Chương 30: The Guest at the Door and the Invitation

Inside the dim room, Rowan was like a panther with every muscle coiled tight in the shadows. He stared dead at the thin, rusted iron door, his left thumb already resting on the activation groove of his high-frequency tactical straight sword. Should the person outside make any violent move, the compressed water mana within the Source Crystal Core in his heart would coordinate with the blade to slit their throat in an instant.

"Rowan? You in there? Open up, it's me." A hushed, gravelly male voice drifted through the door. Accompanied by the voice was the crisp clink-clink of small glass vials rattling inside a cheap parcel. The killing intent in Rowan's eyes faltered slightly, and his stiffened spine relaxed a fraction. The deep blue mana receded silently back into his heart like a retreating tide. He didn't disarm immediately.

Instead, reaching out with his left hand, he exceptionally cautiously slid back the three physical deadbolts on the door. The iron roller-door rattled open just a crack. Standing outside was a scrawny youth. He wore a forest-green jacket stained with machine oil and a low-end tactical monocle over his right eye. In his hand, he clutched a black plastic bag. It was "Syringe," a rare breed of vendor in the underhive who actually held a legitimate business permit. Rowan exhaled fully and pulled the door open.

"Gods above! Is there a war starting out there today?" Syringe darted into the room, immediately slamming the door shut behind him. Leaning against the metal panel, he panted heavily, cursing under his breath.

"Those rabid dogs from the Security Bureau have the intersection completely blocked! Just now, two cops in exoskeletons searched me three times with scanners! When they saw this bag of chemicals, they nearly blew my head off thinking I was some smuggler!" Grumbling, Syringe held out the black plastic bag to Rowan.

"If I weren't trying to save on the drone delivery fee, I wouldn't have bothered risking my neck to deliver this personally. Here, this month's painkillers. Ten vials total, same price as always." Rowan looked at the plastic bag. Memories surfaced of the past decade—the agonizing, soul-shredding pain that felt like ten thousand ants devouring his heart whenever the Möbius birthmark on his wrist flared up.

In those days, it was only through these pain-suppression vials provided by Syringe that he had managed to maintain a sliver of sanity and survive the torment. But now, everything was different. Ever since he activated the mark and completed his first traversal, the pain had vanished. More importantly, after the reforging by the Furnace Melding Art, the chronic ailment that had plagued him for years had been ground to dust along with his once-feeble constitution.

"Take them back, Syringe," Rowan said, making no move to take the bag. His voice was calm.

"I won't be needing them anymore. Ever." Syringe froze. A flash of confusion crossed his remaining biological eye, and he lowered his voice.

"Rowan, did you find a cheaper source on the black market? Look, we've been doing business for years, let me give you some advice: don't touch that dirt-cheap [Snow-Silver Herb Potion]. The Security Bureau is hunting that stuff down right now! If you—""It's not about the money." Rowan shook his head. He knew that in the Seventh Abyssal Hive—a place built on deception and betrayal—words were the flimsiest of things.

He didn't recite a long-winded incantation, nor did he use mental power to construct a complex spell model. Rowan simply, effortlessly, raised his right hand. Woom— Inside the dim, cramped apartment, a cluster of dazzling, profound blue light suddenly ignited. A globule of incredibly pure liquid water spiraled and danced around Rowan's fingertip as if it possessed a life of its own. As the water appeared, a suffocating mana pressure permeated the stagnant air.

This wasn't the rigid, mechanical magic cast through technological runes; this was the raw, elemental majesty of a true Mage. Thud. The bag in Syringe's hand hit the floor, the cheap glass vials rolling in every direction. His low-end tactical monocle, which usually flickered with a faint red light, was now screaming with a frantic beep-beep alarm as it detected a mana fluctuation exceeding its safety threshold. But Syringe didn't care about his overheating eyepiece.

He stared fixedly at the deep blue light on Rowan's finger, his legs giving way as he stumbled back two steps, his back hitting the iron door with a heavy thud.

"T-Tier... Tier 1..." Syringe's Adam's apple bobbed with difficulty, his voice trembling violently.

"Source Rune Resonance... You... you've become a Lord Mage?" If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. He knew exactly what this meant. In the underhive, if a pauper scraped together enough credits for a bottom-tier cybernetic modification, they could become a minor gang leader. But if someone crossed that sky-high barrier to condense a Source Crystal Core and become a Tier 1 Mage... that was a genuine, literal class leap.

They were now high-tier specialists that even Consortiums and the military were desperate to recruit! Rowan waved his hand casually. The water at his fingertip instantly dissolved into the air as if it had never existed.

"My illness is cured. My body was reforged by mana," Rowan said. He opened his terminal and transferred several dozen Terra Credits to Syringe's account.

"This is for your trouble coming here. Take the drugs back and resell them." Seeing the credit-received notification on his monocle, Syringe awkwardly rubbed the hem of his jacket. Looking at the teenager before him, whose very aura had undergone a tectonic shift, the once-familiar warmth in his eyes was inevitably replaced by a surge of awe—and a deep, gnawing sense of inferiority.

"I see... I see." Syringe pulled at the corner of his mouth bitterly, his voice dropping an octave.

