"There's a section of the road up ahead that's not going to be shielded from the sunlight this entire week. The budget's been real low this year. Pray to your gods and hope they listen, haha!"

The bus driver's wooden laugh alerted the passengers, all of whom hurried to pull out protective helmets from the bottom of their seats. It would only safeguard their eyes, ears, mouth, and lungs. For those who had no other choice than to take this road, this was the best they could hope for.

There's no permanent escape from the sunlight in the surface cities, no matter how expensive the shelter you lived in was. One way or the other, the ordinary people would be exposed to the sun's curse if they wanted to make a living. They were prepared to deal with the inevitable manifestation of the curse, just as their forefathers had been.

Standing beside the driver's seat, Mir pulled out his brother's cracked helmet, sighing at its deteriorating condition. Since that guy didn't need this anymore, he had been graced with the honor of using this ten-year-old, originally second-hand, ugly piece of scrap metal. His parents had offered to buy a new one, of course. But the price for these types of equipment was on the rise at that time...and he knew what the family's bank balance was.

As the bus made its way past the shielded region, the searing sunlight made its way through the small windows on all four sides, outshining the weak electric bulbs on the ceiling immediately. It wasn't even a competition.

The familiar bus suddenly looked so strikingly different!

Mir took the opportunity to survey the entire bus, noticing several faces he knew in the back.

Classmates, but not friends.

Looking away, he put his palm over the crack of his helmet, shielding the exposed area of his forehead from the sunlight's direct touch.

The bus sped up, its driver eager to reach the next shielded region of the city. Five minutes later, they reached an area covered by one of the numerous dark shades cast over the city, making all the passengers breathe in relief.

As Mir took his helmet off, he noticed a dull red stripe pulsing on the back of his hand. This stripe was shaped exactly the same as the crack of his helmet.

He didn't need a mirror to know that most of the exposed parts of his skin sported similar stripes.

The people who were regularly exposed to sunlight gradually turned red-skinned, from head to toe. Thankfully, the short bursts of exposure he had just gone through would only have temporary effects.

The human body was capable of battling the sun's curse, to a minor extent at least. This capability was the sole hope of the ordinary people.

Enet City, National College-013, Zoology Faculty

"Today's dissection subject was as much a surprise to me as it will be to you, students! The College was able to procure a batch of living samples from the expedition yesterday. Get ready to open up the body of...the Rubber Roach!"

A surge of surprised yelps and hoots exploded from the lineup of forty students following Professor Corwin's announcement.

But whispers, elbow nudges, fist bumps, and cold sounds of steel toolkits replaced the unruly atmosphere immediately as soon as the students saw the professor's gaze turning frosty.

Lack of discipline in the lab always led to the most severe punishments.

"What grade is the Rubber Roach sub-species categorized as?" The professor used the opportunity to put the class back into the regular rhythm.

Almost all forty students put their hands up, some hesitant, while the rest looked confident.

The professor didn't bother to pick anyone for a question so simple. He tapped on the screen on his desk, following which, a slide appeared behind him on the black projection board.

Rubber Roach [ Arthropod ]

Mutation: Grade-1

Soulslot Consumption: 1 Unit

Mutation Potential: Grade- 3

Affinity: Water [ Limited To Royal Lineage ]

Danger Rating: Ordinary

Origin: Endemic

This was a basic overview of the insect. A lot of crucial information hadn't been included to keep things simple. The next few slides too, contained only what the professor deemed necessary for the dissection today.

"Your task today is to separate the mandibles without damaging the oral tissues. Those of you who succeed may attempt to separate its digestive system from the body, fully intact. Of course, I shall demonstrate the process to you, once. Distracted students wouldn't make it past the first task, my experience says. So, CONCENTRATE!"

With his shout reverberating through the lab, the professor rang a bell on his desk, signaling his assistant to bring in the specimen roach.

Trays after trays were gradually occupied by fat, fist-sized, sedated roaches. Much like its origin species, the Rubber Roach was a dark brown arthropod, only larger in size.

What made it different was its exoskeleton. The chitinous structure had mutated in its very core, forming a different biomolecule as its structural unit.

This had resulted into the birth of the mutated sub-species. Due to their flexible carapace, they could grow larger, allowing minor changes in their digestive and circulation systems. Each change had magnified the changes that followed it.

Of course, these mutations had not happened overnight. For decades, these roaches had reigned free under the cursed sunlight, gradually changing, mutating, and evolving into a direction the humans could not control.

If you cannot stop their growth, exterminate them before they become a threat!

