The Z Gene - Chapter 10：Training with Ropego

Daniel now wore a military coat and boots, he also changed his ripped pants into military pants, he now looked like a man that was ready to go to war, full camouflage!

Daniel’s speed was quite high as he left the building, but he couldn’t make up for hundreds of thousands of kilometers only in a few days, it would take him at least half a month before he got to the jungle, and that would be with nonstop running, even though his stamina was extremely high and his endurance was the same he still had to rest from time to time.

During the resting time, Daniel thought about how he should handle Ropego and the organization known as the Iron Bunker, even though he remembered the silhouette of Baidoa he still didn’t know fully how he looked or his name, he couldn’t ask Ropego either, but at least he knew a little about the boss which only Master Litoa and a few only top tier members of the Iron Bunker knew about.

Ropego observed Daniel day and night, even when he was sleeping and resting, he never took his eyes off him, of course, the cat had his limits as well especially since it didn’t have the Z Gene awakened, he would sleep only when Daniel was running towards the destination.

Ropego’s job was to manipulate and observe Daniel and he always tried to do a great job. After five days of traveling the surroundings started to change, the wasteland wasn’t as hot as before and sometimes acid rain would fall from the heavens. The clouds were all irradiated due to the nuclear bombs that were launched during the fourth great world war, and boy the earth wasn’t ready for more nuclear weapons after the third world war.

Ropego had the information about the world wars in his brain and he liked to reminiscence about it from time to time, he lived during that time and he still missed the lazy days of laying on some soft hay in summer days, just laying around purring and sleeping soundly. Everything changed when the first nuclear bomb exploded.

Ropego shook his head and hid in Daniel’s military coat, he didn’t like rain, especially acid one. Daniel’s clothes weren’t simple as they were made from a material that was resistant to acid and the cruel environment of the post-apocalyptic earth, the Devil’s burning church was pretty good with their grunts and higher ranked members as they gave them good supplies like these clothes.

Daniel stopped near a giant sand dune which looked pretty sturdy, he decided to camp here for the night as he already ate some mutant critters and animals that he found along the way, Ropego even though he didn’t like the mutant meat he still ate it begrudgingly, he didn’t live in the bunker anymore so he couldn’t enjoy the special cat food that leader Baidoa would feed him.

Out of the cold dead wasteland, nothing could be heard but the howls of mutant beasts and the bone-chilling wind, the nights in the wasteland were deadly to any normal people, even mutated people could freeze to death during these cold nights, there weren’t even four seasons anymore, it was either extreme heat or extreme cold, they reached the peak of extremes during the day and the night in this part of the planet.

Life for the survivors of the war was extremely hard, those that ended up without shelter or the people that wouldn’t get into one of the cities would be either dead or slaves to random scavengers groups, scavenger groups would pray on random people they would find and either eat them if they found them tasty looking or do some unspeakable acts towards them then killing them, they only kept the more beautiful ones as slaves which they could abuse whenever they wanted.

Daniel found himself at gunpoint after he woke up, a midget with a rusted looking gun with a giant black beard balding head and crooked teeth was smiling at him, he had his own band of midgets that looked similary to him behind him shouting and harrowing vulgarities at Daniel.

Daniel didn’t like to be threatened thus he took the gun from the dwarf’s hands and bent it in such a way that the gun pointed at the dwarf instead of Daniel.

The dwarf immediately started sweating intensely at Daniel’s feat of strength, he scampered in the ground and started drilling like a mole escaping quickly with his crowd of tiny people behind him.

Daniel scratched his head, this was a weird encounter, he wasn’t sure what the dwarf-like people were shouting earlier as they spoke a strange language that was unknown to him.

Ropego’s eyes were shining as he looked at the holes that the dwarf people left behind and he muttered to himself:

“Those little guys started to leave their city…”

Daniel wanted more information but Ropego said that he didn’t need to burden himself with these guys right now, maybe later after he conquered the surface *cough cough* I mean liberated the surface.

Ten days past and Daniel was getting nearer and nearer to the jungle, he could already see some silhouettes of the extremely tall trees on the very distant horizon using his enhanced vision. Daniel decided it was time to train some more, he only knew the basics of punching and footwork from Ropego, the cat looked like he had more knowledge that he could impart to him.

Daniel got up from the ground where he was resting and approached Ropego who was cleaning himself with his tongue nearby, Ropego looked at Daniel with a cute expression and asked him with not a such cute voice, even though Ropego looked like a cat his voice could be changed to be an adult male or even resemble a little child:

“What do you want boy? Don’t you see I’m cleaning myself now?”

Daniel wanted to chuckle at his words but he stopped himself and said:

“Ropego you haven’t taught me anything beyond the basics of boxing could you follow up, I feel like I would need to know more if I wanted to liberate the Earth at a quicker speed.”

Ropego nodded his little white head at Daniel, never suspecting that the brainwashing wore off from Daniel’s brain, he thought that he wanted to learn boxing to do what he literally told him right now, and that was to *liberate* the Earth faster.

