Another World Trip: Journey with My Cat and an Otaku Loli Goddess Chapter 369 - What An Evil Child

“Let me travel with you guys.”

And I answered in the same way.

“Not a chance in hell.”

****

Firecracker would be proud I reckoned.

The Ren’duan’s expression changed. “W-Why can’t I come with you guys?”

“I’m not gonna lie, I was half tempted when I saw you at first. But when you stated that you weren’t going to forge shit, I lost all interest,” I told him. “Everybody in this group plays a pivotal role in one way or another.”

“Everybody?” he asked.

“Everybody,” I confirmed.

He then pointed at Mina in righteous indignation. “Then why do you have her!?”

“Good point. Mina, why do I have you?”

“Screw you!”

“Love you too. She’s part of the family,” I told him. “I mean, we tried to give her up for adoption, but we got a ‘return to sender’ every time.”

“Screw you sideways!”

I ignored her and asked him. “So, what’s up with you and not forging?”

His expression darkened when this subject came up. The white glow that was subdued between the cracks of whatever made up the base of his midsection flared slightly with his emotions.

I partly wondered if this was to blame. It was also this aspect of him that differed him from every other Ren’duan I had seen thus far.

“I was born with a mutated flame,” though he seemed unwilling, he started to explain. “Because of it, I was deemed a genius that would be able to forge supreme weapons before long. However, nobody asked me what I wanted. Nobody asked me what I wished for! With it being forced down my throat as it was… pause… I came to hate it! It’s all I’ve ever known all my life. Thus, in this life, forging is what I hate the most!”

The white glow flickered and burst into a flash of flames before it quickly disappeared.

Everyone else remained silent in the face of this.

“To be blessed with talent is seen as such to others, but is oft-felt a curse to those who possess it.”

What he said sounded profound, and the sagacious expression he wore drove it home too. But the fact that he was wearing a loincloth while saying it destroyed that image. Also… did he say pause because what he said sounded sus?

Where would he even learn that!?

I decided to tackle the issue of him sounding like a Gen Z social media addict later.

“Then what do you want?” I asked him.

“To not be bored!” His face beamed a smile while he flashed me a thumbs up.

“I’ve simultaneously lost all respect for you even though I never had any to begin with. How do you even do that?”

“I’m built like that!” He declared.

I looked at Pebbles who looked away instantly. I can see what happened there. I’m way too tired to deal with this shit.

“How about I make forging not boring?” I asked him.

He didn’t have eyebrows to raise but I could tell that he raised them somehow. Man’s over here breaking new barriers.

“Impossible.”

“Impossible rhymes with possible.”

“That doesn’t make any sense but I’ll take you on. Prove it.”

“Bet. Take a look at this,” I took out several pages from my storage ring and handed them over to him. I also took out parts for something I was working on.

Now, you may be wondering where I got these from. Good question, remember those scrap metals I got from Yang Fuyou?

Yeah, I wasn’t bashing away at those things randomly. I was building a prototype for something that I wanted to get my hands on for quite some time now.

However, my dreams were dashed since building something I had never built before, even though I researched it extensively on the internet, wasn’t easy.

Basically, I was gonna need a lot of help on this.

Regardless, because of my failures, I knew a lot of things I wasn’t supposed to do. I even managed to create the schematics for it and made a lot of corrections in lieu of said failures.

As the Ren’duan looked over the pages, I could see his expression changing several times. The lack of eyebrows and other normal facial features didn’t make it easy to get a read on how he felt.

However, the glow of the built-in forge in his midsection dimmed and brightened as he switched between the pages.

Everyone craned their necks over to see what I handed over to him, since he was so adamant about not forging before, but looked at the pages in what I could only assume to be interest.

He then looked over to me and his fiery ruby-like eyes glinted. “What do you plan to do with this?”

“I will proceed to be the wrecker of people’s shit. I shall also spam it unendingly and if possible till the heat death of the universe.”

“Then it’s official, I rescind my lifelong hatred of forging!”

That was easy.

“That easy!?” Everyone else said at the time.

I like people like this. Why make life-altering changes so difficult?

If it’s fun and puts your life in mortal peril, put it on a bucket list.

That’s what celebrities do.

“And it’s decided. You are now a part of my group. It will be your responsibility to work on creating this thing. It will be a joint operation between me and you.”

“Say less,” the Ren’duan agreed.

“What’s your name?”

“Jiancheng Shu!”

“You’ve got to be shitting me.”

“Bahhahaahahahhahahahahahaa!!!” Pebbles erupted into laughter and rolled off Lord Whiskers’s head, kicking up a cloud of dust in the process.

After that was sorted out, I let him keep the schematics so he could study them as much as he needed.

We had to wait till Pebbles was finished undergoing asphyxiation before we could move on.

We were heading to another city so we could get a map that included the general direction of Emerald Forest so we could get Xiannu Liang home.

“Wait a second.” Pebbles stopped us from moving off.

“What is it?” Pebbles was normally the first person to want us to get a move on.

“Don’t you want these dead bodies?” He asked me with genuine concern.

“Do you take me for someone who’s into necrophilia? Cuz I’ll tell you right now, though I am a powerful advocate for never knocking something till you try it, dead bodies don’t really get my engine revving if you catch my drift.”

“Oh no!” Pebbles’s nose upturned at the thought of it as it should. “I would never deign to entertain the thought. Though they have a better chance of doing that than Mina. The only competition in that sphere is Mina, Mina! I think of you better than that.”

“Drop dead both of you!” Mina fumed like an overachieving kettle.

“Yet, me and Pebbles would somehow still have more rizz than you. Any thoughts on that?”

“Aaah!”

Mina descended into madness at my question.

I told you I lied.

“Damn right!” Pebbles agreed before he focused back on me. “Don’t you want the dead bodies for the death energy?”

“Nah,” I told him. “It doesn’t make sense. Their vitality is all gone, so I wouldn’t be able to get as much out of it as I’d like. Now let’s get out of here before someone annoying comes along and blames this whole thing on–”

“W-What an evil child! Look at the scene here!”

Well, tickle my scrotum and call me Sussy. This is what I was trying to avoid. I just knew it was coming.

{Author Notes: So the name Jiancheng Shu comes from the characters 建成 and 殊 which basically means ‘built different.’}