Chương 31: Reverse Stampede and the Knight Squad

The violent sensation of weightlessness receded like a fading tide. As the spectral light on the Möbius birthmark dimmed, Rowan's boots once again planted firmly onto the solid earth. Raw, unfiltered primal mana rushed in with his every breath, causing the newly advanced Source Crystal Core in his left chest to emit a faint, resonant glow.

"No matter how many times I come here, the stark contrast in mana concentration feels absurd." Rowan took a deep breath and opened his eyes. He was inside the massive tree hollow he had departed from last time. Instinctively raising his head, his gaze immediately locked onto the ceiling of the hollow. Sure enough, the rotund Crystal-Scaled Pangolin was still huddled up there. Its four stubby claws dug deeply into the rough wood grain, hanging upside down like a scale-covered iron weight.

Seeing Rowan suddenly appear, a flash of pleasant surprise crossed the pangolin's small, bead-like eyes. With a soft plop, it dropped from the ceiling, expertly scurried up Rowan's calf to his shoulder, and affectionately nuzzled his cheek. Rowan chuckled, pinching the hard crystalline scales on its back, complaining inwardly, You look like a pangolin built to bore through solid rock, so why are you acting as cowardly as a gecko?

Despite his mental grumbling, Rowan knew very well that this little guy was a deeply hidden Tier 1 mana-beast with intelligence clearly exceeding ordinary animals. It was highly likely that its profound cowardice was exactly because its superior intellect allowed it to sense and avoid extreme danger. Wasting no time, Rowan sat cross-legged in the hollow, reached into his jacket, and pulled out the data crystal disc containing the [Mind-Splitting Art].

The mana concentration here was countless times higher than on Terra. It was the absolute perfect incubator for undergoing the soul-tearing "micro-surgery" of splitting his mental sea. Just as Rowan pressed the crystal disc against his forehead, fully prepared to endure the living hell of agony... Rumble... Rumble... An incredibly faint, yet highly rhythmic tremor suddenly transmitted from deep within the tree trunk beneath his feet.

The pangolin on his shoulder reacted as if electrocuted, every single scale on its body standing on end. It didn't shrink its head into its body like it usually did when scared. Instead, acting completely out of character, it leaned half its body out, staring frequently toward the gloomy depths of the forest outside the hollow, emitting anxious, low whines from its throat.

"Something's wrong." Rowan's eyes turned razor-sharp instantly. He decisively pocketed the crystal disc and silently slid out of the tree hollow, pressing himself flat against the trunk. The moment he peeked out, the scene unfolding before him made his scalp tingle with numbness. On the forest floor below, an endless tide of bizarre and grotesque mana-beasts was stampeding in absolute frenzy.

A mutated wild boar, the size of an armored vehicle with its back covered in black chitinous plating, was loudly crushing the underbrush in its path. In mid-air, a flock of bizarre four-winged birds with beaks like steel awls swept past like a dark storm cloud. A beast stampede. Yet, there was an indescribable eeriness to this stampede. They weren't attacking each other; predators and prey were running side-by-side in bizarre harmony. There was no terror in their bloodshot eyes.

Instead, they were filled with a fanatical fervor, as if drawn by some overwhelmingly intense lure. With reckless abandon, they surged in the exact same direction deeper into the forest, as if something there was forcefully conscripting them. Acting with extreme rationality, Rowan crouched on a thick branch and observed calmly for a moment.

"The vast majority of these on the periphery are unranked wild beasts. The occasional mana-beasts are D2-grade at most," Rowan muttered, rubbing his chin. An intense thirst for knowledge intertwined with a scavenger's instinct for profit and survival in his mind. After observing for another ten minutes and confirming that there were no entities capable of threatening him on the fringes of the stampede, Rowan decided to tail them and investigate.

Like a weightless ghost, he leaped and wove through the branches of the towering ancient trees. Along the way, he deliberately avoided the few mana-beasts, his gaze sweeping the ground below like a searchlight. Swish— Rowan dropped from a branch. A deep blue water blade instantly condensed in his left hand, cleanly and silently slicing open the throat of a straggling, blind Dire Wolf as smoothly as cutting tofu. With practiced, expert movements, he drew his high-frequency straight sword.

