Chương 7: Harvest from the Dead

Rising from the muck, Rowan wiped the white-robed mage's blood from his face. His stab-proof liner was completely soaked through with muddy water. The cold wind blowing past not only stripped away his body heat but also instantly cleared his sluggish, adrenaline-suppressed brain. This first lesson in otherworldly survival had only hardened Rowan's resolve. I have to become a full-fledged mage! Rowan didn't relax for a single second.

Like a seasoned underhive rat, he hunched his back and, using the thick tree roots and underbrush for cover, silently crept back to the battlefield. The site was an absolute disaster. Ancient trees, thick enough that several men couldn't have linked arms around them, had been snapped in half. The ground was littered with massive craters, and the grass and mud were dyed a dark, rusty red with blood. He moved first to the only remaining casualty on the field—the corpse of the white-robed mage.

The body had been trampled by the frenzied matriarch into an unrecognizable mixture of meat paste and bone fragments, pounded deep into the dirt. Only at the very edge of his ruined robes was a small, palm-sized grey pouch—stitched from some unknown beast skin—half-buried in the dirt. It was an otherworldly mage's storage pouch. A flash of greed crossed Rowan's eyes. Just as he reached out to grab it, a spectral blue arc of spatial energy flickered across the opening of the pouch.

Rowan's pupils shrank, and his outstretched hand froze mid-air. Having experienced it several times now, Rowan was far too familiar with that light. It was the signature glow of a spatial rift. The matriarch's devastating stomp had clipped the edge of the pouch. While it hadn't crushed the main body directly, the massive earth-element shockwave had violently disrupted the stable spatial array inside. Right now, it was basically a spatial grenade with the pin pulled, ready to detonate at any moment.

If he grabbed it directly, the instant the space collapsed, his arm would be sucked straight into the void turbulence and shredded to mincemeat.

"What a shoddy piece of trash..." Rowan cursed through gritted teeth. He drew his high-frequency vibro-dagger but kept the power switched off. Lying flat against the ground with extreme caution, he controlled his breathing and used the metal tip of the blade to meticulously pry open the damaged mouth of the pouch, millimeter by millimeter. Sweat dripped from the tip of his nose, splashing into the muddy puddle. He looked like a bomb disposal tech defusing a complex explosive.

Using the physical leverage of the dagger's blade, he bypassed the flickering blue spatial rifts, gently hooking the contents inside and dragging them out. Clink. The first item rolled onto the mud. It was a crystal, no larger than a pigeon's egg, but radiating an incredibly gentle, pure halo that was almost completely transparent. Rowan's gaze instantly locked onto it. His Adam's apple bobbed hard, and his breathing paused for half a beat. A Mana Primordium!

On Terra, the "Mana Primordium" was the lifeblood of any aspiring mage. It was the absolute mandatory catalyst for a mortal to step into the ranks of the supernatural and etch "Source Runes" onto the Source Crystal Core within their body! On Terra, this was a strictly controlled resource. A pure, naturally formed one like this had a starting auction price of no less than 30, 000 Terra Credits on the black market.

And even then, there was rarely any supply; it was tightly monopolized by the Consortium and the Military. In contrast, the impure, artificially synthesized, low-grade primordiums issued by the government to schools were considered overpriced even at 3, 000 credits. But right now, a top-tier primordium was just quietly lying in the mud.

"The qualitative leap from zero to one..." This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there. With slightly trembling fingers, Rowan used the gentlest motion possible to tuck the primordium into the inner pocket of his clothes, pressing it close to his chest. With this, he possessed the stepping stone to become a true "Tier 1 Mage." Suppressing his wild ecstasy, Rowan continued to probe inside the storage pouch with his dagger.

Just as he carefully managed to hook out half of an alchemical root that looked like tree bark, the pouch on the ground could no longer withstand the tearing of spatial mana. With a sharp tearing sound, it erupted into a ball of blue light. Every remaining item inside, along with the other half of the root and the very tip of Rowan's dagger, was sucked into the spatial turbulence and vanished into thin air. Rowan snapped back to reality, realizing his back was entirely drenched in cold sweat.

He inspected the dagger. The broken tip was impossibly smooth, and a portion of the inner magitech circuit runes was now exposed. With no time to mourn the damaged dagger, Rowan activated his scanning software and pointed it at the half-root on the grass. [Material Scan Complete. Cross-referencing Offline Trial Free Knowledge Base...] [Content does not exist in the Free Knowledge Base. Please upgrade to VIP Level 1.] Shaking his head, Rowan shoved the root into his jacket pocket.

