What’s going on? Why is there suddenly an extra girl in the covers for no reason?! Could it be an enemy raid arranged in the Death Game?!
In the instant of waking, as large amounts of adrenaline flooded into her blood vessels, this was the first thought Xia Li produced.
However, in less than one second, Xia Li automatically excluded this possibility.
After all, although from the previously appearing tap-dancing roasted chicken and pitchfork-wielding pumpkin heads it was not hard to see that the level of bad taste in this Death Game named “Secluded Forest Girls’ Academy” was not low, bad taste of this kind of thing, after all, also had different grades and various flavors.
In this kind of third-rate horror-movie-type Game, it clearly would not, and also had no necessity to, produce the out-of-character activity of a fragrant soft little loli drilling into the covers.
Then, the only reasonable explanation was…
“Lu… Lunene?!”
“Meow-mm-hm-mm-hm… gururu-gurumeow…” The fur ball that had plunged into Xia Li’s covers continued tightly hugging her; from the excessively petite body size, as well as that long and flexible cat tail, it was clear that this fellow was none other than Lunene!
Moreover, this fellow seemed… to have fallen into a muddled sleep?
After Baron Xushinige had assigned the patrol routes and duty shifts, the fifty players had also been allocated dormitories.
Although the total number of rooms in the dormitory building reached as high as forty, sufficient to allow many people to live in single rooms, considering the need for mutual care, in the end everyone still decided on two people per room.
In order to ensure the safety of this little cat girl whose combat power was approximately equal to zero, Xia Li took the initiative to request living in the same dormitory room with Lunene, and arranged her on the upper bunk.
Throughout the entire process, the shy and timid Lunene passively accepted all the arrangements and obediently went to sleep.
In order to avoid encountering “surprises” at night, Xia Li not only did not remove her armor, but also specially placed Weeping of the Shadow at the head of the bed, telling this fellow that it must wake her at the slightest sign of trouble.
However…
…How did this little fur ball strip off her protective gear, along with the middle-school-student uniform worn underneath, without her noticing at all?! And she actually wasn’t even woken up?! With this kind of skill, directly changing jobs to become a thief would be no problem, right?!
What was even more fatal was that having the armor and uniform stripped off was one thing, but Lunene’s mouth and little claws were also very restless, continuously moving around on her body.
And more importantly, whether it was the hot and wet tip of the tongue, or the soft and slender fingertips, both were approaching her important places little by little!
The upper position was still acceptable, but the lower one… if the memories belonging to the original body were not wrong, before Xia Li suffered calculation and staged that scene of “the wind sighs and the waters of the Yi are cold,” she had never been betrothed by His Majesty the Emperor, and even less had any experience of romance.
If Lunene in her muddled state… no no no, this kind of thing was truly far too terrifying; even thinking about it was not allowed!
“Lunene, wake up! Wake up!”
Although as long as she was willing, with Xia Li’s strength, breaking free of Lunene’s thin arms was fundamentally without any difficulty.
But she was very clear that if she was the slightest bit careless, she might very well cause Lunene muscle contusions or even joint dislocation.
Therefore, she could only passively resist while attempting to wake the other party.
However, this little girl Lunene slept far more deeply than she had imagined.
Although the restless hands that had been moving around everywhere were temporarily blocked, she actually revealed a strange smile again!
“Meow… meow-hehehe… cotton candy… ice cream… little cake… so delicious…”
While speaking this sentence in an extremely pure, even somewhat babyish tone, several more transparent strands of greedy saliva flowed from Lunene’s pursed little cat mouth, directly falling onto her critical place, just like adding a bit of mayonnaise to a cherry cake…
…Although Xia Li had already not eaten cherry cake for a long time.
“Hey, enough.” In the end, what allowed Xia Li to escape this awkward situation was her good partner Weeping of the Shadow—of course, unlike the clean and decisive vicious strike that had finished off Emperor Guangjing more than ten days ago, this time its force, no longer controlled by the “Resentful Spirit,” was much gentler.
The lightly floating sword hilt merely knocked once on the back of Lunene’s head with just the right amount of force, then rapidly fell back to its original place.
“Meow… ah leh? Where’s my cotton candy? Where’s the ice cream? And the cherry cake? Meow-waaahhh… I was just a little bit away from eating the cherry!”
“Only thinking about eating!” Xia Li forcefully pinched the corners of Lunene’s mouth that still retained saliva, pulling her mouth into a straight “一” shape, “Idiot, idiot greedy cat!”