In a few quick strokes, he skinned the wolf's most valuable back pelt and stuffed it, along with a pair of canine teeth, into his backpack. As for why he didn't dig out the mana crystal? The crystals from beasts of this level were literal garbage. They couldn't even compare to a near-D1 Saber-Rabbit—and even Saber-Rabbit crystals weren't worth much to him anymore. In just half an hour of stealth tracking, Rowan casually slaughtered four unranked wild beasts, his backpack already bulging slightly.

This effortless, masterful hunting posture was a world apart from his desperate struggles when he first arrived in this alternate world. However, as he drew closer to the "source," the ambient mana pressure in the air began to spike noticeably. Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site. High-tier mana-beasts radiating terrifying auras began to appear frequently in the stampede below.

Rowan even spotted a D3-grade giant python wreathed in spectral green flames; every plant it slithered past instantly withered to ash. Rowan stopped in his tracks with absolute rationality.

"I can't get any closer. Ahead is a clustered zone of high-tier mana-beasts." He raised his head, locking his eyes onto a towering, ancient tree that would require a dozen men to encircle. Relying on the terrifying core strength forged by the Furnace Melding Art—which rivaled that of a high-tier ape—Rowan's fingers dug into the crevices of the bark like steel spikes. Like an agile spider, he rapidly scaled toward the canopy, preparing to secure a vantage point to observe the situation ahead.

Just as he reached a height of nearly sixty meters above the ground... SCREEEEECH—! An incredibly piercing eagle cry that felt as if it could puncture his eardrums detonated abruptly directly above him! Rowan snapped his head up. Plunging from the shadows of the canopy, carrying a gale-force wind, was a giant eagle over three meters long with a wingspan resembling two rows of sharpened steel blades! It was diving straight at him at a terrifying speed! D1-grade Mana-Beast: [Iron-Feathered Gale Eagle]!

Its territorial instincts were extremely aggressive. This ancient tree was clearly its temporary roost, and Rowan—this "hairless monkey" relentlessly climbing its tree—had enraged it. The violent wind pressure stung Rowan's cheeks. Looking at those wings lined with a cold, metallic luster, he was absolutely certain that a direct hit would slice him clean in half.

"Bad luck." Rowan kicked off the trunk violently, shattering the bark beneath his boots. He didn't choose to dodge; instead, he launched himself skyward like a cannonball, meeting the Gale Eagle's talons head-on. The powerful mental perception of a Tier 1 Mage allowed him to instantly lock onto the eagle's trajectory. His left hand clenched the void, and the Minimalist Water Blade took shape almost instantaneously!

A deep blue, hyper-compressed crescent water blade shot from his hand, slashing precisely toward the eagle's left wing. CLANG! The collision of the water blade against the steel-like feathers produced an ear-piercing metallic screech. Amidst a shower of sparks, several rigid iron feathers were forcefully severed, causing the Gale Eagle's flight posture to suffer a microscopic moment of instability. And in that 0. 1-second window of instability, Rowan closed the distance to its abdomen.

Holding the high-frequency tactical straight sword in a reverse grip with his right hand, the blade edge rippling with a high-speed water jet, Rowan viciously slashed the blade across the soft down of the eagle's belly—where there was no iron-feather protection—just before gravity pulled him down! Squelch—! A half-meter-long gash was instantly torn open, and scalding mana-beast blood rained down in torrents. SCREEEE! The Gale Eagle let out a miserable, agonizing shriek.

It finally realized that this seemingly frail creature was absolutely not prey to be trifled with. Flapping its intact right wing desperately, it kicked up a squall and fled frantically into the distant sky, looking completely battered. Before swinging the blade, Rowan had already calculated his landing point. His advanced mental power combined with his reinforced physical body allowed him to execute high-risk maneuvers he wouldn't have dared dream of in the past.

With an incredibly agile mid-air roll, he landed perfectly onto a thick branch. Aside from panting heavily twice, he hadn't suffered even a superficial scratch. Flicking the blood off his straight sword, he ignored the fleeing eagle and continued climbing upward. He finally reached a spot near the very top of the ancient tree where his line of sight could clear the majority of the dense canopy.