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To the human civilization, this principle was set in stone, bathed with the blood of their forefathers, and proved by their struggle for survival across a century.

Mir watched attentively from the crowd of students as the professor skillfully ran his scalpels on the upturned body of a roach.

"Here, the organs are delicate, and the tissues get damaged easily. But if you're lucky, you might find a tumor beneath the 3rd sclerite. This tumor contains a gel that's used as an ingredient for some low grade Physique Enhancement solutions! You better be careful when dissecting this part! Even a milliliter of the gel is worth 400 units!"

Most of the students knew this, but they still couldn't help shivering in excitement, eager to get started on their own dissection sessions.

The professor poked a certain part of its head rather forcefully all of a sudden, and the oral parts around which he had run his scalpel suddenly came apart from the force, completely intact.

Now this was a real surprise. Mir, along with his peers, gasped at the display of skill and experience.

"First demonstration ends here. Your turn!"

The professor put down his tools and began to survey the progress of his students across the room, visiting each and every desk.

"Did you memorize the info in the articles? It looks like he's interrogating students too while visiting," hissed his lab partner.

Mir gave her a withering look. Between the two of them, she was the weaker one when it came to learning the theoretical knowledge. But she made up for it in the lab with her quick-thinking and enviably stable hands.

Especially in dissection classes, she could be considered a top-notch talent.

"Overslept yesterday. Had no time to study."

The lie came out of his mouth naturally. He hadn't overslept. He had stayed the night up playing an online game with questionable content.

Nifiya looked devastated, incensed even. Glaring at him gloomily, she went back to focusing on the roach.

Mir went online using his communicator, searching for info on the exoskeleton of Rubber Roaches and how to dissect one.

But none of the videos showed the method and expertise he had seen being employed by Professor Corwin.

"Oh Lord, he's coming here, he's coming here, he'scominghereeee!"

Nifiya's horrified whispers came to a stop as the professor came close enough to hear them. Peering down at their tray, he nodded in satisfaction.

"You've separated the maxilla perfectly. Well done! Now repeat that performance with the rest of the oral parts."

Nifiya's complexion was barely beginning to recover when he casually said, "State the social structure of the Rubber Roaches and explain why they've been categorized as 'ordinary' in terms of danger rating."

As she glanced at him in panic, the professor turned to look at Mir, one eyebrow raised.

"Uh...they live in numbers. They have a royal line of roaches in each nest...and they have been categorized as ordinary in terms of danger because of their low level of mutation and potential...?"

He was winging it. He knew it, Nifiya knew it, and judging by the annoyed look on the professor's face, he knew it too.

"I appreciate the improvisation, since you took my feelings into consideration and didn't reply saying you don't know, or that you didn't read the articles I instructed you to. But your recent performance in my class has been so poor, Mr. Mir, that I think we need to have a chat. After class, my room."

He took his leave, heading towards the next desk. Nifiya looked torn between whether to show sympathy or to berate him for his declining academic performance.

He wouldn't blame her for choosing the latter option, because as lab partners, his scores would affect hers, although not by a great margin.

College-level education was pretty much a race to reach a bigger stage. The students in the National Colleges were competitive and full of potential. Among his 40 classmates, at least 10 would get the chance to study at the National Universities, and 10 more would enter into internship contracts with various firms, getting an opportunity to compete against the top 10 in a different track.

By the end of the class, all of the students managed to complete the first task perfectly, although no one managed to make much progress on the second dissection. But the good thing was, the College had procured a large supply of the insects from the expedition. They could conduct three more classes on dissection before running out of subjects to cut open.

While everyone made their way out of the faculty, Mir rinsed his hands and reexamined the red stripe on his hand in the washroom.

In the case of ordinary people, the red stripes caused by the sunlight usually disappear by 30 minutes.

But it had been two hours since the red stripe on his hand had formed. It was showing no signs of fading away.

Mir pulled down his collar and examined another red stripe on his neck. Yep, same result.

He had realized this oddity a two years ago. He had immediately informed his parents, fearing something terrible happening in his body...maybe even the manifestation of the sun's curse.

His parents had taken him to a doctor, who merely said, "Your body has lower innate defenses against the virus. It takes your system a longer time to fight and flush those microorganisms out. Not too rare a condition. Don't worry about it."

His parents had stopped worrying, and so had he. But the sight of the stripes regularly surfacing on his skin never really let him forget the condition.

Cleaning up, he made a visit to room 304, knocking on the door gently.

"Enter."

Professor Corwin was waiting inside. Gesturing at him to take a seat at the other side of his desk, the professor leaned over, giving off his usual intimidating aura.

