Chapter 87: Guessing (Part 2)
After devouring a whole roasted fox, my intense desire to eat faded significantly.
Though I still didn’t feel full…
At least I wasn’t hungry anymore.
I smacked my lips while looking at the Angel, who was squatting on a rock across from me, utterly speechless as he stared back.
The Pope’s eyes lingered on me, “Was it good?”
“Not at all,” I quickly shook my head.
“But you gobbled it all up…”
“Uh-huh.”
“Doesn’t it feel uncomfortable?”
“Nope.”
Aside from the taste and texture being wildly off from my expectations, I felt perfectly fine. My stomach was warm, no longer grumbling in protest. After all, we had been rushing through rainy plains, and the chance to eat wild game like this was indeed rare.
Although it tasted awful.
“Ah… I shouldn’t have viewed you as a frail human. That’s my mistake,” Angel suddenly remarked after a long pause.
He patted his legs and stood up, “Seriously though, do you mind if I take a look at your body? Like, in a very serious way?”
“Try it and I’ll glare you into next week,” I shot back at him.
“Tsk…”
The Pope was momentarily speechless.
“Forget it.”
After a moment of contemplation, he waved it off.
“You’ve finished eating, so let’s get back to business.”
Business?
“What kind of business?”
“Follow me.”
“What for?”
“Experiments.”
With that, Angel headed off towards the tent.
?
I glanced at his retreating figure, hesitated for a beat, then followed him.
Inside the tent, Angel picked up a bl**d-soaked and icy bag and presented it to me, holding it upside down. A chunk of meat plopped onto the ground with a “thud.”
!
My face paled, and I quickly stepped back, shielding my mouth and nose with my hands.
“Don’t panic, it’s just a chunk of frozen meat right now.”
Seeing my reaction, Angel thought I was grossed out by the meat and burst into laughter. “Maybe if we roast it, it’ll taste much better than a red-horned marten. It’s lean, and it looks decent… should we give it a try?”
His tone had a playful undertone, but there was an odd seriousness in his eyes at the end.
I shivered all over.
“You’re disgusting!”
“Haha, I’m just joking.”
Angel crouched down, poking and prodding the fist-sized meat chunk. I slowly dropped my hands and cautiously sniffed the air.
It seemed… that desperate hunger feeling was gone.
Was it because I ate fox meat?
“Wow!”
Angel suddenly exclaimed, yanking his hand back and rubbing it against his chest. “Your ice temperature is too low! I almost froze my fingers off… ow, that hurts…”
The meat was as hard as a rock, radiating chilling air, turning the tent into a frigid temple.
Angel looked up at me and said, “Little Black Charcoal, we should heat this up. Try using your Infernal Fire power and see what happens.”
!
“You want to…”
My brows furrowed. I couldn’t quite grasp Angel’s thinking.
This guy had repeatedly warned me not to use my Infernal Fire power to avoid trouble, and now he was casually asking me to use it…
Did he guess something?
“I used the Reverse Image End to block the light and sound here, so no one knows what we’re doing.” Angel explained, backing away. “Feel free to go for it… but be careful; this thing might not be dead.”
I was surprised, “What?”
“Just a guess; let’s wait and see. Go ahead, just don’t make the fire too big.”
Angel stopped chitchatting, his smile fading as a faint glow appeared around him.
…Fine, let’s give it a shot.
I stepped back a couple more paces, inhaled softly, and extended my right palm. I summoned the Infernal Fire power within my body, “whoosh,” and a scarlet, blazing flame erupted from my palm, engulfing my entire right arm as the temperature around me soared.
“Less fire—”
“You’ll turn it into charcoal!”
Angel was hollering from the side, and I snapped back at him, “Shut up!”
I wasn’t particularly proficient with the Infernal Fire; I could unleash it when attacking, but controlling the heat was another matter entirely.
Got to concentrate…
I fixated on the meat chunk on the ground, gradually compressing the Infernal Fire’s strength, adjusting the heat output. Slowly, the flames on my arm flickered down a notch.
“Whew—”
I exhaled, aimed my palm at the meat, and unleashed a stream of fire. “Boom—”
“Whoa—”
The fire hit the ground and splattered everywhere, almost singeing Angel’s robe. The Pope jumped back, shouting, “Hey, do you want to roast me along with it?!”
I hastily extinguished the flames, retreating while covering my mouth and nose with my sleeve.
The Infernal Fire danced wildly in the tent, thick smoke billowing upwards, consuming the meat. The frost melted at a visibly rapid pace.
“Cough, cough!”
“Little Black Charcoal, what are you doing?!”
