Chương 33: Micro-Sculpting the Soul

Inside the blind chamber a dozen meters underground, there was not a single sliver of light. The air was heavy with the damp, earthy stench of soil and a faint metallic tang of blood. Rowan leaned against the cold, hard rock wall, his left arm bound tightly to his chest using shredded strips of his mage robe.

Although he had temporarily stopped the massive hemorrhage by devouring mana-beast meat, even the slightest shift of his body caused the half-severed elbow bone to grind together, sending waves of drilling, agonizing pain through his nerves. He hadn't been in the alternate world for long. There was still nearly a full, excruciatingly long day left before the Möbius ring's cooldown finished.

In this claustrophobic, pitch-black environment, time felt infinitely stretched; every second of waiting was a form of mental torture. But patience and a ruthless, calculating rationality toward himself were the two things Rowan possessed in abundance. In the darkness, Rowan pulled out the data crystal disc containing the [Mind-Splitting Art] and slowly pressed it against his forehead. As his mental power probed inward, the massive, esoteric data within the disc once again flooded his mind.

Purging all distracting thoughts, Rowan followed the guidelines of the technique's master outline and began to mobilize his mental power as a Tier 1 Mage. The first step of the Mind-Splitting Art required the practitioner to condense their entire mental power into a "scalpel," and literally carve out a new mental circuit—the "Secondary Core"—at the very edge of their mental sea. Rowan cautiously controlled his mental power, continuously compressing and shaping it within his sea of consciousness.

Woom— The exact instant the mental scalpel made contact with the edge of his mental sea, Rowan's body locked up violently. It wasn't the sharp pain of a blade slicing skin. It felt more like a blunt, rusted saw violently hacking back and forth through his brain matter, bit by excruciating bit, completely without anesthesia! Hsss... Rowan sucked in a sharp breath, his teeth instantly biting through his lower lip and drawing blood.

An incredibly piercing, high-pitched ringing erupted in his ears, and patches of chaotic static uncontrollably flashed across his vision. Worse still, the extreme agony instantly triggered a chain reaction in his physical body. His already half-severed left arm twitched uncontrollably under the violent spasms of his nerves. Crack. A microscopic sound of bone grinding against bone echoed in the claustrophobic underground burrow. Rowan literally saw stars.

A waterfall of cold sweat instantly soaked the inner lining of his stab-proof vest. He gasped heavily for air, his chest heaving violently. Having endured for less than five minutes, Rowan retracted his mental power and pulled the crystal disc from his forehead. He had made some progress. According to the records in the manual, the secondary core was about one-quarter complete. But he absolutely couldn't continue cultivating today; Rowan was already brushing against his absolute limit.

"Forcefully cutting into my consciousness while severely injured makes it too difficult to focus my mental power. Even if I can endure the pain, I can't suppress the involuntary physiological reactions." Rowan evaluated his condition in the dark. He was a man desperate for power, but he was an even more rational man. He knew perfectly well the difference between "risking one's life" and "throwing one's life away."

In his current state, forcefully continuing to cultivate this high-tier D-Rank technique would have only one outcome: permanent, irreversible damage to his mental sea. Having abandoned the radical cultivation plan, Rowan leaned quietly against the dirt wall and took a long time to calm his breathing. But he didn't completely drop his guard. Although the underground chamber was concealed, he had to confirm the situation outside.

Those two knights from earlier felt like the Sword of Damocles hanging precariously over his head. Rowan reached out with his right hand and gently patted the Crystal-Scaled Pangolin curled up by his feet, then pointed straight up. The pangolin understood instantly. A faint earthen-yellow halo enveloped its four claws as it bored upward along the edge of the sealed tunnel bit by bit.

Rowan ordered it to stop only when it reached the roots of the underbrush on the surface, opening a tiny, fist-sized observation hole perfectly concealed by dense foliage. Stepping on protruding rocks, Rowan climbed to the top of the tunnel and pressed one eye against the observation hole. It was already dusk outside, the forest blanketed in a faint mist. There were only the sounds of birds and insects; no anomalies. After crouching and waiting for another twenty minutes...

Rowan confirmed the surface was temporarily safe and the stampede was gone. He squeezed back down the narrow tunnel into the tree hollow. After applying a crude splint to his arm and ensuring it wouldn't hinder basic movements, he gripped the straight sword with his single good hand and stepped out of the tree hollow once more. This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere. He was going to scout the area!

Walking along a path through unfamiliar underbrush... Rowan shifted his gaze toward a clearing a few hundred meters away. Lying there were the corpses of the unranked dire wolves and mutated wild boars he had casually slaughtered earlier for materials. At this moment, over a dozen scavenger beasts—resembling hyenas covered in scabby mange—were gathered around the corpses. They were greedily tearing at the entrails of a dire wolf.

Occasionally, they would emit low, threatening growls, viciously biting each other until blood flowed just to fight over a chunk of meat. Rowan didn't move. He stood behind a tree like a lifeless rock; the pack of beasts remained completely oblivious to his presence.

"That 'bizarre lure' that drove all those ranked mana-beasts madly toward the basin must be gone now. Otherwise, these mangy mutts wouldn't be here.

"These scavengers are usually as cowardly as mice and only dare to hunt at night. The fact that they're out feeding in a pack proves that those two terrifying ancient knights—and whatever their target was—have completely left this area." Rowan's gaze drifted past the pack of scavengers, looking toward the distant basin.

