Chapter 8: Animal Husbandry
“Next, I’ll ask, and you’ll answer. Do you understand?”
“……”
“Do you understand or not! Make a sound!”
“…… Zhi?”
“Oh no, this little guy is a complete dullard. Maybe I should just eat her whole.”
After staring at the girl in front of her, who had shrunk down to the size of a seven or eight-year-old, Luo Shuangyue rubbed her forehead and sighed.
They had indeed captured this magical beast, but her intelligence obviously hadn’t reached a level for smooth communication.
From the pure black eyes of the magical girl, all Luo Shuangyue saw was clarity and foolishness.
So clear that she resembled an uneducated little kitten or puppy.
Luo Shuangyue seriously doubted this child’s intelligence could sit in the same row as the little butterfly; even You Lian was smarter than these two.
“You know, she doesn’t seem as ferocious as most magical beasts?” Xia Mo said, poking the magical girl’s face.
The touch at her fingertip was cool, similar to poking Luo Shuangyue’s face.
The magical beasts in this other world were nothing like those in the human realm.
“That’s because I’m suppressing her. Otherwise, she would have bitten me long ago.”
Indeed, magical beasts had a habit of killing and devouring each other, but this usually happened among beasts of the same rank or between higher-ranking beasts and lower-ranking ones.
When a high-ranking magical beast chose to spare a low-ranking one’s life and took them as subordinates, the low-ranking beasts didn’t seem to mind much.
Just like that Big-Eyed Demon Lord before, it had an incredibly fierce legion of magical beasts—their loyalty was a result of its craftiness.
Now, the relationship between Luo Shuangyue and the magical girl was somewhat similar.
The only difference was that Luo Shuangyue could suppress the magical girl purely based on strength, unlike the Big-Eyed Demon Lord, which had imprinted loyalty in its subordinates’ minds from birth.
“Don’t let her cute appearance fool you; you saw what her true form looked like just now, right?”
The shrinking process of this girl was something the three witnesses saw firsthand. Since her original body had already been reduced to half, she had to mold the remaining part into a complete body.
And this process had quite the magical beast essence to it.
First, the girl melted into a lump of black, mud-like substance, and then the mud reformed into a smaller girl.
Once the girl shaped her new body, Luo Shuangyue thoughtfully wrapped her in a piece of black cloth made from her own magical energy, just like Taya’s. After all, the child had not yet developed any sense of shame.
As for Luo Shuangyue sucking her energies out, the girl didn’t show any signs of dissatisfaction. This was simply the norm among magical beasts; she instinctively felt that all of this was natural.
“Who are you? What’s your name?” Luo Shuangyue asked while squeezing the girl’s chubby cheeks into various shapes.
The girl let out a whimper as she was treated roughly; she certainly couldn’t answer Luo Shuangyue’s questions.
Who am I? My name? Is this something a magical beast should ponder?
“What is your goal?”
Oh, this question she can answer!
“Destruction, destroy everything!”
“Why do you want to destroy everything?” Luo Shuangyue’s eyes lit up at the girl’s unexpected answer.
Previously, magical beasts in the human world were hard to communicate with, but now she finally caught a normal magical beast capable of dialogue. Naturally, she had to ask what magical beasts were really thinking.
Why were they so brutal? What fueled their strong desires for destruction?
These were indeed worth exploring.
“Why?” The girl tilted her head.
She couldn’t answer Luo Shuangyue’s question because she didn’t know why she wanted to do this.
She only knew that her first thought after gaining consciousness was to destroy the world, to let the entire world be engulfed in darkness.
It seemed that only in this way did her existence hold meaning.
“I feel like I’m not getting any valuable information,” Xia Mo said, looking troubled at the magical girl.
Ye Lin peeked out of the cannon floating beside Xia Mo and said in an old, experienced tone, “This is the nature of us magical beasts. The Serpent King in my memory was just like this—kill, kill, kill from the moment of birth.”
The Serpent King, Ye Lin’s previous incarnation, had been a legitimate demon lord. When it was born, it didn’t possess a clear self-awareness.
It wasn’t until it was sealed inside a card by Bai Ye that the consciousness known as Ye Lin slowly emerged.
“But this little one is better than the Serpent King. At least she can talk,” Ye Lin floated to face the girl and locked eyes with her. “With a less precise analogy, she is like a human compared to a beast.”
Although both were magical beasts, one resembled a person more when its beastly essence was cast aside, while the other more closely resembled a wild beast.
But why was that?
“Taya, do all the magical beasts in your world look like this?” Luo Shuangyue turned to ask Taya.
Taya nodded.
Unlike the oddly shaped magical beasts from another world, the magical beasts in this one generally resembled humans—some even looked more human than Taya herself.
After all, Taya was currently in a disguised state; her true form was different.
“But there are many creatures that look completely different from these beasts. They are like this…” Taya strained to describe those creatures, but her impoverished vocabulary was insufficient to provide a detailed description of the magical beasts she had heard about in classes.
Her description of those magical beasts was that they were very strange, not quite alive, like some sort of tools.
“They can even swallow other beasts and spit them out! It’s terrifying!”
“Really… Taya, can you come look at these things? Do you recognize them?” Luo Shuangyue opened her hand and used magical energy to create some of the magical beasts she had seen.
She didn’t need to show Taya the collection of warship beasts under the Big-Eyed Demon Lord; those had been altered by the demon lord and had completely lost their original appearance.
But the magical beasts from the human world were different; those were pure, primitive magical beasts that looked all sorts of bizarre.
