Change

As the venom serum entered his body, Dilos immediately felt subtle changes taking place. Although faint, he felt the injection site begin to heat up, a sensation that gradually spread throughout his entire body.

After a few minutes, Dilos felt as if his body were trapped in a sauna; the initial warmth had transformed into a stifling, sweltering heat.

Dilos knew this was the heat released as his body underwent constant reconstruction. At this point, someone like him, who had trained their martial arts to the level of An Jin, could simply control their pores to open and release the heat as steam, which would have been much more comfortable. However, he chose not to.

Reconstructing and evolving the body required energy, and the specific type of transformation Dilos was undergoing required a massive amount of it. This heat was a form of energy, and letting it dissipate directly would be quite detrimental to his progress.

Therefore, unless his body reached its limit for heat tolerance, he would not release it.

With this in mind, Dilos endured the rising temperature within him. Only when his body began to feel a slight stinging sensation from the excessive heat did he control his pores to release the energy appropriately.

The heat turned into white steam that drifted around him before dissipating after a few seconds. Once the heat had been released to a certain degree, Dilos closed his pores again, stopping the loss. He would wait until the internal heat accumulated to its previous level before repeating the process.

This went on for eight consecutive hours. After eight hours, Dilos could no longer bear it. The prolonged endurance and the massive consumption of energy within his body had left his mind utterly exhausted; he needed sufficient rest now.

Fortunately, by this time, the energy consumption caused by the internal transformation was not as massive as it had been in the previous hours. With that, Dilos returned to his bed and closed his eyes, which were fighting to stay open. Exhausted, he didn't want to think about anything; he just wanted a good sleep.

The next afternoon, Dilos woke up. Unfortunately, it wasn't a natural awakening—he was woken up by hunger!

Gurgle, gurgle, gurgle, gurgle...

Dilos's expression turned ugly as his stomach let out a series of loud, rumbling growls. If that were all, it would be fine, but the problem was that his stomach was aching from hunger!

Snap.

With a snap, Dilos looked down at his feet and discovered that the tile beneath him had cracked into a web-like pattern from a casual step.

"Is the quality of this tile really that poor? I remember living here for over a month without any issues; why did it crack just from a step today?"

Dilos muttered to himself in confusion, then suddenly froze. He felt as if he had forgotten something. He calmed his mind to recall the events of the previous day, and only then did he remember injecting the venom serum.

"Have I finished mutating?"

Dilos muttered to himself, then, with a hint of excitement, carefully walked toward the mirror by the sink.

He looked in the mirror, and seeing that his face and body showed no strange changes, Dilos smiled with satisfaction.

"Yeah! It worked! It worked! Hahahaha..."

Years of hard work had been for this very moment. Although this wasn't the end of it, for Dilos, it was a very good start.

Gurgle, gurgle...

But before he could be happy for long, his stomach started growling again. Only then did he notice that his reflection looked pale and gaunt, like a malnourished flagpole. Moreover, the pain in his stomach from hunger was constantly assaulting his brain.

Too rushed to wash up, he dashed straight to the refrigerator. He yanked the door open so violently that it tore right off its hinges. The door flew through the air, leaving a trail of afterimages and whistling as it pierced straight through the television with a loud crack.

Dilos ignored this, as he was too hungry to spare any energy for other thoughts. He didn't care if the bread and milk in the fridge were too frozen or if eating raw beef and pork would make him sick; he grabbed whatever he could and shoved it into his mouth.

In less than ten minutes, like a gluttonous beast reborn, he had wiped out all the food in the half-height refrigerator. Yet, his stomach didn't feel full—it didn't even feel like he had eaten anything.

His frantic raid on the fridge had only slightly alleviated his hunger; given his current state, he needed much more.

"Tsk." Dilos clicked his tongue in annoyance. After gauging the level of hunger in his gut, he gritted his teeth and called several familiar fast-food joints. Ignoring the horrified expressions of the staff on the other end, he ordered twenty portions of large meals from each place.

It wasn't that Dilos didn't want to go out to eat, but there were no large restaurants or diners within several blocks of his apartment, only a few small snack shops. And at this hour, those shops had long since sold out of food.

Furthermore, even if he ran to a restaurant several blocks away, he would have to wait fifteen or twenty minutes just for a single meal.

That wouldn't be nearly enough to satisfy him. So, he chose to order delivery. Since it was a slow time for orders, the delivery drivers would arrive quickly—likely in about half an hour.

Even so, half an hour was not easy to wait, especially for a 'glutton' like Dilos, who was dizzy with hunger and weak in the limbs.

Ding-dong~

When he heard the doorbell after half an hour, his bloodshot eyes erupted with a piercing, cold light. He rushed to the door. Ignoring the strange looks from the delivery staff, he roughly grabbed the large bags of food, tossed them the cash he had prepared, and slammed the door shut. He carried the food into his room, leaving the delivery drivers outside, staring at each other in bewilderment.

"Did he eat all that by himself? Can he even finish it?" Delivery Driver A asked, as if questioning himself.

Delivery Driver B: "Should we eavesdrop? See if he's really eating it all alone?"

Saying this, Delivery Driver B took action. He pressed his ear against Dilos's door, trying to hear the sounds of him eating.

Seeing this, the others crowded around out of curiosity. But after a long while, it remained dead silent inside.

"Maybe he's just a nutcase," Delivery Driver C said, curling his lip. "I once knew a guy who thought the world was ending and hoarded a ton of food in his house. In the end, the world didn't end, but a lot of the food spoiled because it wasn't stored properly."

The others nodded in agreement. Then, Delivery Driver D said, "Whatever, it's none of our business. I've got work to do, I'm leaving."

With that, Delivery Driver D left first. The others realized they were wasting their time and, seeing someone else lead the way, followed suit.

Dilos was unaware of what had happened outside. Even if he had known, he wouldn't have cared; he could just use his abilities to make them lose those memories later.

Dilos was currently gorging himself in his room. Thanks to the soundproofing, the noise of him tearing open packages and devouring the food didn't disturb anyone.

He shoveled the meals into his mouth box by box. As he did, his gaunt body gradually began to recover its original, healthy, muscular, and tall appearance.

After a whirlwind of consumption, the floor around Dilos was piled high with oily, empty food containers, and he had completely returned to his normal state.

Only then did Dilos stop feeling hungry; he even felt as though his stomach was slightly overstuffed.

This was arguably the most satisfying meal of his life, but he didn't want to go through it again. Thinking back to the state where he couldn't get full no matter how much he ate, Dilos couldn't help but worry about his physical condition. This kind of frantic binge-eating was clearly abnormal, and if it continued, he would inevitably be exposed to those with ulterior motives, which would be extremely disadvantageous for him.

Fortunately, after this meal, his appetite returned to normal. As for the previous binge-eating, Dilos speculated that his body had consumed so much nutrition and energy that it was in desperate need of replenishment.

Having figured this out, Dilos let out a heavy sigh of relief. When it came to whether genetic influences on physiology were good or bad, no one could say for sure—not even Richard Parker. Even Richard Parker would have needed long-term, continuous experimentation to confirm which types of gene-insertion technology wouldn't bring negative side effects to the host.

"Eh?"

As Dilos was secretly feeling happy, he suddenly felt an itch between his fingers. He subconsciously looked down and couldn't help but curse out loud: "What the hell is this?!"

Between each of his fingers on both hands, four pairs of sharp, thick, thirty-centimeter-long, milky-white giant tiger claws were growing out, shimmering with a cold light!

Then, right before Dilos's wide, shocked eyes, the claws retracted without a sound.