Chapter 3

The rains of the wasteland always came without warning.

The sky was like a torn black curtain, pouring down murky, highly radioactive acid rain.

Wearing a high-tier anti-radiation suit I had snatched from the cellar, I lay prone on top of an abandoned cooling tower.

Through the faint shimmer of my [Eye of True Sight], I looked down from a high vantage point at the ragged tin shack a few hundred meters away.

Truth be told, having acquired the supplies and the black-market pass, I could have easily used the cover of night to fly far away and start anew in a safe human settlement. But I didn't.

How could I just walk away?

In my previous life, Eric laughed hysterically in Marcus's arms, watching mutant hounds crush my bones one by one while my parents sneered, their eyes full of vindictive pleasure.

Those three pieces of trash, as well as Marcus—that high-and-mighty tyrant of Zone A—each owed me a life.

If I just let them die quietly in the wilderness, eaten by some random blind beast, this revenge would be far too boring.

I wanted to watch with my own eyes as they gleefully walked into the Zone A fortress, obtained their dream life, and then were dragged straight into hell by the very monster they elevated to the altar.

That was the retribution they deserved.

Before long, three figures, supporting each other like beaten dogs, crawled out of the dilapidated shack.

It was the one-armed George, the traumatized Martha, and Eric, who was surrounded by his parents as if he were made of fragile glass.

"To Zone A... only by reaching Zone A can I get the best medical treatment and receive the offerings I deserve..." Eric's decayed face, a mess of torn flesh, looked incredibly hideous in the gloom.

He was as shriveled as an old man, yet his eyes burned with sick arrogance.

Eric puffed out his chest with extreme conceit. Forcing the glowing crystal on his chest to activate, he ignored the "Mutant Beast Warning" sign painted with a red skull on the outskirts of the slums and stepped straight into the wasteland.

I silently dropped down from the cooling tower, trailing them from a distance, watching them struggle forward.

They hadn't gone far when several pairs of scarlet eyes lit up in the thick mist of the acid rain.

It was the most infamous scavengers of the wasteland—a pack of Red-Eyed Mutant Hyenas.

Five or six monsters the size of small calves blocked their path, saliva dripping from their jagged fangs into the acid rain.

"Ah! Monsters!" Martha shrieked in terror, her legs going weak. George, too, froze.

However, Eric didn't run.

He shot a disdainful glance at the hyenas and actually stepped forward, opening his arms like a true deity.

"A pack of lowly beasts dare to block the god of the New World?"

As he willed it, the bluish-purple crystal on his chest suddenly burst with blinding light.

Immediately after, with a massive Boom, a visible deep-purple ring forcefield swept outward with him at the center, instantly slicing through the leaping mutant hyenas.

There was no blood splatter, no agonized howls.

The ferocious hyenas didn't even have time to react. The moment they touched the forcefield, they were shredded into a mist of blood by some high-frequency oscillation, leaving no bones behind.

"Divine power! Unparalleled divine power!" George dropped to his knees in the acid rain, worshipping in pure ecstasy.

Hiding behind a radioactive rock in the distance, I watched Eric stroke his own ego, my eyes brimming with mockery.

Through the [Eye of True Sight], I saw the truth behind this so-called "ability" perfectly clearly.

It wasn't Eric commanding power at all.

The reality was that the Abyss Worm inside the crystal sensed extreme hostility from the outside.

Like a fierce beast protecting its food, the worm, to prevent its "incubator" from being destroyed by other animals, reflexively released a high-intensity destructive biological wave through the tentacles rooted in its host's bone marrow.

Eric thought his mind was linked to the power. In reality, he was nothing more than a "mobile lunchbox" being protected by a parasite.

Moreover, there is no such thing as free power in the wasteland.

Every overpowered energy output required an exorbitant amount of "fuel."

Eric’s arrogant smirk hadn't even faded from his face when his expression morphed into horror, and his entire body convulsed in agony.

In the vision of my [Eye of True Sight], the Abyss Worm larva—having just expended a massive amount of energy—was starving.

Unexpectedly, it didn't just feed; it initiated a parasitic replacement!

Those countless barbed, blue tentacles multiplied rapidly, plunging deep into Eric's liver and lungs, greedily sucking dry the life energy of those organs.

Immediately after, the crystal secreted a translucent, bug-like tissue that directly replaced the missing parts of his internal organs.

The Abyss Worm was claiming Eric’s body, piece by piece!

Gag—!

Eric let out a harrowing retch, dropped to his knees, and violently vomited a massive mouthful of thick, black blood.

