Chapter 9 Capture

Sleeping curse? The classic trope of Sleeping Beauty. Could it be that someone needed to kiss it? It was fine if it was really a beauty. He would not mind being a queer uncle(1) once. But he would not be queer to an extent, that he would not even let go of a boy. Although, he was also very pretty.

Fortunately, the old dragon king carried on, “the best way to remove the spell was to invite the Old Immortal Crane(bird). But to summon the old immortal Crane you will need to prepare enough sacrifice offerings.”

As soon as he finished, he looked at Zhou Yu. Clearly, this was going to be another quest, and Zhou Yu didn’t hesitate to accept the quest. He didn’t mind to have more animated creatures as all.

40 pieces of Phoebe zhennan wood, 40 pieces of Diospyros ebenum wood, 40 pieces of Mahogany wood, and lastly 10 small beasts. Those were the requirements for summoning the old immortal Crane.

He already had Diospyros ebenum wood and Mahogany wood, but he still didn’t have Phoebe zhennan wood. The Moe Coins that he had originally planned to use to buy the comic studio, were now used on the gashapon machine. However, even if he was able to get the seed today, he still needed to have 15 days of the growing period. In other words, the poor boy needed to sleep another half a month.

“Take that! You coin-eating machine!…”

Zhou Yu stopped playing after he got two seeds of Phoebe zhennan plants, and as he had expected, he also got some other wooden materials and ores. But there were also some surprises as well. In the tools category, he had received Jiang Ziya’s Chinese yew fishing rod, Ma Liang’s Douglas-firs hoe. In the building category, he had received, the miner’s hut (Temporary).

The miner’s hut gave Zhou Yu a three-star miner, who was contracted to work for him only for 30 days. He would go to the mountain by himself every day to collect stones.

Jiang Ziya’s Chinese yew fishing rod had a special skill. It was ‘willing to be caught’. The fish that was caught by it would have the title ‘King’ attached to them. The selling price of such fish would be increased.

Ma Liang’s Douglas-firs hoe would add ‘the magic paintbrush’ special effect to soils. It would increase the probability of raising the creatures of the ACG world to become ‘manga artists’.

It was a shame that there were no flower seeds, otherwise, he could try the new hoe.

Now that he had gathered enough the wooden materials, it all left with 10 small beasts.

The small beasts were those randomly generated creatures that he had encountered before in the village. Normally, if the quest didn’t specify which small beast he needed to capture, it shouldn’t be that difficult. However, it was too troublesome to capture those small beasts.

Since the first day he had encountered a small beast in the village, he occasionally encountered some others when he wandered in the village. Just like Pokémons, there were also different types of them.

However, after several trial battles, not once he was able to capture them successfully. So in just a few days, Zhou Yu gave up capturing those small beasts.

It was all because the capturing conditions were too harsh!

The typical example would be the running battle that once proposed by a Sky Rat. It challenged Zhou Yu to run three laps around the village with it, and if Zhou Yu could outrun it at the end, it would leave with him. However, to a real otaku, it would be a miracle if he could finish three laps around the village, let alone outrun the small beast.

The rest of the small beasts were almost the same, it was just the types of competitions were different. Some challenged him to a swimming competition, some challenged him to a climbing competition, some challenged him to a jumping competition. There were even beasts challenging him to a tennis competition. It made Zhou Yu feel like the small village was like an Olympic village, and it was filled with all types of athletes – small beasts.

The worst competition he had fought was the boxing competition. Originally, he thought that he would be able to win the competition easily, since his opponent was just 20cm tall. However, he didn’t expect that his opponent would suddenly transform into a 180cm muscular man during the match… the result was very obvious, he spent three days, lying on his bed.

The competition was not fixed, the same beast might challenge him to a different type of completion next time. What was worse was that once he accepted the competition, there was no way he would be able to quit. Only after the winner was determined would he be able to leave. So after he was being brutally tortured for a period of time, he was no longer interested in capturing any small beasts.

But now, in order to summon the old immortal crane, he had to be tortured again.

