Chapter 3
Stepping out from the darkness was a profoundly anomalous ghoul.
Its frame was gaunt, its skin a necrotic, deep ash-grey.
But the most bizarre feature was its eyes—not the bloodthirsty crimson of an ordinary ghoul, but a rare, extremely clear pair of silver-white pupils.
It didn't assume any offensive posture. It simply stood quietly at the edge of the shadows, watching me.
I ignored it.
I voluntarily retracted the sharp edge of the Sacred Flame within my body, allowing the frenzied Tier-2 ghoul on the cross to open its bloody maw and ruthlessly clamp its jaws down on my bleeding left wrist.
Crunch—
As its razor-sharp bone teeth pierced my flesh, the jet-black blood—a volatile mixture of high-tier resources and experimental serum—poured frantically through the wound and into my veins.
The Sacred Flame and the Blood Plague were inherently mortal enemies.
The very instant both collided within my body, a terrifying conflict erupted.
The Tier-2 ghoul biting me didn't even have the chance to let out a scream; its internal organs were instantly pulverized by the tyrannical power surging backward from my body. It slumped into a puddle of mush, completely and utterly dead.
Pulling my wrist free, I casually wiped away the blackened blood with my thumb, then turned to look at the silver-white eyes in the shadows.
"Have you been tracking me?" My voice was perfectly steady, showing not the slightest hint of weakness from having just ingested a lethal virus.
It remained silent for a moment. Then, from its throat came harsh, stiff human words that sounded like grinding sandpaper: "I... sensed it. The scent on you... it is different from theirs."
"If you want to live, get lost." I casually tore a bandage with my teeth, tightly wrapping my wrist as I stood up and walked toward the exit. "You'd best not watch what happens next."
The footsteps behind me were imperceptible.
It didn't leave. Like a stubborn ghost, it merely retreated deeper into the shadows, continuing to observe me from the dark.
I couldn't be bothered to care.
Because I knew full well, the true nightmare was only just beginning.
For the three days following my return to the Bastion of Dawn, I acted no differently than usual.
Patrols, inspections, routine prayers. No one could spot the slightest anomaly on the Chief Holy Knight's placid face.
But I alone knew that the mutation had already begun.
At first, it was just a faint, icy numbness starting from the bite mark on my left wrist, slowly creeping along my veins. It felt as if thousands of microscopic ice needles were racing madly beneath my flesh.
When night fell and the heavy iron doors of the barracks locked shut, the true torment descended.
I curled up alone in the darkest, sunless solitary confinement cell deep within the base.
Two extreme forces of piercing cold and searing heat turned my body into the most brutal battlefield imaginable.
The grim chill of the Blood Plague attempted to freeze my bone marrow, trying to drag me down into the abyss of mindless beasts. Meanwhile, the residual Sacred Flame reacted like an enraged lion, burning furiously in an attempt to incinerate the intruder.
My muscles spasmed violently beyond my control. My bones let out teeth-aching cracks, as if I was being snapped inch by inch from the inside, then brutally pieced back together.
But the most excruciating agony was the tearing of my consciousness.
The Blood Plague hit my mental defenses like a tidal wave, crashing down over and over again. It tried to wipe away my sanity and replace it with pure, bloodthirsty savagery.
I bit down completely on a thick wad of canvas shoved in my mouth. My hands clamped onto the reinforced steel bedframe like iron vises, my ten fingers forcibly pressing deep indentations into the metal.
I used the bone-deep hatred accumulated across two lifetimes as my fortress, defending the absolute core of my lucidity to the death.
Karl and Ira wanted me dead? I absolutely refused!
They wanted me to become a mindless monster?
Even if I became a monster, I would be a monster sitting upon their corpses!
On the fifth day of the mutation, at the outer perimeter of the wasteland.
I was leading a routine purge mission.
The continuous cellular reconstruction had pushed my physical condition to the brink of collapse.
My vision occasionally blurred, my breathing was heavy, and a sickly, ashen cold sweat even seeped from my palms.
Just as we passed through the ruins of an old-world highway overpass, a colossal mass suddenly lunged from the shadows overhead.
It was a terrifyingly massive Tier-3 Heavy Ghoul.
The exoskeleton on its body had evolved a metallic luster. Its descending speed and force were like an armor-piercing shell crashing directly into the center of our formation.
Before anyone could react, our defensive line was torn to shreds.
