Evan gave a faint smile as he set the pot down and switched off the stove. He cooled it instantly, then stowed it back in his subspace before finally lifting his eyes to meet the gaze of the new arrival.
It was a lone woman this time. She wore the usual long robes most cultivators wore, though hers were a bit scorched, the singed fabric still faintly smoking at the edges.
Her jet-black hair was tied into a loose braid that swung behind her, and despite her burns and visible exhaustion, her stern eyes watched Evan with guarded intensity.
Evan didn't mind. Honestly, he would've found it more suspicious if she wasn't on edge in a situation like this.
The moment he opened his inventory, he silently activated Appraisal, his expression not changing even the slightest bit from the result he saw.
A result which confirmed that he was definitely in the Infernal Dimension.
Despite seeing through nearly all the secrets she was hiding in a single glance, Evan calmly continued dishing out his pasta like nothing had changed.
'Hmm... I could use some eggs. Egg pasta would hit the spot.'
Glancing up at her, he asked casually, "You wouldn't happen to have any eggs? Just to spice up the meal."
"…I do have a few cockatrice eggs."
"Good to he—wait, what? Cockatrice eggs? Those are edible?"
Evan blinked in surprise as he asked, and she nodded in response.
"You've never eaten them before?"
"Not once. I mean, regular chicken eggs are already good, so why would I go for the eggs of a monster that can turn people to stone?"
"Fair point," she said, stepping a bit closer, though her wary gaze never left him.
Evan didn't comment on the look she was giving him, he just held out his hands.
"So? The eggs?"
"…Right. Here."
She pulled a few large eggs from a spatial ring on her finger, and Evan couldn't help but notice a faint smear of blood on it.
Acting like he didn't notice anything, he took the eggs, cracked them open, and prepared them before mixing the now-scrambled eggs into the pasta.
"Here," he said, dishing a plate for her and placing it on the table. Then he took a seat in the chair behind him and dug into his food.
"Ooh, this is nice! Cockatrices might just go extinct when I get back home."
"Home…"
She echoed the word, glancing up from the plate in front of her to look at him, her expression shifting slightly.
"Are you normally this… nonchalant?"
"Hmm? Oh, you mean me sharing a meal with someone I didn't even know existed five minutes ago?"
He shrugged. "Normally, no. But right now, I'm just too exhausted to care."
He went right back to eating after responding, and the woman studied him in silence for a moment.
'This is him too exhausted to care?'
She didn't let her thoughts show on her face as she quietly sat down on the tree stump Evan had cut earlier, and took a bite of the pasta.
Her eyes seemed to light up after the first bite, a reaction that made Evan chuckle as he pulled a bottle of wine from the portable fridge inside his inventory.
"…your subspace seems to contain quite a lot," she muttered, eyeing the bottle with a hint of surprise.
"Yeah, I probably have enough stuff in there to furnish an entire mansion."
Right after he said that, his eyes widened slightly as a thought struck him.
"Wait a minute! Why don't I just put an entire mansion inside? I could have a portable house."
She gave him a skeptical look, but Evan paid it no mind, already pulling out a tablet. He scribbled something down with his right hand while continuing to eat with his left.
"When I get back home, that should definitely be one of the first things I do."
Hearing his muttered plans, the woman raised a brow at him.
"You mentioned it earlier, but… you seem awfully confident about returning home, given our situation."
"Well, unless I wind up dead, I'm pretty sure I'll get back regardless of what happens."
Evan's confidence came from the fact that once his time in the past ran out, he would be forcefully pulled back to the future.
That inevitability was part of the reason he could remain this calm now.
"But even if that's the case, I don't plan on staying in this weird place for long. After a night's rest, I'll start thinking about how to get home.
Maybe I'll track down some natives and see if they can help me figure out where I am and how to leave."
He switched off the tablet as he spoke, and in response, the woman asked,
"What if the natives aren't friendly?"
"That's something I've considered, but I haven't come up with a good solution yet. With how much ambient infernal energy there is, this place is probably filled with those types of devils, and I don't have much experience dealing with them."
The moment Evan mentioned 'devils,' the woman stiffened, a frown forming on her face.
"Devils? How do you know that?"
"Didn't I just say? The ambient infernal energy concentration," Evan replied casually, glancing up to catch her darkening expression.
"I guess Spirits like you don't get along with Devils, huh?"
"?! You… how do you—"
She looked startled that he had figured out her race, but Evan only shrugged.
