Taming the Beast World with a Frying Pan-Chapter 115: She Wasn’t the Only One?

Ren froze. The word hung in the cold night air like a suspended raindrop.

Human.

She was so used to the beastmen referring to her as a "mammal"—a biological classification that made her feel like a specimen in a zoo—that hearing Vex call her a "human" sounded alien in her ears.

For weeks, she had just assumed that maybe there weren’t any humans in this strange, chaotic world. She had accepted her lot in life as the exotic "hairless monkey" species and rolled with being called a "female" instead of a woman.

But Vex knew the word.

Ren’s eyes widened, the pupils dilating with sudden, desperate hope.

’Wait,’ she thought, her heart skipping a beat. ’Does he know the word because there are others? Is there a secret colony of humans somewhere? Is there a civilization with paved roads, coffee shops, and indoor plumbing?’

She had only seen this forest and the swamp. The Beast World must be vast! Surely she wasn’t the only one?

Ren looked at him, excitement and burning curiosity shining in her green eyes, desperate for even a single breadcrumb of information about her own kind. She opened her mouth to grill him for answers—

And then her gaze drifted down by about two feet.

The excitement was immediately quenched by the aggressively visible sight of his nakedness.

Her face flushed a deep, violent red, as if she was seeing him for the first time, even though she had just managed to tear her gaze away from his "Goldilocks" situation only minutes ago. It was like a solar eclipse; you knew you shouldn’t look, but it was right there.

This time, Ren didn’t let her gaze linger. She squeaked and whipped her head away, staring intently at a very interesting pinecone on the ground.

"How..." Ren cleared her throat, her voice cracking. "How did you know I was human?"

Vex shrugged, the motion causing his muscles to ripple in the moonlight.

"I overheard you saying it before," he replied casually.

Ren frowned at the pinecone. ’He overheard it? When? Where?’

She racked her brain, trying to recall a moment where she had openly announced her origin, but she came up blank. She didn’t press him about it, though. Lately, so much happened every single day—kidnappings, feral madness, giant bears—that her memory was starting to feel like Swiss cheese.

’I must be aging faster in this world,’ she thought miserably. ’I used to be a steel trap! I can memorize the precise ingredient list for a thirty-course tasting menu across four different culinary cultures. Now I can’t even remember the things I’ve said yesterday.’

Ren shook her head and looked back at Vex’s face—strictly his face.

"Have you met others?" she asked, her voice breathless with anticipation. "Other humans?"

Vex looked at her, his expression blank. He shrugged again.

"I don’t know," he said flatly. "What are humans?"

Ren’s face, which had been glowing with the hope of civilization, twisted instantly into a scowl of pure irritation.

He was trolling her. He was absolutely rage-baiting her, dangling the carrot of knowledge just out of reach only to snatch it away with a smirk.

"You jerk!" Ren snapped. "Why would you bring it up if you don’t know anything about it? Are you enjoying messing with me?"

"Immensely," Vex admitted with a grin.

Ren growled and stomped her foot in frustration—which was a mistake, because her calf immediately seized up with a cramp.

"Ow!" she hissed, hopping slightly.

Her mood, which was already bad from the cold, the irritation, and the nudity, plummeted into the basement.

"Are we going to go inside?" she demanded, shivering in his oversized coat. "Or are we going to stand here and freeze our asses off first? Well, my ass. Yours is apparently immune to hypothermia."

Her thoughts drifted anxiously to the top of the tree. ’Kael is up there.’

She chewed her lip. Was his health bar still declining? How much time did they have before the Feral Madness progressed to the point of no return? If he shifted into a Shadow Beast while trapped in a treehouse... that would be a disaster.

Ren tilted her head back, looking up at the colossal trunk. The treehouse was quite the distance from the ground. It was practically almost in the stratosphere.

’How on earth did Vex get Kael up there?’ she wondered.

Kael was the Tiger King. He was three hundred pounds of dense muscle and bone. Even for a shaman beastman, deadlifting that kind of weight up a vertical surface seemed impossible.

’Is Vex really that strong?’ she mused. ’To climb a tree with an unconscious tiger on his back?’

She scanned the trunk for a method of ascent. She expected a rope ladder, a pulley system, maybe a magically grown spiral staircase.

There was nothing.

There were only deep, carved dents in the thick, rugged bark, spaced out at intervals that looked terrifyingly wide for her short legs. They were handholds. Primitive, terrifying handholds.

Snap.

A sharp sound right in front of her nose made her jump.

Vex snapped his fingers again, grinning.

"Earth to Little Rose," he teased. "You went somewhere else. Probably fantasizing about me again?"

Ren blinked, the wonder leaving her face instantly. She scowled at him, her eyes narrowing.

She did her absolute best to keep her gaze locked on his eyes, refusing to let it drift down to the rest of his naked glory.

"Can you not cover yourself with something?" she asked through gritted teeth. "A leaf? A branch? Anything?"

"All my clothing is up in my den," Vex replied smoothly, gesturing vaguely toward the canopy. "I travel light."

Ren let out a long, suffering sigh. She looked up at the towering tree again, then back at the naked fox man. 𝐟𝚛𝕖𝚎𝕨𝗲𝐛𝚗𝐨𝐯𝐞𝕝.𝐜𝗼𝗺

"So," she asked, dread pooling in her stomach. "How exactly do we get up there?"

Vex chuckled, a low, mischievous sound that vibrated deep in his chest.

"Isn’t it obvious?" he said, gesturing to the terrifyingly high trunk. "We climb."