Chapter 15 p2
Shi Nuo, panicked, scrambled forward a few steps, escaping the wolf’s grasp, and huddled against the wall, his lips white, his eyes red and wet, staring at the white wolf warily.
He suppressed his sobs, afraid to make a sound.
The white wolf, regaining its senses, remembered its earlier actions towards the Omega and froze, faint voices echoing in its ears.
“He’s lost control!”
“The young master has lost control again.”
“Quick, tranquilizer, restraints!”
“Fire!”
“White fire!”
Memories from years ago flooded back, a cacophony of shouts and terrified cries.
He was the source of all the chaos.
Hugh Elvis’s reason returned, and the memories of his youth surfaced. He loathed the feeling of losing control, as if all consciousness was shut out, leaving him in a blurry, chaotic, and violent world, alone with only his instincts.
Two years of peaceful living had misled him into thinking he could control his power and his beastly nature.
The white wolf, filled with self-disgust, turned and left.
His pants torn, Shi Nuo couldn’t bring himself to throw them away. He didn’t know how long he would have to stay here. He tried to mend them with needle and thread.
His handiwork was poor, the stitches crooked and ugly. After washing them in the washing machine, he folded the pants and placed them at the bottom of his closet. They would be a last resort if he ran out of other pants.
The wild grass outside was still young, not ready to be harvested. The white wolf had been gone for two days, hadn’t returned.
Whether it was present or not, Shi Nuo’s life remained monotonous. If he didn’t go out, he could only stay inside the house, with no books to read, no entertainment.
He had arrived here in a hurry. Usually, wherever he went, there was a star network signal, so he hadn’t developed the habit of downloading anything to his optical brain.
Having gradually accepted life on this planet, he longed for a book or a movie to pass the time, but that was impossible. He could only sit on a stool and stare into space.
Early in the morning on the third day, after finishing breakfast, Shi Nuo found the empty dining room and living room alternately too large and too confining. He used his optical brain to open the front door for some fresh air and saw a small bucket placed outside.
He hadn’t been paying attention these past two days and hadn’t even noticed one of his buckets was missing.
The Alpha’s pheromones still lingered in the wilderness. There couldn’t be anyone else here.
A large shrimp jumped out of the bucket, its body thrashing. Shi Nuo hurried over and, seeing the bucket full of live fish and shrimp, fell silent.
In the distance, hidden behind a large rock, the white wolf watched as the Omega carried the bucket inside, its restlessness easing slightly.
It frowned, went to a newly dug pool by the river, and lay down in the water.
The wind blew, and the flowing river shimmered.
Early autumn was approaching. The sky was clear blue, unpolluted, everything vibrant with life.
At the bottom of the pool, embedded among the rocks, a dark blue gem glowed faintly.
It was a water purification stone, a rare functional mineral crystal. When placed in water, it killed various harmful microorganisms and insect larvae. It also emitted a scent that most aquatic animals disliked, making it useful for purifying water sources, providing clean, drinkable water for any outdoor activity.
Water purification stones were found only on certain planets, their deposits small, making them expensive.
After arriving here, Hugh Elvis had explored the continent and discovered a source. He had dug up some, carried them with him, and buried them in secret locations.
Whether for drinking or bathing in the summer, he would luxuriously drop a stone into the water, far more fastidious than ordinary beasts.
The white beast lay in the water, its head resting on a protruding white rock, its eyes half-closed. Remembering what had happened two days ago, it felt a surge of restlessness, its breathing heavy.
The temporary marking and the Omega’s presence had made it lose control. The scent of tea olive blossoms had been too alluring, amplified many times over by its heightened state.
It had lost control of its pheromones before, but only to suppress other Alphas and Omegas indiscriminately. Losing control like that, becoming aroused by an Omega…it figured it must have been because of the temporary marking. The marked Omega belonged to it, and its out-of-control pheromones wanted to claim the Omega completely.
