Taming the Beast World with a Frying Pan-Chapter 133: The Wicked Witch of the Wastelands

Flashback

The memories of that day were etched into Vara’s mind with acid.

It was three days after Kael had gone feral. Three days after the White Tiger King had turned into a mindless engine of destruction, shattering the village and fleeing into the forest.

The dust had barely settled on the ruins of the nursery when the Clan turned on her.

"It is her fault!" a mother screamed, clutching a wounded cub. "She was the one feeding him those herbs! She poisoned his mind!"

Vara had tried to defend herself. She had tried to explain that she was only trying to make him love her, to make him forget the mammal witch. But the elders weren’t listening. Elder Roa, his face twisted in grief for the fallen Elder Juro, pointed a trembling finger at the village gates.

"You are a curse, Vara!" he bellowed. "You have destroyed our King and our home. We cannot kill you, for you are a female and our laws forbid it, but you are no longer one of us."

The sentence was exile. Not to the forest, but to the Wastelands—the dead, grey strip of land bordering the Shadow Territory where nothing grew and monsters roamed.

She was thrown out with nothing but the clothes on her back.

For three days, Vara wandered through a hellscape that felt designed to break her. The sun here wasn’t warm; it was a blistering, white-hot eye that scorched her skin. The ground was a cracked mosaic of dry grey earth that sliced into her bare feet, leaving a trail of blood with every step. There was no water, only stagnant pools of black sludge that smelled of sulfur and death.

Vara, who was used to the finest furs and the choicest cuts of meat, was reduced to gnawing on dry roots and catching beetles. Her beautiful fur cloak was torn and gray with ash. Her hair was matted, losing its luster.

Every step was fueled by a burning, obsessive hatred.

"I hate him," Vara hissed, her voice cracking as she kicked a bleached skull across the cracked earth. "I hate Kael. He would rather lose his mind than look at me. He chose a weak, hairless mammal over a true Queen."

And she hated Ren. Oh, how she hated Ren. That strange, soft creature was the root of all her suffering. Vara hallucinated in the heat, seeing Ren’s face in the rocks, mocking her. She imagined Ren sleeping on soft furs, eating fresh meals, while she, a high-born Tiger female, was forced to drink mud.

Crack.

A twig snapped behind her—a sound too heavy to be the wind.

Vara spun around.

Standing there was a Stage 3 Feral Deer. It wasn’t the cute Bambi kind. It was eight feet tall, its flesh rotting off its bones, exposing the ribcage where maggots writhed. Its antlers had sharpened into obsidian spears, and its eyes glowed a hollow, demonic purple.

It screeched, a sound like grinding metal, and charged.

Vara stumbled back, tripping over a rock. She scrambled backward, dirt filling her fingernails. She had no weapon. She was weak from hunger.

"This is it," she thought bitterly. "I die here. Unavenged. Forgotten."

The deer leaped, its razor-sharp hooves aimed at her chest to trample the life out of her.

ROAR.

A black blur slammed into the deer from the side with the force of a falling meteor.

There was a sickening crunch of bone.

Vara watched, wide-eyed, as a massive figure tackled the beast. He didn’t use a spear. He didn’t use a knife. He used his teeth.

The stranger ripped the deer’s throat out in one savage motion, black blood spraying over his chest. He twisted the massive head, snapping the neck like a dry twig, and threw the carcass aside as if it weighed nothing.

Silence returned to the Wastelands, heavy and suffocating.

The savior stood up, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

He was a tiger beastman. But he wasn’t a white tiger.

He was bronze-skinned, covered in thick, swirling charcoal stripes. He was huge—broader than Kael, thicker in the waist and neck, built like a fortress meant to withstand a siege. And he was completely, unapologetically naked.

He turned to look at her. His eyes were a pale, ghostly yellow.

He wasn’t handsome. Not like Kael. His nose had been broken too many times, his jaw was too square, and his face was a map of jagged scars. But he radiated power. Raw, unfiltered, violent power.

He walked toward her, his heavy manhood swinging with each step, completely unbothered by the elements or her gaze.

"You are white tiger," the stranger rumbled, his voice like gravel in a mixer. "But you are far from home, female."

Vara looked up at him from the dirt. She saw the stripes. An Alpha. A rare, exiled black tiger variant.

A slow, manipulative smile spread across her dirty face. She saw an opportunity. She saw a weapon.

"I have no home," Vara said, her voice trembling just the right amount to sound alluring. "My clan... they betrayed me. They cast me out because I was too strong for them."

The Black Tiger stopped in front of her. He looked down, sniffing her hair aggressively.

"My name is Carik," he grunted. "I have no clan either. I killed my brother when I was a cub. They didn’t like that."

He looked at the dead deer, then back at her.

"You are hungry," Carik stated. "You are small. But you have fire in your eyes."

He reached out a blood-stained hand, grabbing her chin roughly.

"I need a mate," he decided, as simply as choosing a rock. "The females in the Wastelands are dead or feral. You will do."

Vara didn’t flinch. She leaned into his rough touch.

"I will be your mate, Carik," Vara purred. "But I am a Queen. And a Queen needs a King."

She traced a scar on his chest.

"I know where there is a village," she whispered, her voice dripping with poison. "A village full of weaklings who need a new master. If you help get my revenge... I will give you everything."

Carik grinned, revealing yellow, chipped teeth.

"I like killing," he said simply.