“What’s wrong?!”
“I told you to use low heat to cook the meat, not set the tent on fire!”
“I can’t control it… cough.”
“Put it out, hurry!”
“Oh.”
Before he could finish, I raised my other hand, a blue light flashing from my palm, and low-temperature ice mist poured out, engulfing the roaring flames.
I was already quite familiar with using the Frost Order; controlling the amount came almost instinctively. A pale white mist rained down on the blazing flames, sizzling sounds filled the air, and thick mist poured out, quickly stabilizing the fierce crimson fire.
But before I could breathe a sigh of relief, something shot out of the mist with a “whoosh.”
“Ah!”
The moment I recognized what it was, my scalp tingled.
It was that chunk of meat!!!
The disgusting, flaming meat was wriggling across the ground as if it was alive. After the frost melted, it turned a grotesque crimson with dark brown shades, and I could clearly see pulsing blue veins… it was crawling towards me!
“Ah—”
I was stunned, my mind blank. The overwhelming feelings of disgust and aversion mingled with an odd familiarity and terror.
Before I could think, I booted it away.
“Freaking heck!”
Angel cursed nearby, and as the meat chunk flew towards him, a golden light shimmered around him. In the blink of an eye, he appeared on my left side.
Buzzing…
The air trembled slightly, and a golden sphere the size of a fist floated above the Pope’s head.
“Reverse Image.”
Buzz—
Invisible waves spread from the golden-haired man, and in my view, the meat chunk that hadn’t hit the ground yet and was about to land in the tent’s fabric suddenly seemed to hit an invisible wall. The rebound force sent it flying away again, crashing to the ground, wriggling to crawl again but getting stuck, smashing into the air again until the meat was flattened.
This is…
That orb, Angel had used it during the Royal City battle…
Back then, Nero was trapped behind that invisible wall of air, and even I bumped into it without knowing… I remembered feeling as if I’d been “thrown” back by some unseen force, leaving me dazed for quite a while…
“Were you aiming for that on purpose?”
The man’s relaxed voice pulled me back from my shock.
“What?”
“You deliberately kicked that thing towards me. You’re a bad girl.”
“……”
?
In that situation, who had time to think about where you were?
I rolled my eyes, too tense to engage him as I kept my gaze fixed on that chunk of meat.
In the fog, the meat was wriggling back and forth within half a meter, and no matter how hard it tried to crawl, it smashed into the wall of air… it seemed trapped in a “cage.”
“What’s going on?”
“Good question.” The golden sphere flickered a few times, then sank into Angel’s chest. He flicked his golden hair away and glanced at me with admiration, “That’s a very insightful question. I honestly don’t know how to answer… can’t you just look for yourself?”
With that, he clapped his hands and approached the squirming meat chunk.
“Just as I thought…”
The Infernal Fire had been extinguished by the frost, steam wafting everywhere made it difficult to see. Angel stepped up to lift the tent flap, letting the steam escape, then crouched beside the meat chunk.
He said softly, “This thing is alive.”
The meat kept wriggling as if it could sense a person’s presence, lunging towards Angel again and again, only to be rebounded every time.
The gold-haired man squatted there, remaining expressionless for a moment before beckoning me, “Come over here.”
I hesitated for a moment.
Then slowly walked over and stood behind him.
The Pope pointed at the struggling meat chunk and asked, “What do you think it is?”
“… I don’t know.”
My head was in a jumble, feeling extremely nauseous, unease bubbling up in me, making it hard to think straight… and I felt like I’d seen something like this before.
“Do you think it has thoughts?” he continued.
“It shouldn’t, right?”
Where had I seen this before…
“What do you think it wants?”
“……”
I fell silent, continuing to stare at the meat.
It seemed similar to that place where such meat crawled towards me…
“Ah!”
My eyes suddenly widened.
“I remember now!”
In Irush’s dream!
“What did you remember? Why are you shouting?” Angel asked, digging at his ear.
“I, I remembered! I’ve seen this in my dream…”
Fragments of information rushed through my mind like a tidal wave, leaving me with a buzzing in my ears, the daunting truth stunning me into a stutter, my words jumbled as I struggled to express myself.
“Back in the Royal City, on the terrace… Irush put me in a dream…”
That deep, eerily atmospheric hallway.
The room filled with jars and bottles.
An office desk with a blank Book of Songs, and behind the door, a black cloak that looked very much like the Pope Knight’s but with different embroidery, along with those vessels filled with unknown liquids… I broke one open, and meat chunks spilled out.
It was this thing.
Almost identical, the repulsive thing!
