29 The Peeking Taotie

'There are more of those rodent lass!?'

Assuming that there was only one kin per region, Kivas' mind was led to the thought of a big group consisting of the rodent lass. Even without thinking too much, the imagery was too repulsive and mind-rending for him.

He couldn't fully imagine a whole group of an annoying and hard-to-red teenager with round rodent ears. Not to mention, Kivas was always a cat person and preferred his feline companion to be active and hunt every rat in the house. Now that he didn't have any cat in this world, his instinct was heavily perturbed in an exaggerated way.

Of course, curiosity tends to kill the cat. Kivas pressed on and stalked the direction where the footprints were leading to, always prioritizing to feed his curiosity first and foremost, even if such curiosity would end in him meeting with more unreasonable rat people.

'My first impression has already been tarnished by that rodent lass. Then again, one figure never represents their whole kin, and I'm just reminded with the cat that I gave to my runaway neighboor when the warning of the bomb happens.'

If Kivas would have a chance to get his hands on any kind of pet, he would prefer a cat. If that wasn't possible, then maybe a fox.

He always like fox.

Eventually, the trail of Impurity that he created had come to a halt. The footprint not only led him to the place that he was familiar with, but also a culture-shock of what he thought about the people of this world.

It was the same place where he found the white gate frame made out of stone and the two stone masks.

Currently, Kivas was stealthily hanging by a giant tree branch that was leaning a little bit sinker to the gate's vicinity. The amount of Impurity that he produced had been subconsciously reduced to its most minimum intensity, allowing an almost zero presence of him within the area.

There, he tried to make out every single person within his range of illumination. Apparently, there were a lot more people than what he initially deduced. As if, some of them didn't even leave a trail of footprints like others.

'A hooded tall man is shouldering a sword that is so long and thick, it looks like a hunk of steel. A female with a rather inefficient length of golden hair with a big squirrel tail, holding a mechanical crossbow that is bigger than me. Near her, there is a person with green-themed clothes and hat that looked to be more of a medieval accountant than an explorer or a fighter. Wait, is that a perfectly human-shaped human with human traits that I see??'

They all seemed to be within an ongoing discussion with someone outside of Kivas' vision as the leader. Especially with how there was one person, a man around 190 cm in height with short silver hair and skins covered in obsidian black, mostly covered black leather armor with golden leaf motifs, together with a long and fluttering red scarf on his neck. He was in the middle of it all, the second nearest to the gate frame in fact. With the hypothesized leader outside of Kivas' torch range, being right in front of that man.

A total of 24 people could be traced with another 5 that Kivas deduced with how they individually behave and shift their gaze. Together with the hypothesized mysterious leader of the group-scale discussion, there should be a total of 30 people of well armed men and women with a few niches of roles in between.

If Kivas was true to his feeling, this assembly was similar to a pre-raid meeting within those Massive Multiplayer Role-Playing Games that he sometimes binged on the internet. But on the serious side, Kivas felt quite a bit of bloodlust and discomfort emitted by some of them. There might be no clear spectrum professionalism embedded in every personnel, but the tone of this meeting was enough to conclude that something big is going to happen.

Of course, knowing that this kind of event was unfolding in front of him, Kivas would most definitely acquire a purple orb that may or may not shout out his position to the, which he did acquire the purple orb. But before the torch birthed the upgrade orb, Kivas put the flame and pretty much the top of the torch into his mouth, preventing the gold flicker and wind chime from reaching their ears.

'I learned from this probability right after the tree person attacked the mine, I won't make the same mistake!'

Still, curious like he always was, Kivas tried to move a little bit further into the sinking branch to cover the leader of the group into the range of his torch's illumination.

Slowly and carefully, not letting his presence be known, otherwise the target of their hunt would shift into him. He put a lot of faith in his dexterity and his spectral link control training.

The moment the leader of the group was covered by his torch's illumination, Kivas flinched.

It was the rodent lass.

The same face, the same clothing, and the same tools strapped onto her.

Or so what Kivas thought at first.

The face that she was currently making was the contrast of the rodent lass he met back near the river. This rodent lass had a scheming and confident smirk, while the rodent lass that he knew barely had any sign of that while always on the verge of crying all the time.

'Not to mention, she was wearing a hood instead of a cap.' Kivas was more of disturbed than surprised. 'And the fire-starting kit on her waist… I have failed on using it a couple of times, so there should be dent and scratches…'

But the unique fire-starting kit on her waist was good as new, as if it had never been used before.

If those signs didn't convince someone that they were not the same person, then there was still the fact that this rodent lass was leading a group discussion of a whole 30 armed people. Kivas' lived long and wise enough to determine the characteristics of someone by simply looking at their face. The rodent lass that stood there was definitely someone with huge malicious intent, a pair of bared fangs behind the mask of expression that she donned.

And so, Kivas continued to watch over the discussion, even though he had absolutely no idea what they were talking about or just what was truly happening in general. As for them, it seemed like they were deeming Kivas' less considered malicious presence and hidden gaze to that of a wild animal. Although, Kivas noticed that some of them had been extremely wary of something despite not having a clue of where the source was.

Suddenly, the inner part white gate frame began to conjure a black and white illustrious whirlpool as if it was opening a portal to another world. The texture of the portal was vaguely familiar, especially with the animated ink-like property as if it was an ink of color being mixed in the perpetuity of the spiral.

Two people joined the group afterward. It seemed like those people were the one who solved the crystal puzzle of the masks in their respective locations.

'So there are 32 people in total, then.'

One by one, they entered the whirlpool portal, allowing themself to be swallowed by the unknown of the world. This statement was highly supported by the fact that Kivas saw most of them created this rather skeptical expression the moment they decided to enter the portal.

Either that they have a bad feeling about this whole fiasco, or they were forced, or in a much happy tone, they were heavily obliged to follow the direction that was assigned to them.

Slowly and surely, Kivas crawled back to the main body of the tree and began to rush into the stone mask location. There, Kivas saw his theory of having the rainbow ore processed and molded into the shape of the crystal of the other eye.

'Hmmm.' A shred of doubt began to make itself comfortable inside Kivas' mind. 'The miniature cavern might be small, but I think it was enough for the rodent lass to fit into the few meters inside and used some sort of stick to fish out the ore that I put at the end of the cave.'

Kivas didn't want to be suspicious of the rodent lass, but every possibility was still a possibility to be reckoned with.

'Should I go back first? There is a half hour of time to come to the river if I sprint at full speed.'

But only gods know what was unfolding inside the mysterious white gate. To his intent, he didn't want the group to exit before he could have the chance to explore the place inside the portal.

After all, unknown things are equal to purple orbs. If there were many things to discover, that means there were many purple orbs to recover!

'All right!' Kivas immediately shifted his direction 180 degrees to the white gate. 'A time well spent is a time where you stay true to your heart's desire!'

And it seemed like Kivas' heart of desire was more that of greed.

'Doesn't matter! Greed is justice!'

It was definitely not.