The moment Raven Shaw returned, she sensed it immediately—
the aura coming off Adrian Vale had surged again.
It made her glance over, just slightly.
But she didn't say anything.
Adrian had secrets.
And so did she.
Right now, they were tied to the same rope—but they'd known each other for less than a day. Some things weren't meant to be asked.
Besides…
With her sharp instincts, Raven had noticed something else as well.
Every now and then, she caught a flicker of greed in Adrian's gaze when he looked at her.
But it wasn't lust.
It was the same kind of hunger he'd shown when staring at the Greenback Croc—
the hunger of a predator looking at food.
Of course, what he'd shown toward the croc had been far stronger than whatever he felt toward her.
Which only confirmed something Raven already understood:
Adrian was constantly forcing something down—suppressing a deep, ravenous instinct.
Instead of fear, it only made her more curious.
At this point, Raven was certain—
Adrian Vale was not an ordinary human.
Maybe…
No. Not "maybe."
That unknown, that mystery—was exactly what interested her most.
She pushed the thought aside. Later.
For now, she looked him over and shook her head.
She'd been about to hand him a canteen, but stopped midway and pulled it back.
"Kid," she said calmly, "go wash the blood off your face at the pool."
Adrian snapped out of his internal check.
And honestly… she wasn't wrong.
He looked like a mess.
His face was smeared with dried blood, some of it already crusted into dark flakes against what should've been pale, clean skin.
If someone didn't know better, they'd think he'd crawled out of a battlefield from a century ago.
Adrian paused, mildly stunned.
He'd just eaten an entire E-rank monster in front of her—raw.
And yet this woman showed zero fear?
He'd always known she wasn't simple.
But just as he was about to speak—
Raven's lips curved, faintly teasing.
"What? Still standing there? Don't tell me you want me to wash you myself?"
"..."
Adrian went quiet.
Then, without another word, he headed deeper into the oasis.
Raven watched his back for a moment, then looked at the blood-soaked ground and the torn-up battlefield.
A strange, almost eerie light flickered in her eyes.
"Interesting," she murmured. "More and more interesting…"
Splash—
Clear water turned red in ripples as Adrian washed up.
His white hair had been stained during the feeding frenzy, so he didn't half-clean it—he rinsed it properly.
A moment later, he slicked his wet hair back, pushing his bangs away from his forehead.
The live chat instantly erupted.
"Okay… you're not normal."
"That face is unreal."
"You people forgot what he looked like when he was eating."
"So what? Odd tastes don't cancel out good looks."
"That wasn't 'odd tastes.' That was horror."
Adrian, as usual, didn't read a single word.
He put on a fresh eyepatch and stood up—
And then his nose twitched.
His hidden left eye flared with a dark crimson-black sheen beneath the patch.
"…This scent."
This time, the smell was unbelievably rich.
In Adrian's perception, it was thousands—no, tens of thousands—of times more intoxicating than the E-rank Greenback Croc.
A chill ran through him.
Elsewhere in the Divine Domain: Forbidden Zone—
Two competitors from White Rooster Nation were riding high on pure luck.
White Rooster Nation was one of Blue Star's many smaller countries—so obscure that most people had barely heard its name.
But inside the Divine Domain: Forbidden Zone, their two representatives had been absurdly fortunate.
With guidance from their nation's expert team, they'd already secured two F-rank resources.
And now, under the experts' instructions, they were heading toward a location believed to hold another resource node.
Their terrain was nothing like the desert oasis Adrian and Raven had claimed.
This place was a dense, thriving forest.
Towering trees rose far higher than anything in the outside world.
By now, they'd gotten used to it.
Was the forest itself a resource?
Yes.
But as everyone had learned—claiming a resource meant one thing:
You had to kill whatever guarded it.
And a forest this enormous?
Its guardian would be… anything but ordinary.
Still, even if the forest guardian was too dangerous, there were smaller, scattered resource points inside the area.
That was their goal.
But not long after they set off—
BOOM—BOOM—BOOM!
The ground beneath them began to quake violently.
The earth cracked open in jagged seams.
Massive trees toppled like toothpicks.
The shockwave swallowed a radius of hundreds of meters—sudden, brutal, with no warning at all.
And the two competitors were right in the middle of it.
Even so, after two F-rank chest rewards, they weren't ordinary anymore.
They struggled—but managed to keep their footing.
"What the hell is this?!" one shouted.
"I don't know! It came out of nowhere—did we trigger a trap?!"
A trap?
No.
The true source of the disaster revealed itself a second later.
"Oh my God—what is that?!"
"Earthquake? Tectonic shift?!"
"No—if it's an earthquake, why is everything outside the area completely still?!"
"Then it really is some kind of trap!"
"LOOK—something's coming up!"
A gigantic shadow exploded from the earth ahead of them—
KRAAAASH!
Thirty… forty meters long—at least.
A truly colossal body.
Backlit by the canopy and dust, it was hard to see clearly—
But then the Will of Blue Star spoke.
[Congratulations! White Rooster Nation competitors have encountered a Divine Domain creature! Analyzing… Analysis complete!]
[Name: Giant Thousand-Hand Centipede (A-rank)!]
[Traits: A-rank Divine Domain creature. Omnivorous. Prefers group habitats.]
[A mutated variant of the Thousand-Hand Centipede—originally only C-rank, but through abnormal growth and mutation, it obtained catastrophic power.]
[Cunning and vicious. Excels at using terrain advantages to hunt prey.]
[Enjoys tormenting captured prey to death.]
The moment the banner appeared—
Every viewer went dead silent.
An A-rank.
◇ BONUS & SUPPORT ◇
◇ 1 bonus chapter for every 10 reviews — drop a comment!
◇ 1 bonus chapter for every 100 Power Stones.
◇ Read 60 chapters ahead on P@treon → patreon.com/StrawHatStudios