After checking the torn fragments of the mage robe and confirming they were just ordinary fabric, Rowan shifted his attention to the area around the mage's remains. His boots squelched over chunks of viscera; it felt like walking on sticky paste. As he scanned the area meticulously, his eyes suddenly narrowed. Pinned beneath a shard of the mage's ribs was a bloodstained scrap of parchment, its edges charred by the rhino's mana beam. Rowan quickly pinched the scrap and held it up to the light. There was text on it!

"Wait..." Written boldly across the torn page were the words: "... Praise be to ___,... and..., Your radiance... grants shelter to the lost lambs..." Despite a few incomprehensible symbols, he could read most of it! Suppressing the shock rising in his chest, Rowan quickly recorded the text while pondering its implications. What connection does this world have with Terra? There were still over a dozen hours left before the Möbius ring finished recharging.

Pushing his thoughts aside, Rowan turned his gaze toward the massive, hill-like corpse of the bull rhino a few dozen meters away. Although the beast's heart almost certainly contained a mana crystal, cutting through that heavy armor was far too massive an undertaking. Instead, he locked his eyes on the beast's single horn, which had a slight crack in it and was practically leaking dense earth-element mana.

This was authentic material from a Tier 1 mana-beast; the mutated rabbit from before was little more than a wild animal in comparison. Rowan sprinted over quickly and switched the high-frequency vibro-dagger to maximum power. Even though the tip had been cleanly sheared off by the spatial turbulence, the core circuit runes were thankfully intact. Woom—! The blade buzzed with a nearly silent, high-speed oscillation as he drove it ruthlessly into the crack on the rhino's horn.

However, against the horn of a Tier 1 beast, the refined Terra-made blade met unprecedented resistance. The blade struggled to push through the keratin layer. The extreme heat generated by the friction caused the blade to glow red, and the built-in mana battery drained at a visible rate.

"Still pushing it too hard... This dagger doesn't even qualify as D-rank, after all."

"Faster. Just a little faster..." Rowan gritted his teeth, pressing down on the hilt with both hands with all his might. Five minutes passed. He was completely soaked in sweat, and the dagger's battery had dropped to a critical 15%. Yet, the rock-hard horn had barely been sawed a third of the way through. Just as Rowan prepared to adjust his angle and continue cutting, his right ear caught the faintest rhythmic vibration echoing from deep within the earth.

And it wasn't just vibrations—the wind carried the faint, unmistakable metallic grind of armor clashing. Rowan's scalp tingled. Pure underhive instinct dropped him flat behind the massive corpse of the bull rhino. He immediately pulled down his tactical binoculars, maxed out the focus, and peered through the dense layers of the forest. Through a gap in the trees, about two kilometers away, he saw the greatsword martial artist who had fled earlier—returning.

And this time, he was leading an entire squad of fully armed, heavy-duty mercenaries! Looking at the precious rhino horn he was just moments away from sawing off, and thinking of the un-harvested mana crystal still sitting in its heart, a flash of deep reluctance and greed crossed Rowan's eyes. If he'd had just ten more minutes, this beast's value would have been more than enough to wipe out his upcoming debt payment in full.

But the first rule of survival for an underhive rat was absolute: Never reach for money you can't carry away.

"You can only spend money if you're alive to spend it." Without a second's hesitation, Rowan powered off the vibro-dagger and tucked it into his waistband. He ran back to the spot of the initial battle, scooped up a handful of dirt laced with shattered crystal powder from the broken array core, and stuffed it into his pocket. After a brief second of hesitation, he returned to the rhino corpse one last time.

Activating the dagger, he plunged it straight into a gaping wound left by the martial artist's sword, smoothly carving out a chunk of meat, which he shoved into his portable satchel. Right before retreating, he activated his AR terminal's environmental scan mode—anti-tracking habit, drilled into him by years in the underhive. He snapped over a dozen high-definition 3D photos of the dead rhino, the remains of the white-robed mage, and the battle-scarred terrain.

If he brought these image data back to Terra for analysis, he could definitely squeeze out even more intelligence. Finally, he grabbed handfuls of mud and smeared them over his boots and the cut marks on the rhino horn, masking his scent and tampering with the scene. Without a backward glance, he slipped into the dark, primeval jungle like a shadow. He had no intention of hiding nearby to wait them out—who knew if they had some form of tracking spell.

Right now, all he needed to do was find a safe hole to curl up in and quietly wait for the Möbius ring's countdown to hit zero.