Two days later, the group of four were all awake together. In truth, it had only been an hour since the three who had collapsed from fatigue stirred again, and in that time Adela had proven her independence by managing to slay a stray Enraged-rank beast that crossed their path, adding to the meat they carried.
Fortunately for them, it had not yet begun to decompose; being the flesh of a mutated creature, it remained quite edible. Had it been before the chaos fifty years ago, even if the meat had been technically edible, the human body would never have been able to adapt to the world's altered mechanics, and thus could never have consumed such fare.
Naturally, even now, every mutated creature carried corrupted energy in its core, a substance that served as a fatal trigger to any human who absorbed it. Yet, thankfully, corrupted energy could neither be transmitted nor passed on through the consumption of their essence cores.