"Careful, Commander!" Ironhand had just raised his shield before he was sent flying by the immense shockwave.
The Tier-3 ghoul rolled its crimson eyes. Roaring, it swung a bone blade capable of cleaving an armored vehicle in half, hacking straight down at my seemingly weakened body.
In this life-or-death fraction of a second, the two forces butchering each other inside my body bizarrely reached a momentary synergy in order to protect their host.
Boom—
The world abruptly slowed down in my eyes.
My speed shattered the absolute limits of human physiology in an instant, moving twice as fast as my peak.
Without even drawing my sword, I stepped into its strike. Braving the stench of blood, my right hand slid past its bone-blade defense as easily as reaching into my own pocket, and clamped ruthlessly around its thick throat.
A surge of power pumped from my heart and erupted down my arm.
It carried the searing heat of the Sacred Flame, but it was no longer a blinding, pure gold light.
Wreathing the edges of that golden glow was a layer of tyrannical, magma-like dark gold.
Crack!
Exerting force with a single hand, I crushed the Tier-3 ghoul's bulletproof cervical vertebrae to powder right then and there, as easily as snapping rotten wood.
Dark-gold flames spread down its neck. Before it could even utter a scream of agony, the massive beast collapsed onto the ground with a heavy thud.
The surroundings fell into a dead silence.
It took several seconds before the blown-away knights unsteadily climbed to their feet in shock. Ironhand looked at the charred corpse, then looked at me, his eyes brimming with absolute awe. "Commander... your power... Did you awaken a new form of the Sacred Flame?"
I slowly lowered my hand, crushing the residual dark-gold sparks in my fist, and looked at them expressionlessly.
"Perhaps. Move out."
Awakening? Only I knew this was no divine grace. This was the abyss opening its arms to me.
The Third Form Mutation was taking shape.
Meanwhile, back at the Bastion of Dawn, within the underground Inner Court.
Ira dismissed all the guards and stood alone in front of the glass safe in the Sacred Blood Vault.
The surveillance showed no anomalies. The records were flawless.
But she was the Saintess with the sharpest affinity for the Holy Light the Church had seen in a century.
Closing her eyes, she lightly trailed her fingertips through the air, her brows furrowing tighter and tighter.
The records were correct, but she detected a subtle anomaly in the residual energy traces.
She didn't raise an alarm. Instead, she quietly launched her own investigation, simultaneously passing word to Karl via their secret channel.
Half an hour later, at the highest pinnacle of Ironthorn City.
Karl lounged on his throne of bones, listening to the secret report from the Bastion of Dawn. At first, he merely sneered in contempt.
But when a ghoul stalker returned from the wasteland church, trembling as it presented a copied scent sample of the residual energy, Karl's laughter abruptly ceased.
It was an extremely dangerous, hybrid aura.
The tyrannical Blood Plague and pure Sacred Flame—like two rabid beasts locked inside the same cage—exuded an oppressive pressure that made even high-tier ghouls instinctively shudder.
Karl's dark-red pupils instantly constricted into dangerous slits.
He realized it. A terrifying bloodline capable of rivaling his own was being born!
The seventh day of mutation.
At 4:00 AM, I collapsed onto the freezing floor of the solitary confinement cell.
The veins all over my body throbbed violently. Large, dark-red web-like patterns surfaced on my skin, only to be forcibly suppressed by the golden light of the Sacred Flame.
My consciousness was like a solitary boat in a violent storm, threatening to capsize at any moment.
Right in the middle of this torturous tug-of-war, chaotic and hurried footsteps suddenly rang out from above.
"Hurry! Surround the Commander's barracks! Don't let a single fly escape!"
"What happened?" someone whispered forcefully.
"A Supreme Holy Order from the Chief Elder! Saintess Ira personally testified that a heretic lurking in the upper echelons is conducting a blasphemous Blood Plague infection experiment... They're coming for the Chief Holy Knight!"
The footsteps grew denser, the heavy military boots striking the stone floor like a death-knell drum.
Lying in the darkness drenched in cold sweat, I listened to the commotion outside. The suppressed, pain-filled breaths rattling in my chest ultimately transformed into a faint, incredibly cold chuckle.
You came fast.
Your Holiness!
She noticed something was wrong much earlier than in my past life. So she wanted to strike preemptively, pinning me to the pillar of shame with the crime of "willing corruption."
