During his training, he felt his tendons, bones, muscles, heart, and blood vessels strengthening at a visibly rapid pace. However, this was actually just a hallucination from his nervous system due to the stimulant.
Noid felt that the SNG-26 Hormone Stimulant was truly a miraculous drug for people who loved to train. The sensation of his body continuously growing stronger in a short amount of time was like a drug to them. Moreover, the only side effect was a slight hallucination from the nervous system.
Even a person with Noid's lazy disposition felt a bit excited and intensified his training.
However, he didn't know that the very first version of the stimulant, SNG-1, was originally a poison. SNG-1 tricked the brain and entire nervous system into thinking the body was metabolizing and digesting faster, causing a sensation of intense hunger even when the user was well-nourished. This was one of the greatest weapons used in torturing prisoners, as it could make them experience the suffering of 20 days of starvation in just 17 minutes.
Later, the SNG-1 stimulant was discovered and improved. After a great deal of time and effort, the most perfect version, SNG-26, was created.
Noid was excitedly training, completely unaware that he was about to find out why the SNG-26 stimulant, despite being so effective, was not popular in its original world.
After training for about an hour, he suddenly felt a slight blockage in his abdomen, which quickly turned into a feeling that something wanted to "explode." Noid was horrified. At that moment, almost all of his human instincts kicked in. He dashed into the restroom at a speed comparable to a sprinter and locked the door.
More than ten minutes passed, and all his excitement was gone, replaced by endless horror. Noid swore that if the substance he excreted didn't have a smell and wasn't so grotesque, he would never touch this stuff again.
To the system, this side effect wasn't a side effect; it was more like a part of the process.
The proof was that he now felt his body was better. Before using the stimulant, things flowed smoothly, but Noid always felt a slight discomfort. More accurately, it felt a little choked up, like he could breathe normally, but there was something caught in his throat.
Now the process is complete. On one hand, his body was moving and digesting, and on the other, it was expelling impurities and waste. Because the stimulant enhanced his digestive abilities, what he expelled was just useless waste and impurities.
After the impurities were expelled, the stimulant's effects also wore off. His body returned to normal, but heat was still radiating from him in waves, as if he had just stepped out of a sauna.
He shook his body a bit, then took a deep breath. A syringe containing a golden liquid appeared in Noid's hand.
The training with the stimulant was just a warm-up. The real thing he was looking forward to was this syringe of Reinforcement Fluid.
Without a moment's hesitation, he plunged the syringe into his vein. The fluid that flowed out of the syringe was not a liquid but a high-concentration energy that had been liquefied, and then repeatedly diluted and filtered so it could be used by people with a value below 1.0.
Otherwise, pouring condensed high-concentration energy into the body wouldn't make a person stronger; it would turn them into a bomb.
The reinforcement fluid spread to every cell. Noid felt as if thousands of ants were biting and tearing at him from the inside, and he collapsed to the floor in pain. Not only that, his skin became horribly itchy. He didn't dare to scratch, he could only roll around on the floor.
It took three hours for the fluid to be fully absorbed. Noid didn't get up immediately, because he had no strength left. Although the reinforcement fluid used its own energy to perform the strengthening, he didn't consume much energy. However, enduring the sensation of the strengthening required a great deal of mental effort. So even though Noid was now filled with strength, he didn't want to move a single finger.
Half an hour later, he finally sat up, his clothes soaked with sweat. Noid felt very thirsty. He grabbed a large bottle of water and chugged the entire thing. Only then did he feel better.
Noid took off his clothes and went to take a shower. In just one day, his body, which had no muscles, had become a size larger, and the outlines of his muscles had started to appear. And it seemed he had also grown a little taller.
His whole body was hot, and his skin, which was like red-hot clay, was cooled by the water from the showerhead. Noid guessed that his value had reached 0.7, or was very close to it.
…
"Are you sure no one followed us?"
"Yeah, I checked carefully. I even took a few detours on the way."
Two doom cult followers were whispering to each other, looking smug that they had shaken off any trackers, unaware that 100 meters away, Noid was coldly observing their every move.
The two followers continued to move. He followed behind, always maintaining a distance of 100 meters. They stopped in front of a normal, unlit house. From the darkness, a masked man came out and checked the two followers.
Seeing that they were his own people, the masked man relaxed. The two followers disappeared into the darkness of the house.
Lately, in district 20, rumors had been circulating about a masked warrior hunting down the doom cult. At first, the cult members just snorted in contempt, viewing it as a rumor created by the people to shake their morale. However, as the number of lairs dismantled at night increased, the truth became clearer. There really was someone hunting them.
The opponent wore a dark windbreaker, and beneath it, black armor plates, an oval helmet, and two cold, round green eyes. In his hands, he held a gun and a staff.
All cult members who operated outside at night had to perform counter-tracking every time they returned and undergo a final check before being allowed into the stronghold. If they didn't pass, they would be killed on the spot.
A few minutes after the two followers went in, the sound of footsteps echoed from the road near the house in the dark of night. The masked man was startled. He cautiously moved out of the door, his hand on the gun at his waist, a knife in his other hand.
The masked man planned to hide near the door and ambush, but when he swung his knife, it cut through only air. The only thing he remembered was a cold voice.
"Wrong direction."
The masked man, paralyzed and losing consciousness, was caught by Noid, who then gently placed him down without a sound. After that, his figure was swallowed by the darkness of the house.