CHAPTER 49: WHY BOTHER?

If Theo asked his question with the huntress still below his bum, the perception of it would be starkly different.

But no.

He made sure to get some distance, allow her to stand up, and then reveal how he was now aware of her triumph card before ever mentioning the talks.

And weirdly enough, it was this approach that ended up infuriating the other party even more.

"What is there to talk about?" the huntress spat through her teeth before literally spitting down on the ground, her off leg moving back while the spiritual spear manifested in her hand again. "Are you here to fight or just brag?"

She lowered herself down on her knees, bringing her center of weight to a more stable position from which she could more easily jump into another charge.

Was it her attempt to make the most out of the little distance she had to execute another charge? Or was it merely a mind game of making Theo believe so, while she prepared another technique?

"I’m here for neither," Theo shook his shoulders, the mana brimming all around him as it fed in and out of his active glyph, maintaining it at its most optimal state while ready to deploy at full strength at a moment’s notice. "I’m what you could call a scout?" he then added while raising his hand to scratch his ear, "or a surveyor maybe?"

It was this look of relaxed helplessness on Theo’s face as he scoured his mind for the proper term that took the huntress off guard.

Enough so to make her raise her hand, stopping the rest of her group that she rushed in to support from executing their attack, now that they circled around Theo and were ready to take him on from five different directions at once.

"So you are not here for Banga?" The huntress, with her hand still raised, asked while squinting her eyes and pulling her leading arm just a little bit further to the back.

"Banga?" Theo raised his eyebrow, genuinely confused. "The hell is that?"

"What?"

For a moment, both sides stood in silence, merely staring each other down. And in the end, it was the huntress that broke first.

"If you are not here to fight nor to steal our Banga, what the hell are you here for?!"

Theo heaved a long sigh.

"You are really hostile for someone I’ve only met today, you know?" Theo asked, shaking his head in exasperation. "But since you asked, then I’m here for..." sensing a weird fluctuation in the world’s mana, Theo’s eyes skirted to the side, tracing the source, "this," he continued, pointing directly at the ground between himself and the huntress.

"The tallgrass?" the huntress asked, her expression softening a little bit for the very first time since the start of the encounter.

As if Theo finally started to make some sense.

"I don’t care about the grass," Theo quickly dismissed the woman’s idea. "Wait, scratch that. While I’m not here for it, if it has some use, I might be interested in getting some samples, but again, what I’m here today for is this," he pointed at the ground again, "this patch of ground. I need open land out in the nowhere, where I’m not going to bother anyone and won’t be bothered by anyone else either."

Theo turned his head back to the woman.

"Well, that, and a short talk with someone who could get me connected to the local tribes, so I can pass a message."

Theo then shrugged his shoulders.

"And that’s pretty much it."

"You want... this land?" This time, the huntress’s voice gained a slight bit of surprise, one that quickly turned into a flash of curiosity in her eyes. "It’s a dead land. Nothing can grow here," she then added, her face tensing as her voice gained a deeper, more intense tone.

’Is she trying to convince me of it, or something?’ Theo thought, only to quickly dismiss the point.

Whether that was the case or not, he couldn’t care less.

He wasn’t here to grow stuff.

At least, not in the way the huntress would expect.

"The distance from where I stand to where you are," Theo pointed out, "extend that like twenty, maybe thirty times, then about ten times to the side."

Theo opened up his arms.

"That’s how much open land I need. And, as I mentioned, for someone to pass on the message."

The huntress stared at Theo for just a little longer before taking a deep breath and raising up while dismissing the spiritual spear in her hand.

"Is that really all that you need here?" she asked, her face still full of suspicion even if her body language indicated she was slowly toning her hostility down.

"And a message," Theo nodded his head with a small, polite smile.

The girl stared at him for just a little longer before finally heaving a long sigh herself and shaking her head.

"Fine," she spoke, raising her eyes as she now looked at Theo with cold indifference in her eyes. "I can pass the message to the leaders. What is it?"

Theo’s smile grew slightly wider.

"You know this energy that you use to construct your spear?" he asked, rather than giving the message that he spoke about a few times already.

"The spiritual Qi?" the huntress asked while tossing aside a tightly knitted strand of her thick, brown hair over her shoulder. She then summoned a small amount of the very same energy that she used to construct her spear with - what Theo would call mana - and raised her hand up a bit. "What about it?"

"Nothing much," Theo shrugged his shoulders with a weirdly irritating smile on his lips. "In a few days, there’s going to be a lot more of it all over this place."

This should be a good thing.

No cultivator, whether calling the mana a spiritual energy or spiritual qi, would dislike the idea of having more of it to go around.

And yet, weirdly enough, that statement appeared to put the huntress right back into her hostile stance.

"Liar," she stated, once again lowering her center of mass while turning the ball of mana in her hand back into the shape of a spear. "You come here, to our lands, fight with my folk and then expect me to believe you are here to enrich the place?" she uttered through her gritted teeth before spitting down on the ground again, "liar!"

"Call me a liar, call me delusional, call me whatever you want," Theo simply shrugged. "I’m not here to enrich this place. The effect I spoke about is merely a side effect of what I’m really going to do here. And my message?"

He shook his head before deploying two more glyphs.

Before the huntress could as much as blink, Theo appeared right before her, his hand already closing down on her throat while some strange force dispersed the spear in her hand while stopping her spiritual Qi from following her wishes.

"If I wanted to, I could just slaughter you all," Theo spoke right into the huntress’s shocked face, his smile gone and replaced with a cold, empty look. Then...

The oppressive feeling lifted from the girl right as Theo reappeared right where he stood just a moment before, this time with his arms closed behind his back.

"But why bother?" he asked, shrugging his shoulders once again. "I’m telling you guys in advance, so that you won’t feel the need to investigate it, effectively sending warriors to where I will be working. And judging how you greeted me with arrows?"

Theo leaned his head over his shoulder, his face momentarily returning to what it was when he revealed just how easily he could dominate the huntress.

"If they were to appear, they would attack. Then, I would kill them. And then, rather than enjoying the thing that will benefit us all, I would have no other choice but to ensure no further party of warriors would come to disturb me."

All throughout his speech, Theo kept up the face born out of his hate for all those who bullied and made use of him back in his original life.

The face of pure and unadulterated wrath and cold desire to just take the easy way out and, either through force or through scheme, remove them from the equation.

Then, however, he relaxed his face and shook his shoulders again.

"See?" he muttered while shaking his head. "It would be too much of a bother. So, before we start killing each other over nothing, I’m here to give you a heads-up in advance."