Chapter Ninety-One: The Depressing Choice

As a boss, you may not know the business, and you may not know how to manage people, but there is one thing you must understand: how to squeeze your employees.

For Fan Li, killing monsters carried an extraordinary significance. Slaughter points, sealed relics, and the chance to stain his katana with even more blood—when set against his own troubles, the butcher’s little grudge was not worth mentioning.

No reduction in affection appeared before Fan Li’s eyes. Clearly, the butcher was still in a dazed state and had not connected the vanished enemy to Fan Li.

Yet nearby, there was another witness who had noticed something.

Ellie dragged the giant hammer over to Fan Li’s side. First it turned its face toward the blank ground, then toward Fan Li, as though recalling some unpleasant scene.

Ellie was far more intelligent than the zombies. The moment Fan Li cut down the monster, the energy fluctuations surrounding it vanished all at once. That reminded it of the empty ground left behind not long ago, after it had exhausted itself to kill the nightmare.

If memory served, Fan Li had even spread his hands then, claiming he knew nothing at all.

Ellie lowered its head in disappointment. It felt hostility coming from Fan Li, and a faint doubt arose in its trust toward him.

“A new flavor. Want to try it?”

The whole thing had happened too fast for Fan Li to even bother hiding it properly.

His affection level was in danger. Fan Li seemed to already anticipate the warning that would appear in the next instant.

Unlike the butcher, whose rise and fall in affection was meaningless, Ellie demanded much more of Fan Li’s attention.

With some experience under his belt, Fan Li knew this was no time to sit and wait. He had to do something.

Potato chips.

Fan Li took a bag of chips from his backpack.

The words “new flavor” had completely captured Ellie’s thoughts. It lifted its head, yet for a long while still did not extend its little hand. Between the new chips and forgiving Fan Li, it was wavering.

Crinkle, crinkle.

Fan Li shook his right hand, and the sound of chips colliding inside drifted out. That became the final straw pressing down on Ellie. In the end, it chose to extend its little hand and accept Fan Li’s offering of atonement.

After settling Ellie’s small trouble, Fan Li took out the monster manual. He merely wanted to confirm something: why, despite both being complete forms, had this one yielded fifty points, nearly twice as many as the nightmare?

The book, which rose and fell faintly like breathing, lay in Fan Li’s hands. He flipped it open quickly, skimming past the existing sealed entries until he reached the last page.

Against a black background, the monster’s head hung low. It seemed to have struggled for a while, but after confirming that it could not break free, it had chosen to give up.

A complete-form monster.

Unnamed.

Power has reached its limit and meets the standard for enslavement. Duration: fifteen minutes.

Effect one: You may feed an existing monster and gain a chance to comprehend an ability possessed by the thing it consumes.

Effect two: Consume the monster and grant the host one ability for use. Duration: two minutes.

Effect three: Refine the monster. It is a treasure of this world, and also a depressant poison. Only by swallowing it will you realize how small you truly are.

Fan Li’s pupils contracted slightly. He had indeed noticed the difference: unlike the nightmare, which had only the first two options, this freshly slain monster had revealed an entirely new one.

Refine?

That meant to be tested and tempered again and again, to strip away the impurities and obtain the essence.

Fan Li leaned against the wall and closed his eyes for a moment to rest.

As for monsters, and the third option in particular, he had already formed a preliminary understanding and analysis.

Monsters were powerful beings that stood above nightmares.

Zombies could not be sealed, which could also be understood as lacking the value to be sealed at all.

A monster in incomplete form, that is, a mutated form, could be sealed, but could not be summoned into the real world. When consumed, the time during which one could wield its ability was also very short.

A complete-form monster, however, could be summoned into the real world. By spending life force to obtain its ability, the duration of use would also be greatly increased.

And the monster from earlier, the one covered in heads, was stronger in both ability and methods than a nightmare’s single, simplistic trick of luring people into dreams.

In other words, monsters were not all the same. Just as a litter of puppies would always contain some large and some small, their strength varied, and so would the increase in slaughter points they yielded.

All of that was fairly easy to understand. What mattered most to Fan Li was the third option.

Refine the monster.

“It is a treasure of this world, and also a depressant poison. Only by swallowing it will you realize how small you truly are.”

That was the line describing the refining option.

Fan Li found several key words: depressant, poison, swallow, and small.

Based on his understanding of those words, he reached a conclusion. Like turning a plump, delicious fish into a broth, the third option meant refining the monster into some unknown ingredient or potion that could be swallowed.

As a Chinese man, Fan Li had always prided himself on not being picky with food. But asking him to drink the freshly squeezed essence of a monster—just thinking about it made his stomach feel as if countless rats were scratching inside, disgusting beyond words.

Fan Li suppressed that mad impulse. There were many ways to seek power, but for now, he had not yet reached the end of the road, nor was he prepared to pour all his courage into such an experiment.

Crack.

Crack.

A crisp chewing sound rang out. Fan Li looked down and saw that Ellie had somehow torn open the package and was tossing chip after chip into its mouth.

The bloody surroundings had not affected Ellie’s appetite at all. It was trying the new flavor Fan Li had mentioned.

Well... not bad.

Fan Li’s scattered thoughts slowly gathered again. His condition gradually steadied, and he closed the monster manual before putting it back into his backpack.

Practice reveals the truth.

Fan Li very much liked that saying. There was still far too much controversy surrounding the third option. Whether he tested it himself or had someone else do it, this would require careful planning, not reckless action. No one knew what would happen once the so-called swallowing was truly completed.

Then, from the front, footsteps suddenly sounded.

Fan Li jerked his head up, only catching a fleeting shadow as it flashed past.

This factory still seemed to contain many areas worth exploring.

He no longer dwelled on the sealed monster’s mutation, and instead shifted his attention back to the factory itself.

Patting Ellie on the head, he found the latter holding a chip in one hand, turning its face toward him as if asking whether something was the matter.

Ellie’s behavior made Fan Li feel a little more relaxed. He smiled and pointed ahead.

“Still hungry? Come on—let’s go get you something really good to eat.”