Chương 24: Gluttony and Reforging

"Come on, let's go upgrade our hardware too." After exchanging a few more witty barbs, Rad dragged Rowan straight toward the equipment sector on the other side of the underground bazaar. On Terra, the pricing logic for knowledge and physical gear was entirely different. Copies of techniques and spells stored on data crystal discs contained precious core mana architectures, but they could ultimately be duplicated infinitely by magitech recorders.

Thus, a few thousand credits could buy mid-to-high-tier D-Rank premium goods. But physical gear was exponentially more expensive. A weapon genuinely capable of channeling mana and enduring high-intensity slaughter required precious mana-conductive alloys, complex mana-wiring, and even etched runes to enhance mana output. Every single piece was literally piled high with hard currency. Rowan didn't hesitate.

He was currently holding a massive fortune of over twenty thousand Terra Credits, and he was about to face a Consortium young master armed to the teeth. Being stingy right now equated to courting death. At a stall run by a smuggler wearing a single-eye eyepatch, Rowan waved his hand and dropped a clean ten thousand Terra Credits, completing a total overhaul of his arsenal. First was a D1-grade [High-Frequency Magitech Tactical Straight Sword].

The blade possessed an extremely understated dark-silver hue, about forty centimeters long, with an impossibly thin edge. What satisfied Rowan the most was the deep blue, water-attribute mana-channeling groove inlaid along the spine of the blade. As long as mana was injected, not only would the sword vibrate at high frequencies, but through its etched runes, it would also carry a razor-sharp "High-Pressure Water Jet Cutting" effect. It was countless times stronger than his broken-tipped dagger.

Second was a D1-grade [Lightweight Kevlar Magitech Inner Armor]. This close-fitting defensive garment was incredibly thin; worn under his hoodie, it left absolutely no trace. Yet, the mana impact-resistant fibers woven inside were more than enough to block a fatal strike below the D1-tier at a critical moment. Looking at the completely revamped Rowan, Rad punched him approvingly on the shoulder.

"Alright, kid. You're basically wrapped in a turtle shell now. I'm not buying anything else. I need to save my energy and head back to adjust my condition to its absolute peak." Arriving at an intersection, Rad stopped in his tracks. A decisive, point-of-no-return resolve burned in his electronic eye.

"I'll be spending the weekend in the Guild's Breakthrough Darkroom. The martial inner-etching process cannot be disturbed." Rad reached out his massive mechanical hand and gripped Rowan's shoulder tightly.

"See you at school on Monday. Don't die before then."

"You too. If you don't survive it, I'll sell your scrap metal parts for drinking money," Rowan replied coolly. The two brothers shared a knowing smile, turned around, and walked toward their respective, brutal battlefields. It was deep into the night by the time Rowan returned to his cramped, dim rented room in the Seventh Abyssal Hive. He deadbolted the rusted iron door and drew the curtains, completely sealing off the turbid, putrid air and neon lights of the outside world.

Sitting cross-legged on the hard mattress, he took a deep breath and pressed the data crystal disc containing the Frost-Chill Gauntlets against his forehead. Following the decryption method provided by the merchant, he channeled his mental power inside.

Woom— With a faint fluctuation of mana, a colossal and phenomenally complex spell model data-set surged into his mental sea—that ancient 'Sea of Consciousness' that served as the absolute wellspring of a mage's power, or what modern magitech manuals clinically termed the 'Primary Cognitive Core'—like a raging storm.

"Hsss..." Rowan sucked in a breath of cold air, his brows locking together tightly. It was too complex. If the D1-grade Minimalist Water Blade was merely a 2D line drawing composed of a few hundred strokes, then this D2-grade Frost-Chill Gauntlets was a 3D blueprint woven from thousands of intersecting, three-dimensional threads!

It didn't just require rapid mana output; it demanded the caster to instantaneously alter the physical state of water-element mana, dropping its temperature to the absolute limit and compressing it into solid ice. If an ordinary novice mage obtained this spell, they would need at least a week of deep meditation just to barely sketch its complete outline in their mind. But Rowan didn't have a week. He had less than two days left.

"Again!" Rowan clenched his jaw. The terrifying mental resilience he had honed on the razor's edge of life and death in the underhive was put on full display. Like an utterly manic micro-sculptor, he forcefully stripped apart and reassembled those mana threads within his mind. Failure. The mana dissipated. Failure again. His fingers turned purple from the uncontrolled, leaking frost. For an entire night, Rowan sat on the bed like a stone statue. Sweat soaked his clothes time and time again, only to be frozen solid.

