Chapter 773: Riddle Man, Get Out of Terra! The Shy Appearance of the Ten-Thousand-Year-Old Feline, So Cute!
"Ch'en, Hoshiguma, you all go back to your own business. I have some things to discuss with these two."
"Mm."
Ch'en, Hoshiguma, Swire, and Lin Yühsia obediently left the apartment.
They indeed had their own pressing matters to attend to.
Having been immersed with Ren for the past two days in a haze of indulgence, the work of the Lungmen Guard Department (L.G.D.) and the commercial sector had piled up like a mountain. The burden had been temporarily shouldered by Wei Yenwu and the Rat King, but those two old foxes wouldn't do the heavy lifting forever.
Now that the... in-depth discussions were over, the girls had to return to reality and reclaim their authority.
The door clicked shut, leaving a sudden silence in the room.
Only Gladiia and Skadi remained standing near the entrance, while Kal'tsit sat poised on the sofa, her posture as rigid as a statue.
Skadi and Gladiia looked at each other, their red eyes full of unspoken words. The bond of the Abyssal Hunters, forged in blood and salt water, didn't need vocalization.
Fortunately, their bond was one of camaraderie and shared trauma, not romance; otherwise, Ren might have felt the urge to intervene.
He wasn't interested in eavesdropping on what the two Abyssal Hunters wanted to say about the crushing pressure of the deep sea or the singing of the Seaborn.
He waved his hand dismissively. "Skadi, Gladiia is your former captain, right?"
"Yes."
Skadi nodded, her expression softening slightly as she looked at the Aegirian woman beside her.
"It seems you have a lot to say and don't want others to hear it. Go talk amongst yourselves. The balcony is open, or you can take a walk."
"Remember not to cause trouble in Lungmen. I don't want to clean up a demolished city block."
He let them talk by themselves, but Ren also reminded them of the rules. Abyssal Hunters were living weapons; a friendly spar could level a skyscraper.
"Mm."
After giving Ren grateful looks—rare for the stoic Hunters—the two silver-haired women left side by side, their coats swishing in unison.
Finally, the room was truly quiet.
Only Ren and Kal'tsit remained.
The atmosphere shifted instantly. If the air with the Hunters was heavy with martial pressure, the air with Kal'tsit was thick with intellectual calculation and ancient secrets.
"You must be Dr. Kal'tsit. Amiya told me about you."
Kal'tsit's emerald eyes flickered, and she narrowed them slightly, analyzing him like a complex virus under a microscope.
"Mr. Ren, how did you know what I looked like just from my name?"
Her voice was calm, monotone, and laced with skepticism. She didn't believe Amiya would describe her appearance in such detail to a stranger. Amiya was cautious; at most, she would just mention her title.
But Ren had just directly identified her the moment their eyes met.
This naturally aroused Kal'tsit's suspicion. Was there a leak in Rhodes Island's security? Or was his intelligence network that vast?
In response, Ren casually crossed his arms, leaning back against the wall with a faint, playful smile.
"Ms. Kal'tsit, you ask me how I knew?"
He paused for dramatic effect.
"Of course, it's because I am omniscient."
He said this with his head held high, chest puffed out, and an extremely confident expression that bordered on arrogance.
"???"
Kal'tsit froze. The gears in her mind ground to a halt for a split second.
So familiar!
Whether it was his expression, posture, tone, or that extremely familiar phrase...
She had said it. Or rather, she had projected that aura of knowing everything for centuries. It was like looking into a distorted mirror.
Seeing the astonished expression on her usually stoic, beautiful face, Ren felt a sense of immense satisfaction.
He did it on purpose.
However, unlike the enigmatic feline before him, in this world, he truly was omniscient and omnipotent.
What Deep Sea Abominations, false worlds, Feranmuts, Originium, and the Observers?
Hmm, they were all minor characters in his script.
"Mr. Ren, I presume you are not someone who enjoys joking around with baseless claims…"
Kal'tsit calmly spoke after recovering her composure, a hint of coldness returning to her expression. She adjusted her monocle slightly.
"Wrong. I personally quite enjoy joking. Life is boring without humor. But I wasn't joking just now."
Ren pushed off the wall and walked slowly toward her. His gaze pinned her to the spot.
"You have many identities: a Doctor of Rhodes Island, a former Babel executive, the shadow behind the Lord of Fiends, the one who walked the barren lands of Kazdel for centuries..."
"!!!"
Suddenly having her hidden identities stripped bare one by one, Kal'tsit's pupils constricted into vertical slits.
Mon3tr, the creature dwelling in her spine, stirred uneasily, sensing its master's spike in adrenaline.
But even so, it wasn't enough to break her. She had lived too long to be rattled by a mere dossier.
Yet Ren continued, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper.
"And the fact that the little rabbit Amiya is the true successor to the Sarkaz King. The legacy of Theresa. These things... I truly know them all."
"!!!"
This time, Kal'tsit was genuinely shocked.
She also gained a new, terrifying understanding of Ren.
He knew too much. These were secrets buried under layers of history, blood, and Originium arts.