"I've got a few Spirit friends back home. It's easy to tell."
|Detection Field Acquired|
|Rare Skills require one skill slot.|
|Eleven Skill slots remaining.|
Accepting that explanation with a quiet nod, the woman said nothing more and finished her meal in silence.
"…Thank you."
"Don't mention it. You gave me new cooking ideas," Evan responded as he finished his second serving of pasta.
He took a moment to stretch after the last bite, then stood up and began packing his cooking gear.
A quick wave of hot water cleaned up all the utensils he used, then he stuffed everything back into his subspace. By the time he was done, there was no evidence that someone had just cooked a full meal here.
He glanced up at the sky, watching as the last light of day faded into complete darkness.
"Well, I've eaten, I'm full," he muttered, stretching once more. "Now I want to sleep."
With those words, he pulled out a collapsible tent from his inventory, setting it on the floor and expanding it. He entered to lay out his bedding, then poked his head out and looked at the woman still seated on the stump.
"I'm sure you've got your own sleeping setup. I'm heading to bed. See you tomorrow morning."
Without waiting for a response, he zipped the tent shut and lay down on the memory-foam mat inside, pulling a light blanket over himself.
Outside, the woman remained seated, staring at the zipped-up tent in silence.
"…He's… a strange one…" she muttered under her breath, still trying to make sense of him.
◇ ◇ ◇
Deep in the night, while Evan lay fast asleep in his tent, his unexpected companion stirred. She rose quietly from her sleeping bag, her movements minimal, careful not to disturb the silence around them.
She cast a side glance at Evan's tent before turning her full attention to her spatial ring, retrieving a small bottle of water.
After downing half the bottle, she capped it and returned from whence it came, before lying back down. Without a word, she turned onto her side, pulling the blanket up to her shoulders and letting sleep take her once more.
◇ ◇ ◇
The next morning, Evan woke up well-rested and immediately got to work preparing breakfast.
He moved quietly, careful not to wake his unexpected companion. But as the scent of sizzling spices filled the air, the woman inevitably stirred, sitting up groggily just as Evan was finishing his cooking.
They shared a peaceful breakfast, and once finished, Evan packed up his utensils and cookware with the same brisk efficiency as the day before.
He'd already collapsed, folded, and stored his tent back into his inventory, so once he was done packing his cookware, there was nothing of his left behind.
Stretching his arms above his head, Evan let out a satisfied sigh and then spoke.
"Alright then… my companions are scattered around, so I'm going to fly around a bit and think about who I'll meet first."
With that, he jumped a dozen metres into the air, forming a void step beneath his foot. He stood upon it, then looked down at the woman on the ground.
"It was nice talking to you, random miss I didn't know existed until yesterday and probably won't see again ever."
That drew a small, amused chuckle from her.
Evan just smiled wryly before raising a hand and waving.
"Anyway… see ya."
Without another word, he unfurled his white wings and beat them, launching himself in a completely random direction. He used an instant acceleration spell, and by the time the resultant shockwaves of his shattering the sound barrier reached the ground, Evan had already vanished far into the distance.
Left behind, the woman stood still for a moment, and eyebrow raised in light surprise.
"I see… no wonder he felt ambiguous. He's a dragonkin, huh?"
Folding her arms, she continued staring in the direction Evan flew off.
'Still, even while sleeping, he didn't drop his guard. If it were my real body, I could have taken him head-on… but this soul clone of mine isn't strong enough to handle him without suffering substantial soul damage.
Especially since he's a user of Destruction.'
She silently clenched and unclenched her fist, then sighed.
"Oh well. I suppose I should still keep an eye on him."
Raising her hand, the woman whistled, and moments later, a black devil bird, roughly the size of a human child, descended from the cloudless sky and landed on her outstretched arm.
She gave it instructions, and the bird took off, circling the clearing once before rocketing into the sky. As it accelerated, its body gradually faded into invisibility, vanishing in the same direction Evan had flown.
As the bird disappeared, the woman reached for the scorched cultivator robes she wore and ripped them off, revealing the long, pristine dress she had worn underneath.
With a snap of her fingers, every burn and every hint of exhaustion that she'd shown in Evan's presence vanished in an instant.
Her face was unchanged, but the impression she gave off was entirely different.
"I suppose I should inform Azzonnin about him," she muttered quietly. "He did say he was looking for a dragon body, after all."
And with those final words, the woman—an Infernal Archdevil masquerading as a Spirit—turned and walked into the forest, her body disappearing into the sea of trees.