw of the farmland and the swampland remaining forces, the city was almost empty. The hunting teams only have found stray animals that were evolved into beasts as their main threat, this at the same time gave them the possibility to loot more effectively and recover more spare parts for our I&D area.

Luckily, we were able to recover a lot of beast corpses from the east gate battle, and they were already stacked up in the fully operational warehouse freezer, but we will run out of it sooner or later.

As we approached the housing complex looking at the desolate place a fool smell kicked my face so hard that I had to turn off my smell.

"Holy crap this smells horrible…"

At my side, Rose also covered her mouth and nose with her hand. As soon as I crossed the wall, a notification ringed on my ears.

[Mission: Visit the old NDR base.

Type: Chain (1/3)

Reward: 25 System points, 1 AP]

It was clear the reason for me to not do this sooner was the lack of a good reward for it, even if it was chained the time limit was enough for me to wait another week if a want.

I added the point into wisdom which was lagging behind a little and was needed to understand the concepts behind the universal laws faster. As soon as the first mission was completed a notification gave two new tasks to fulfill with similar time ranges.

[Mission: Destroy the remains of the blood pool.

Type: Chain (2/3)

Reward: 50 System points, 4 SP

Time Limit: 12d 13h 19m 52s]

[Mission: Find the ???? at Hamilton's house.

Type: Main

Reward: 75 System points, ????

Time Limit: --- 15d 13h 19m 52s]

I hated that smell, and I knew that sooner or later it would bring problems… who knows how it would corrupt a beast if it drank from it or what kind of sickness it might provoke in the future.

I took out two masks from my item box. After I got this system function a lot of my usual problems were gone, I filled it with things that I thought could be useful eventually, so I don't need to buy them from the system if I ever need them. That included extra clothes, antidotes, tools, food and of course my weapons.

I informed Rose about the missions and asked her to go into Hamilton's house to see if she find something in there while I looked for a way to get rid of the blood pool. Even if this place was searched after the war, it wasn't weird that the hunting team in charge wasn't able to find some of the secrets that Hamilton hid here.

I almost felt my eyes tearing as I arrived at the place where the blood pool was located…

It was gross, this was the first time that I saw this place in person, Dante showed me the area before, but it has changed a lot… the mountain of bodies next to the pool now was just a bizarre mass of mixed meat, bones and what I think might be hair. The color that could be seen along the scarlet red of the dry blood was a pale grey-green that was characteristic of the spoiled meat.

The blood pool had similar tones to the ones in the pile of bodies. In the side of the pool, footprints could be seen, and they turned my sixth sense on. That is definitely going to be a problem.

*Pop*

A bubble appeared in the center of the pool, but after waiting for a few seconds, nothing else happened. I understood that it was just a gas bubble and calmed down.

Using fuel, I started with the easier part and burn down the pile of corpses.

As I saw the smoke coming from there, I tried to think for the most effective way to take care of the blood. Since it was decomposing it was likely to be producing gas which worked on my favor, but it wasn't enough for it to burn continually, at least not without an additional supply of gas.

It didn't take long for me to figure out a plan.

If the process to decompose the flesh was too slow… then we have to make it happen faster…

Time listened to me, believed in me and always helped me, asking it to accelerate a little wasn't a big favor, in fact, it was easy…

The speed in which the gas was produced escalated in the pool area…

The number of bubbles that came from the inside increased and suddenly before I could even throw a match or a lighter to start the fire, the fire from the pile of bodies ignited a flare coming from the pool.

*Boom!!!*

It was something unexpected, but I was able to step back in time to avoid the explosion.

The burning was constant as I wanted it to be… the pool was covered by a layer of fire and spat fireballs to the sky every time a gas bubble appeared…

The sound that came from the flares was enough to scare Rose who came from the house and looked astonished at the fireworks show.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah the first explosion took me by surprise, but I'm fine… Did you find anything?"

"I'm not sure… there is nothing suspicious at first glance, but there is something that I would like you to see."

*Boom*

"Sure let's go. This is going to take a while anyway…"

The time for this place to act like that was set to an hour so I could just leave… it would be safer that way after all.

Besides not being cleaned in a while Hamilton's house was what you would expect of a high-class politician. The place was huge and filled with luxuries… since he left, I don't think he will miss some of this stuff so I will more likely ransack this place once I finished with the missions, I could use silk sheets for our bed.

The place where Rose took me was likely the office. There were some books about economy, politics, and psychology, despite getting the prompt to consume them right away I decided to wait for hope to read them before using them and saved all of them in my item box.

The item box was the size of a small room around 20 square meters (A/N: reference 2mx4mx2,5m), with the space I have I can take with me most of the daily stuff that I could possibly need, but there was not enough space to throw every beast corpse, a vehicle or large furniture in there.

Now I was looking an empty black box with gold details and symbols that apparently used to contain something important inside…

I touched the box and searched for the moment that was important… it used to have a silver pearl inside. The two most important moments were when the pearl was saved inside by Hamilton, less than a week after the meteor shower, and when it was taken out when the beasts started their invasion.

What was that pearl?...

I moved from the room as I used my aura and tracking view.

In the floor of the living room the pieces of the pearl were scattered and had lost their silver color, but each piece still had a soft and familiar aura on it. I kneeled on the floor to gather the pieces.

"What is that?"

"A broken pearl… I think that it was inside the box."

I used psychometry again, and this time I saw how the pearl was created. How a silver light, the essence of the space gathered and condensed in the hands of a young dark-haired girl not older than Rose…