Chapter 2

By the time the morning bell tolled, I was already suited up.

The spotless white cloak, symbolizing the highest honor of the Bastion of Dawn, perfectly concealed the boiling madness beneath this flesh.

During the morning assembly, I volunteered to the Grand Bishop to lead a patrol to the edge of the wasteland.

My reasoning: "I need battle to clear my head."

No one suspected a thing.

In their eyes, Chief Knight Sera Cross had always been a fanatic whose sole destiny was to purge monsters.

Before dispatching, Ironhand clapped a heavy hand on my shoulder.

"Be careful out there, Commander," he said, his rugged face etched with sincerity. "The outer perimeter ghouls are agitated lately. Don't push too aggressively."

I stared at him. The lowered head he had during my execution in my past life perfectly overlapped with his face right now.

"I will," I said, forcing my lips to curve. "Take care of yourself too."

Once we entered the wasteland, I used terrain reconnaissance as an excuse to break away from the main unit, sprinting at full speed through the dark red sandstorm.

The flashing memories of the past ten years had provided me with a crystal-clear map of all of Karl's trump cards.

The reason he could achieve high-tier evolution at such terrifying speeds was that Ira had been secretly "feeding" him the core resources of the Bastion of Dawn.

My target right now was his first batch of "feed."

Over ten kilometers away, at the outskirts of Wasteland Mine No. 2.

There was a secret transport relay here that the Church knew absolutely nothing about.

The four elite death-sworn guards didn't even have the chance to draw their blades before I cleanly snapped their necks.

I threw off the insulated tarpaulin. Beneath it sat exactly six crates of highly purified 'Dark Ore', along with an 'Experimental Serum' sealed within a specialized cryogenic container.

The former could reconstruct the skeleton of a high-tier ghoul, and the latter was a concentrated virus Ira had extracted through live human experimentation on refugees.

Holding nothing back, I shoved them all into my storage pack.

Next, I forced my unique golden Sacred Flame onto my fingertips and burned a forged Priority Requisition Order into their logistics terminal.

The paper trail was flawless.

Even if Ira discovered the supplies were missing, she'd be forced to swallow her losses in silence.

Without this batch of resources, Karl's invincible physique would be delayed by at least half a year.

Shortly after I rejoined my unit, we were ambushed by a ghoul pack.

If it were the past, I would have instantly transformed into a blinding sphere of holy light and charged into enemy lines.

But now, holding my Mythril broadsword, I stood on an elevated ridge and watched coldly.

I was searching for the perfect pathogen to trigger the "Resonance Mutation."

Soon, a Tier-2 Agility-type Ghoul entered my line of sight. The dark red veins bulged against its skin like thick roots, making it far more violently bloodthirsty than ordinary ghouls.

The moment it lunged at a rookie knight, I finally moved.

The blade became a blur. It precisely severed the ghoul's leg tendons in mid-air, before driving straight down through its spine, pinning it firmly to the earth.

While my comrades were engaged in a bitter fight on the other side, I used the cover of my wide cloak to draw a specialized blood-extraction syringe, plunging it viciously into the thick artery next to the monster's heart.

A full vial of jet-black heart's blood, bearing hyper-active infectious properties, was silently tucked away into my hidden pocket.

"Commander, is there something unusual about this one?" The rescued rookie ran over, looking at me with awe and fear.

"Nothing," I replied calmly, ripping my broadsword free and smoothly decapitating the ghoul in the follow-through. "Just standard trash."

That night.

The Bastion of Dawn fell into its deepest slumber.

I changed into pitch-black, non-reflective tactical gear, melting into the night like a ghost.

I could recite the Silverwing Knights' patrol routes and blind spots with my eyes closed.

Moving unimpeded, I infiltrated the Bastion's most heavily guarded restricted zone—The Sacred Blood Vault.

This was where the Church's purified "Sacred Blood Essence" was stored.

In my past life, Ira used the excuse of "vaccine research" to hand these life-saving materials entirely to Karl to accelerate his evolution.

Inside the climate-controlled vault, the dark red essence vials glowed faintly behind bulletproof glass.

I pulled out my pack, moving with lightning speed and zero hesitation. One vial, two vials, ten vials... In just five short minutes, a full half of the vault's high-purity Sacred Blood was swept into my bag.

With the materials to become the perfect mutant now fully gathered, it was time for the next step—Willing Infection.

4:00 AM, in the basement of an abandoned church on the edge of the wasteland.

Another Tier-2 Ghoul—one that I had secretly crippled and smuggled here during the day—was pinned securely to a wooden cross with chains as thick as my wrist.

I poured the hijacked Dark Ore powder, the experimental serum, and a vial of Sacred Blood Essence into a single container. Immediately, a violently boiling chemical reaction erupted.

Then, I unsheathed my military-grade combat knife and, without even blinking, slashed a deep, bone-exposing wound across my own left wrist.

Dark gold blood, radiating the searing heat of the Sacred Flame, gushed out instantly.

I suspended my wrist right over the ghoul's cracked, snarling lips, letting the blood drip down freely.

Hiss—

Like ice water dropping into boiling oil, the ghoul convulsed frantically as if electrocuted. The Blood Plague inside it sensed its natural predator and instinctively tried to reject it, releasing a harrowing shriek that I ruthlessly choked off by gripping its throat.

This was the first step recorded in the Church's forbidden texts: Absolute Rejection.

Next, all I had to do was voluntarily loosen the suppression of my Sacred Flame and guide the monster into taking a bite of my flesh...

Just then, my spine violently stiffened.

From the deepest corner of the basement, from behind a row of collapsed wooden pews, came an incredibly faint sound.

It wasn't the wind, nor was it a rat.

It was the deliberately hushed sound of breathing, accompanied by a faint trace of bitter almond—a scent utterly unique to a highly-restrained, high-tier ghoul.

Something had been lurking in the dark, watching me perform this blasphemous experiment the entire time.

I didn't look back.

Letting the blood from my wrist go drip, drop against the stone floor, I picked up a strip of white cloth and unhurriedly bandaged my wound, my voice echoing through the darkness with icy detachment:

"Come out. Aren't you tired of hiding for so long?"