“Wuu… wuu-meow! I don’t dare anymore meow! Please spare me meow…” Lunene trembled in fright.
“Speak! Climbing onto the bed of a pure and jade-like unmarried young lady in the middle of the night, what is your intention?!” Although deep in Xia Li’s heart, the part that belonged to the original “Xia Li” was not particularly resistant to a little cat girl quietly climbing onto her bed, the other part that came from Xia Li still retained the reserve of having been the Crown Princess of the Federal Empire.
“I… don’t know meow. Speaking of which, although I often got sick in the past, I didn’t have sleepwalking either…” Lunene muttered while hurriedly putting on clothes in a fluster, “Today’s matter… uh… wait, I seem to have remembered something!”
“Oh?”
“After falling asleep, I seemed to vaguely smell a very pleasant scent that made people feel very comfortable,” Lunene said with an expression of yearning, “Then… I muddle-headedly climbed up. As for the things that happened afterward, I don’t know either meow. I only remember that in the dream I ate cotton candy, cherry cake, and also…”
“After we survive and get out of this ‘Game’ and obtain the qualification of Seekers, I’ll take you to enroll at Saint Theodoros,” Xia Li looked at the other party’s drooling expression and sighed, “Also, what exactly does the ‘scent’ you mentioned mean?”
“Don’t know meow.” The fully dressed Lunene climbed down from the bed.
“I do know, though,” Weeping of the Shadow’s voice entered Xia Li’s mind, “In short, it is the scent of pheromones unique to beast-form people. More accurately, it is the scent of pheromones related to… that aspect.”
“Wah leh?!”
After hearing these words, Xia Li could not help but cry out in fright, which attracted Lunene’s puzzled gaze.
Helplessly, she could only spend a bit more effort to finally coax Lunene back to sleep on the bed, and only then began the mental conversation with the black sword: “What did you mean just now?”
“It seems Your Highness Xia Li does not understand the beast-form people of this world very well,” Weeping of the Shadow said, “However… in the eyes of the ‘people of the heavens,’ beast-form people were originally lowly existences; not understanding is also very normal.”
“Then you understand very well, huh?”
“The era in which I was created was precisely the golden period of Elysia. The humans of that time, in pursuit of extreme entertainment, experimented on this planet with all sorts of ‘creative ideas’ that modern people would find unimaginable; the manufacture of beast-form people was one of them. Therefore I happen to possess the complete set of related materials.”
“I would like to hear the details.”
Although Weeping of the Shadow’s high-and-mighty attitude made Xia Li very dissatisfied, considering that she herself had already become one of the beast-form people, corresponding knowledge was naturally the more the better.
Therefore, she still endured her temper and asked.
“First, I can state the conclusion: the reason Lunene was attracted by you is because of the pheromones emitted from your body… and the reason you would emit this kind of pheromone is very likely related to the previous two pairs of girls who slipped into the small thicket.”
“I… don’t quite understand.”
“This is related to the physiological characteristics of beast-form people. Although the early beast-form people were mostly manufactured in a more ordinary way—through gene editing to make ordinary modern sapiens produce the epigenetic traits of animals—the ancient people who always pursued stimulation and fun without regard to cost ultimately chose a more ‘explosive’ method. That is… parasitism.”
“Parasitism?”
“Do you still remember the process of your public punishment? Your dog ears and dog tail, as well as the neural cord connecting them, are actually a unique parasitic organism. Technically speaking, it can be directly implanted into the body of an ordinary person,” Weeping of the Shadow answered, “The ancestors of the Elysian beast-form people were mostly produced this way. But now, aside from a small number of ‘people of the heavens’ banished because of crimes, few people encounter this kind of thing.”
“In other words, people like Lunene are all… produced by natural birth?”
“Correct. Incidentally, beast-form people also have one more characteristic,” Weeping of the Shadow suddenly very gentlemanly “hehe” laughed a few times, “Have you noticed? On the ground, have you ever seen a male beast-form person?”
“Uh… seems not.” Xia Li carefully searched through her own memories, then discovered the problem, “Wait, in that case, how have beast-form people naturally reproduced for so long? Could it be relying on ordinary people’s…”
“If combining with ordinary human males in the conventional way, what beast-form females give birth to will be ordinary humans… of course, the pregnancy rate is several tens of times lower than the combination of ordinary human males and females,” Weeping of the Shadow’s tone became even more… joyful. Clearly, for it, the matter to be spoken of next was rather interesting, “In other words, beast-form people have other means of reproduction…”