<887 – The Unworthy (10)>
People often have misunderstandings about taming.
– Taming? To get animals to follow you well, you must be so kind-hearted that even the animals can sense your goodness, right?
– What kind of kind-hearted person? More like a sucker who keeps getting suspicious cult recruitment offers!
– Hiiinnng, I’m not a sucker!
– Still, Titosso is pretty cute. Isn’t it just because she’s a pretty girl that they like her?
– Well, I guess the uglier ones get rejected by animals.
People mistakenly believe that if someone appears kind or foolish, animals won’t approach them.
They also think animals are shallow enough to judge based solely on appearances.
While that’s not entirely a misunderstanding, there are greater factors at play.
“Why do they suddenly calm down the moment we mention Professor Weird’s name?”
Just a moment ago, the animals were rampaging about the huge pirate ship, fighting, bullying weaker animals, and causing a ruckus. Now they all seemed to hush.
In the chaos, the Flying Danto who had knocked down goods from the stall that Jigoku Pirates set up to sell to the rescued people were picking up the fallen items and flying them back onto the stall.
Wild? Pffft, acting like humans as if they’ve picked up some manners!
“They’ve become so well-behaved that they seem just like people. Aren’t they understanding our language?”
“So they can understand human speech, but feel like causing a ruckus for their own amusement?”
As the pirates speculated, the animals suddenly avoided eye contact with the humans.
It was as if they were trying to assert that this is how animals naturally behave, Kitten-Dog shoveled the ground suspiciously.
“Let Irene do it. Let her use [Frost Hand] to lift the Cerberus and stare into its eyes.”
“Why?”
“Because when dogs and similar creatures are cast out from the pack, their whites become visible.”
Even if there’s a hellish three-headed dog that spits out hellfire, at the end of the day, Cerberus is still a dog.
Realizing the strange atmosphere around it, Cerberus tried to flee, but the freezing spell of the ice magician at Level 4 Area locked the water’s surface.
Yip! Yip!
Hiiing…
Wangwang!
Startled by the cold touching its feet, yelling, and barking, all three heads of Cerberus froze in place, unable to budge in front of Irene’s chilling gaze.
“If you don’t confess that you understand human speech, I’ll hire you as a scout dog for the Northern Demon Realm Expedition. The Academy can provide corresponding points for that.”
Cerberus’ tail tucked between its legs.
It lay belly up, showing a submissive posture.
That was a de facto admission of guilt.
Meowww!
Hyaaak!
The Flying Danto raised their voices outside, demanding how the same species could betray one another, but Irene’s [Frost Hand] showed no favoritism.
“Do you all want to join the Demon Realm Expedition?”
Hyaaak!
“Thinking of using you as scouting animals only to have you run away is pretty naive. The Demon Realm Expedition doesn’t just need scouting animals. We need ‘fresh ingredients’ too.”
?!
“I don’t know why Oknodie is raising you, but don’t provoke us any further. There are hundreds of ways to torment animals.”
After managing to hold back the Flying Danto with ice rings until the ice thawed, they were finally released.
The beasts allowed to leave were left trembling in fear, huddled together in corners, keeping wary eyes on the humans.
“Wow… Irene is really scary when she’s angry.”
“She was already hard to talk to, but now it’s even worse.”
“Gyahhaha! You little ones! Just because you’re animals, you think you can threaten me to conscript you into the Demon Realm Expedition? As if I’d do that to a human!”
In an attempt to lighten the mood, Jigoku spoke, but he noticed one of the pirates flinch upon seeing Irene.
“C-Captain… the Northern Grand Duchess just flinched…?”
“…You must be imagining things!”
“Why can’t that person look us in the eye?”
“It’s because you’re ugly.”
“Captain, that’s too harsh!”
Seeing the frantic banter and laughter among the pirates trying to lighten the mood, Oknodie thought to herself.
It must be kept a secret that the bloodline of the Northern Grand Duke’s ancestors comes from the wolf beastmen, Fenrir, making them one-thirty-second werewolf blood!
“We’ve arrived!”
Of course, that’s one thing, but they had a job to finish.
The Jigoku Pirates’ ship reached the Botanical Garden where Professor Weird’s Research Lab was located.
The Death Zone that had generated throughout the Academy was no exception here, especially due to Professor Weird’s vigorous experimental desires.
“My goodness. Are there tens of thousands of them?”
“Doesn’t the amount here match what we saw overflowing at the Infinite Dungeon Theme Park…?”
“How can the undead from just one professor’s research area be comparable to what spills out of a dungeon?”
In reality, Professor Weird ranked among the top three professors who use a lot of practicing monsters.
Nature has a robust reproductive capacity, and monsters that can be utilized for practice abound.
Through learning the habits of these numerous monsters, understanding their dangers, distinguishing edible materials, mastering processing methods, artificial breeding, and taming, students can easily learn hundreds of different things from just one monster.
Weak monsters that have undergone all of those processes wouldn’t survive, making it a must to have far more than a dozen for each student’s practice.
The result was a fierce struggle of the research lab instructors, engaging in siege warfare using bows and potions like elves up in the trees of the Botanical Garden.
[Spore Poisoning] + [Rapid Infection] + [Mana Theft]
[Paralysis Powder] + [Sleep Powder] + [Venom Powder]
The instructors were forcibly lowering the resistances of the undead with status effects that shouldn’t work on them and contaminating their mana.
