Chapter 54: Luna Everhart!

Following the vague directions preserved in his memories, Aiden eventually parked the car at the end of a moss-covered cobblestone road riddled with cracks.

Ahead stood a small Gothic-style church in the middle of a desolate courtyard.

Most of its stained-glass windows had been shattered, leaving behind pitch-black openings that resembled empty eye sockets. The cross atop the crooked spire leaned dangerously to one side, as though it might collapse at any moment.

Strangely, the area was almost completely silent.

Even wandering monsters were rarely seen here.

Aiden pushed open the car door and stepped out.

The moment his feet touched the ground, his keen perception immediately picked up something from inside the church.

A faint, malicious clamor. And beneath it... A life fluctuation so weak that an ordinary person would have never detected it.

But Aiden could sense it through the subtle perception granted by his Sovereign of Souls.

That weak life force flickered like a candle struggling against a violent wind.

Yet what truly made Aiden’s heart tighten was the aura intertwined with it.

Chaotic. Ominous. And carrying an indescribable sense of fate that sent a shiver through the depths of his Soul.

"This is it." Aiden’s eyes narrowed. Without the slightest hesitation, his figure glided silently forward like a ghost.

He approached the church’s heavy, worm-eaten wooden door, which had been left slightly ajar.

Through the narrow crack, the scene inside gradually came into view.

Aiden’s pupils suddenly contracted. And in that instant, A bone-chilling killing intent surged from the depths of his heart.

The light inside the church was painfully dim. Only a handful of thin rays of sunlight managed to pierce the shattered sections of the dome overhead, descending like pale pillars into the darkness.

Dust drifted lazily through those beams, while the rest of the ruined sanctuary remained swallowed by shadow.

The once-sacred place had long since lost its holiness. Broken pews lay scattered across the floor.

Cracked statues of forgotten saints leaned against the walls, their faces worn away by time and neglect. Stains blackened the stone around the altar, and the faint smell of dampness and decay lingered in the stagnant air.

Near that ruined altar, a heinous act of bullying was taking place.

Three hooligan players surrounded a small figure curled tightly against the wall. They looked exactly like the kind of people who had flourished after the apocalypse began. Their clothes were dirty and sloppily worn, their equipment cheap and poorly maintained. Low-quality tattoos covered their exposed arms and necks, while crude weapons hung from their waists. ...

But the moment Stan’s gaze swept over the three men, his eyes widened. He recognized them.

The Black Fang Gang. His university’s infamous gang.

For a moment, Stan simply stared. ’They’re still alive?’

He had been certain the Black Fang Gang had been wiped out during the early chaos of the apocalypse. At least, that was what he had always believed.

That explained something. In his previous life, he had never heard anything about them after the apocalypse began. He had assumed their disappearance meant they had been among the countless groups swallowed by the initial wave of chaos.

Apparently, he had been wrong. They hadn’t been eliminated. They had simply moved.

Somehow these bastards had made it this far from the university. And judging by their equipment and levels, they hadn’t merely survived. They had grown stronger.

Stan’s eyes narrowed. ’So that’s why...’

This area was considerably farther from the university than where the Black Fang Gang had originally operated. During the confusion of the early apocalypse, they must have abandoned their territory and migrated here, following the opportunities created by the collapse of civilization.

Along the way they had discovered monsters to kill. Quests to complete. Resources to plunder. Perhaps even weaker survivors to exploit.

They had reached Level 2 and Level 3.

It wasn’t impressive by Stan’s current standards. Not even remotely. But considering how little time had passed since the apocalypse began, it was enough to prove that these people had survived the initial bloodbath and adapted to the new world.

None of them was particularly strong. Level 2. Level 3 at most.

Yet before the apocalypse they had simply been ordinary university students who happened to belong to a violent gang.

Now, with the rules of the old world shattered and power suddenly placed into their hands, they had discovered something far more dangerous than strength itself.

Freedom from consequences. After all there were no police coming. No university authorities. No laws capable of restraining them. No society left to punish them for what they did.

All that remained was power. And in the hands of people like the Black Fang Gang, even the smallest increase in strength could become an excuse for cruelty.

Stan’s expression gradually turned cold. He had once thought these people were already dead.

Now he realized something far more unpleasant. They hadn’t disappeared. They had simply been given more time to become monsters.

Their victim was a young woman of eighteen or nineteen. She was petite and frail, dressed in a set of washed-out, ill-fitting clothes that looked as though they had already belonged to someone else before reaching her. Her knees were pulled tightly against her chest. Both arms wrapped around them. Her head was buried deep between her arms, as though hiding her face could somehow make the monsters surrounding her disappear.

Her thin shoulders trembled violently. Not from cold but from fear. Her breathing was shallow and uneven, each breath barely more than a whisper. Even her life aura was frighteningly weak. It flickered around her like the flame of a dying candle. One strong gust of wind seemed enough to extinguish it.

Yet what was even more striking than her appearance were the three objects scattered across the floor in front of her.

Three dice. Each was roughly the size of a human palm, ancient in appearance and completely different in color. One was crimson. One was pitch black. And the final one was grayish-white, resembling polished bone. They didn’t look like ordinary dice. Faint, mysterious patterns covered their surfaces, and every so often the three dice seemed to tremble imperceptibly, as though responding to some invisible force.

At this moment, the crimson die had stopped with one of its faces pointing upward. A hideous skull stared back from its surface. The symbol seemed to have been painted in fresh blood. An ominous aura radiated from it, so dense that even the surrounding air seemed colder.

Misfortune. And not ordinary misfortune. This was Great Misfortune.

Aiden Cross understood everything the instant he saw it. His gaze swept across the scene, the girl, the three dice, the crimson skull, the dangerously weak life aura, the three bastards surrounding her. Everything connected in his mind.

Luna Everhart. So this was where it had begun.

In his previous life, Luna Everhart had been one of those names that appeared briefly in scattered survivor records before disappearing completely. A mysterious girl. An SS-rank class holder. A genius whose name should have shaken the world. Yet she had died young. Too young. At the time, nobody had understood why.