It wasn't until the first faint rays of morning light filtered through the cracks in the window that his tightly shut eyes snapped open. The Source Crystal Core inside his left chest vibrated violently, and the deep blue [Water Source Rune] erupted with blinding radiance.

"Condense!" Rowan let out a low shout, thrusting both arms forward. In that instant, the ambient temperature around Rowan plummeted below freezing! A layer of white frost rapidly crawled across the walls and water pipes of the rented room at a visible rate. Thick, surging mana poured frantically through his meridians.

The moment it contacted the air, it directly condensed into a solid layer of ice armor—two centimeters thick and radiating a bone-chilling, deep blue luster—covering his arms from the elbows down to his wrists! Over his hands, the armor was much thinner, especially around the joints where it was nearly non-existent—likely a design choice by the spell's creator to maintain hand dexterity.

However, the ice armor covering his hands was so deeply blue it was almost black, clearly possessing an incredibly high density and hardness. This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings. Rowan clenched his fists, the surface of the ice armor emitting an agonizing, grating crack-crack sound of friction. He violently whipped his wrist, hammering his fist into the remaining half of the scrapped, solid steel pipe he had sliced yesterday. Bang! The steel pipe caved in upon impact.

But that wasn't the most terrifying part. The moment of contact, an extremely introverted wave of extreme cold spread from the dent. The surface of the once-hard steel pipe was instantly covered in thick white frost. Subsequently, under the slightest pressure, it shattered into several pieces of metallic slag, brittle as cheap glass!

"What a tyrannical extreme-chill enchantment." Rowan looked at his completely unscathed hands after dispelling the ice armor, a sharp glint in his eyes.

"As long as these hands make contact, the conductive fluid inside a Magitech Exoskeleton will instantly freeze and be rendered completely useless!" Next, he threw four or five rapid punches at a scrapped iron barrel on the other side of the room. The iron barrel dented with every strike, and under the effects of the extreme-chill enchantment, a massive hole was eventually punched straight through it. He retracted his hands and examined the micro-fractures on the ice armor. Rowan nodded thoughtfully.

The coverage around the knuckles was still slightly weak; the wrists and forearms were the optimal points for blocking and defense. The spell aspect was fully prepared. What came next was the true main event. Rowan stood up, sensing the meager dregs of mana remaining in his body, and touched the Möbius ring on his wrist. The surrounding space warped. A second later, carrying an aura of lingering frost, Rowan stepped into the primeval, wild alternate forest.

"Hmm? It ran off?" Rowan frowned slightly. He scanned the area; the tree hollow was completely empty, devoid of any life signs. The Crystal-Scaled Pangolin from before seemed to have vanished.

"Sigh, just a passing encounter after all." Rowan sighed in disappointment. Expecting an unfamiliar mana-beast to accept him as its master after a single day was indeed unrealistic. But the thought of not being able to retain such a bizarre and highly practical pangolin made his heart bleed. Slurp. The sudden sound made him instinctively grip the hilt of his sword, his gaze sweeping sharply toward the source. Then, he helplessly released his grip.

About half a meter up the inner wall of the tree trunk directly to his left, a chubby little lump covered in crystalline scales—camouflaged flawlessly as a gnarled burl of wood and rock—was staring unblinkingly at him with incredibly clear, innocent slit-pupils. Its mana fluctuations were perfectly concealed by that natural armor; even Rowan had almost been fooled.

"This stealth talent of yours... you were born to be a top-tier assassin..." Rowan shook his head with a laugh. His taut nerves finally relaxed completely, replaced by an unexpected joy of regaining something lost. He reached out and rubbed its smooth, scale-covered head. It felt surprisingly nice. Watching the pangolin blink its little black-bean eyes and happily resume licking his wrist, Rowan couldn't help but feel a bizarre illusion of "I'm not sure who's actually the pet being stroked here."

Having petted it enough, Rowan sat cross-legged and initiated the Basic Mana Channeling technique. The air here was saturated with high-purity natural mana that Terra could only dream of. Like a shriveled sponge encountering a long-awaited downpour, the pure otherworldly mana surged madly into his body through his pores. In just half an hour, not only was his depleted mana bar completely refilled, but the capacity of his Source Crystal Core was slowly being expanded by this incredibly pure energy.

When his mana reached its absolute peak, Rowan opened his eyes and directly pulled out the Furnace Melding Art—the manual the black-market stall owner had treated like a suicide note. The circulation route for this technique was extremely bizarre. It didn't require mana to circulate through the body's major meridians. Instead, it brutally compressed and collapsed all mental power and mana straight into the stomach, ultimately forming a "Mana Furnace" that resembled dark red runes lining the stomach wall.