Rowan exceptionally carefully parted the dense foliage in front of him, looking toward the epicenter where the stampede was converging in the distance. It was a massive basin. Rowan pulled out the tactical binoculars hanging around his neck. His vision instantly zoomed and cleared. But when Rowan saw the scene unfolding in the center of the basin, his eyes sharpened to pinpricks. People! Two humanoid figures. This was the second time since Rowan arrived in this world that he had seen humans other than himself.

They were enveloped in a blinding, nearly tangible silver-white aura. Like two tireless meat grinders, they were carving a horrifying path of blood and gore through the swarm of high-tier mana-beasts! That's... such terrifying power. Is that the peak of Tier 1? Rowan estimated their strength in his mind, though the distance made it impossible to judge accurately. Rowan widened his eyes, observing the two figures with extreme focus.

They wore incredibly ancient, heavy, full-body enchanted metal armor, wielding exaggerated greatswords that were clearly the work of master forgemasters. With every swing of their greatswords, muffled sonic booms detonated in the air. Relying purely on terrifying explosive physical strength and that silver-white energy, they were forcefully cleaving those ferocious mana-beasts clean in half!

Rowan even saw the corpse of the D3-grade flaming python he had spotted earlier, now lying in pieces at the feet of one of the knights. The sheer lethality displayed by these two individuals surpassed the vast majority of people Rowan had encountered in the Seventh Abyssal Hive over the years. The reason he said "vast majority" was because the remaining few—whether these two knights or the true elites of Terra—were entities he simply couldn't see through!

However, as Rowan observed deeper, he acutely sensed an anomaly. Although the knights' heavy metal armor showcased exquisite craftsmanship and ancient lineage engravings, their surfaces were currently caked in dried mud, grass stains, and layers of dark, coagulated old blood. The hems of their cloaks had long been torn into ragged strips. This wasn't the posture of a local garrison or an unhurried "cleanup mission."

They looked like they had been on a forced march, sleeping in the dirt, frantically pursuing something all the way here! What cemented this conclusion in Rowan's mind was their combat style. They were extremely "utilitarian." Facing mana-beasts lunging from all directions, they showed absolutely no intent to defend or skirmish. Their moves were brutal, ruthlessly efficient, and devoid of any wasted motion. Every single attack was designed for maximum slaughter.

They didn't care in the slightest if the valuable materials on the beasts were ruined; they were simply trying to forcefully "cleave a path" through the stampede. Squelch! In the center of the basin, the slightly taller knight on the left decapitated a lunging Black-Armored Frenzy Lion with a single swing. Scalding blood sprayed across the ground. But he didn't even spare a single glance at the corpse of the high-tier mana-beast. Instead, displaying intense irritation, he flicked the foul blood off his greatsword.

Across a distance of a kilometer, Rowan clearly saw that after delivering that strike, the knight raised his head. His gaze shot past the stampede, looking toward a specific direction deeper in the forest—his eyes filled with urgency and rage.

"This isn't a simple stampede." Rowan's brain processed the information like lightning.

"These frenzied mana-beasts... it looks like someone deliberately unleashed a 'lure' specifically to bog down these two terrifying bastards!" Rowan subconsciously held his breath, suppressing the fluctuations of the Source Crystal Core in his heart. He absolutely did not want to be dragged into this maelstrom of pursuit and slaughter between high-tier supernaturals. However, in the very next second.

The knight in the center of the basin, having just flicked the blood from his blade, seemed to sense a microscopic shift in line of sight. Exhausted from a long pursuit and operating in a state of hyper-vigilant threat detection, he reacted like a ferocious beast whose territorial radar had just been tripped. He whipped his head around.

Across a kilometer of distance and overlapping layers of dense foliage, a gaze—tangible, icy, berserk, and brimming with absolute killing intent—locked onto the canopy where Rowan was hiding, with the pinpoint accuracy of a sniper rifle! Thump! In that instant, Rowan's heart missed a complete beat.