The root cause of its loss of control was a beast heart it had mistakenly consumed at the age of nine.
Beastmen originated from Beast Star, also known as the Primal Star.
Even now, beast hearts were still found deep within the Primal Star, forming one every thirty to fifty years, making them incredibly rare and highly sought after by beastmen.
Beast hearts weren’t flesh and blood but crystals, shaped like a beast’s heart.
The energy contained within them was unique and immense. In ancient times, beasts that consumed these special crystals, after enduring a painful transformation, would gain the ability to shift between two forms, thus evolving and creating civilization.
Nowadays, beastmen no longer needed beast hearts to gain their human forms. The value of beast hearts lay in their immense energy, especially for energy weapons.
The Elvis family had shared mining rights for beast hearts, so their presence within the family wasn’t unusual.
When he was young, he had even played with them.
Some had tried to use the energy within beast hearts to treat Alphas who couldn’t shift into human form, hoping to induce evolution. But the energy was too unique. Once extracted from the crystal, it became unstable, and most experiments failed. The few Alphas who survived, even if they gained a human form, lived in constant pain, their bodies unable to fully absorb and contain the energy.
Hugh Elvis remembered it vividly. At nine years old, he had been sleeping in his beast form in his territory. When he woke up, a servant brought him a plate of fruit. Despite his young age and his wariness of the complex power dynamics within his family, he had still been tricked.
A beast heart had been disguised as a piece of fruit, its appearance and scent indistinguishable from the real thing. A costly disguise.
He had eaten the fruit in his beast form. No matter how well-disguised, the hardness of the crystal couldn’t be concealed. The moment the “fruit” entered his mouth, he wanted to spit it out, but a surge of oppressive pheromones forced him to swallow it.
The purpose of the crystal was evolution, but he already had a human form. The crystal’s energy brought him unimaginable pain as his muscles and bones instinctively tried to evolve, constantly rupturing from the excessive energy, then regenerating due to his powerful healing abilities, a continuous cycle of agony.
He rarely remained conscious during these episodes of extreme pain, and even when he did, his mind was filled with uncontrollable rage.
Power struggles within the family were common. As the heir, he was already at the center of the storm. Countless members of the Elvis family were punished during that time, but those who had harmed him, his half-brother and stepmother, had never received any real punishment, only confinement and whipping.
The Elvis family needed an heir. Having lost one, they couldn’t afford to lose another.
Treatment continued, but the power of the beast heart was beyond the ability of any physician. His fate was either complete regression, losing his humanity and becoming a ferocious beast, or death from the rupturing of his muscles and bones under the strain of the energy.
During those years of struggle, his biological father hadn’t stripped him of his title as heir. He had been told that if he survived, he would be allowed to punish his stepmother himself.
The immense energy within him, destroying and transforming, had caused him to evolve a unique ability: white flames that flowed through his blood and burned in his bones. In his dreams, he seemed to become fire, burning uncontrollably.
This unique evolution seemed like a positive development, but he still regressed, his beast form larger than that of ordinary carnivorous beastmen, the uncontrolled transformations accompanied by berserk episodes and violence.
At fifteen, during one such episode, he had bitten off his stepmother’s right hand and forearm.
The flames, clinging to the stump, cauterized the wound, causing the Omega to pass out from the pain, then wake up again. The damage was so severe that reattaching the limb was impossible, and she could only be fitted with a prosthetic.
He hadn’t regretted being exiled to this alien planet. In his moments of clarity, the hypocrisy of the people and their words disgusted him. He had long grown tired of it.
For ten years, he had unleashed his beastly nature, following his instincts, running and fighting in the wilderness and forests, free from schemes and the false faces of his family.
In nature, everything was primal and untainted: the mountains, the rivers, the plants, the animals.
The earth was solid, the sky vast. The soil beneath his paws nurtured countless lives, and he felt it, the raging energy within him resonating and connecting with the natural world.
He had finally found respite and the best possible treatment: the power of nature.