"You scored C minus in your last class test. Not only in my class, you've also performed terribly in every other subject you've chosen in College. From regular A's, this downfall hasn't been sudden. Your grades have deteriorated over the course of the last four semesters. Are you confident that you can achieve anything noteworthy in the national exam at the end of this semester?"

Perhaps he had expected Mir to be obstinate, or maybe show that he didn't care about his grades at all. Because he looked surprised at how devastated Mir appeared immediately.

"C MINUS?! FUCK!"

Hands clutching his hair, Mir let out a shout of frustration and leaned back into his chair in defeat.

"Mum's gonna kill me...uh, sorry, professor. I didn't expect-"

"That your results would be so terrible? I don't quite believe that. You know very well how poor your answers were in the tests."

Mir looked back at the professor, feeling his face go red from embarrassment. He couldn't really argue against that.

"Are there any problems in your home that are hampering your studies? Any personal issues that are troubling you? Feel free to share. Even if I can't help you, I'll find someone who can."

For a long minute, the student and the professor stared at each other, both of their gazes cautious.

In the end, Mir relented.

"It's my older brother. He was a student here too, one batch ahead of me."

"Murray? You're Murray's brother?" The professor's eyes widened, making Mir laugh. This was a common reaction in the campus. Almost all the teachers knew Murray.

"Yeah, we do look pretty similar. His...accident was a great blow to the family, including me and my sister. My parents aren't sure whether to invest in his future or invest more in the two of us younger children. He has not been able to live up to his promises, and neither I nor my sister feels confident in doing the same. After all, he was the most talented child of the family."

"...." Professor Corwin leaned back into his seat as well, looking as defeated as Mir.

"Think you can do anything about that?" Mir asked with a hopeless smile.

"I need some time to think. This is not the first time I've seen this situation. Do your parents still run the same business?" the professor said slowly.

"Yeah. They asked Murray to help around the shop after he was released from jail. But he refused."

"Understandable. If he really was as innocent as he claims, he would harbor some misgivings."

The conversation came to an end after that.

Mir left the faculty and decided to skip the next class. There would be a seasonal event on his online game. He didn't want to miss it.

A small voice in his head said, "Maybe the reason why your academic performance has been deteriorating has more to do with your gaming addiction, not your family problems. Look at your sister. Her grades haven't dropped that much. You're the one who completely gave up!"

As usual, Mir ignored the annoying voice.

Taking the bus again, he headed home. On the way, they passed under the shadeless region once more, giving birth to a second red stripe on his right hand.

Mir's home was at a corner of the main city. It was in one of those shelters that would be prone to attacks from mutated beasts if not for the fact that way too many people had gathered around it, forming a messy, overpopulated locale that even beasts knew to avoid. The classic principle- 'Strength in numbers' had manifested properly here.

Principles of cavemen becoming the shield of modern civilization...Mir couldn't help but dwell on the irony every time he saw the packed, narrow streets.

Hands in pockets to prevent theft, he made his way to his home, a two-storied building that looked ready for a gentle demolition.

Mir's older brother was sitting on the porch, wearing-

"Deacon Uniform?!" Cried Mir as he rushed forward, unable to believe his eyes. As Murray walked over, Mir circled around him a couple times, testing the material of the uniform and the authenticity of the logo.

"You really did it! You joined Sunbreaker's Church," Mir mumbled.

Murray laughed, seeing his expression morph.

"As a Trainee Deacon, yes. It took some convincing. But how can they turn down a rare talent even if he has fallen from grace? Is it not the Church's duty to guide the fallen, help them repent, and return to the Lord's path?"

Mir's befuddlement only increased. Their family had never been religious. How did this guy adapt so fast?

How long has he been planning this? He had only informed the family that he was considering joining the church three days ago!

"Don't look at me like that!" Murray looked around surreptitiously and leaned over to whisper, "I did it for the benefits. I even got one for you today. Go check your bedroom. There's a package there that would definitely help you out of your plight!"

Oh....he hasn't really changed, has he? No, wait a minute, what plight?

Mir took a step back and eyed Murray with suspicion.

"Help me out of my plight? Which plight?"

Murray's eyes twinked mysteriously. "The Lord forbids me from revealing the secrets of a sinner. This is the rule of the church."

"The church's rules couldn't have changed you so fast." Mir rolled his eyes at the saintly act from his brother.

"But since the sinner is you, I'll stretch that rule a bit...it might cure your addiction to borderline pornographic online games!"

"....."

Curse the sun!

The church hadn't changed his brother. Instead, his brother was changing the Church's rules.