Monster Dismantling Company

Chapter 20 Ren

"Get to the point! What exactly do you want to do to them?"

"It's very simple." The girl leaned back, resting against the air, her legs crossed, mimicking the posture of a human negotiator. "I can release them, but on the condition that you accept my courtship."

"Yes! Right now!"

"..." The girl was silent for a moment. "Why? You just flatly rejected me, but now you've agreed to it? Those are clearly people who have nothing to do with you. They're not your descendants, not your relatives, your genetic information isn't passed on to them, you can live without them. Why would they become your weakness?"

"Because I am a human being."

Silence, a long, long silence.

"I'm not reconciled... I've clearly completed the courtship ritual. You ate the prey I brought, and you were satisfied with what you ate. Mating with you was what I deserved; it's part of the courtship ritual. But why, why did I have to go through such a long and complicated process to get this perfectly natural thing?! I... I'm not reconciled!"

After a while, she turned her back and jumped into the pool and disappeared—only to reappear in an instant.

"I have released your master, as well as other people you know and don't know."

"really?"

"Just consider it that I'm tired of playing with them, and I'm too lazy to bother them anymore."

This laziness felt familiar to Li Lin once again.

He could sense from the gaps in their words that the other person's heart beat exactly like his own. But he knew that he wanted to be human more than a dragon.

Thank you.

The girl showed no joy at being thanked; instead, she stared coldly into the empty space: "Courtship isn't like this! You should accept my gift first, then we'll hunt together, together... Never mind, I lost. I misjudged your composition. I didn't expect you to be so deeply involved in human life. You're already... completely human."

"Can I take this as a compliment?"

She shook her head, answering the question with a question: "So, there's still one thing I don't understand: is human life really that good?"

"Human life is not good; it is not perfect."

"Then why do you want to be human rather than dragon?"

"I...don't know. Actually, it's a question I don't understand either. So I'm sorry, I can't answer a question that I don't know the answer to myself."

"That's settled then." The girl waved her hand, and a passage appeared in the cave wall behind her, leading to the sunlight outside. "You can go now. Just pretend we never met or said anything. Catfish King Dragon... oh, you call it [Taba], right? It's yours."

Li Lin was silent for a moment, then nodded.

He glanced back at the light outside, then turned to leave—but after a few steps, he suddenly turned back:

"May I ask what your name is?"

"Name?" The girl stared at her for a moment. "At this point, is there any point in saying anything?"

"It seems not..."

She shook her head: "Humans always do these inexplicable things. For unique individuals like us, names and such have no meaning."

"It seems...that's true. Well then, thank you." Li Lin bowed to her and turned to leave.

"stop."

"?" Li Lin turned to look at her.

"If you absolutely must ask, my name is: Ren."

壬。

That is, the dragon of Ren Chen.

"I know you don't like the name 'Dragon.' So if we ever meet again, just call me by that name. Ren, that's enough."

"Well then, see you again if there's a chance."

...

Li Lin breathed a sigh of relief after seeing the sunlight again.

Today, he successfully escaped from Taba's body.

He solved a crucial problem, and many people were saved because of him. Taba's crisis ultimately proved to be a false alarm, and Taba himself will be a regular on the city's tables for the rest of the year.

only...

His instincts were indeed triggered just now. It was just that his human form suppressed them.

Thinking back on those intimate moments, it always feels like a dream, and I always feel a sense of emptiness inside.

Ren felt that he was closer to a human being than a dragon.

The colonel felt that he was practically an ancient god in human form.

He himself didn't know which side he saw was the real him.

However, one thing is certain.

"Ah~~ Finally, we can eat! Taba, it's really delicious! Tonight, I'm going to have a big feast!"

The whole afternoon was a pleasant work experience.

After being uniformly "cleared out," both the defense forces and the operators were immediately thrown into the sunlight. The giant dragon maggot was also thrown down with it. Now, the dragon maggot, having lost its vitality within the cavity, was dumped on the beach, becoming a sample awaiting research.

As for the other tasks—aside from the tense and exciting search and raid, the other tasks of monster decomposition are purely enjoyable.

Many people find satisfaction in cutting tuna, and many become amateur butchers to relieve stress. Here, however, there are enormous chunks of meat to be butchered.

Just like Li Lin had tasted before, Taba's meat was simply art. The perfect distribution of muscle and fat was secondary. The important thing was that the types of meat on Taba's body were as diverse as an encyclopedia:

Belly fat, shoulder fat, cheek fat, Achilles tendon fat—all sorts of textures and shapes can be found on Taba's body.

In other words, right now, if all other edible poultry, livestock, and fish on Earth were to become extinct, then even just the [Taba] alone could sustain the human food industry. Whether you want to stir-fry pork belly and need a cut of pork shoulder, make hot pot and need beef brisket fat, eat raw salmon or pan-fried sirloin steak, you can find meat on the [Taba] that meets all your cooking requirements, and it's of extremely high quality.

If meat is meant to repay a debt of gratitude, then this is it.

"Ah..." Li Lin sighed. He didn't know why, but seeing how perfect the meat was, he felt a little...

I feel a little melancholy.

Because if this is a gift, it would be a perfect gift. He really likes it.

It's just a pity...

Suddenly, Master Wang patted him on the shoulder: "Don't look so gloomy. Wasn't today all good? We completed the task without any major incidents."

"Yes...it was a close call." After saying that, Li Lin suddenly remembered, "By the way, how's the colonel doing?"

"On his end? Great news. Although it was a false alarm, it wasn't a misreport. There are indeed some unimaginably powerful forces within Taba, currently believed to be caused by that dragon maggot. The navy arrived this afternoon, and they highly praised Ningzhou's defense efforts. That dragon maggot is the largest one captured so far. We've all done a great job capturing such a huge experimental sample."