God will bless the faithful!

As dusk approached, a young monk gave his verbal blessings to the middle-aged couple at the door before turning to leave.

"God will bless the faithful!" they quickly replied, watching the monk walk away. The couple then closed the door and handed the consecrated bread given by the monk to their nephew Adam and daughter Lina, saying, "I'll go make dinner now. We have cured meat tonight."

"That's great, Aunt Maggie," Adam said with a wide smile that brightened everyone's mood.

While his aunt and uncle busied themselves, Adam put the consecrated bread in his mouth, enduring the burning pain it caused.

"I must find a way to leave Saint Hymn Kingdom," Adam thought, swallowing the rest of the consecrated bread despite the pain.

The consecrated bread was a white bread baked with holy water and wheat flour by the monks of the Holy Sound Church. It wasn't special in itself, but the holy water blessed by the monks carried a faint holy power.

This holy power could expel evil.

Unfortunately, Adam was among the "evil" it expelled.

Adam's original name wasn't Adam Boku, nor his former name Nesser Riggs. It was a name entirely out of place in this world.

"Thirteen years have passed since I came to this world," Adam mused.

Originally, he was an ordinary person from another world who crashed into a black hole while driving home from work, only to be reborn in this world—a world with divine magic, sorcery, and various supernatural beings.

Unluckily, he was reborn as a being shunned by most human factions—a werewolf.

Werewolves and humans weren't all that different except in a few areas. For instance, most werewolves would lose control during a full moon, growing fangs and claws, transforming into a giant bipedal wolf, and often losing their sanity, becoming bloodthirsty and hunting anything nearby.

Thankfully, Adam was among the few who could control his transformation and retain his sanity, even suppressing his bloodthirsty urges.

This difference stemmed from whether a werewolf was born or made.

Natural-born werewolves, like humans, were born to werewolf parents and were called purebred werewolves. In contrast, other werewolves could be created through infection, curses, or magic.

Adam was a half-purebred werewolf; his biological father was a werewolf. This allowed Adam to hide in the border city of Roya in Saint Hymn Kingdom, appearing no different from a human as long as he didn't transform.

Saint Hymn Kingdom was a theocracy with many church monks, and all churches, for various reasons, were the greatest enemies of supernatural beings. They had squads specifically tasked with hunting down such beings. If caught, supernatural beings were either burned, hanged, or imprisoned until death.

The outcome was usually the same—death.

Adam's goal was to cross the Roya city walls and reach the neighboring Loken Kingdom.

He currently stayed with the Boku family, nominally the nephew of the male head, Aris Boku. However, they had no blood relation.

The real Adam had died at the hands of bandits—a naïve boy coming to Roya to seek refuge with his uncle after his parents died.

The first time Adam met the real Adam, he learned most of his information without much effort. By the second meeting, the unsuspecting boy had become a corpse in the hands of bandits.

Witnessing this, Adam realized he needed an identity. He avenged the real Adam, silenced the bandits, and took on Adam's identity to come to Roya.

"Brother Adam!" A call made Adam turn around to see a seven or eight-year-old girl running towards him, hugging his legs and looking up at him with sparkling eyes. "Did you finish your consecrated bread?"

Lina Boku, Aris's daughter, and Adam's nominal sister had grown very attached to him over the past half month.

"Yes, I did. I'll save some for you next time, okay?" Adam replied, ruffling her hair, then fixing her braid.

He didn't like the tasteless consecrated bread that caused him pain but had to maintain a "normal" appearance to avoid suspicion.

Watching Lina happily run to her mother to show off her braid, Adam went upstairs and looked out at the twilight scenery of the border town from a second-floor window.

"I need to leave quickly…"

Early the next morning, Adam went out to sell the Boku family's homemade pickled vegetable cakes, greeting the neighbors along the way.

The neighbors had become familiar with Adam, calling out to him with smiles.

Half a month ago, this Boku nephew had come to seek refuge after his parents died of illness, his face swollen from a venomous bee sting. Now that the swelling had gone down, he was quite a handsome young man.

While selling the cakes, Adam also gathered information, satisfied that his disguise was holding up. He and the real Adam didn't look alike, and although Aris hadn't seen his nephew in years, he had some recollections. If Adam had appeared completely unfamiliar, Aris would have been suspicious.

Adam had intentionally swollen his face. Over the past half month, as his face gradually returned to normal, he built enough rapport to prevent Aris from suspecting anything.

As he peddled, Adam kept an eye on a distant mansion—his target.

Saint Hymn Kingdom and Loken Kingdom were at odds, with the border closed. To cross the Roya border wall, Adam needed a noble's help, as many border nobles were involved in smuggling.

Typically, a commoner would have to work for years, even decades, to get involved in a noble's smuggling operations. Servants were usually long-standing, passed down through generations, gaining the nobles' trust over time.

A stranger, no matter how much they proved themselves, couldn't earn that trust.

However, an opportunity now presented itself.

"Those bandits were backed by Baron Mansela," Adam recalled the information from the bandits, noting the baron's layout before finishing his sales and leaving.

He still had much preparation to do; otherwise, both nobles and the church in the city could easily handle a young werewolf like him.

When Adam returned to the Boku home, Aris and Maggie weren't back yet.

The Boku family was not well-off, barely making ends meet, especially with Adam there.

"It's time," Adam thought, rubbing Lina's head as she came running at the sound of his return, calculating his next moves. Previously, to avoid suspicion, he had kept a low profile. Now, as he grew more familiar, he felt he could start helping the Boku family without revealing himself.

"Knowledge from another world would be too conspicuous, and the world is different. Some things may be entirely different, making that knowledge useless."

"Even if useful, if it's too advanced, I might be accused of being possessed by a demon and end up on a stake. Or worse, be branded a lowly thief who stole noble secrets?" Adam was well aware of the church and some people's nature in this era.

Scanning the modest home, Adam noticed a book with a picture on the cover.

"Maybe I could try being a painter."

In this world, being a painter, especially in religious art, was a good career path. Adam happened to be quite familiar with this area.