Chương 34: The Lethal Diner

"What... is that... in your hand?" The hoarse indigenous words drifted into Rowan's ears like a breath of icy air blown directly by the Grim Reaper. He didn't turn around, nor did he have time to reach for the high-frequency straight sword planted in the dirt half a meter away. Rowan's body executed an instinctual survival response. Thud! Rowan instantly dropped to a low crouch. Like a feral cat with its fur standing on end, he launched himself forward into an ungraceful, desperate roll.

"Urgh—" The violent rolling motion brought agonizing waves of pain from his half-severed left elbow bone. But he forcefully swallowed the scream. After creating a three-meter gap, he dropped to one knee and violently raised his uninjured right hand. Woom! The remaining mana within his Source Crystal Core was extracted without reservation. A deep blue, high-pressure water blade instantly materialized in the palm of his right hand.

Only in this moment did Rowan's bloodshot eyes finally see clearly the "ghost" that had silently infiltrated the space behind him. It wasn't some demonic beast. It was a woman. A young woman with beautiful features, a tall stature, and astonishing curves, yet her entire being radiated a heavy scent of blood mixed with the wild fragrance of grass and trees. She wore an ancient-style mage robe covered in complex magical runes.

Hanging around her neck was a mysterious necklace strung together from dark red beast bones and crystals. But what shocked Rowan the most were the two fluffy, silver-grey wolf ears poking out from beneath her hood, and the bushy wolf tail swaying somewhat irritably, gently sweeping the dirt beneath the hem of her robe! A Beast-kin! Aside from those two distinct animalistic traits, her face and limbs were entirely indistinguishable from a human's.

She radiating an unnerving elegance, like a predator that was as graceful as she was lethal. However, Rowan was in no mood to appreciate beauty right now. His gaze was locked dead onto the wolf-woman's body—specifically, the large, scorched, carbonized burn mark at the hem of her ornate, classical robe. It gave Rowan a profoundly familiar sense of déjà vu. Just as Rowan held his water blade high, treating her like a mortal enemy, the wolf-woman opposite him appeared incredibly casual.

Her pale gold slit-pupils cast a cold glance at the readied water blade in his hand. Swish— She merely hooked a single, pale, slender finger lightly in the air. Rowan's eyes widened instantly. He felt the mana connection between himself and the water blade be forcefully, absolutely severed by some tyrannical, vast power in a fraction of a second! The highly compressed water blade in his palm disintegrated instantly, turning into a puddle of completely harmless ordinary water.

It traced a gentle arc through the air and landed obediently into the palm of the wolf-woman's hand. Hsss... Tier 2? Or Tier 3? Rowan's mental state grew unprecedentedly grave. This was an absolute, overwhelming suppression of tier! Out of the corner of his eye, Rowan saw the Crystal-Scaled Pangolin in the corner. The normally incredibly clever Tier 1 mana-beast had curled itself into a tight, scaly ball, not daring to emit even a microscopic trace of mana fluctuation.

It was the primal, bloodline-deep terror of a lower-tier creature facing an apex predator.

"#@%￥..." The wolf-woman looked at the water in her palm, raised her head, and spoke to Rowan in the indigenous language, her speech rather rapid. Rowan couldn't understand a single word. There were still several hours until the Möbius ring's cooldown finished. Fighting was absolutely impossible, and there was nowhere to run.

"I have no hostile intentions," Rowan took a deep breath. Enduring the excruciating pain in his left arm, he took the initiative to speak in the common tongue of Terra, his tone calm.

"I am just a passing scavenger. If you can understand me, perhaps we can communicate." Hearing this completely foreign language, the fluffy ears atop the wolf-woman's head twitched slightly. A flash of obvious confusion crossed her pale gold eyes. As expected, a language barrier... Just as this thought flashed through Rowan's mind. The wolf-woman's eyes lit up. The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. Whoosh— A sudden gust of wind swept through the tree hollow.

Before Rowan's retinas could even capture an afterimage, the tall wolf-woman had crossed the three-meter distance and appeared abruptly right in front of him! Too fast! This pure, explosive physical speed—achieved without the aid of any magitech—made Rowan feel an immense, lethal threat to his life. Just as he tried to step back, a slightly cool finger, bearing faint calluses, pressed lightly but indisputably against his forehead. Woom!

Rowan felt his mental sea being forcefully breached, like a massive whale barging into the shallows. It was a terrifying shudder of having one's life completely out of one's own control.

"Don't be nervous, human." A cold, slightly languid, mature female voice echoed—not through his ears, but directly deep within his mental sea! Telepathic communication!

"Your tier hasn't reached [Ring Forging] yet. Your mental power is too weak for external transmission. I can only construct a mental link and read your surface thoughts through physical contact," the wolf-woman's mental ripples echoed in Rowan's mind.

"That glowing disc you were holding just now... what is it?" Confirming that the other party had no immediate intention of killing him, Rowan forced himself to calm down and formulate his thoughts. He exceptionally pragmatically organized his words in his mind, transmitting them through her finger: "It is a tool used for storing knowledge. It records some methods for cultivating mental power."

"A vessel for storing knowledge?" A trace of surprise flashed in her pale gold slit-pupils.

"Then why didn't I sense any traces of magical transcription on it?"

"It is a unique technology from my homeland, similar to... a mechanical lock." Rowan didn't dare attempt to explain magitech, so he substituted it with a concept she could understand.