The other sports were still okay. If he lost the competition, he would treat it as gaining combat XP from the competition. What he scared the most were those fighting sports, the results of those sports were often filled with tears and pains…

Wandering in the village, he soon met with the first small beast – the lightning dog. Seeing the beautiful blue lightning bolt symbol, Zhou Yu immediately knew that it was the electric type “Pokémon”.

After accepting the competition request, surprisingly, it challenged him to a ping-pong match. Amongst all the competitions, Zhou Yu believed that this was the only competition that he had the highest chance of winning. So it was not a bad start.

The lightning dog did not transform, it was holding a bat that was as big as its body, using its mouth. Standing on the ping pong table, it was like a stuffed toy. However, as Zhou Yu lowered his head to have a closer look, there was nothing there, not even the ping pong table and ping pong bat. There was just him doing the gestures of playing the ping pong ball without any actual ping pong ball or ping pong bat in his hands, as if he was a crazy person.

He just wanted to get it over and done with as soon as possible. Otherwise, It would be extremely embarrassing if it was seen by other people.

Hence, the one-game Ping Pong competition was begun!

Normally, although Zhou Yu’s ping pong skill was not very good, it was not possible for him to lose the game to a pet-like dog that was almost as big as its bat. However, this was the ACG world. It was a world that completely ignoring the laws of physics. So when the lightning dog fabulously cast out a ping pong ball that was clearly surrounded by lightning, in the air, Zhou Yu was completely stunned.

It was truly the animated world!

While he was distracted, he was hit by the lightning ball. Immediately, he felt sharp and quick tremors all over his body as if he was tased by a low-powered stun gun. Luckily, the bat was insulated, otherwise, how on earth he was going to continue?

The weird behavior of Zhou Yu was eventually still seen by the village Chief, who was passing by. It didn’t take the old village chief long to judge that the kid had probably lost his mind. Fortunately, he was just playing by himself, and he didn’t seem to be harmful.

‘It is truly a shame. That kid is a good kid.’

Shaking his head and sighing, the old village Chief walked away. And the competition between Zhou Yu and the lightning dog was also coming to the end. Apart from the lightning ball, the small beast didn’t have other skills. So as long as Zhou Yu could pay attention when the small beast charging up its skill, defeating it would not be a problem.

After all, this was the newbie village. There was no way that a demon king would appear here. This also applied to other competitions as well. Too bad that Zhou Yu’s power level was less than five. That was the main reason why he felt that capturing those small beasts was a very difficult thing to do.

After defeating the lightning dog, it suddenly made a “puff” sound and then turned into a cloud of smoke. After the smoke disappeared, a card that was similar to the card in “Yu-Gi-Oh!” appeared before him.

One-star lightning dog, for manga use only, line art +1.

Oh, so it was used to add a special effect to manga. Maybe there were other small beasts that would be able to add special effects to anime. It seemed like he would have to capture more of them in the future.

What the eyes of the ACG world had brought to Zhou Yu seemed to want to force Zhou Yu out of his house. Just look at him, the time he spent in front of the computer was getting fewer. Oh well, it was all because he himself wanted to see what the quest would lead him to. And it seemed like, before he was able to complete it, there was no sign of him wanting to stop.

The first time winning boosted Zhou Yu’s morale a lot. Thinking that he should take this opportunity to capture more small beasts, he carried on wandering in the village. However, he didn’t expect that the next small beast he encountered would challenge him to a Judo competition.

As soon as he heard it, tears began to run down from his face. ‘Damnit, the pain is going to last for several days.’

Wearing the Judo uniform, the little bear looked very cute. But when it transformed into a big roaring bear, it almost made Zhou Yu shit himself. Having no way to surrender, Zhou Yu was shoulder thrown by the big bear. It almost made him puke up what he had eaten last night.

Luckily, no one saw what happened. Otherwise, seeing a person that could send himself into the air and did 720-degree spin before landing on the ground, it would make people question their own sanity.

…Note…