Mind-Blowing Changes

“Oh, Boss, you know, the comrades’ work pressure is just growing exponentially.”

“In this kind of situation, our cats’ mental energy simply isn’t enough.”

“Speaking of which, this period of anomalous change has been unusually long.”

“Our intelligence channels have confirmed that global anomalies have entered a high-frequency phase.”

“If things don’t return to normal later, we’ll be in serious trouble.”

“But Bai, do you have any leads on these anomalies?”

“They’ve only really started in the last half year.”

“These piles in the room… the more I look at them, the more I like them.”

“They’re so artfully arranged.”

“If you have time, do you want to come and help me stack some in my room too?”

“Hey, hey, hey, Bai, did you change Officer Wei’s chat nickname?”

“What did she do?”

“Blah, blah, blah…”

Dr. Cat, in her active persona, lay beside Bai, chattering away incessantly.

Yet, after a long while, she still hadn’t reached the main point.

These two personas were truly polar opposites: one with a wild imagination that ran off the rails, the other afraid to utter a single unnecessary word.

However, regardless of which persona it was, for Bai, they were both… quite annoying.

Bai knew Dr. Cat hadn’t reached the point, and she even clearly foresaw the purpose of Dr. Cat’s visit.

Nevertheless, Bai respected the talkative green-furred cat’s urge to express herself.

She lay sprawled on the floor like a flattened cat pancake, her eyes hollow as she stared at the indistinct, drifting wisps on the ceiling.

‘Was that… a spiderweb?’

‘Hmm, no, I don’t think so.’

‘Ah… what is The Doctor rambling about…’

‘Too lazy to listen, too lazy to move…’

“Ah, right, right, Bai, can you share that mental energy boosting ability of yours?”

Meow?

Had she finally gotten to the point?

Bai twitched her ears, slowly un-pancaking herself from the floor into a three-dimensional cat.

She sat elegantly, her tail protecting her paws, her gaze fixed on Dr. Cat.

“No, there’s no more space.”

“No space?”

“Does that mean it really can be shared, but the current sharing slots are already at their limit?”

Despite her talkativeness, Dr. Cat was quite intelligent, immediately grasping Bai’s meaning.

“What skills are currently being shared?” Dr. Cat inquired, but quickly shook her head, answering herself.

“Oh, right, it’s the Auxiliary System, Versatility, and Appraisal.”

Versatility and Appraisal?

Bai tilted her head, pondering for a moment before realizing these referred to ‘Versatility’ and ‘All-Seeing Eye’.

‘Versatility, Appraisal… meow… those names actually sound quite nice.’

“How is the limit calculated?”

“Do different skills account for different proportions, or is it simply based on the number of skills?”

When the topic turned serious, Dr. Cat immediately reverted to her ‘Ten Thousand Whys’ nature.

What else could she do?

Bai patiently replied: ‘By quantity, with a maximum of three.’

“Three…” Dr. Cat fell into deeper thought.

Her first thought was to replace one of them.

The All-Seeing Eye was fundamental for the cats to efficiently handle anomalies; increasing mental energy was precisely to use this skill more often, so it definitely couldn’t be replaced.

Versatility couldn’t be replaced either.

Setting aside skills like disguise and information gathering, which had been trained but were rarely used, without this skill for cover, cats on external duty would face immense trouble.

The Auxiliary System—one shouldn’t underestimate this skill.

It seemed useless, but the effortless use of the two skills above relied entirely on its existence.

The Doctor still remembered that without the Auxiliary System’s help, Officer Wei had spent a month learning Versatility and could only change her hair color.

This posed a problem.

There were no empty skill slots for growth-oriented skills, which was incredibly awkward.

Wait.

Dr. Cat immediately thought of another approach.

“Bai, can the limit of your skill sharing be increased?”

‘Of course.’

‘The skill sharing limit depends on the scale of the Soul Lantern Network.’

“The scale of the Soul Lantern Network?”

This wasn’t the first time Dr. Cat had heard the term.

Based on her understanding, it could be roughly compared to a neural network, though with a key difference: the size of each unit wasn’t uniform.

“The larger the scale, the more skills can be shared?”

“…Can we just contract more people?”

Dr. Cat rubbed her long green hair, a troubled frown creasing her brow.

This was going in circles; they were trying to increase mental energy precisely because they didn’t want to expand the number of cat-people.

Bai watched Dr. Cat’s distressed expression and shook her head.

‘Not quite, meow~’

“What’s not quite right?”

‘Not the overall scale.’

Shaking her head, Bai realized her previous explanation wasn’t precise enough.

She searched her human vocabulary for the right words.

‘Hmm… it’s the average scale!’

“Average… scale?”

‘For cats other than myself, the average value of their mental flow is the average scale.’

This time, Bai articulated it in detail.

Upon receiving the answer, Dr. Cat’s eyes lit up immediately.

“I get it!”

“The number of shared skills is linked to this mental flow, right?”

“What I mean is…”

Dr. Cat tilted her head, her ears and tail standing straight up in excitement.

“If we don’t look at the average, but calculate each person individually, can we achieve different numbers of shared skills for everyone?”

Bai paused…

‘It really seems possible?’

‘But in that case… how would each person decide which skill they want?’

“It’s just like a chat group!”

“You can list the skills you can share, Bai, and let the contractors choose for themselves!”

Bai: ( ᗜ o ᗜ )!

‘It really could work!’ Bai gradually grew interested in such a fascinating change.

“I’m excited now too!”

“Look, we can link the amount of obtainable skills to mental flow, then represent these two data points with a ‘level’.”

“Then, mental energy would be equivalent to ‘MP’, and my Scripture of the Spirit Vine would be like the upgrade system, used to gain ‘EXP’.”

“And Bai, your contribution skills would be the ‘skill pool’ that can be learned upon leveling up!”

“Then we’d establish a mandatory skill sequence: first, learn my Scripture of the Spirit Vine to activate the upgrade system, then list the Auxiliary System as the second mandatory skill.”

“After that, as they slowly level up, they can learn other skills!”

It seemed Dr. Cat had hit upon one of her excitement zones.

The green-furred cat’s ears twitched rapidly as she vehemently expounded her views.

Bai listened, utterly stunned, feeling as though her companion was truly a professional who understood everything perfectly.

After a thorough exchange between the two cats, they instantly agreed and immediately began a sweeping reform of the contract system that very night.

The next morning, Yun Juan awoke from sleep.

Although becoming a cat-person meant a period of nocturnal habits, thankfully, she could manually adjust back to a human’s schedule.

Her pale legs stretched out straight, her hands propped on the bed.

Yun Juan let out a big yawn, twitched her ears, and roused her spirits.

She first opened the system panel, much like many people check their phones first thing in the morning.

Yun Juan wanted to see if she had missed anything in the system chat group overnight.

As soon as she opened the panel, Yun Juan froze, staring at the familiar… yet unfamiliar interface.

She scratched her head.

“What is this, meow?”