Cathulhu Online, MUNYA!

Chapter 18 – Cat Dad’s Cat Slave

After Xiaomao left the building, he rushed to the labor guild.

Xiaomao found a manor, which was surrounded by tall fences. The front entrance was guarded by a squad of ten level 20 town guards. Everyone glared at the visitors and the NPCs that passed through the gate as if they were warning them with their eyes not to cause trouble here.

Xiaomao waltzed to the manor. The guards only glanced at the premium icon of a chocker and a leash. Then, they ignored Xiaomao.

Not many players visited here as this place didn’t provide quests. On the other hand, rich players often came here for business.

Xiaomao entered the building and went to a counter. He pulled out a platinum token from his game menu and put it on the counter.

The platinum token was none other than the materialized PACT. Xiaomao still had 1,812 tokens in his game account.

As soon as the front counter receptionist saw the token, she smiled at Xiaomao.

“What can I do for you, sir?”

“I’m here for a license to own a slave, munya!”

The receptionist glanced at Xiaomao’s Labor Guild Premium Pass icon and nodded at him, “Is your Contribution Level one or higher?”

“Yes, munya.”

After his Contribution Level had reached level 1, he could begin creating his labor forces or possess a slave. Xiaomao now could capture a monster in the wild or purchase a slave here to accompany him.

But that was not his intention. He had a better way to earn PACT through the labor guild.

“Please wait a moment, sir. We shall issue you a license right now. Issuing a license doesn’t cost a token. You can keep it.”

“No, munya. I’m purchasing a private lodging slot with this token. Get me a room for my slave, munya.”

In order to have a slave or a worker, a player needed a place for them to live or rest. The cheapest way was to rent a house or book a room from an inn. However, items of the slave or worker could be stolen by another player or thief NPCs.

However, Labor Guild provided secured apartments for slaves and workers for players with a slave master license and a Labor Premium Pass. Players could purchase a room here with PACT, and the belongings and items of their workers or slaves could not be stolen by any means.

Secondly, by owning a permanent lodging here, players could create their slaves by using their unused NFT characters!

That was when Xiaomao’s unused NFT characters came into play!

In this game, not only players could use the NFT characters as their primary in-game characters, but they could also be used as support characters.

Slaves and laborers worked differently.

Slaves were NPCs. Captured monsters, prisoners of war NPCs, criminal slave NPCs, and debt slave NPCs fell into this category. Owners of such slaves only needed to provide them food and necessity for living, and they would move or act according to their preset behavior and personality. Lazy slaves were always reluctant to act or follow orders while stubborn NPCs might try to flee or escape from players if their loyalty value was low.

As for laborers, players did not need to worry about their loyalty as they were fixed at 100%. After all, they were created from NFTs of players.

Support characters were also different from alt characters or secondary characters, which players used as shuttles, extra storage, or playable characters. Instead, the support characters acted as semi-NPC characters that would wholeheartedly support the assigned primary character.

For example, Xiaomao could create a new character as a semi-NPC, who would work for Xiaomao without the need for a salary. He could assign specific tasks to the supporters and let them work automatically while his main character was doing something else in-game.

Moreover, support characters continued to work even though the players were offline! They could continue to collect resources, hunt monsters, tend the farms, or even increase their levels!_.

In short, they were game bots that players could use!

The contribution level was also a major factor. As Xiaomao’s current Contribution Level was one, he could unlock one permanent lodging slot for one bot. But once his Contribution reached level 10, he could unlock 10 permanent slots for 10 bots and so on!

For now, Xiaomao only needed one slot for his worker empire.

The guild receptionist nodded and took the platinum coin from Xiaomao. She picked a key from her drawer and put it on the counter in front of Xiaomao.

“Your slave’s lodging room is on the second floor, sir. Since you have the premium warehouse pass, we have chosen a room with a magic chest for you.”

“Thanks, munya!”

Xiaomao grabbed the key and hopped toward the stairs to the second floor.

…

The Labor Guild’s building offered apartment-like studio rooms for support characters and slaves. Xiaomao got a room on the second floor, and his key was written 201.

‘The first room on the second floor?’

Xiaomao immediately found his room. He used the key to get inside.

Inside was a small 10 square-meter room with no bathroom. However, a metal chest was preinstalled at the corner of the room.

Xiaomao opened the chest. Then, a new system menu appeared.

Ding

<Welcome to your premium warehouse. You may store 1,000 types of items here, and all premium warehouses in every city are linked.>

1,000 slots for premium storage were too small for a veteran player like Xiaomao. He clicked his tongue as he knew that it wouldn’t be enough after a month of gaming.

Xiaomao checked his in-game inventory.

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Newbie Healing Potion (20 HP) 100

Cat Food Package 951

Cat Food Cans 405

Smelly Seaweed 1000

Stalk of Seaweed 1000

MSG Seaweed 900

Premium MSG 1000

Niece Seaweed Card 250

Nephew Seaweed Card 250

MSG-Seasoned Baby Ayu 320

MSG-Seasoned Baby Mackerel 320

Goldfish 353

Sardine 801

Tuna 110

Betta 476

Koi 500

Seaweed Rice Sag 100

Fuiyoh MSG Package 10

Fuiyoh Rice Cooker 1

Fuiyoh Wok Shield (DEF 10) 1

Fuiyoh Cleaver (ATK 10) 1

MSG Seaweed Salad Recipe 1

.