Mixed into that puddle of black blood were over a dozen dark-red chunks of meat, the size of fingernails, devoid of life.

Those weren't chewed-up remnants. Those were his shriveled organs—drained of energy, deemed useless waste by the bug, and forcefully expelled and replaced!

"It hurts... something is writhing inside my chest..." Eric rolled in the mud, crying out in pain. Bathed in cold sweat and acid rain, his body visibly became even more withered, making him look like a desiccated zombie.

"Oh my god, son, what's happening to you!" George scrambled over in a panic.

But in the next second, the utterly ignorant Martha knelt with fanatical eyes. Cupping the muddy lumps of expelled organs in her hands, she praised loudly: "George, look! Don't panic! This is a miracle!"

"What nonsense are you saying? Our son is vomiting blood!"

"You don't understand!" Martha screamed neurotically. "Eric just used his divine power; he is automatically discarding his weak, mortal organs! This is the necessary path for a god shedding his mortal coil! He is reshaping his divine body!"

Hearing Martha's words, George froze, and then the worry in his eyes instantly transformed into ecstasy: "Yes! Yes! It's incredible! Son, hold on! Once you completely vomit out all these useless mortal impurities and are reborn, you will be a true immortal god!"

Even Eric, who was on the verge of passing out from pain, was enveloped by this false psychological anesthetic.

Incredibly, enduring the tearing agony of his innards being replaced by a living creature, he forced out a sickly smile uglier than crying: "Yes... I am a god... I am shedding my mortal body..."

Watching this scene, I almost couldn't hold back my laughter.

It was the pinnacle of irony.

A piece of trash whose body was slowly being seized by an alien parasite, violently expelling his own ruined organs, paired with two lunatic parents who mistook a body snatcher for a "divine metamorphosis."

For the sake of their delusional vanity, this pathetic family was teaming up to personally send themselves to hell. I wouldn't even need to draw my blade.

The grueling and brutal trek lasted an entire day and night.

By continually overdrawing his own life and flesh to feed the Abyss Worm, the skeletal Eric unleashed the "ability" a few more times to scatter roaming beast packs.

Almost a third of his internal organs had been replaced by insect tissue by the time he finally dragged his parents through the wasteland thunderstorms to the towering structure that symbolized absolute power and the hope of survival.

Zone A Fortress.

Thick alloy outer walls soaring hundreds of meters into the sky, bristling with dense clusters of heavy artillery. It looked like an iron behemoth hibernating in the middle of the wasteland.

"We're here... finally... here..."

Eric let out a ghastly chuckle. The crystal on his chest—fueled by continuous, violent growth—erupted with a blinding bluish-purple light. To my eyes, that was the dangerous signal that the true body of the Abyss Worm had fully awakened and was beginning the countdown to total assimilation.

Then, his eyes rolled back, and he collapsed outside the fortress’s heavy alloy gates like a pile of rotting meat, completely losing consciousness.

"The Son of God has arrived! Open up! Open this door and welcome your god!" George waved his single remaining arm, screaming hysterically at the walls above.

Flash! Flash! Flash!

Over a dozen high-energy searchlights, millions of candlepower strong, instantly swept down from the walls, locking dead onto the three people outside the gate.

Following that, with a massive mechanical rumble, the heavy alloy gates slowly cracked open.

A squad of heavily armed Royal Guards of Zone A's ruler, clad in heavy exoskeleton armor and wielding Gauss rifles, filed out.

A soldier holding an energy scanner pointed it at the unconscious Eric. The device instantly let out an ear-piercing, high-frequency alarm.

"Sir! Detecting horrifying, unknown biological energy fluctuations! The intensity... it’s breaking straight through the S-Class threshold!" a soldier reported in shock.

A man looking like a commanding officer strode forward. Staring at the bizarre crystal glowing intermittently on Eric's chest, entirely unaware that it was a lethal bomb, his eyes instantly filled with extreme greed and awe.

Not all Awakened possessed crystals, but the lucky few who fused with an "extraterrestrial crystal" always became terrifyingly strong. That was the recognized iron law of the wasteland.

"Quick! Deploy the highest-grade medical hovercar immediately! Take him to Lord Marcus! We’ve found an absolute treasure!"

George and Martha danced with joy, following the hovercar through the gates with smug, triumphant faces.

The heavy gates began to close again with a deep rumble.

Standing in the wasteland’s pouring rain, I flipped up the hood of my anti-radiation suit, patted the black-market pass in my pocket, and similarly began walking toward the fortress.