CHAPTER 370: CHAPTER-370.

Veer’s mouth opened.

Then closed.

There were no safe words left in his vocabulary.

They wandered the market for a while longer—pointlessly, aimlessly. Kaya’s irritation didn’t cool. It just hardened into something heavier, settling in her chest like a stone.

Finally, she stopped walking and glared at the nearest stall like it had personally wronged her.

"I’m going back," she said flatly. "Coming with you is a complete waste of time."

She spun on her heel and started walking, her stride sharp and angry.

Veer stood frozen for a moment, watching her back disappear into the crowd.

Now he understood—crystal clear—why his father always told him to marry a vulture-tribe woman instead.

’What the hell is wrong with this girl...’

But his feet moved anyway, chasing after her.

"Sweetheart, wait," he called, jogging to catch up.

’’’

By the time they reached the hotel, Kaya’s mood hadn’t improved even a little.

She dropped into her usual seat with all the energy of someone who’d been beaten down by the world and didn’t want to talk about it. Her shoulders slumped forward, but her eyes still had that dangerous edge—the kind that said she wasn’t done being angry yet.

Veer felt the guilt twist in his chest.

He ’wanted’ to fix this. Wanted to march to his father and demand money. But his father wasn’t even in the capital right now—too busy, too far, unreachable.

And the vultures under him? He’d already borrowed from most of them. Squeezed them dry. There wasn’t much left.

Cutie walked in carrying a tray of food, his tail swaying lazily behind him.

He stopped when he saw Kaya’s face.

"Why the long face?" he asked, setting the tray down with a soft ’clink’.

Kaya didn’t answer.

She just picked up her cup and stared into it like the liquid inside had personally offended her.

Cutie’s eyes slid to Veer.

Veer sighed—a long, tired sound—and lifted his hand, rubbing his thumb and fingers together in the universal sign. Money.

Cutie raised an eyebrow, then looked back at Kaya.

"How much do you need?" he asked simply.

Kaya turned to Cutie a little too sharply, her nerves still buzzing.

Normally, she never even ’thought’ about asking him for money—this man hoarded coins like a dragon, never spent on anything extra, so in her head he basically didn’t ’have’ any.

So when he calmly asked, "How much do you need?", it scraped right across the raw place inside her.

Her irritation twitched, but it wasn’t really about the money at all.

What had her shaken was the ugly truth she’d just slammed into today: ’’ignorance can kill you.’’

She had been ’this’ close to stepping into that arena, fully ready to fight, thinking that even if she didn’t win, she’d at least come out in one piece.

But after watching that rhino move—watching that massive body blur forward with ridiculous speed, not even a single injury on him while the bull lay broken in the dirt—Kaya knew she might not have walked out at all.

She’d never even ’considered’ that a rhino could be that fast, that strong.

In her head, herbivores were supposed to be the "less dangerous" ones—big, yes, but slow, clumsy, easy to read.

Most of the time, all she thought about was surviving the next mission, the next target, the next day.

Back in her old world, she’d fought lion-type, tiger-type, even hyena-type enemies; carnivores made sense to her—they were built to kill.

But a rhino? That walking boulder with plant-based diet? She had never put it on her "direct threat" list.

Yet that huge, heavy body had still moved fast enough to make her eyes miss half the steps.

If ’one’ beastman like that existed, how many more were out there?

This world was full of them—beastmen with animal traits, each with some weird mix of speed, strength, instincts she didn’t fully understand.

God knew how many were stronger than that rhino, how many were faster, or just more vicious.

And Kaya didn’t even know what all the animal types ’were’ here, forget what they could do.

She didn’t have a neat little field guide where she could flip to "rhino" and read: ’Do not engage in close combat unless you have a death wish.’

A single, ugly thought slid quietly into her mind:

’If I get separated from Veer and Cutie... how many days would I even last alone?’

And then the darker one that followed it:

’If one day Veer and Cutie also decide they want me dead... what then?’

If they wanted to kill her, it would be so easy.

She’d tested it without admitting she was testing it—left her gun on the bed more than once, in plain sight, within reach.

No one had touched it.

No one had swapped the bullets, moved it, hidden it.

So ’what’ did they want from her?

Why the hell was someone else so desperate to kill her when the people closest to her weren’t even taking the obvious chances?

The more she thought about it, the more her head hurt.

Maybe it was just because she was still shaken that these thoughts were spreading like cracks through her mind.

Cutie watched her quietly for a moment, then said, "If you want, I can help you."

Kaya lifted her head and met his eyes.

"I want to buy some weapons," she said, voice flat. "Do you even have that kind of money?"

Cutie paused. Just a tiny beat—but she saw it.

The second it registered, guilt punched her in the chest.

’Great. You’re broke yourself and still snapping at people,’ she scolded herself.

She dragged in a breath, forcing her shoulders to loosen a little.

"I’m sorry," she said quietly, looking at him properly this time. "I didn’t mean to talk to you like that."

Cutie didn’t say anything right away.

He just reached into his pocket, pulled out a small cloth pouch, and set it on the table in front of Kaya.

His voice was softer than usual. "Would these be enough?"