8:31am.

Parasite's life flashed before his eyes.

He relived the past 28 years of his life in an instant, the highs and the lows, the memorable moments and the pleasure he enjoyed throughout.

'Lord Parasite!' He could hear his subordinates calling his name in awe and adoration and it felt like music in his ears.

In his last moments as he stared at the bomb that was about to detonate in front of him, he felt no remorse. The only regret he had was death.

He didn't want to die yet.

He still wanted to enjoy his life, he still wanted to terrorize the world, he wanted to enjoy all the pleasures of the world for as long as possible.

Afterall, they were supposed to be his right.

In his final moments, he faced the bitter truth. He realized that he was a coward who was afraid of death, a coward who killed but was afraid to be killed. At first, the feeling twisted his guts, but now he no longer even felt ashamed of it.

He already lost his mind.

Now, only one final motivation stayed in his mind. 'I'm not going alone!'

"Heh," he grinned in a slightly deranged manner that hid his fear as he stared at the bomb that was about to detonate in front of him, then he snarled. "F*ck the world!"

KABOOM!

The bomb detonated, spreading a torrent of flames that engulfed the whole bus, triggering a secondary explosion as the fuel in the bus also ignited!

Yet, just before the explosion, in the microseconds in between, Parasite did something.

'F*ck the world' was not just a last word of profanity from him, it was a final act of defiance against the world that he took on a whim.

Just before the explosion detonated, his ADE flared one last time, pouring into the blood-red pendant in a torrent, then…

Blood Sacrifice!

He activated the second ability of the D Rank Gene Augur Artifact.

Rose Bishop is a D Rank Artifact of the Gene Augur Bioforger Specialization, a pendant that mutates the blood of its user, giving him the abilities of a parasite.

The Artifact has two abilities, Blood Slave and Blood Sacrifice.

When activated, Blood Slave grants the insidious ability to create blood slaves from victims who ingest the mutated blood of the pendant's user. And within a range of 100 meters around the user, the parasite can hop and hijack the body of his blood slaves in range.

As for Blood Sacrifice, the second ability that Parasite refused to explain to his enemies, he refused to explain it because unlike Blood Slave with outsiders as the target, with Blood Sacrifice, the parasite himself becomes the target.

Rose Bishop is an evil and insidious Artifact.

With its second ability, the parasite can turn himself into a Blood Sacrifice just like he creates blood slaves by accepting a Lord and ingesting the blood of the said Lord.

When activated, the parasite sacrifices his own body, his blood, and his life to enable the descent of his Lord.

For 15 minutes, his body becomes the vessel for a divine descent.

But unlike with blood slaves, since this is not a full parasitism but just a bloodline descent, there's a slim chance of the user surviving if the parasitism doesn't exceed 10 minutes.

Parasite was too big a narcissist to acknowledge anyone as Lord, but he was forced to ingest someone's blood, his sponsor's blood.

The sponsor of his slave trade in the Omnicore Federation, Mr. Representative Ben's superior is a D Rank Gene Augur of the Beastframe Specialization.

Rose Bishop became the contract that bound the two parties to a cooperative business.

By ingesting his sponsor's blood, in a way, Parasite's life and death now belonged to his sponsor.

Parasite accepted the deal because on one hand, his sponsor finally helped him to break the restriction on the Artifact, basically turning him immortal with Blood Slave as he could finally use it to create blood slaves.

To him, there was no use having an Artifact if he couldn't use it.

And second, he accepted it because Parasite acknowledged that by engaging in slave trade, he was about to enter the big leagues where he was likely to make a lot of powerful enemies like the Freegrid Collective.

To survive, he needed to have a sponsor, a secret backer.

The last thing Parasite wanted was to die like a helpless lamb.

Even if he was going to die, by activating Blood Sacrifice and sacrificing his own life, he could screw his enemies over by summoning a D Rank Gene Augur!

The moment Parasite decided to charge towards the bus and cause as much casualties as he could, he already accepted his death.

This was why despite his instinctual fear of death, when he saw the bomb tumbling towards him, he accepted it and became a Blood Sacrifice.

His ADE flared one last time even as the explosion overtook his body.

The second explosion from the bus exacerbated the flames, raising the temperature even higher as the bus began melting!

Not just the bus, Parasite's body melted in front of the explosion!

Even the blood-red pendant finally suffered damage as it started melting at the very core of the flames.

In that moment, Parasite died.

This time, there was no body-hopping, no other trick to save his life as just like Mr. Representative Ben, the high-temperature flames evaporated his blood and flesh, beginning to melt his bones.

Inside the flames, all that was left of him was a melting chassis of a humanoid.

Yet, that was when something else took place inside the flames.

Bright orange ADE like the sun erupted in the heart of the explosion as just before the pendant could be destroyed completely, a new, alien consciousness awakened inside Parasite's body!

BZZZ!

When the consciousness woke up, he couldn't see. All he saw was white, and all he felt was heat and pain that engulfed him from all sides.

But then, the bright orange ADE pulsed within the flames.

Cell Repair!

It was still the same Cell Repair ability that Ascended like Brick, Cell, and even Parasite used, but in the hands of a D Rank Gene Augur, it felt different, it felt unimaginably potent and otherworldly.

As soon as the new existence activated his Cell Repair, he paired in Metabolic Overdrive and instantly, Parasite's already dead body and the torrent of flames surrounding it came to a stalemate.

Parasite's body stopped melting and dying as it came to a stalemate against a bomb!