“Um… I think I have seen these. They seem to be quite common in our world.” After glancing a few times, Taya immediately responded.
In this magical world, there were surely more than just Taya and a few big and small cats in the Sacred Domain.
Although the rulers of this world, or rather those at the top of the food chain, trembled in the Sacred Domain, a diversity of life existed beyond them.
For instance, in the sea of flowers around them, can one say that the eternally blooming purple flowers are not life?
This is the case here; other places surely have life unique to them.
“In my former territory, there were things that looked a bit like me, but they were quite foolish and couldn’t talk to me.”
If one were to discuss the differences between those forms of life and Taya’s, it boils down to intelligence.
Taya was a sentient being; she knew who she was and what her purpose in this world was… or maybe not.
This world had been very peaceful, so peaceful that the intelligent beings here acted rather lazily until the appearance of the Black Calamity.
At least this was the case among intelligent beings, as the territories were too vast for one individual to manage; even ambitious individuals, after conquering territory, could not find suitable people to manage it.
Over time, the life here developed a rather lazy and laid-back overall style.
“The things in our territory may look like us, but they differ greatly in power and intelligence,” Taya continued.
Birds of a feather flock together. This saying made sense in this world.
For example, just seeing the sea of flowers, Taya could guess what the original owner of this flower sea looked like.
It must have been a large, beautiful purple flower; there would be no other possibility.
“It does sound quite similar to the ecosystem of the magical beasts under the demon lord…” Hearing Taya say this, Luo Shuangyue felt energized.
Although she had not experienced a true magical girl education, she had certainly heard something about it.
And Xia Mo, who had received a formal education and was a good student, immediately connected the dots with Luo Shuangyue.
The demon lord indeed exploded upon emergence, without a chance to steadily develop their own power; however, it wasn’t always like this.
In the dark times before magical girls became prominent, several demon lords ruled over the mother planet, and the magical beasts appearing in their “territories” indeed exhibited trends resembling them.
It was as if these magical beasts were born to serve as the demon lord’s subordinates.
“Taya’s world’s magical beasts look like us, while our world’s magical beasts look like Taya’s?” With the discussion reaching this point, Xia Mo boldly concluded.
Luo Shuangyue’s thoughts went a step further.
She thought these magical beasts not only resembled both sides’ forms of life, “Don’t you think that only demon lords possess decent intelligence on our side, which is quite similar to the ecology here?”
In the human world, only demon lords possessed wisdom and the ability to lead magical beasts.
However, this world’s magical beasts were different; the magical girl’s strength was merely at the king level yet already displayed intelligence far beyond that of magical beasts.
She might just be inexperienced now, but as she gained more experience, she would definitely become smarter and more like Luo Shuangyue’s kin.
This was bad; why did it feel like she truly found her kin in another world?
“I have a bold thought. Is it possible that the magical beasts here were originally humans?” Luo Shuangyue pressed down on the magical girl’s head and gently rubbed it.
The girl’s black hair became messy under Luo Shuangyue’s hand, and the texture felt just like that of an ordinary little girl.
Even the pitiful expression seemed somewhat similar.
“Look, she even looks pitiful!” Luo Shuangyue exclaimed, pointing at the girl’s face, which seemed on the verge of tears.
Do magical beasts feel pity?
At least Luo Shuangyue had never seen a demon lord that felt pity, and she hadn’t seen many demon lords, especially not ones like this.
When You Ji described how her original magical power was consumed by the Big Butterfly, she felt quite pitiful.
But whether You Ji at that time was still the original demon lord was debatable; her accounts held little significance.
“Taya, they call that gray world the Kingdom of the Dead, which connects our world to theirs. It would be quite normal for people from our side to be reborn here after death, right?”
Interpreting from a literal perspective, Luo Shuangyue’s statement didn’t pose any major issues.
That gray area was filled with ghost-like entities, and occasionally a few might venture out to become magical beasts in other worlds.
As for why the two sides exchanged, who knows? Perhaps it was because the dead couldn’t return to their original world?
“Your idea is incredibly bold…”
“Regardless, it’s possible. Plus, I have a very simple way to verify my hypothesis.” Luo Shuangyue raised a finger. “Let’s pick up a few newly born magical beasts and raise them. If each one turns out like her, then my conjecture would be validated.”
One magical beast might just be a coincidence, perhaps this magical girl was talented, but if all the magical beasts Luo Shuangyue picked up looked like this, her hypothesis couldn’t be baseless.
“Anyway, you will regain your strength soon, so when we come across low-level magical beasts, we’ll catch a few. We’ll know if I’m right then.”
Luo Shuangyue’s plan was exceptionally beneficial; it not only helped the indigenous people of this world deal with the magical beasts but could also verify her hypothesis and fulfill the little butterfly’s wishes.
When catching magical beasts, they had to lose their ability to resist, right? What if Xia Mo accidentally killed a magical beast?
At that moment, the little butterfly could make her grand entrance; just let her pounce and take a bite. As long as the other party wasn’t a demon lord, they would definitely lose resistance immediately, becoming mere toys that could only be whined out as they were drained of their power.
In the time that followed, Luo Shuangyue could allow them to regain their strength, and once they had recovered a bit, she would continue to drain them, just like milking cows.
Hey, isn’t this the magical beast’s cyclical animal husbandry?
As long as there were enough magical beasts caught, in the future, all she would need to do was flip cards to absorb a few magical beasts daily; the future looked utterly perfect.
…Though the aesthetics might be a bit odd.
Even though she only had one reusable magical beast for now, Luo Shuangyue believed that with her power, catching more and more magical beasts was only a matter of time!