"Back during the entrance exams, I thought memorizing basic potion formulas was too exhausting, so I went to the streets. You spent every night working part-time just to buy secondhand textbooks... and now you're a bona fide Mage. I guess I'm destined to spend my life delivering medicine in this mud pit." Rowan didn't offer any words of comfort as he watched Syringe deflate. They were business associates, and in the brutal world of Terra, cheap sympathy was a worthless currency.

Just as Syringe bent down to retrieve the vials, preparing to slink away, he suddenly seemed to remember something. He snapped his head up, a flash of internal struggle crossing his face before he finally gritted his teeth and spoke.

"Rowan... no, Master Rowan." Syringe rubbed his hands together, his posture stiff and expectant.

"Four days from now... are you free?" Rowan narrowed his eyes.

"What is it?"

"It's my brother's frontier pioneer squad," Syringe explained rapidly, swallowing hard.

"The Explorer's Association discovered an abandoned ancient biological warehouse in the wastelands outside the city. The Guild masters have already given it a preliminary hazard rating of [Tier-D Ruin]. My brother's squad took the contract for the follow-up detection and cleanup mission. But... most of his squad are half-ironmen with cheap, low-grade prosthetics. They only have two D-rank mages. A ruin like this is a bit of a stretch for them, and they're desperate for a heavy-hitter to anchor the team."

Syringe looked up at Rowan, his eyes burning with fervor.

"If we could have one more Tier 1 Mage like you, success would be guaranteed! Rest assured, if you go, the lion's share of the Explorer's Association contribution points will go to the Mages! We mortals just want some scraps and the labor credits." A ruin exploration? Rowan's mind raced. This was indeed a perfect opportunity. As he brought more and more precious materials back from the alternate world, he needed a "legal" cloak to wear on Terra.

"Loot from an Explorer's Association ruin" was undoubtedly the most perfect laundering channel. Finding rare materials in a low-tier ruin wasn't unheard of; "precious" on Terra usually just meant "scarce," not necessarily "high-tier." More importantly, four days from now was the exact point where his planned three-day intensive cultivation of the Mind-Splitting Art would conclude. It would be a perfect chance to test his progress.

"I'll do it," Rowan nodded.

"Four days from now, contact me with the coordinates via an encrypted Dark Web channel."

"Excellent! Thank you so much!" Syringe sounded like he had just received a divine pardon. Bowing repeatedly in gratitude, he pulled the iron door open and vanished quickly into the dim corridor. As the door slammed shut again, the room returned to absolute silence. Rowan walked to the small window. Through the slats of the blinds, he watched the agitated police lights of the Security Bureau still conducting their sweeps.

"I need to find a new safehouse as soon as possible," Rowan calculated. With his rising strength and the increasing frequency of his traversals, this slum apartment with zero security was no longer viable. If the Security Bureau or Julian's thugs were to kick in his door while he was away in the alternate world and his body was physically missing, his deepest secret would be exposed. But those were problems for four days from now. Right now, he had something more critical to attend to.

Rowan turned around and pulled his modified tactical terminal from the hidden compartment beneath his bed. With practiced ease, he yanked the mana battery, physically powering the device down, and shoved it back into the deepest layer of the lining. In Terra's cyber-network, this terminal—with its backdoors severed—was his tool for evading Consortium surveillance and browsing the Dark Web. But for now, he would not be taking it to the alternate world.

That world, overflowing with primal mana and seemingly ancient, was still an unknown. Until he fully understood its level of magitech development, this industrial-style terminal would be a ticking time bomb loudly announcing "I don't belong here." Rowan reached up and lightly touched the corner of his eye.

This cheap AR retina, forcefully implanted by the Consortium to pump garbage advertisements and monitoring protocols into his head whenever he was on Terra's network, had ironically become his best tool for the alternate world. Once he used the Möbius ring and left the signal coverage of the Akashic Network, most of the device's intrusive features would simply paralyze.

In offline mode, its pure optical recording and lightweight processing power were a "benefit" of Terra's advanced magitech that he could use without exposing himself. The irony of using the Consortium's leash to secure his own fortune made a faint smile curl Rowan's lips. He opened his battered wardrobe and pulled a grey-black robe of pure cotton-hemp from the bottom shelf. It was an item with zero industrial runes that he had specially scavenged from the black market days ago.

He stripped out of his cyber-industrial hoodie and donned the coarse robe. Next, he drew his high-frequency straight sword and, with immense patience, used a whetstone to completely grind away the tiny "Factory Steel Stamp" on the scabbard, even rubbing some mud into it for a "weathered" look. Finally, he used a dagger to pry away all the metallic buckles on his tactical boots that bore corporate branding, replacing them with simple cord ties.

When Rowan stood before the cracked mirror again, the student reeking of machine oil and underhive poverty was gone. In his place was a cold-eyed wanderer, his entire being exuding a classical, mysterious aura—a wandering mage. Everything was prepared. Rowan took a deep breath, tucking the data disc for the Mind-Splitting Art securely against his body. Then, he slowly closed his eyes and concentrated his mental power on his right wrist.

The ugly, Möbius-shaped birthmark seemed to feel its host's call, beginning to radiate a spectral light. Woom— Space warped slightly. A second later, the dim apartment was empty. Only a wisp of lingering, cold water vapor remained, slowly evaporating into the air.