Chapter 62
Though beastkin make up more than 30% of the total population, there are truly many different races among them.
If you had to name the races with the largest populations or the strongest influence over society as a whole, they would be the catkin, wolfkin, and dragonkin.
For reference, my master is wolfkin as well.
Anyway, if there was a race as famous as those three, it was the rabbitkin.
As a single race, they made up three-tenths of the entire beastkin population, so there was no need to say more.
The secret behind that was their vigorous sex drive and the fact that pregnancy progressed more quickly than it did for other races.
Apparently, the process from fertilization through implantation and childbirth took only eight months.
As a result, many men looked down on rabbitkin women and approached them, or so I had heard. There had been quite a few such idiots even when I was in high school.
But having a strong sex drive didn't mean they were indiscriminate about who they took.
Rather, they were especially aggressive toward men who took them lightly, making them the beastkin one had to be most careful around when approaching them for the first time.
Of course, perhaps not as much as those with especially strong homosexual tendencies.
“Bunny girl?”
I looked up and down at the rabbitkin woman who had appeared by tearing through the air.
Her bunny-girl outfit aside, even her blue eyes and long twin tails made it clear she wasn't an ordinary woman.
Objectively speaking, if one considered only her appearance and figure, she was undeniably attractive, but everything else about her made me uneasy.
I had a strong feeling that I didn't want to get close to her.
Still, as I said before, her appearance and figure were objectively absurdly attractive.
Not only were her huge breasts fully exposed as befitted a bunny-girl outfit, but she also had dangerously prominent hips and thighs, along with buttocks that looked ready to burst.
It wasn't an outfit a man could easily take his eyes off.
Even if I tried not to think about it, stealing glances wasn't something I could simply stop doing through sheer willpower.
“Aha? Customer. I'm sorry, but the reward isn't my body, you know?”
The rabbit girl's eyes curved into crescents.
There seemed to be a strange excitement flickering in the gaze beyond them.
Was I imagining it?
“Aren't you being a little too blatantly disappointed?”
“I never said anything of the sort.”
At my firm reply, the rabbit girl let out a soft, sultry moan as though disappointed.
Was she already in heat, just as one would expect of a rabbitkin?
“Anyway, what do you mean, you're the reward? What does that mean?”
“Exactly what I said.”
“...You just said you weren't.”
My gaze swept over the rabbit girl's breasts, hips, buttocks, and finally her thighs.
With a woman in that body and that outfit standing in front of him and saying she was the reward, how many men in the world would be able to think of anything else?
“Customer! A gentleman doesn't seek a woman's value solely in her physical qualities!”
The rabbit girl crossed both hands into an X while making a beeping sound with her mouth.
Her exaggerated gestures and reactions, along with everything she said and did, overflowed with mischief.
That only made it harder to tell what she was thinking.
“Then what can you do for me?”
“Anything you wish, customer!”
“...”
She dressed like a woman from a brothel, claimed she would do anything I wanted, and yet said she wouldn't do anything with her body?
There was no contradiction more contradictory than that.
“Your eyes are being awfully blatant!”
“...Forget it.”
There was no denying that she had an extremely attractive appearance and figure.
“You came from the ‘Dating App from Another World,’ right?”
But I already had Iris and Cheon Yeo-hwa as lovers, and I had slept with Choi Hye-na several times as well.
There was no need to lose my head over women and miss a valuable opportunity.
“Who knows?”
A crescent-shaped smile appeared at the corner of the rabbit girl's mouth.
Was she refusing to comment?
“Then what if I asked you to tell me about the app as my reward?”
“...”
The rabbit girl's expression stiffened in an instant.
“Customer.”
A cold voice, 180 degrees different from before, began filling the surrounding space.
This wasn't merely a change in her voice.
My instincts were warning me.
“In fiction, there's something called a MacGuffin. It gives the story motivation, but never appears in the end.”
It was telling me that now was not the time to run my mouth carelessly.
Goosebumps rose all over my body, and cold sweat dripped down my spine.
“Readers who thoughtlessly try to dig into a MacGuffin aren't viewed very favorably by the author.”
“...So you're saying you'll kill me if I dig any deeper?”
Even so, I couldn't bury this matter for the rest of my life.
Rather, because I didn't know when I might get another opportunity like this, I decided to take one more step along this precarious tightrope.
At my decision, the smile disappeared from the rabbit girl's mouth.
“If necessary, I might.”
At a subtle distance where we could touch if either of us reached out, the rabbit girl and I locked gazes.
Just as it seemed that even a faint killing intent was swirling beyond her icy eyes, vivid blue energy gathered at the tips of the rabbit girl's fingers.
It was weaker than my master's, but it was unmistakably hand-force (手罡).
The hardened qi, the exclusive domain of high-level experts and something even the Barrier at my maximum output couldn't stop, was about to shoot toward me—
“Customer, you should choose your words a little more carefully... Aaaaaaaagh?!!”
KWAANG!!!
Lightning suddenly fell from the sky.
Naturally, it wasn't my lightning.
Literally, lightning had fallen from a clear sky... No, from a clear ceiling.
It wasn't a trap going off. I had stepped there earlier as well.
Nor could it have been an attack by a magical beast, since Mana Detection showed not a single magical beast nearby.
“Ngh, ugh...”
Brrr-
Just as I thought the rabbit girl had been knocked unconscious by taking the lightning head-on, she trembled and raised herself, while a familiar vibration sounded from somewhere.
It sounded like a cell-phone ringtone.
“Eek?!”
The rabbit girl's complexion turned deathly pale in an instant when she heard the sound. She hurriedly slipped a hand between her breasts and pulled out a cell phone.
I'd only seen that on NewTube, but apparently that really could be used as storage space?
