The young man looked curiously at the girl that had just passed out. He crouched beside her and analyzed her face for a while. She was breathing raggedly and her forehead was wet with perspiration.

He poked her flushed cheeks, her thin nose and her slightly pointy ears. He then proceeded to touch his own cheeks, nose and ears, like he was trying to confirm something. His eyes were clouded and he was frowning, lost in thought.

After a while, he got up and approached what remained of the razorclaw monkeys’ bodies. He inserted his bare hands inside the bisected monsters and removed their hearts and livers, making a small pile of organs to his side.

He then squatted down and gave one heart to the creature resting on his shoulders. He took another one from the pile and started munching on it.

Around this time, Liza started mumbling and slowly regaining her consciousness. She opened her eyes and slowly sat up.

She could see the young man squatting down, his thing still in full view. He and his pet were chewing on something. She rapidly closed her eyes again, her flushed cheeks getting even redder.

[What the heck? He is still naked! Did he ignore what I said? Or perhaps were his clothes destroyed? Doesn’t he feel embarrassed?]

Liza was lost. She started to reconstruct everything that had happened today in her mind, so she could better process all the weird things that were occurring.

She remembered, particularly vividly, the fight with the razorclaw monkeys and how she got her foot injured at the start of the combat. She had managed to desperately hang on, before giving up hope and using everything she had to at least kill the one that looked like the leader.

Then she was saved by that weird young man. He was naked, true, but strange enough she didn’t feel grossed out by it, just embarrassed.

She couldn’t put her finger on why though, maybe it was because he saved her life, or maybe it was his eyes. Those dark blue eyes looked at her without any malice; they were pure, filled only with innocent curiosity.

[Right, they were like the eyes of a child… how strange.]

Liza breathed evenly and calmed herself; her cheeks were only slightly pink right now. She opened her eyes and raised her head up, trying to avoid seeing the man from the waist down. She managed to keep her composure, although she looked awkward with her head unnaturally tilted up.

[Ok, maybe now we can talk for a bit…]

She had barely adapted to that strange situation when she realized the young man and his pet were eating the raw heart of the monsters. She immediately became flustered again and tried to get up, only to fall down due to the sharp pain on her foot.

“What the heck are you doing?! You are eating a grade 4 monster heart, not only without cooking, but without processing first! Do you want to die from mana rebound? Are you crazy?” she exclaimed.

The forest around them got noisy, as insects and birds flew away. Liza knew it wasn’t smart to scream here, but she wasn’t thinking clearly right now.

The young man tilted his head to the side, giving her a questionable look. The action looked very similar to what dogs would do when people tried to talk to them. She would probably find it amusing, if she wasn’t feeling exasperated right now.

“Spit it out! Put your finger down your throat and empty your stomach right now!” she lashed out as she tried to get up again.

The young man looked at her for a while longer and started to eat again. She looked at him, her face filled with incredulity.

[Doesn’t he understand words? Is he stupid?]

Liza watched as the man finished one heart and ate two more. He then picked up two raw livers, eating them as well.

His pet, at some point, had come down from his shoulders and was curled besides the remaining pile of organs, eating them at a leisure pace.

She waited with bated breath, already expecting a gruesome sight to occur… and nothing happened, the man didn’t die.

He burped at some point, but that was it. There were no seizures, no bleeding from all orifices, not even pain. Liza’s eyes were open wide, her mouth hanging in disbelief. How could he survive? And he didn’t even feel pain, not even a little bit.

She had seen, a long time ago, a novice adventurer drinking a concoction of refined grade 2 monsters parts made by an alchemist.

The burly man had gnashed his teeth and had a ferocious expression on his face, like he was resisting great amounts of pain. He had remained seated and immobilized for an entire afternoon.

Of course, he got stronger afterwards, but he had to pay the price for it. And here in front of her, in the middle of the forest, was a man who just ate many raw grade 4 monster organs, looking all fine and dandy.

Liza took a long while to get her wits back together. It was almost turning into a trend to be surprised and out of words after meeting this mysterious young man.