Xiaomao put the unnecessary Fuiyoh Rice sags, Rice cooker, Fuiyoh MSG packages, Premium MSG, the recipe, and MSG seaweeds in the chest. He kept the rest to himself as he might need them.

All fish and cat food were stored in his premium inventory slots. Tradable monster cards, healing potions, and equipment went to his character inventory slots.

Just like that, Xiaomao got rid of useless items. Then, he sorted his inventory to make his character inventory and premium inventory more orderly.

Xiaomao glanced at the small icon of a trash bin next to the premium warehouse.

This icon was a quick exchange bin, which converted the value of items into gold coins automatically.

Xiaomao moved the 1,000 smelly seaweeds and 1,000 stalks of seaweed to the trash bin right away as they could only be used as food for low-grade monsters, which Xiaomao didn’t need.

Ding

<You have exchanged 1,000 smelly seaweeds and 1,000 stalks of seaweed for gold coins.>

<You have gained 2,000 gold coins.>

“It ain’t much, but it’s an honest work, munya!”

Once everything was ready, Xiaomao closed the warehouse and navigated to the Contribution Menu, where more details were shown here.

.

Contribution Level: 1

PACT Weekly Income: 1/100

EXP: 10/160,000

Active Support Characters: 0 / 1

Lodging Slot Used: 0 / 1

Authorized Accessible Trade Routes: 0 / 0

Authorized Accessible Regions: 0 / 0

Authorized Accessible Cities: 0 / 0

Available NFT characters: 961

Available NFT fragments: 38

Available PACT: 1,811

.

Xiaomao ignored the detail of accessible regions and cities as they were irrelevant at his current stage. He pressed the bottom button – [Create New Support Character].

After pressing it, the cards of Xiaomao’s NFT characters appeared.

800 Common NFT characters

100 Uncommon NFT characters

45 Rare NFT characters

25 Rare NFT fragments

15 Super Rare NFT characters

10 Super Rare NFT fragments

1 Ultra Rare NFT character

3 Ultra Rare NFT fragments

Everything was sorted and arranged by rarity. Xiaomao could see the portrait of a pretty Oni Samurai, aka the Ultra Rare NFT character that Xiaomao had gotten from the gacha machine.

Xiaomao swiped the menu and filtered the list and selected several names and tags that he needed.

Soon, less than a hundred NFT characters showed in the menu. The rest was hidden.

Xiaomao scanned the list and picked one of the NFT cards.

.

Rarity: Common

Race: Human

Job: Fisherman

Unique Skills: Fishing Spot Finder

.

This NFT was an average lifeskill character. Aside from the ability to find a good fishing spot, he was not worth investing in.

Still, Xiaomao selected the Asian-looking character NFT portrait and pressed the confirm button to finalize the character creation process.

Ding

<Please name your support character.>

“Slave One, munya.”

<Slave Number One has been named.>

<Creating the new support character…>

<Error… Reinitializing…>

“…”

Xiaomao sensed a déjà vu. He immediately opened the game menu and looked at the logout button.

It was still clickable. Xiaomao let out a sigh of relief.

“I got scared for a second, munya.”

Ding

<Reinitializing completed!>

<Creating the new support character…>

<Detecting your character’s unique bloodline ability. Will you bestow your bloodline to your new character?>

<Note: You can only bestow one character without your bloodline every month.>

“What the butthole of a cat, munya?”

Xiaomao was confused. The game was toying with him again.

What bloodline?

What bestowing bloodline?

There was no such thing in his previous life. What happened here?

Again, Xiaomao glanced at his mysterious skill, [???].

As the only comprehensible detail was its brief description as a Passive Bloodline, Xiaomao could only relate this error to this skill.

Since Xiaomao didn’t know what it could do other than giving the 100% drop rate to the user, Xiaomao allowed the game to bestow the unknown bloodline to the new character.

There was nothing to lose anyway.

“Go ahead, munya! Make this trashy slave of mine OP, munya!”

Ding

<Creation completed!>

WHOOSH

In the 10-square meter room, a thin dark-skin Asian man appeared. He looked at Xiaomao with bright eyes.

Xiaomao rechecked the supporter’s status and skill again.

.

Rarity: Common

Race: Human (Evolvable)

Job: Fisherman (Evolvable)

Unique Skill: Fishing Spot Finder

Racial Skill: [???]

.

It really appeared.

Also, the character’s detail changed. It was now an evolvable character.

Unfortunately, after this NFT had been activated, it was bound to the user. Xiaomao couldn’t sell this character to the market anymore. Otherwise, he could have started a new business by bestowing the bugged skill to the NFTs.

Xiaomao had so many ideas about how he could exploit this supporter because of the bugged 100% drop rate. He began to jot down the thoughts.

Soon, he came up with a brilliant plan.

A bot with a passive skill? This might work.

“I was planning to make you auto-fish somewhere around here, but I change my mind, munya. Come with me! I’ll make you the legendary fisherman, munya!”