In the heart of a bomb, Parasite's body began regenerating!

The fractured skull pieced itself back together, and inside, flesh squirmed, forming a brand new brain!

Flesh materialized all across the bone chassis that was already melting a moment ago, including tendons and muscles as they started wrapping and knitting themselves back together.

The organs began regenerating, then…

BADUMP! BADUMP!

A new heart emerged.

The new existence didn't stop at that, he activated another ability.

Beastframe- Chimera Tiger!

GRRR!

A deep guttural growl that made the air vibrate and the ground to shudder reverberated from inside the flames as Parasite's body transformed.

His back hunched, his body and flesh bulking rapidly in seconds as hair grew all over his skin.

Within a few seconds, a towering Tiger stood in place of Parasite's body.

Yet, the new existence was still not done because Cell Repair was not an ability that lasted forever and the flames of the bomb explosion were still dealing damage to him even as a D Rank Gene Augur.

And so, he activated another ability.

Bio-Armor!

…

[POV of Talia's Wraith Cell-9 Crew…]

KABOOM!

As soon as Talia escaped from inside the bus, she heard the loud sound of the bomb detonating even as she was finally forced from her AR state.

Her ADE was depleted.

Talia collapsed to the ground even as Leon rushed towards her to support her. And then, the both of them just like everyone else looked into the torrent of flames to see the aftermath of the bomb.

They couldn't even see Parasite's body, the thick flames engulfed him completely as a fate similar to the A.I Construct seemed to have befell him.

Parasite was completely devoured by the flames as he showed no signs of resistance in the face of a bomb.

Yet, in less than 2 seconds after the bomb detonated even as the flames stayed thick and burning, consuming everything in sight, something unusual took place inside the flames.

They felt it, the descent of a new, alien and unfamiliar presence.

BZZZ!

The aura of a higher existence swept over all of them, penetrating the deepest parts of their souls and asserting dominance as they trembled in fear.

They all instinctively stared into the flames and they saw it.

They didn't see it clearly due to the bright light of the flames, but they saw shadows- a silhouette.

They saw a humanoid silhouette stand up within the flames, and then this humanoid silhouette bulged, literally, gigantifying and turning into a quadrupedal feline beast, and this beast continued growing every second.

The beast took a step out of the flames and stopped.

THUD…!

And then they saw it in full, it was a Tiger.

Not just any Tiger, this was a Tiger standing at a staggering 5 meters!

It had two rust-red curved horns growing out of its head. Unscientifically, the gigantic body of this Tiger was covered in a thick dark brown carapace that seemed to grant it impenetrable defense, keeping the flames of the explosion at bay.

Its eyes were orange-brown, predatory, but they also had a sign of clear sentience inside them, a calculating calm that could only belong to a humanoid.

'A humanoid?' Leon shuddered as one thought reverberated in his head. 'A Gene Augur… a D Rank Gene Augur!'

In that moment, Leon felt despair as his eyes widened in horror.

Not just him, all of them felt the primal terror of death grip their hearts as they stared into the calm and intelligent eyes of this monster.

Talia couldn't even move, she just stayed weakly on the ground, leaning on Leon's support as all strength already left her body.

Her ADE was completely depleted.

Her eyes twitched in terror. 'It's over'.

One, two, even against five E Rank enemies, Talia would still improvise and think of a way to fight them and survive, to at least struggle, but against a D Rank Ascended?

She couldn't even struggle, all she felt was despair in the face of this horrifying existence.

Daren, Kain, Gary, Mary, Brick, and Ghostwire all stood with horrified expressions on their faces as they stared at the gigantic monster.

Yet, even in their fear, even under the immense pressure and weight of being subjected to the aura of a D Rank Gene Augur, Rex and Leon noticed something that no one else saw.

Even as Rex's legs quivered in fear as he felt like he would lose his consciousness any moment, a sentence rang in his mind. 'Mechanists must think outside the box!'

That thought raised a doubt in his mind, then a question. 'Why is it not attacking us yet?'

That question led to another. 'Why did it take only one step?'

Perhaps, Talia would have asked the same question if she still had the power to put up a fight but she was spent, her ADE was exhausted, and all she felt at this moment was raw fear and despair.

The aura of the new enemy scrambled her brain and made her lose her mind immediately, including Ghostwire, but not Rex and Leon.

Even under the pressure of a D Rank Ascended, their brains whirred at speeds rivaling that of a computer.

These questions led to their eyes narrowing as their enhanced perception enabled them to notice a few inconsistencies, and then they arrived at a conclusion at the exact same time. 'He's struggling!'

It wasn't evident but at this moment, after taking that one step and pausing, subtle tremors convulsed under the skin of the gigantic Tiger.

Leon's eyes widened. 'It's… it's almost like it's not his body!'

And then, BOOM! The idea solidified in his mind.

'…Rose Bishop, it's the Artifact!' His eyes gleamed. 'Parasite used it to create blood slaves and hopped through bodies… this Gene Augur took over Parasite's body in the same way?... but back then, Parasite took a few seconds to fully take over his victim's bodies… is this what is happening, but stronger?'

Leon's eyes narrowed. '…He's struggling!... he's just putting up a strong front before us… he's not fully adapted to the new body yet… he can't even move properly… this is our chance, our only chance!'

Leon and Rex came to the same conclusion at the same time.

And before Leon could react, Rex moved, charging towards the flames that were already beginning to disappear and the 5-meter tall Tiger!

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