"Those knights slaughtered dozens of high-tier mana-beasts along their path... Right now, that area is absolutely littered with premium D1, maybe even D3-grade materials and high-tier mana crystals." If he could just scavenge two corpses and bring the materials back to Terra, it would absolutely sell for an astronomical fortune on the black market. A flash of raw greed streaked across Rowan's mind. But a mere two seconds later, that impulse was ruthlessly extinguished by absolute rationality.

"I can't go." Rowan took a deep breath and made his decision. If low-tier scavengers were already out foraging, then the overwhelming stench of blood radiating from the mountain of high-tier mana-beast corpses in the center of the basin had absolutely attracted every surviving apex predator within a radius of dozens of miles. Right at this very moment, a brutal, chaotic free-for-all—far more savage than the stampede—was likely erupting in that basin as beasts fought over the high-tier flesh.

With his left arm half-crippled and his mana reserves far from their peak, dragging a severely wounded body into a meat grinder swarming with apex mana-beasts just to scavenge loot was an inexplicably idiotic suicide mission. If a high-tier beast locked onto him, he didn't delude himself into thinking he'd have the same luck as before.

"No matter how good the loot is, you have to be alive to spend the money." Having gathered the necessary intel, Rowan discarded any lingering attachment. He returned to the tree hollow. The weakness brought on by hunger and blood loss began to spread. He needed to eat, utilizing the Furnace Melding Art to maintain the cellular vitality around his broken bone. Using his right hand, Rowan rummaged through his pack and pulled out a small metal tin—his unfinished "Complex Synthetic BBQ Spice."

As an underhive scavenger who still held onto a tiny shred of dignity regarding his meals... Having survived the critical phase of his unstable injuries, he truly, deeply did not want to eat flavorless raw meat ever again. Rowan made a gesture of opening his fist, then patted the pangolin's belly—a command sequence he had used several times now. The pangolin obediently opened its mouth, spitting the sliced chunks of premium Rock-Scaled Giant Crocodile meat from its companion pocket dimension onto the ground.

After prepping the slices, Rowan placed the meat onto an irregular, thin slab of rock propped over the fire he had just started. It was essentially a purely ecological grill. He pressed the meat against the hot stone. The blood veins on the surface rapidly faded, and the rich aroma of roasting meat permeated the air. Once a layer was seared, he dusted it heavily with the BBQ powder. With the first bite, the intense aroma of spices indeed rushed into his nasal cavity.

But immediately following that was the coarse texture of the crocodile meat, accompanied by an inescapable, swampy foulness that no amount of seasoning could mask. Huurk... Rowan's stomach churned violently, nearly regurgitating the meat he had just swallowed. Having forced down massive doses of this repulsive substance as "healing medicine" for several consecutive meals, his body had developed an extreme physiological rejection response.

Even though he had changed the cooking method multiple times, it simply couldn't be made palatable. But he didn't stop. Without pausing, Rowan shoved the second and third chunks of crocodile meat into his mouth. As his stomach began to operate like a literal furnace, massive life essence detonated within his body once more. The Furnace Melding Art acted like a ravenous engine, frantically extracting the energy from the flesh and blood and continuously pumping it toward the broken bone in his left arm.

Although it couldn't mend the bone, that warm current vastly alleviated the agony. After finishing this dinner that bordered on mild torture, Rowan leaned against the tree trunk, sweating profusely. He closed his eyes and began the Basic Mana Channeling technique. The high-concentration mana of the alternate world seeped through his skin like sweet rain, gathering toward the Source Crystal Core at his heart.

The pure mana not only slowly expanded the absolute limit of his mana pool, but also acted like a cool ice pack, gently soothing the trauma inflicted on his mental sea earlier. Nourished by this mana, Rowan felt his taut nerves finally find a moment of relief. Time slipped quietly away in the dead-silent underground. Feeling his mental state sufficiently recovered, Rowan pulled out the data crystal disc for the Mind-Splitting Art once more.

Since practical application was temporarily unfeasible, he decided to use this closed-door retreat to thoroughly, absolutely devour the theoretical framework of the entire technique. In the darkness, he pressed the disc against his forehead, immersing his consciousness in an ocean of theory composed of countless glowing characters. He simulated the circuit arrangement required to construct the "Secondary Core" over and over in his mind, deducing the exact methodology for bifurcating his mental power.

His foundational, logical mindset from the cyber-world of Terra allowed him to dismantle this magical technique as cleanly and clearly as reverse-engineering complex source code. He didn't know how long had passed. When Rowan finally finished reading the conclusive, esoteric summary on the final page of the crystal disc, burning the last obscure character deeply into his memory, a profound sense of total comprehension and clarity welled up within him.

"As long as I get back to Terra and have Old Gold set my arm bone properly, within two days at most, I can complete the initial divergence..." Rowan calculated silently in his mind. He severed the mental link, slowly pulled the crystal disc from his forehead, and let out a long sigh of relief. The extended study session had left him extremely mentally fatigued.

Right now, the tree hollow was so quiet he could only hear the steady breathing of the pangolin curled up in the corner and the occasional chirp of unknown birds outside. Rowan rested his right hand holding the crystal disc on his knee. His spine, which had been rigidly tense for a full day, relaxed slightly as he prepared to close his eyes and rest, waiting out the final few hours of the Möbius ring's cooldown countdown. However, in the exact instant he closed his eyes...

Directly behind him, without the slightest warning, a woman's voice rang out. The voice spoke the [Alternate World Indigenous Language]. Rowan vaguely understood those few syllables.

"What... is that... in your hand?" BOOM! In a fraction of a second, a violent shudder wracked Rowan's entire body, every single hair standing on end in absolute terror. Because just half a second ago, and even up to this very instant, within the perpetually active mental perception net of a Tier 1 Mage... There was absolutely, unequivocally nothing behind him!