Upon reaching fifth tier, Lu Heng stopped absorbing crystals. He feared the black bear outside might recover from its effects, so he decided to contract it sooner rather than later.
He flashed out of his spatial dimension again and glanced at the black bear, which showed no signs of waking. Reassured, Lu Heng dripped blood into the black bear's mouth and contracted it.
Feeling the contract with the black bear complete, Lu Heng extended his palm, channeling his abilities. As his thoughts shifted, various mastered abilities converged into different forms, appearing one by one.
With his fifth-tier abilities, Lu Heng could condense various natural elemental abilities into solid spheres or the forms of various weapons.
For instance, wind swords, ice swords, water spheres, fire chains, lightning storm spheres, and wood vine long chains.
These natural elemental abilities were something he hadn't possessed in his previous life. However, having witnessed other natural elemental ability users employ them, he could condense many forms of natural elemental weapons through imagination. It was just that he needed more practice in wielding these abilities.
As for power-type abilities, they were the only ones he had possessed in his past life. Therefore, he could quickly utilize the power of such abilities by channeling a little energy.
By channeling his power-type abilities and with his fifth-tier control, the strength of his own body also increased.
Consequently, his physical body could completely withstand ordinary physical attacks without sustaining damage.
He had heard that once the power-type ability reached level ten, which was the maximum, the body could become indestructible, completely resisting attacks from zombies of lower levels, achieving true invulnerability to blades and spears.
In his previous life, almost no human ability users reached the maximum level because upgrading became increasingly difficult in the later stages.
After evolving to second tier for over a month, zombies began to upgrade again, with zombies sequentially evolving to third tier.
Within the following six months, a majority of zombies would evolve to fourth tier. After that, most zombies' levels would remain at fourth tier, and they would stop evolving to higher tiers.
Of course, a very small portion of zombies would evolve to higher tiers, but those that evolved to higher levels were extremely rare, as they needed to develop higher intelligence to advance their levels further.
For human ability users, the number of core crystals required for upgrading in the later stages was in the tens of thousands. Moreover, as zombie levels also increased, the difficulty for low-level survivors to collect zombie crystals grew exponentially after a few years in the apocalypse.
Recalling his thoughts, Lu Heng channeled his surrounding abilities, accumulating power into his clenched fist, and swung it towards a thick tree beside him.
As his fist neared the tree trunk, the bark on the facing side began to peel off at a visible speed. Subsequently, his fist struck the trunk, piercing a large hole through it, and Lu Heng's entire arm passed through the hole.
After retracting his hand from the hole in the tree trunk, Lu Heng gently pushed the large tree again, and it crashed down backward.
A slight smile curved Lu Heng's lips. This familiar feeling of power truly made Lu Heng feel like he had come back to life.
Looking at the fallen tree, the significant noise it made would have likely scared away all the surrounding animals. Finding those animals again would require waiting.
After all, frightened animals would take some time to gather again near this man-made lake.
Since he understood that contracting ability animals was linked to their levels, and the number of core crystals in his spatial dimension was likely enough to raise his level a few more times, he might as well focus on returning to his spatial dimension to upgrade first. Then, he could become more familiar with the attributes of various abilities, allowing him to use them at will during combat.
Alas! Too many attributes made him indecisive!
Hahahaha!!!
...
Inside the spatial dimension.
Lu Heng fed the newly contracted pets for the day with food mixed with ancient well water. He had discovered that these pets, upon consuming more ancient well water, showed improvements in both intelligence and physical development.
Even he himself felt that since he started drinking this ancient well water, his intelligence had also significantly improved. At the very least, when reading those obscure and difficult technical books, he could not only achieve photographic memory but also understand the content after reading it once.
Sometimes, he would pick up some physics problems and find them very easy to solve.
Many of these problems, he couldn't solve during his university years.
It was just that he couldn't detect what specific special substances were in this ancient well water, even with the equipment in his spatial hospital. He only knew that the content of various trace elements in the water was extremely high, much like the water from those longevity villages before the apocalypse. Long-term consumption was beneficial to the body.
After feeding the few contracted pets, Lu Heng first returned to his apartment in the spatial dimension for a bath. He needed to explain his rules to all the pets later, as he now had many pets.
Although he wasn't worried about them betraying him, establishing rules now would save him trouble in the future when he acquired more new members.
Lu Heng calculated that he was currently a fifth-tier ability user. Based on his understanding from his previous life, he could contract a total of twenty ability animals, following the standard of a top-tier tenth-level ability user.
Comparing this to the various ability attributes known in his previous life, even if he contracted ability animals of all attributes, by the time he reached level seven, he would have no more ability animals to contract.
Unless he contracted some group-attack combat-type ability animals repeatedly, as offense was crucial. If you could annihilate the opponent in one encounter, then defense would become irrelevant.
Of course, the prerequisite was that his ability level must be higher than other ability users or zombies. With such a level advantage over the opponent, and with his defensive skills, he could truly walk unimpeded in the apocalypse.
After his bath, Lu Heng took out a portion of beef stewed with potatoes, a portion of boiled large shrimp, and a cup of refreshing ancient well water, watching a movie while eating.
Once Lu Heng had rested, he channeled his thoughts to the adjacent room. The room was a bit crowded now, as he had collected nine pets in total, and some of them were quite large. Staying in the original single apartment made it appear somewhat cramped.
Fortunately, when Lu Heng arrived, they showed no unusual behavior. Led by the "Director," they were lined up according to their size, watching a Mahjong competition.
Lu Heng remarked, "It seems I need to take back the phone that downloaded the Mahjong competitions. If they keep watching like this, they'll probably become unproductive in the future."
Clearing his throat, Lu Heng coughed.
Instantly, the Director put away its phone and turned to look at Lu Heng.
Was it watching that intently?
Perhaps it was due to the telepathic connection between the Director and Lu Heng. The Director had just profoundly sensed that Lu Heng had an opinion about it playing the Mahjong competition program.