Chapter 3

To hone Sirius's abilities, I took him everywhere to fight, learn, and master his skills.

An abandoned slaughterhouse in the suburbs became our first base of operations.

A top-tier bloodline standing at the peak of the food chain like the White Wolf King could absolutely not be hand-fed via incubators and kibble.

He required the harshest life-and-death stimuli; he needed the flesh and blood of his own kind to forcibly break the shackles of his growth.

For the next four weeks, Sirius and I plunged deep into the wilderness, hunting down low-tier magical beasts that were just beginning to mutate.

At first, the scrawny pup instinctively flinched when facing mutated boars several times his size, but I mercilessly cut off his avenues of retreat.

When he was sent flying by tusks, dripping with blood, I was right there next to him, gripping my combat knife, engaging in brutal close-quarters combat within the herd.

After every tragic, bloody battle, I would press down on the back of Sirius's neck, letting both man and wolf bathe together in the scalding blood of the defeated beasts.

Blood is the ultimate catalyst for the awakening of a high-tier magical beast.

Through countless brushes with death and endless devouring, Sirius's sparse fuzz was gradually replaced by silver fur as cold and hard as steel needles. His frail skeletal frame expanded at a visible rate. Meanwhile, my arms and back became covered in ghastly claw marks.

Compared to my madness amidst mountains of corpses and seas of blood, Simon's days could only be described as incredibly cozy.

Occasionally, when I returned home to grab essential supplies, I would always see him lounging comfortably on the sofa, playing video games.

The television continuously broadcast red-alert news: "Abnormal Global Temperature Spikes" and "Widespread Drought Warnings." But Simon couldn't even be bothered to bat an eye, treating it as insignificant background noise.

"Dad, Mom, the news is just exaggerating. So what if it stays hot?" Simon acted sweet as he snuggled up to our mother, enjoying the cool mist spit out by Naga the water snake. "With Naga here, the house will always be cool. I will definitely take good care of you guys. Unlike Victor, who's a ghost all day, doing nothing but fooling around outside with his useless wolf."

Our parents affectionately stroked Simon's hair, then turned to look at the blood-stained, expressionless me. Their eyes were filled with undisguised disgust. "Victor! Look at you, reeking of blood and guts! Your brother is so sensible and filial, yet you insist on going out every day acting like a madman. You're hopeless!"

I didn't even bother arguing back half a sentence. I hoisted up my tactical backpack, packed with compressed biscuits and first-aid supplies, ready to leave.

Just as I turned around, Sirius—who was following at my heels and had already grown to near my knee height—suddenly stopped.

His slitted pupils, burning with an ice-blue light, locked onto Simon on the sofa. The violent, murderous aura forged through endless slaughter could no longer be contained. A deep, overwhelmingly oppressive growl rumbled from his throat.

In that moment, the air seemed to instantly freeze.

Simon's smile stiffened on his face, his pupils shrinking. He looked like a duck being choked by the neck.

Not only him, but even Naga, the water snake coiled around his wrist flicking its tongue, was terrified to the point its scales stood on end under the natural pressure of an apex predator. It let out a horrified hiss and violently shrank deep into Simon's clothes, trembling uncontrollably.

"Victor! What are you doing?!" Recovering his senses, Simon jumped up from the sofa, his face deathly pale. Feeling he had lost face in front of our parents, he shrieked with false bravado, "You're deliberately making this beast threaten me, aren't you?! You're jealous of my water snake! Let me tell you, a cold-blooded, selfish person like you will die quickly in the apocalypse, rotting on the streets with no one to care for you!"

Listening to his hysterical, vicious curses, I stopped and calmly swept my gaze over him and the low-tier water snake in his arms.

"Alright," I smirked casually, the mockery in my eyes as if I were looking at a corpse. "Then I wish you and your snake a long, intimate life together right until the very end of the apocalypse."

Ignoring Simon's confusion and anger at those words, I strode out of the house with Sirius, shutting the annoying noise firmly behind the door.

One month later.

The morning sun had just risen, yet the sky took on a bizarre, despairing dark crimson hue.

Thermometers across the city maxed out and burst within a single hour. Asphalt roads emitted pungent, toxic smoke as they melted like tar. AC external units caught fire and exploded one after another. The water supply system completely collapsed under terrifying evaporation. The shrill sound of air-raid sirens tore through everyone's dreams.

The extreme heat crashed down upon the mortal realm like the red lotus flames of hell, holding nothing back.

The Extreme Heat Apocalypse had broken out exactly on schedule.