The other party was very likely a "Long-Life Species," and not just an ordinary one like an Elf or a Vampire.
A Feranmut? A Deity? A Beast Lord? Or something... older?
Her mind raced, calculating probabilities, threat levels, and containment strategies. Possibilities flashed through her mind like lightning.
"Sigh."
Seeing her suddenly fall into deep thought, her eyes glazing over as she retreated into her mind palace, Ren sig heaved a light sigh.
He reached out.
Smack.
He slapped his large hand gently but firmly on top of her head, right between her distinctive lynx ears.
And whispered in her sensitive ear: "Don't guess. I don't belong to this world. You can understand it as someone from 'Outside the World'."
"Outside… the world…"
Her eyes widened, the green irises trembling.
As if she had heard something incredible.
This possibility—an alien entity, an Observer from beyond the star-pod—had indeed never appeared in her calculations.
But before she could process the existential implication...
"Ugh!!!"
Her body suddenly trembled violently, and an involuntary, high-pitched moan escaped her lips.
"Nya...!"
"You... what are you doing?!"
Her eyes instantly snapped back to reality, turning into an expression of endless shame and anger. Her cheeks flushed a deep, uncharacteristic red.
"Oh, I just suddenly felt that your ears were very comfortable to touch. Fluffy."
That's right.
Ren was playing with her ears. His fingers were kneading the soft base of her lynx ears, scratching gently at the tufts of hair.
Now that she was being stared at by eyes filled with fury—eyes that promised a Mon3tr beam to the face—he released his hand.
But he still rubbed his fingers together as if savoring the texture, murmuring: "So nice. I'm almost thinking of taking you home and raising you. You'd make a great house cat."
If he thought about it carefully, there were an unusual number of Beast-eared Girls in this world. Arknights was practically a paradise for kemonomimi lovers.
If he could win them over…
"…"
Kal'tsit's ears laid flat against her head, trembling slightly.
Her body still felt the lingering, electric tingling sensation. The nerve endings in her ears were extremely sensitive, a fact she rarely let anyone exploit.
Her anger also vanished in an instant, replaced by a flustered confusion.
Because she knew very well that the man in front of her—whom Amiya, Ch'en, and even the Abyssal Hunters treated with such reverence—was someone she, or even the entirety of Rhodes Island, could not afford to provoke.
So, even with such flagrant disrespect, she suppressed her anger. She forced her tail to stop swishing aggressively.
The priority now was to figure out what was going on with Ren, the anomaly.
"You have many things you want to ask."
Before she could speak, Ren spoke first, sitting down opposite her. "I think you, who have lived for tens of thousands of years, should understand one basic principle of the universe: everything has a price."
"You want to know about me. You want to assess the threat I pose to Terra. But the prerequisite is... do you think you can afford the price? Rhodes Island is not exactly rich."
"…"
Kal'tsit silently stared at Ren's playful eyes.
Information and intelligence were undoubtedly the most valuable currency on this war-torn continent.
For Kal'tsit, Ren's uniqueness was an invaluable variable.
She wanted to know what kind of change he was bringing to Terra.
Was it salvation? Destruction? Or simply chaos?
So, before considering the price, there was one more thing she needed to establish. The terms of engagement.
"Mr. Ren, regarding the geopolitical ramifications of your presence and the potential sociopolitical impact on the existing power structures of the mobile cities..."
"Wait."
She had just opened her mouth to launch into a trademark monologue when Ren interrupted her again.
Kal'tsit frowned, her train of thought derailed.
What did he want to say now?
Ren leaned forward, his expression dead serious.
"My time is quite precious, so I don't want to beat around the bush with you. Get straight to the point. Speak frankly. Speak human."
He pointed a finger at her.
"No riddles. No philosophical waxing. No tongue twisters. No encyclopedia entries."
He hadn't forgotten this.
There were too many riddlers in Terra. The Emperor's Blade, the Confessarius, the Ancients.
But Kal'tsit was undoubtedly the Grandmaster of Riddlers. The CEO of Verbosity.
He was too lazy to parse through paragraphs of "Kal'tsit Syntax" to find the one sentence of actual meaning.
"…"
Kal'tsit's breath hitched for a moment. She looked genuinely offended.
But she quickly recovered, frowned, and reorganized her words in her head, stripping away the layers of obfuscation she used as armor.
"Mr. Ren, I would like to know... your valuation of your own information?"
"Hm-hm."
Ren was very satisfied with this concise question.
He nodded approvingly. "Good. See? You can do it."
He answered directly: "Enough to easily change the entire Terra. Whether for the worse or for the better. I can cure Originium. I can sink the Seaborn. I can shatter the sky. That is the value."
"…"
Such arrogant words.
If it were anyone else—even the Emperors of Yan or Ursus—Kal'tsit would definitely question their sanity.
But these words came from Ren. The man who parted the sea.
This left her with no choice but to ponder carefully.
If the value of this information was as he claimed, then the price to obtain it would undoubtedly be unimaginably huge. Could Rhodes Island pay it? Could she pay it?
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