"It has a mental power lock. If someone doesn't know the specific decryption sequence and indexing method, anyone else who picks it up will only see a blank slate."

"An interesting method of encryption." The wolf-woman withdrew her finger thoughtfully and took a half-step back. Although the mental link was severed, she didn't show any hostility. This allowed Rowan to breathe a slight sigh of relief. However, in the very next second, the wolf-woman naturally stepped into his personal space again, pressing her finger against his forehead once more.

"Just where did a hedge mage like you come from?" Her mental ripples carried a heavy tone of scrutiny.

"You don't even speak basic Gardian? If I hadn't seen how pathetically weak you are, and noticed the burn wound from a Wind-Fire Net on you, I would have swatted you to death long ago, assuming you were a lapdog for those disgusting Church lunatics." Gardian? Church lunatics? A massive volume of information slammed into Rowan's brain. His mind raced like lightning, knowing he absolutely could not expose his identity as a "visitor from another world" right now.

"I come from the far south," Rowan constructed the image of a destitute, wandering mage in his mind, his tone sincere.

"I left my homeland to travel with my mentor. Unfortunately, we encountered high-tier mana-beasts on the road. We split up to escape, and I got lost alone in the wilderness. I wandered for a long time before ending up in this forest."

"A country mage from the southern borders?" The wolf ears atop her head twitched. She seemed to accept this flawless excuse, even complaining through the mental link, "No wonder. It's normal you don't understand it. My own Gardian is actually quite terrible. Those rolled r's pushed by humans completely violate Beastman physiological structure." Rowan maintained his silence, not daring to interject.

"Oh, right, little country mage." The wolf-woman suddenly remembered something, tapping his forehead again.

"Since you walked all the way here, do you happen to know which way the 'Free Federation' is?" The Free Federation? Rowan smiled bitterly inwardly. He didn't even know what latitude of the alternate world he was currently on; how the hell was he supposed to know where the Free Federation was? But he couldn't say he didn't know. To a high-tier powerhouse who could crush him like a bug, demonstrating "uselessness" was extremely dangerous. Rowan's brain processed rapidly.

Suddenly, he recalled the mercenary squad he had encountered during his first traversal—the one composed of the martial artist, the leather-armor mage, and the white-robed cleric! The martial artist who had fled eventually brought back reinforcements. Since that group had come to the forest to hunt, the direction they came from was highly likely to be a human settlement, or the territory of some major faction!

"I'm not sure if it's the Free Federation," Rowan cautiously transmitted the visual memory.

"But I saw a group of human mercenaries previously. They came from that direction." Rowan raised his uninjured right hand and pointed toward a specific azimuth.

"That direction..." The wolf-woman closed her eyes, seemingly extending her perception, then nodded. She removed her finger from Rowan's forehead.

"Seeing as you've been relatively honest, I'll let you live for now." Hearing this, Rowan didn't lower his guard in the slightest. This wolf-woman was incredibly powerful, and he was completely at her mercy. The situation was extremely precarious. As long as she leaves, or I survive the final few hours... Rowan calculated silently in his heart. However, after taking two steps toward the exit, the wolf-woman abruptly stopped. Rowan's heart leapt into his throat once more.

He watched as the high-tier werewolf mage's elegant nose twitched rapidly several times. Then, she slowly turned around. Her pale gold slit-pupils locked dead onto the dying embers of the fire pit in the corner of the tree hollow. More accurately, she was staring at the irregular stone slab propped over the fire.

The stone slab still bore the residual grease from Rowan roasting the Rock-Scaled Giant Crocodile meat earlier, along with the incredibly pungent, potent aroma of the "Complex Synthetic BBQ Spice" produced by Terra's industrial assembly lines! Gulp. In the dead-silent tree hollow, Rowan heard it with absolute clarity: the wolf-woman opposite him swallowed a heavy mouthful of saliva.

"Um..." The wolf-woman flashed back in front of Rowan, pressing her finger against his forehead. The aloof, high-and-mighty demeanor from earlier was completely gone from her eyes. Instead, they were filled with a suppressed, burning craving.

"That lingering smell on the stone slab is very unique. Just now, while I was fleeing... passing by, I smelled it seeping through the cracks in the dirt, which is why I dug my way down here." Rowan was speechless. He looked at the terrifyingly powerful Tier 2 or Tier 3 wolf-woman in front of him—who was clearly running for her life from ancient knights—and the corner of his mouth twitched uncontrollably. She was lured all the way down here just by the smell of BBQ?!

"You know how to make that stuff, right?" The undisguised gluttony in the wolf-woman's slit-pupils burned bright, her mental transmission heavy with suggestion.

"... Yes." Rowan sighed. Five minutes later. A bizarre, surreal scene unfolded within the gloomy tree hollow. A scavenger boy from a cyber-underhive—half-crippled left arm, heavily injured, and hovering near death's door—was sweating profusely as he used one hand to lay slabs of raw crocodile meat onto the scalding stone slab, expertly dusting them with synthetic BBQ powder. And on the opposite side of the fire pit...

The werewolf female mage—who had likely incited a terrifying beast stampede and had just narrowly escaped the clutches of two high-tier ancient knights—was squatting on the ground. Her fluffy wolf tail wagged happily behind her as she stared eagerly, waiting for dinner to be served. In the corner, a pangolin playing dead squeezed its eyes shut in absolute despair.