“H-hello...? Y-yes, yes...! What? K-kill you?! Do you really think I was serious? Ha, haha...”
Whether or not she cared about my reaction, I caught a glimpse of a low-ranking rookie employee's back as the rabbit girl politely held the phone in both hands while taking the call.
Even afterward, the rabbit girl continued talking for quite a while, unconcerned that her entire body had become drenched in sweat.
The rabbit girl repeated only three types of answers like a parrot: yes, no, and I'm sorry.
As though she considered it presumptuous even to voice her own opinion.
Even so, the voice on the other end of the phone could not be heard, as though it had been filtered out.
“Ah, yes, y-yes! Understood!”
Just then, perhaps the call had ended, because the rabbit girl let out a deep sigh of relief.
Then, completely out of character for her, she timidly approached while nervously watching my expression.
“Heh, hehe... C-customer...? You know everything I said earlier was just a joke, right...?”
Rubbing both hands together pitifully as she spoke to me cautiously, she looked just like a groveling rabbit.
Ah, right. She was a rabbit, wasn't she?
“A joke?”
“D-do you really think I intended to harm you, customer?! Of course it was humor meant to advance our relationship!”
“It wasn't funny.”
At my icy response, the rabbit girl's complexion turned pale again.
Moreover, even her rabbit ears, which had stood stiffly until just moments ago, drooped. I could almost hear the sound of her frantically thinking.
“If I made you feel that I was being rude, I sincerely apologize...”
“Without offering anything?”
I didn't know much else, but I could clearly tell that the relationship between us had become one between the superior and the subordinate.
It wasn't difficult to guess why.
Considering that the rabbit girl had called me customer from the beginning and maintained an ingratiating attitude throughout the phone call, the whole picture became clear.
Imagine this: a company sends an employee to take care of a VIP customer, and this hopeless employee not only mouths off to the VIP but even threatens to kill him.
Her boss must have been tearing his hair out.
‘That boss must be someone affiliated with the Dating App from Another World.’
Of course, even that was merely speculation without evidence.
Thinking of the Dating App from Another World as a company in the first place was nothing more than my own delusion.
Even so, I decided to call the person who had chewed out the rabbit girl Assistant Manager Kim. Giving that superior a name would make it much easier to organize the situation later.
Besides, judging by the things this hopeless rabbit did, it was difficult to imagine her being given anything above staff level.
No matter how I looked at it, she was a hopeless MZ-generation rookie employee.
“Th-then...?”
“What are you going to use to compensate me for the emotional damages I suffered because you threatened me?”
“C-compensation...?”
The rabbit girl's eyes shook as if an earthquake had struck them.
“...How about my lovely eye smile?”
“No need.”
Iris's or Cheon Yeo-hwa's eye smiles would be one thing, but this woman's was completely useless.
“Then how about the shortest route to the third-floor boss of this dungeon...?”
“The shortest route?”
“Yes! And it would take only half a day at most! What do you think?”
That was certainly an enticing reward.
I had bought the die that cost 1,000 coins in the hope that it would help me reach the third floor in the first place.
And she didn't seem to have anything else I could wring out of her, while with time of the essence, an unnecessary argument would only be a waste.
“Not bad...”
Ding-
Just as I was about to accept the rabbit girl's offer, a new screen appeared before my eyes.
[On behalf of this app, we sincerely apologize for this discourtesy]
[Since we cannot easily claim to understand the humiliation you must have felt, we would first like to offer you the maximum compensation we can provide]
[Compensation: Ownership of Noel Lonnidella]
[Would you like to receive it?]
[Y/N]
What the fuck was this?
“W-why are you like that...?”
Noel sensed an indescribable unease from Kang Hyeon-woo as he stared blankly into the air.
Her hands and feet began trembling involuntarily.
“Can you see this?”
“Pardon?”
Kang Hyeon-woo pointed at the screen, but there was nothing in Noel's field of vision.
“If it's something related to the app, I don't have enough authority to see it.”
“Really?”
Too bad. Explaining it to her would probably be slower than showing her, anyway.
Ding-
As soon as I had that thought, the app immediately responded.
[Would you like to share the screen with Noel Lonnidella?]
[Y/N]
For an incompetent rookie employee, the app certainly handled things quickly.
Maybe Assistant Manager Kim was getting chewed out by that superior as well.
[Y]
[The screen is shared with Noel Lonnidella's field of vision]
There was no reason to refuse, so I accepted immediately.
“...Huh?”
There was no need even to ask whether she could see the screen; the rabbit girl's immediate reaction reached my ears.
Shock flooded her eyes in an instant.
“Wh-what is this...”
“Wow.”
Thump—my arm came to rest across the rabbit girl's shoulder.
Even so, the rabbit girl couldn't even resist.
“Well, look at that. Who would've thought something like this could happen?”
“C-customer... You won't accept it, will you...?”
Beyond the rabbit girl's eyes as she looked up at me pitifully with a forced smile, I could see something that seemed to be a mixture of unease, fear, and bewilderment.
Only then could I be certain of what I had been unsure about.
So Noel Lonnidella is your name, huh?
“Why wouldn't I?”
[Compensation: Ownership of Noel Lonnidella]
[Would you like to receive it?]
[Y/N]
[Y]
[Ownership of Noel Lonnidella is imprinted upon Kang Hyeon-woo's soul]
[Noel Lonnidella is registered as Kang Hyeon-woo's summoned creature]
“...”
The rabbit girl—or rather, Noel—stared blankly at the screen for a long time.
Of course, that did not change the result that had already been decided.
“Then I suppose you should start by showing your respect to your master?”
I whispered into Noel's ear.
“Put your head on the floor.”
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