Chapter 2

Stepping out of the climate-controlled contract hall, a heavy, suffocating wall of air hit my face.

The asphalt beneath my boots was already starting to turn sticky.

The temperature was skyrocketing, already far exceeding normal seasonal averages. Yet, to the oblivious crowds around us, this was nothing more than a rare heatwave.

Only I knew exactly what this meant.

I looked down at the fragile weight in my arm.

The White Wolf King, Sirius, let out a soft, uncertain whine, his ice-blue eyes fixed on me.

He was nothing but skin and bones right now, a pitiful, shivering ball of white fluff.

"Don't worry," I muttered softly, my thumb gently tracing the coarse fur behind his ears. "I won't abandon you."

Before my rebirth, the earth had turned into a literal geothermal purgatory, relentlessly baked under temperatures reaching 80°C.

The ground cracked and bled, crops turned to ash, and rivers boiled.

In that past life, I was the one chained down by Naga, the water snake.

Just because of that low-tier beast's measly water abilities, I became the ultimate survival tool for my whole family.

I was forced to maintain localized cooling zones and purify water day and night, completely drained dry under the crushing shackles of "family duty."

I let them live comfortably, but I fed my own soul and life into the furnace to do it.

Simon, the "perfect, filial brother" in the eyes of outsiders, had contracted Sirius in that life.

But top-tier bloodlines required an incredibly long time and absolutely massive amounts of resources to mature.

For months, the white wolf was just a weak, useless cub. In a world where every second was a fight for survival, it constantly required Simon's protection.

Inevitably, Simon grew to despise him.

To this day, I clearly remember the vicious sneer on my good brother's face, and how he maliciously kicked the starving pup away.

Simon tried countless times to abandon Sirius in the desolate wasteland to fend for himself. He couldn't directly kill the beast without suffering severe contractual backlash, so he chose lethal neglect and torture instead.

And my parents blindly favored Simon's cruelty.

They righteously ordered me to act as Simon's meat shield: "Protect your brother, Victor. It's the bare minimum you should do as an older brother."

I remember the look in the wolf pup's eyes right before he died—a gaze of utter, deadened emptiness born from absolute despair.

How agonizing it must have been, bound to a master who treated him like garbage and wished for his death every single day.

I felt Sirius tremble in my arms, snapping me back to reality.

The pup instinctively nuzzled my chest, seeking a companion's warmth amidst the growing sweltering heat of the environment.

Simon thought he was a genius.

He thought he had cheated fate by stealing Naga first, smugly planning to reenact my route from the past life. He believed he could hide comfortably behind the water snake's barrier and continue forcing me to tank all the lethal dangers for him.

What a pity.

Simon had died too early in our past life.

He didn't live long enough to witness the true face of the apocalypse.

He genuinely and naively believed that the extreme heat was the final test of this disaster.

He was completely unaware that the roasting temperatures were merely the prologue.

The true slaughter never came from the sun; it came from the sea of blood.

As the apocalypse deepened, the extreme heat triggered heavily violent, accelerated mutations within the magical beast populations.

It became a hell ruled by pure carnage. In that absolute meat grinder, low-tier creatures like the water snake hit their genetic ceiling almost immediately.

They were destined for elimination, serving as nothing more than appetizers for the apex predators.

Only the purest, absolute top-tier bloodlines possessed the potential to evolve, survive, and dominate the brutal slaughter.

Sirius looked up at me again, revealing tiny, incomplete fangs mid-yawn.

He was a late bloomer, a "piece of trash" despised by everyone because of his agonizingly slow development.

Conventionally, the White Wolf King required years of meticulous care to become a true combat asset.

But as I looked into those pure blue slitted pupils, I couldn't help but smile.

Growing too slow? That's a complaint for fools who only know how to hide in safe zones.

I knew a shortcut.

A path of blood to forcefully awaken an apex predator.

"Let's go, Sirius," I whispered. I stepped off the curb and strode away from the city—a city still clinging to its illusion of prosperity—without looking back.

I planned to feed this fragile pup with the blood, severed limbs, and wails of tens of thousands of magical beasts. I would use the most extreme violence and high pressure to tear through the threshold of evolution.

I will teach you how to bite the throat out of any blind prey in a sea of corpses and blood.

And then, stepping on their bones, you will be crowned King.