Once they completed casting their status effects, the high-level monster [Painkiller], bound to deal fixed damage for each status effect placed on surrounding targets, released explosive leaves in a frenzy.
As the undead touched by the leaves burst into explosions, the combo technique activated by the instructors was unleashed.
[Explosive Shoot] + [Propagation Bug] + [Combined Explosion]
[Status Ailment Propagation Technique] + [Explosive Leaves] + [Explosive Shoot]
With explosions and successive propagations of the status ailments, colorful blasts erupted beneath the gigantic tree like a fireworks display.
Once the Death Zone wave destruction was complete, Oknodie landed behind her seniors using flight magic and poked them in the waist.
The senior, who hadn’t sensed her at all, staggered in surprise.
“Uwaaaaaaaaaah!!!”
As they fell, the senior screamed as if their soul was being sucked out, landing with a splash under the surface.
“Dark Princess!!”
“Is she here to ambush us during the chaos to vent her long-held resentment towards Professor Weird?!”
“It was the professor who touched the Golden Port City, not us! Please, for the sake of Senior Kiote, spare me. If I die, Professor Weird will take back the 700-year-old scale tree spirit I’ve put on a 30-month installment plan in the hometown forest!”
Fortunately for the instructors, Oknodie’s target wasn’t them but the professor.
“Calm down. I’m here to fetch the professor!”
“Fetch the professor…? Have the superhuman on a white horse finally come to eliminate Professor Weird? Is that you?”
“Please take our professor to the Netherworld!”
“I didn’t come from the Netherworld; I came from a pirate ship! It’s not that I intend to harm the professor, but surely the teachers would be happier without her, right?”
“Of course!”
“Then please call the professor!”
The instructors cast half-resentful, half-sorrowful glances at the tree where the professor’s lab was supposed to be.
“The professor isn’t here…”
“Eh? Then where did she go?”
“When the Death Zone opens, it becomes easier for the hellish sentinels to overlook things, so she went to gather plants that grow in hell along with the spirits…”
“Damn it… The spirits should be guarding the place, but because they’re scared of going to hell, they pulled back, and we ended up like this…”
As usual, these instructors were having a tough time under Professor Weird.
With multi-tentacle writing skills, they filled a blackboard in under a minute, feeling proud of their penmanship just as the students quickly began erasing it, where the professor’s hostility towards them was unchanged.
“Ah! That won’t do…”
“What did you want the professor to do?”
“I was going to make the animals obedient and use this time to do infinite gacha for elder lich summoning!”
Infinite gacha for an elder lich…?
So to keep summoning a boss-level monster from the Death Zone?
The instructors realized.
No matter how crazy a professor adorned with flowers might be, the talent she covets is inherently abnormal.
“Your animals on the ship are calm even now, so do you really need Professor Weird?”
“If we’re here dawdling, what if someone kidnaps the elder lich summoning beast first? Hurry back.”
“Wow! You’re right? Thank you, seniors!”
The animals, terrified by Irene’s cruel Northern Demon Realm enlistment threat, had already turned into docile sheep.
The groundwork had been laid to carry the animals even without Professor Weird.
“But now that we’ve come this far, can we take a few animals with us?”
The instructors exchanged glances.
Is it really okay to permit this?
“If the animals from the lab leak out, the professor will get angry.”
“Still, if we say we gave them to Oknodie, who’s being eyed as a disciple candidate, I think she’d forgive us.”
“We can only take two of each species!”
“That should be fine…”
“Right?”
Reluctantly, the instructors gave their permission.
After all, the beasts in Professor Weird’s lab were notoriously difficult to handle.
When they grow horns, they ground them down for reagent materials, and when mushrooms sprout, they pop them off to stir-fry with rice – there’s no way these animals would cooperate with humans.
Casting calming spells too much can harm health, so magic use is prohibited, making it hard to avoid outright mayhem when dealing with those beast-type monsters. The instructors’ only training method was to sweet-talk and coax them through hardship.
Clearly, they’d soon tire out and give up trying to take even a few.
Considering it’s a tough job, some even thought it would be better to just kill them all, when Oknodie stepped outside shortly after!
“What? You gave up already?”
“Haha. See, our instructors’ visionary taming skills are vital after all. Treat me to a meal later. Then I’ll teach you taming skills…”
“Sure? What’s taming skills?”
Oknodie, bewildered, watched as hornless deer, freshly cut mushrooms, and feather-plucked parrots came rushing out like a torrent behind her.
Taming skills may only be status symbols for newbies who have no idea how to increase basic favorability through numerous functions and buffs!
“Wow, cleaned out.”
“Wow. For us to just pull that bull out would’ve taken at least two hours…”
As the experienced instructors pondered retirement amid the fleeting thoughts of life’s futility, Oknodie suddenly placed her hand on the Death Zone beneath the tree.
The dark mana introduced from Oknodie accelerated the wave cycle of the Death Zone, causing the monsters to pour out even faster.
“Hey! What are you doing?!”
“If you do that, the undead in the Death Zone will gather even quicker!”
“But hey, undead animals are classified as a different kind after all!”
“?!!”
“Didn’t you say we could take two of each type?! No more talk!”
Oknodie’s sinister act, flooding the monsters while claiming to take a few animals, made the instructors feel like they were losing their minds.
Thus, they vowed:
“Before we quit being instructors, we must see Oknodie become Professor Weird’s top disciple…”
“You’d better watch out, Dark Princess… I won’t forget the numbers from the Death Zone…”
One day, I’ll pay you back for the humiliation of today!
