Chapter 1

In my past life, I ripped the alien parasite from my brother’s chest to save him. Instead, my family accused me of being jealous of his "god-tier" awakening. They shattered my legs and threw me to a tyrant's mutant hounds.

Reborn on the exact day he fused with that crystal core, I faced my parents who wanted to drain my spinal fluid to "power up" my brother. This time, I just sneered and backed off.

You thought sacrificing me would earn you a god’s blessing? You thought shoving me into the deadly radiation mines would be my end? When I claw my way back to the surface clad in supreme battle armor, I will quietly watch as that monster you worshipped as a god bursts from his chest and chews you all into a bloody pulp, bite by bite!

Chapter 1

Pain.

The phantom pain of something tearing my throat apart made my eyes snap open.

The first things I saw were a blackened, moldy wooden bed and a leaking tin roof.

Outside, the deadliest acid rain of the wasteland was pouring down, pattering sickeningly as it corroded the impoverished shantytown. The air reeked of pungent sulfur and sour, low-grade motor oil.

This is... my old place in the radiation zone!

Have I been reborn?!

Reborn to the time before I extracted that so-called "God-tier crystal"—which was actually a parasite egg—from my brother's chest!

In my past life, my brother, Eric, found this glowing crystal in a garbage dump, and it eerily melted into his chest.

Our parents went crazy with joy.

They firmly believed it was a "God-given S-Class Ability Crystal Core," and that Eric was the deity who would lead our whole family to greatness.

But because I had awakened the Eye of True Sight, I could see a living creature writhing inside that crystal. I knew it was dangerous.

I desperately pinned Eric to the bed and used a knife to carve that perilous thing out of his chest!

As a result, my parents and brother believed I was just jealous of his S-Class awakening. George smashed my leg with an iron pipe, and Martha blinded my left eye with a sewing needle.

They cursed me as a "vicious bastard jealous of his brother's talent."

Yet, I couldn't bring myself to sever my ties with them. On our way to the Safe Zone, I protected those three useless pieces of trash, losing an arm to a mutated beast and ending up half-human, half-ghost.

When we finally reached Zone A and entered that fortress symbolizing absolute power...

Those two parents, attempting to climb the social ladder, offered Eric up to Marcus, the tyrant of Zone A who had peculiar fetishes.

The handsome and delicate Eric immediately won Marcus's favor. But his very first act after crossing class boundaries was to exact revenge on me. He threw me into the beast gladiator arena, where I was chewed to the bone by mutated hounds.

Right before I died, my brother smiled venomously. "Hahaha! That’s for ruining my path to godhood! Now it's your turn to be tortured!"

My parents showed no emotion, only watching me with cold sneers.

It wasn't until the literal last second of my life that I finally understood: in their eyes, I was never family. I was just a consumable.

Back in the present, before I could even take a deep breath, fingers like withered bones violently clamped down on my right hand.

"Let go! Let go, you little beast!"

A shriveled, piercing curse exploded in my ear.

My biological mother—Martha—was clawing at my wrist like a starving wolf fighting for scraps. To pry my fingers open, she dug her sharp nails into my flesh until I bled.

I was tightly clutching a faintly glowing test tube.

It was an extremely precious vial of B-Class anti-radiation serum.

I had traded three broken ribs in a life-and-death struggle with three Mutated Poison Rats in the outer radiation zone just to bring back this precious medicine.

I was currently suffering from severe radiation sickness, my lungs wheezing like broken bellows. Without this serum, I wouldn't live out the next three months.

But looking at my hysterical mother in front of me, and then at my father, George, standing in the shadows nearby, I suddenly smiled, my mouth filled with the taste of blood.

Unlike my past life, I didn't fiercely guard this life-saving medicine. Instead, I willingly loosened my grip.

Martha snatched the serum away. Without so much as a glance at me coughing up blood, she turned and threw herself fanatically toward the only other reasonably clean bed in the room.

Lying there was my younger brother, Eric.

Eric was half-naked, his face pale, but his eyes carried a sickly fanaticism.

Right in the center of the flesh of his chest, embedded deeply, was a fist-sized crystal emitting an eerie bluish-purple glow.

"Mom, hurry up and give it to me... I can feel it! The crystal core is calling for energy. With this serum, I can definitely complete my first evolution!" Eric stared at the serum, his voice trembling.

Martha didn't hesitate. She jammed the needle into Eric's vein and pushed my life-saving medicine into his bloodstream.

My father, George, also leaned in, hands clasped together, neurotically chanting, "Praise the gods, praise evolution..."

In this wasteland world devastated by nuclear radiation and mutated beasts, just surviving was a luxury for the bottom-tier slum dwellers.

