“You are a noble.”

Leo raised and then fixed his eyes on Camila’s face.

He then twisted just the corners of his lips in a small smirk.

“Camila is a noble.”

With the familiar sensation at the top of his tongue, Leo amused himself with the girl’s shocked reaction.

‘I guess my nanites are still working overtime,’ he thought, breathing out a shallow sigh before relaxing against the boulder behind.

(Excuse “me,”) Camila reluctantly spoke out, using one of her hands to cover her mouth as if in an attempt to muffle her voice, while raising her other hand a bit like a student in a classroom. (“But how” can you be so calm “with them around?”)

Leo raised his eyebrows a bit.

‘With them around?’ he casually raised his face and followed the girl’s eyes…

Only for his eyes to slowly open up wide, as he witnessed the furry majesty sitting just a few steps ahead.

‘How did I not notice them?!’

Freaking out, Leo took a deeper breath…

And then he looked deep down at the big, perfectly black eyes of a beautiful creature at the front of its pack.

It was different from all the beasts Leo hunted thus far. Superior, supreme… A being an entire league above.

Leo looked deeply into the beast’s huge, black eyes, seemingly drowning in the abyss of the monster’s intelligence.

Gulp.

‘I don’t need to be a goddamn expert to know,’ the young man thought, finally realizing the gravity of the situation. ‘This this… is…’

Something, deep in the young man’s soul revolted at the idea of calling this majestic beast bad.

Leo gritted his teeth, struggling not to overreact. For the sight of those three, majestic, Gray doggos, reminded him of nothing else but the only luxury he was afforded in his childhood years, back the world was just a tiny bit better place.

An old stray that Leo’s family adopted and kept for the last three years of its life.

‘Still, why does it have to look… just like Puppers?’

Leo’s hand grasped his powerful rifle.

Even assuming it could actually hurt something bursting with this oppressively majestic aura…

The young man simply couldn’t bring himself up to raise his gun to Puppers incarnate.

And so, entering the very same state that he observed that Camila girl in just recently, he slowly removed his rifle from his lap and moved it to the side where he simply rested it on the grass.

‘At least I don’t need to be worried about anyone grabbing it…’

With the SMG still hidden within his clothes, he was still armed. And with the biolock on the rifle’s trigger that Leo long since installed, no one else would be able to wield its modern might.

‘But it’s not them that are my biggest concern right now,’ Leo thought while slowly and steadily removing his backpack and lowering it to his knees.

‘I only have one shot at this,’ Leo could tell with his guts.

As nice as it was of those doggos not to attack and simply observe him for now, he had no delusion over what would happen if they decided to attack.

Still, replicating his moves from back when he climbed up the cliff, Leo slowly pulled out a huge, rolled package from his backpack before putting it aside as well.

‘Now, not to spook them,’ Leo thought, grabbing a special part of the reinforced wrapping before slipping the plastic lid off and revealing a concentrated ration.

Thanks to the memory nanites low-key imprinted in his brain, he could even choose a specific flavor of the military ration without looking down the bag. And in this encounter, Leo didn’t need to think for long about which flavor would be best.

“Here,” Leo spoke, still moving as slowly as he could. He then lowered his head over to the baton of highly nutritious paste. Surprisingly, the taste of softly spiced meat was exquisite, levels above anything Leo ate back on earth.

As much as he would happily gobble the food up, Leo pulled it away, just to showcase how he readily swallowed what he just bit off. He then reached out, as if to pass the baton to the wolfs, dogs, celestial beholders of the mythical truths, Barkers, or whatever name locals came up with for those majestic pups the size of a damn motorcycle.

Leo had no hopes for those beings to approach him so easily. Instead, he held his hand out long enough to indicate his purpose, only to then retract it for a moment and bring it right back, lightly sending the baton of concentrated meat rolling towards the pack.

Moving nothing more but their majestic yet still extremely adorable, fluffy heads, the three wolf-dogs or whatever traced the path of the baton. And after a moment of tense silence…

The leader of the pack rose up and took a step, approaching the spot where the baton exhausted its momentum. And after giving it a short sniff and then raising its perfectly black eyes up to the young man’s face…

It looked down and took a small bite of the condensed meat… and froze.

The two companions of the leader locked their gazes on their boss. And just as they started to rise, ready to pounce on the culprit that made their boss freeze like that…

The pack’s leader loudly gulped the food down before hastily taking in another bite.

The instant outburst of hostility that the two packmates gave off vanished as soon as it appeared as they both looked back, curiosity brimming in their full, dark eyes as they stared down at the snacking leader.

‘In the backpack, I still have the nutty, fruity and I think… chocolate one?’

Leo took a deep breath before raising up to alert the pups of his movements without actually moving all that much. Once their black eyes focused on him again, he reached out to the backpack he just put aside and pulled out two more sticks, saving the chocolate one within the dense insides of the tactical backpack.

The young man then repeated the whole procedure while finally fully realizing just how insanely tense he was.

Just like Camila who nearly pissed her pants when staring down the hole of his gun, Leo was perfectly aware that one wrong move, one silly attempt at anything, and the whole stalemate would come to an end.

Yet, as much as he could tell those wolves, dogs, or whatever they were, were pretty much as powerful as that bitch from the previous rift…

When looking down those deep, black eyes… Leo felt like it would be a heresy against the local world itself if he deemed them as primitive as that bloodthirsty woman.

No.

When looking down at their fluffy face, Leo couldn’t help but sense some sort of deep, silent wisdom.

Still, Leo repeated the same procedure as before, unwrapping the ration, taking a bite, and then rolling it out.

This time, however, he brought himself up on his knees and sat up straight before waving at the two doggos approaching the food, stopping them roughly a step away from the batons.

‘First…’

Leo pretended to still have a baton in his hand… only to bring it closer to his face and loudly snore as if he wanted to get himself high with the smell of the imaginary food in his hand.

He then pulled his arm down and pointed at himself before putting on a happy, relaxed face.

The hounds, thankfully, stopped to observe his silly act rather than reaching for the snack first.

Given the time, Leo hurried up and pointed at the doggos before replicating the scene from before… Only this time, he first made a disgusted, revolted face… only to then quickly switch up to a happy one… and then a slightly weird expression.

In the end, though, Leo simply shrugged his shoulders and put on a helpless, confused face.

All of that, with that strange girl from before watching with a face Leo couldn’t even amuse himself with!

And despite how deeply Leo desired to just reach out and pet those doggos…

He knew better than to risk his life just for a moment of fluff, regardless of how strained his nerves were after everything that transpired since he went down the probability well.

No matter how soft and elegant the fur of those doggos looked, how comforting it would be to just hug his face into this majestic dog’s side, scratching it behind its ear while it slept with its head atop his lap…

‘Ugh…’ Leo took a deep breath, putting a stop to his fluffy delusions. ‘I’m reaching my mental limits I guess?’

“Excuse me…”

Behind, Camila finally managed to regain her voice, only to cry out a little in a breaking, teary voice.

“What the hell is going on?!”