Chapter 145: Druid Quality
After the animal sports festival ended, the audience’s requests underwent a slight change.
They began heading over to the animals that had put on impressive shows during the festival and asking them to reenact their performances.
For instance, they would approach the monkey who had created spectacular balloon art and request a fresh round of balloon art.
Of course, only one particular guy could pull it off, and he only did it when he felt like it, so it was never easy. Because of that, viewers started buying bananas one by one and offering them as tribute while begging for balloon art.
Other requests included Namcat holding up a Churu treat and taunting him until he got blasted with a Nyangnyang Punch, or bringing a locked padlock to shove in front of the police dogs.
“Hmm, this is a bit of a problem.”
It could be said there was a slight problem.
To be exact, there were two issues.
One was that humans had started issuing challenges to Cheongho, the strongest animal in the zoo.
“Cheongho! My dream is to be the boxing king! Spar with me!”
“I go first! My dream is to be a specialist in security! Cheongho, please teach me one move!”
“I’m the number one from Busan High! Come at me!”
These challengers appeared one after another, each declaring their identity and demanding a spar.
Of course, even during his military dog training and even now that he was with me, Cheongho never used his strength on humans. Unless it was a mission or he was directly harming the person he was protecting.
The guy seemed to be making it clear that he would never use force, so he simply lay down on the floor.
“Please spar just once!”
“These humans are really annoying…”
Although the challengers still refused to leave Cheongho alone, Namcat who happened to be strolling by ended the whole thing by beating them into submission.
“Hmph, noisy.”
Namcat, who had beaten the challengers instead, flicked his tail and walked away without a backward glance.
Watching that, I let out a brief laugh, but it was only for a moment. It was not because of the people challenging Cheongho, but because of worry over another issue.
Rather, another animal abuse controversy had erupted again. They were claiming that forcing animals to fight each other was animal abuse.
Of course, since there were many who dismissed those claims as pointless, it wasn’t a major problem yet, but the fact that such stories were spreading was still worrying.
“Hmm… how should I handle this.”
While I pondered for a moment, I eventually concluded there was only one way. There was no better option than explaining it directly on the broadcast. It was better to address it lightly now when it was still just starting to spread than to let it grow into something bigger later.
I immediately started the broadcast.
Countless viewers flooded in, filling the chat with all sorts of comments.
“I turned on the broadcast today for an explanation, not an explanation. Because there are people claiming that this animal sports festival is animal abuse.”
Before I could finish, supporters flooded the chat. Of course, there were some annoying contents mixed in, but whatever.
Anyway, after bringing up that topic, I decided to reveal one hidden fact.
“By the way, the bracket for the competition in the sports festival was rigged. I knew from the beginning who would win.”
With the word ‘rigged’, the chat exploded.
“That’s not rigging. Since I already knew the outcome of the match, I set the bracket to the most reasonable level. I paired Namcat with the giraffe, Cheongho with Bbwoobbwoo because I knew how it would turn out. It’s not that I forcibly paired them for tourist products.”
I immediately played a prepared video. The video showed bodyguards with superpowers wrestling an elephant, all getting knocked out in the confrontation with Cheongho.
The viewers seemed to agree with my words that they had held the match because they were confident they could beat the elephant.
“And I didn’t force them or anything… I’ll show you evidence that it’s not the case.”
I picked up the camera and moved quickly. The target was the Namcat who had just passed by.
“Namcat!”
“What.”
“Jump, do continuous backflips in the air, and meow cutely.”
“…This is crazy.”
With my out-of-the-blue words, the Namcat guy made a dumbfounded expression, then suddenly jumped and gave me a Nyangnyang Punch to the forehead.
“Ouch!”
It was a pretty heavy hit, a bit stronger than a smack. After rubbing my throbbing forehead, the Namcat guy disappeared without a trace.
“See? Even if I’m a Druid, animals don’t always do what I tell them to. I can restrict movements in the same way as stopping them, or prevent them from attacking people, but I can’t force them to do things they don’t want to. If I could, I would have fixed that cat guy’s personality first.”
Explaining while rubbing my forehead, the people didn’t listen to my words but instead spouted ‘lol lol lol’ and initials. Leaving everything else aside, it felt like they were just enjoying that I was wrong.
But there were always humans who couldn’t understand the truth… or rather, who didn’t even want to understand the truth.
“Hurt animals? Not a single one got hurt.”
In the donation message questioning if I had watched the sports festival in detail, I went to each animal.
Not only the fierce match between Namcat and Cheongho, but none of the other animals got hurt. Only Yubu, who was the worst off, had gotten a bit of dirt on his feathers from landing.
However, because they were humans who didn’t want to understand the truth, despite showing the truth, they didn’t believe it.
“Animal limits… I’ll show you what Druid Quality is.”
With the words ‘animal limits’, I smiled lightly and headed home. Because there was a representative animal at home that transcended animal limits.
“I have bees… well, I live with bees too, you know? Because of that, they were strongly affected by my superpower.”
While going home and talking about the bees, I went to the yard with bees and tapped on the beehive.
Bees came out aggressively, making a buzzing sound as if attacking something disturbing the house. But soon they calmed down after confirming I was there. Most went back inside, and a few landed on my palm.
When I captured the bee’s appearance on camera, people were dumbfounded. Because a bee larger than a bee came out, even though I said bee. Of course, comparing to hornet, but it wasn’t that large.
“It’s a bee. How sweet the honey they collect is.”
I lightly brushed the part between the bee’s wings. Then, as if pleased, the antennae moved in a pararak way.
But at that moment, one of the bees on my palm suddenly flew up. Buzzing loudly, it flew somewhere suddenly.
“Ah, a hornet.”
The reason the guy flew was because of a hornet that came looking for the bees. Even from afar, it was large and had a loud drone sound, so it was clearly a giant hornet.
But I wasn’t particularly worried.
“I was surprised last time, but our house bees killed a hornet.”
Before I could finish, the bee charged at the hornet. The hornet tried to grab the bee as if ‘what the hell’, but it was in vain.
The bee instead moved quickly, followed the hornet’s back, and grabbed it. Despite being larger than a bee but smaller than a giant hornet, it held the giant hornet very firmly.
The giant hornet’s signature drone propeller sound stopped instantly. Because the bee held it so tightly, it couldn’t even move its wings.
And the bee that caught the hornet flew a bit farther while holding it.
When I captured that scene on camera, questions poured in. Most were asking where the bee holding the hornet was going.
“He’s going to dispose of the hornet. I don’t just think of the beehive as home, but consider the whole zoo as home, so I don’t leave corpses nearby.”
Showing the bee that returned alone, people reacted even more in amazement. Because the bee had no wounds.
Compared to ordinary beekeepers or dozens or hundreds of wild bees gathering to kill one hornet, it was an enormous difference.
“This is exactly Druid Quality. It means I made it so that even a normal bee can kill a hornet alone. For the guys with me, limits are meaningless or something, right?”
Smiling lightly, I sent the bee back home, and additionally showed a few more animals.
The parrot that called fast rap, pronouncing diction without any error, the chameleon that emits colorful colors instead of brown or reddish camouflage, Pe-eng who slips like ice on concrete or sidewalk blocks.
By showing animals far from ordinary, no more people were complaining or dissatisfied. Only people who had lost words in amazement were there.