Ropego stopped licking himself and started to instruct Daniel in a serious tone of voice:

“Ok, since you already know the basics on how to do a correct punch which you can put one hundred percent of your strength into, I will now teach you how to go beyond one hundred percent! You will be able to even put your whole strength into these punches combined with your Z Gene height and weight modification, this fighting style would be very good for you!”

Ropego started instructing him seriously after he said that teaching him jabs, hooks, how to dodge properly against an experienced fighter, of course, these techniques while useful to be learned had no foundation and they needed to be tempered in a fight, thus Ropego, unlike his usual lazier self, decided to spar with Daniel to temper the newly learned techniques and ingrain them in his brain.

Ropego stood on all fours looking at Daniel warily, Daniel’s power grew every day in small amounts now that he supplied this strength freak with a complementary technique, he would pretty much be unstoppable, of course, that would be against the lower-ranked people of the Devil’s burning church, A Devil Lord would give him quite the fight while a Devil Duke should be able to defeat him but not kill him only the Devil Gods would be able to kill Daniel.

And that’s without his Z Gene helix tree being fully awakened, Ropego was making assumptions right now as he didn’t know the Devil Gods and Dukes true power or the genes that they awakened if they were mutants or not. He just thought that the bunker’s experiment was a very high success that had instant power and extremely high potential.

Ropego made himself invisible ready to strike at Daniel whenever an opening would be made, and it didn’t take long, Daniel just learned how to fight properly, his technique was sloppy Ropego appeared quickly behind him and scratched at the back of his neck but Daniel smiled and was ready to throw a straight hook at Ropego and knock him out directly but all he hit was an afterimage!

Ropego’s speed wasn’t a joke, his speed gene and his mutation made him the perfect assassin, of course assassination techniques were very weak against the type of people like Daniel. True strength triumphed over anything else.

Ropego started to flash around as a black aura started to encase him increasing his speed even further, he was bringing out an ace to temper Daniel’s foundations in boxing!

Ropego’s speed started to overwhelm Daniel as cat claws started to appear around Daniel’s exposed vital points, Ropego either aimed for the eyes throat or neck, Daniel was hit all over but his wounds would close then scab in seconds afterward the scab would fall off revealing smooth skin.

After more than a few hours of fighting back and forth, Ropego shook his head Daniel learned faster than the average guy but he wasn’t talented at all at boxing! even though the technique was good for his body and gene he just wasn’t talented to learn fast enough. But it wasn’t a problem he didn’t have to learn fast, as long as he got even the bare basics of everything down he would be a powerhouse that couldn’t be defeated easily. He could still master the techniques with a long time of training, his life was extremely long as he awakened the Z Gene and it would get longer the more branches he awakened from the helix tree.

After both of them rested they decided to continue their journey towards the jungle city while also stopping from time to time so Daniel could train. Ropego also benefited from fighting Daniel every day, as his life was always in peril anytime Daniel would brush with his fur if he hit one of his legs he would be crippled! If he hit a vital location he would be dead. He told Daniel to not hold back during the spars and now he felt that he should have made him have a bit of restraint. Daniel wasn’t joking around when he fought Ropego, he was unleashing all the hidden rage he had inside of him whenever he fought Ropego.

And thus fifteen days past as Daniel made his way inside the jungle, it was the first time he saw such huge and tall trees, their height and width were immense! and if he saw things properly some trees had eyes and noses!

They looked at Daniel with wary looks on their faces seemingly sensing that his power was extremely high under his small body, small compared to them. The trees were at least a few tens of kilometers long and their width took at least one hundred meters. Such a huge jungle of trees of different species gave Daniel quite a strong impact. And unlike the wasteland, the jungle was full of vitality!

Tons of mutated animals could be seen in it, giant bears and there were even pythons with arms and legs. Koalas looked at you with threatening eyes and they had giant fags that drained the blood of the pythons with arms and legs.

Crocodiles who lived in the trees inside of rivers, they had feathered wings on their bodies and extremely long snouts that looked like an elephant’s trunk.

A lot of strange animals could be spotted in the newly arrived jungle, but the city was nowhere to be seen!

It seemed that the city was hidden either in the giant trees or deeper in the jungle or both! Ropego nodded at himself as a map was sent to his brain by Baidoa via his chip. Ropego patted Daniel’s shoulder with his paw and pointed in a south-west direction from where they stood and said:

“Move twenty kilometers in that direction then scale the biggest tree in the vicinity for fifty kilometers, we should be able to find the next city there, it’s one of the more populated city’s unlike City Magenta, this city is habituated by two hundred million people, twenty percent of the actual known population!”

After Ropego’s explanation, Daniel started to run at quick speeds across the trees trying to search and find the next city, after a few days of searching he finally found the biggest tree which he started to scale by actually running it upwards!

It looked like gravity couldn’t affect Daniel at all, but in reality, little tendrils on his feet kept him on the tree thus giving the illusion that there was no gravity.

After a day of scaling the tree, he finally found what he was looking for! The city was guarded by humans with bird wings who had a sword on their hips and they wore a different outfit compared to City Magenta, they all wore loose robes on their bodies and most of them had blonde hair and blue eyes. They had muscular bodies and even the most scrawny guard was very athletic looking.

Daniel approached the city guards, it was time for a new city adventure.