Legend had it that only a very few lucky individuals could merge with the "extraterrestrial crystals" that fell from the sky, awakening powerful abilities to become New Humans.

As long as you awakened an ability, you could directly enter the paradise-like "Zone A Safe Fortress," eating pure synthetic meat every meal, never having to smell acid rain and dead rats ever again.

I watched the ecstatic family of three by the bed, my eyes full of mockery.

"Brother, don't look at me with those resentful eyes."

Reveling in the cool sensation of the high-grade medicine entering his veins, Eric turned and shot me a condescending glare.

Suddenly, he craned his neck and let out a low growl of pure pleasure.

A visible, scorching wave of air rippled outward from his body, rattling the tin walls.

The shriveled veins on Eric's body instantly bulged, brimming with power.

"Oh! Incredible power!" George trembled with excitement.

"My son is a god! A god of the wasteland!" Martha wept tears of joy.

Eric beamed, looking at me. "Once I fully awaken my power and become a big shot in Zone A, just tossing you a few scraps will be enough for you to live comfortably in the slums for the rest of your life. Handing over that medicine to me was your honor."

Honor?

Suppressing the bloody froth in my throat, I sneered inwardly.

A barely perceptible eerie blue light quietly bloomed in the deepest part of my pupils.

[Eye of True Sight]—my actual awakened wasteland ability, capable of penetrating all illusions to see energy and true essence.

In my past life, it was relying on this half-ruined Eye of True Sight that I managed to guide these three pieces of trash safely past dangers and into the Safe Zone.

Suddenly, the world before me shed its superficial shell.

Inside that bluish-purple "God-given crystal" worshipped by my parents, I clearly saw the truth—

It wasn't an ability core at all. It was a translucent egg!

Inside the eggshell curled a nauseating, multi-legged, segmented parasite.

This was the larvae of an "Abyss Worm," the most terrifying high-tier xenomorph from the depths of the wasteland.

Its countless tentacles, finer than human hair, had already rooted deeply into Eric's heart, lungs, and spine.

That blinding blue light just now wasn't an ability awakening; it was this larva frantically siphoning Eric's life force!

As the B-Class serum entered his body, the larva greedily gorged itself, growing a size larger. To placate its host, it released a highly concentrated hallucinogenic neurotoxin.

That was the truth behind Eric feeling an "explosion of power."

He was trading away his life, acting as a petri dish for an alien monster that could burst out of his chest at any moment.

But in this life, I would never be that pathetic pushover again.

Not only will I not stop it, but I will magnify your greed infinitely. I will personally escort you fools—who worship a ticking time bomb as a god—to meet your master, Marcus.

I can't wait to see the hilarious expressions on your bastard faces when that bug matures and crawls out of Eric's body!

Just as I was sneering, a sudden change occurred.

"Ahhh—!!"

Eric, who had been arrogant just a moment ago, suddenly let out a shrill, agonizing scream.

He bent over in pain, like a boiling shrimp, as the crystal on his chest began to flash frantically with red light.

"It hurts! Something is biting my heart! Help! Mom, save me!"

I could see it perfectly clearly with the Eye of True Sight.

Because the Abyss Worm larva had grown too fast, the energy from the B-Class serum was instantaneously depleted.

It was hungry. Throwing a tantrum, it frantically churned Eric's heart with its barbed tentacles.

It needed higher-grade, fresher biomass energy!

"Eric! What's wrong?!" Martha screamed, throwing herself at the bedside.

"Not enough energy! There's not enough energy for the evolution!"

George, like an ant on a hot pan, snapped his head around, his bloodshot eyes frantically scouring the empty room.

Soon, like a starving hyena, he locked eyes onto me—huddled in the corner, seemingly weak and powerless.

The temperature in the room felt like it had dropped to freezing.

I saw the undisguised malice and greed in George's eyes. That was absolutely not the look of a father looking at his son. It was the look of a butcher staring at livestock.

"Victor."

George suddenly softened his voice, so gentle it was blood-curdling.

"Your brother is dying. As long as he can get through this hurdle and reach Zone A, our whole family won't have to struggle in this mud pit anymore, right?"

As he spoke, he dragged a rusty toolbox out from under the bed.

"I've heard that in the New Human black market, spinal fluid from an Awakened is a far purer energy liquid than serum..."

Hearing this, Martha froze for a second, then gritted her teeth.

Not only did she not stop him, but she pulled an iron rod from the corner, tacitly blocking the broken wooden door—the only exit.

"Victor, Mom is begging you! Your brother is a genius, and you are the older brother. What's wrong with making a little sacrifice?"

Martha's face twisted into a monster's under the weight of her extreme favoritism and selfishness. "You're infected with radiation anyway, you aren't going to live long. At least make a contribution to your brother!"

These bastard parents!

I clenched my fists tight.