The Cat Doesn’t Want to Have a Name!

Chickens, ducks, geese, pigs, fish—or any other animal, for that matter—there was no distinction.

Hordes of living beings lined up, their very existence efficiently harvested.

Such was their predetermined fate; birth, growth, consumption—the entire species had, over eons, been imbued with its ultimate purpose: to become food.

This description, however, was not meant to evoke pity or compassion.

While empathy formed a cornerstone of human morality—and was by no means a negative trait—Bai’s own capacity for it was far less developed.

In Bai’s eyes, this passage merely articulated a fact.

Bai was simply lost in thought, gazing at the motes of light invisible to everyone else.

These were the souls of the animals, drifting out of their bodies after their brief, chaotic lives had ended.

They, too, were fleeting and formless.

Vaguely, one could discern the shape of an animal, but they would collapse and dissipate within a few breaths.

Most of their information—which was sparse to begin with—vanished entirely from this world.

Only tiny, fragmented pieces, retaining no discernible information, drifted vaguely towards Bai before they could completely disappear.

Bai extended a paw, lightly touching one of these ethereal fragments.

In a blink, the fragment vanished into the cat’s paw, reappearing within a complex structure so vast it resembled the moon compared to a pea.

There, it became an insignificant component, pieced into an unknown, tiny corner of the mechanism.

The specific change was an increase in Bai’s spiritual flow by a magnitude of sixteen zeros after the decimal point.

Bai didn’t even register any change.

Given the fundamental difference in their life essences, though both were called ‘spiritual flow,’ Bai and her contractor’s couldn’t possibly be compared.

Indeed, at this very moment, Bai and her companions were stationed beside a slaughterhouse assembly line.

They had set up a small cubicle where several Cat-girls idly played cards.

“Is this really okay?”

“It feels so unreliable… so different from what I imagined…”

One Cat-girl stretched languidly, voicing her doubts.

It was true.

Neither the imagined arduous cultivation in remote mountains nor battling monsters to level up resembled their current predicament.

They were simply lying by a slaughterhouse assembly line, not even needing to lift a paw to gain experience.

It was simply unbelievable.

Bai, who had been lying on her side, idly staring, lifted her head.

She widened her eyes at the Cat-girl who harbored such thoughts.

Bai, too, found it hard to believe.

Was this kind of good fortune not satisfying enough?

How wonderful it was to simply lie around lazily.

It would be even better with sunlight.

Setting aside what the Cat-girls were pondering, Bai was currently contemplating a profound and difficult question.

‘What is the essence of the soul?’

‘What is the meaning of life?’

Just kidding.

Why ponder such things?

It only invites trouble.

Cats would never seek out trouble for themselves.

The Cat was merely thinking about one thing:

‘With so much meat, it wouldn’t hurt to sneak a little, would it?’

The Cat-girl who had been puzzled by the sudden surge of power could finally rest easy.

After half a month of ‘experience leeching,’ she had finally hit a bottleneck.

Indeed, if this were truly a game, the design of the Soul Lantern Game would be difficult to evaluate.

After all, no one had ever heard of a game where levels were tied to MP.

Now, the Cat-girls faced this minor issue.

The experience they gained only increased their spiritual flow, or ‘level,’ while their spiritual power limit—their ‘MP’—increased excruciatingly slowly.

Actually, it wasn’t exactly slow; Dr. Cat’s spiritual power, which was nine times that of an ordinary person, only took eight years to reach that level, roughly doubling each year.

However, this particular attribute couldn’t be boosted by experience; it only increased gradually with time.

Furthermore, the spiritual flow value couldn’t exceed one-tenth of the spiritual power, which was precisely what caused the bottleneck.

This was understandable.

If spiritual power was likened to a machine’s maximum load, spiritual flow would be its rated power.

The load was fixed, and too much power would only burn out the machine, yielding no benefit.

The upside, however, was that it made arrangements much simpler.

By calculating their own spiritual power, they would know if they had reached their limit.

If not, they would report it and be scheduled for ‘further study.’

Currently, most of the cats possessed four skills, with four fixed slots: Upgrade System, Auxiliary System, Appraisal, and Versatility.

A small number of cats, born with innate deficiencies, only had three skills.

Fortunately, there were no unlucky ones with only two skills yet.

These three-skill cats had to forgo Versatility, but thankfully, they wouldn’t have to wait long—roughly a year and a half—before they could upgrade.

Of course, there were also ‘genius’ cats, such as Plant Cat, who was still meowing miserably while attending lectures and working in the research institute.

They possessed five skill slots.

There were only two such genius cats, and each was learning a skill no one else had seen: Reincarnation and Pure Land of the Heart.

Ghostly Shot was Officer Wei’s weapon skill, and Hide and Seek was the skill of the cat-head ribbon.

(Incidentally, that cat-head ribbon was now standard issue for everyone; while it might look a bit mismatched on ordinary cat members, it was incredibly useful!)

Photosynthesis and Stone Skin were Plant Cat’s and Yun Juan’s own skills, respectively.

The priority for these could be deferred for now, while they examined the unfamiliar skills.

First was Pure Land of the Heart.

Its passive effect could increase affinity, which was due to Bai and her cat companions having no ill will, as the essence of this affinity was sharing one’s inner self.

Its active effect was to construct an illusion.

One could set up the illusion freely, but the energy consumption was so immense that currently, only Dr. Cat could sustain a single use.

If not actively constructing an illusion, it would automatically generate the illusion the user most desired to see.

This consumed significantly less energy, but still, only Cat-girls with over 60 spiritual power could use it once.

The other skill, Reincarnation, however, was truly baffling.

Its description was a single, simple sentence: ‘Transmission of souls and information.’

That was it.

Just that one sentence, as if the skill itself was never intended for the Cat-girls to learn.

Surprisingly, despite its mysterious nature, the skill’s energy consumption was almost negligible, on par with Versatility.

Given that the skill’s name was rather frightening to cats, the only one who learned it, Green Leaf Cat (Plant Cat’s nickname, as she was the only one with grass growing on her head), had no choice but to ask Bai.

‘Reincarnation?’

Bai was quite curious too.

She used this skill daily to teleport around, even carrying other objects with her, but she had never seen anyone else use it.

Tilting her head, the milky-white large cat indicated that there was no danger, and it was fine to try.

Subsequently, Green Leaf Cat learned a new skill: Out-of-Body Experience.

After all, Green Leaf Cat did not possess Bai’s wealth of power to transmit with material objects.

Fortunately, when Bai said there was no danger, it truly meant no danger.

By setting the target to her own physical body and transmitting again, her soul could return.

Otherwise, Plant Cat would have truly become a ‘plant cat’ today—a cat in a vegetative state.