Although this technique was a fragment, it was cleanly divided into chapters from D1 to D3. Mastering the D1 level wasn't overly difficult for him. Rowan grasped the basics in just four hours. Fully prepped, Rowan had the pangolin rummage through its companion pocket dimension and spit out the blood-drenched, four-to-five-pound chunk of premium Rock-Scaled Giant Crocodile meat. Thigh meat from a mid-tier Tier 1 beast, brimming with massive amounts of life mana.

Rowan drew his newly bought high-frequency tactical straight sword, swiftly sliced the meat into small chunks, roasted them half-rare over a makeshift fire, and swallowed them down ravenously. The moment the meat hit his stomach. Rowan activated the Furnace Melding Art. He clearly felt his stomach transform into a literal steel-smelting furnace.

The tough beast meat, which normally would have taken days to slowly digest, was instantly dissolved by terrifying high temperatures and extreme compressive force the second it touched the dark red mana furnace! Boom! Without a single drop of waste! The mana essence—of which more than sixty percent would normally be lost if consumed by an ordinary person—was violently, almost entirely locked inside his body by this "garbage technique"!

"Gahhh—!" Rowan clamped his jaw shut, a low, agonized growl tearing from his throat. It was too massive! The sudden, explosive surge of pure vitality and berserk mana was like a breached dam. It shattered the confines of his stomach and was pumped directly through his bloodstream into his limbs and bones. His skin instantly turned a boiled-shrimp red. The moisture on the surface of his body was instantly vaporized by the terrifying heat, rising as wisps of white steam. Crack... Pop...

A spine-chilling series of pops echoed from inside his body. His original, mortal muscle fibers were being torn apart by the impact of the berserk energy, only to be instantaneously reconstructed into thicker, far more resilient forms under the nourishment of the pure mana! Pain! Absolute, excruciating agony! It felt as though countless dull knives were simultaneously slicing through every inch of his muscle, as if molten lava were flowing through his veins.

If a poor bastard from the underhive had eaten toxic rat meat, this extreme extraction process would indeed cause lethal poisoning within seconds. But what Rowan was eating was the purest, high-tier mana-beast meat from an alternate world! The fatal drawback of this technique simply didn't exist for him. All that remained was an outrageous, lossless physical rampage! Rowan's eyes were entirely bloodshot. His fingers dug deeply into the dirt beneath him, his nails leaving deep white gouges in the underlying rock.

He savored the agony of this tearing process, because accompanying the pain was layer upon layer of explosive strength. Ten minutes... half an hour... an hour. When the lava-like burning sensation in his stomach finally began to subside, Rowan looked as if he had been dragged out of a river. Completely drained, he lay spread-eagled on the ground, his chest heaving violently. Squeak... A fawning chirp sounded nearby. The Crystal-Scaled Pangolin had scurried over at some point.

It seemed to have been frightened by the terrifying vitality Rowan emitted earlier, and only now dared to cautiously rub its little head against his arm. Rowan kept his eyes closed, flashing a grin. Reaching blindly to his side, he grabbed a leftover chunk of meat and tossed it with pinpoint accuracy. The little guy instantly hugged it excitedly and began gnawing away with a happy crunch, crunch. For the next day and night, Rowan utterly transformed into a tireless eating machine.

Slice, activate the furnace, channel mana to recover, repeat... He even consumed his final one-and-a-half vials of mana cultivation supplements in the process. After finishing another grueling session and resting for a moment, Rowan slowly stood up. As he rose, the bones within his body let out an incredibly long, resonant crackle, like a taut bowstring being plucked.

His originally lean frame still didn't possess exaggerated, bulky muscle mass, but beneath the streamlined, panther-like muscle contours lurked a suffocating, explosive power. He lifted his head, feeling the surging, boundless vitality crashing through his veins. Clenching his left fist slightly, the extreme, deep blue ice armor of the Frost-Chill Gauntlets instantly encased his arm. His single-phase mana pool had been forced open to one-third capacity—he was already nearing the mid-tier of Single-Phase.

His physical body rivaled that of a wild beast. He held extreme cold in his hands, and a razor-sharp D1 magitech sword hung at his waist. Rowan took a deep breath of the earthy, fragrant air of the otherworldly forest. He slowly lifted his head to look at the massive moon, half-hidden by clouds. In his cold eyes, an undisguised, freezing thirst for battle ignited. The monthly mock exam was fast approaching.