She decided to just accept it for now and turned her gaze to his strange pet. It was definitely a high grade monster, one that she had never heard about before, nor seen in any book or guild register.

The enigmatic creature had an aura of majesty, highly intelligent eyes and the power to float or levitate freely. No doubt it would create a ruckus if the outside world learned about it. A monster flying around without wings meant it knew levitation magic or, better yet, had high mana affinity.

She sighed deeply. Her foot was still throbbing, causing her pain. She removed what was left of her boot, revealing her white foot which was covered in dark-red streaks of dried blood.

She searched one of her pouches for bandages and an ointment and started to treat her injury. The pain subsided a bit when she focused on the task, so she tried to start a conversation.

“Thanks for saving me. It was the first thing I wanted to say, but I got surprised and so many things happened that I forgot. My name is Liza Branwen. How should I call you?”

She waited for a while, but there was no response. She looked up. The man was looking at her with his head tilted to the side again. She gave him a wry smile.

“Can’t you speak? Are you mute? Do you even understand what I am saying?”

The young man just kept staring at her, his dark blue eyes so bright and innocent that it hurt. She couldn’t keep her gaze any longer and diverted her attention to the foot she was treating. She felt slightly annoyed, like she had just lost. Although in what she had lost, she didn’t know.

After half an hour, she managed to clean her wounds with water from her canteen, apply the ointment and bandage her foot tightly.

She felt uncomfortable knowing that there was someone just in front of her in silence, thus Liza tried to talk with the man again.

She told him how dangerous it was to eat monster parts that weren’t refined by an alchemist, asked what his weird looking pet creature was and made other small talk.

He never responded, he just kept looking at her with curiosity and tilting his head sideways from time to time. She found out he looked really adorable when he did that.

His pet kept floating around him, or resting on his shoulders every now and then, but he never approached her again like he did before she fainted.

“Ah, that feels a lot better. It will probably take a while to heal, but I should be able to walk with the help of a stick, no problem.”

Liza patted her hands together after finishing tying the bandage. She looked around, gazing into the forest, with her brow slightly furrowed.

She could hear the sounds of birds and insects in the distance. The iron-like stench of blood that surrounded them was now mixing with the strong odor of the ointment she had just used.

“Weird. Why haven’t the other monkeys, the ones that were fighting that large feline, come here yet? They should be part of the same group. Is it because of you perhaps?”

Liza looked at the creature that was flying besides the young man. It was a high grade monster for sure. It looked highly intelligent and it didn’t have wings but was still flying around. It didn’t look ferocious though. She turned her head to look at what remained of the small monkeys.

[Well, I guess they didn’t look fierce as well, but they were really dangerous,] she thought.

“Well, not that I am complaining, it was good to take a breather. I am starting to feel hungry as well…” she looked around.

The scene and the smell didn’t help, but beggars can’t be choosers. She unpacked a set of dried rations and started eating.

The young man and his pet looked at what she was eating with much interest. She looked at their reactions with amusement, took two pieces of salted beef jerky and offered towards them. They both smelled it for a bit before taking a bite. Their eyes sparkled, and they started eating it voraciously.

After finishing it, the young man opened his palm, like a child asking for more, while his pet approached one of her pouches and started to nudge it with its snout.

She giggled. Their reactions were so comical. She unpacked a bit more jerky and gave them before getting up after a bit of struggle.

“Well then, thanks again for saving me, even if you can’t understand what I am saying. I must be going now; I want to get out of the forest before nightfall, because it’s never wise to sleep somewhere dangerous when you can avoid it.”

She broke a branch from a nearby tree and used it to redistribute her weight. She walked in circles for a moment, trying to get used to it, before talking again.

“So, this is it, if fate wills it, may we meet again!”

Liza was making her way to the edge of the forest, slowly, carefully. She had walked for an hour now and could still hear the footsteps behind her.

“Hey, hey, why are you guys still following me? I am out of beef jerky already. What the heck do you want?”