Chapter 146: A New Storage Space
His beginner equipment was still waiting to be replaced by gear dropped from elite monsters.
After returning home, Joo Joowon first left the mutated crab outside the door before carrying Byeol and Hwi into the bathroom.
Both cats were filthy.
Even though the water supply had already been cut off, he was still willing to waste precious water to wash them clean.
This had little to do with cleanliness itself.
The problem was that cats licked their fur.
If they survived fighting zombies only to become infected by licking zombie blood off their own fur, that would be far too ridiculous.
Hwi was not a problem.
It had already been injected with the immunity serum.
Byeol, however, was different.
Although Byeol disliked water, it was not actually afraid of it.
For the most part, raising Byeol had never caused Joo Joowon any trouble.
Hwi, on the other hand, was the classic type of cat that absolutely could not tolerate water.
The moment it entered the bathroom, it immediately began jumping all over the place while producing screams that sounded as though someone was slaughtering a pig.
Fortunately, Byeol was still the leader between the two cats.
The moment Byeol let out a fierce warning cry, Hwi immediately crouched obediently in place.
Its little ears drooped downward as it sat there looking pitiful beyond words.
Joo Joowon could not help clicking his tongue in amazement.
Considering Hwi’s coat pattern and body size, both of which placed it firmly at the bottom of the feline food chain, he truly could not understand why Hwi listened to Byeol so obediently.
Surely Hwi could not actually be Byeol’s kitten, right?
After thinking about it carefully, though, that possibility did not seem entirely impossible.
Before Joo Joowon brought Byeol home, Byeol had already been wandering the streets for quite a long time.
According to the veterinarian, Byeol had not yet reached one year old.
Cats could enter heat as early as six months old, and some particularly precocious kittens could even go into heat and become pregnant at four or five months old.
After thinking about it for a moment, Joo Joowon decided he did not really care either way.
Even if Byeol could not keep Hwi under control, he would still instinctively take Byeol’s side.
No matter how much he had decided to adopt Hwi, he still cared more about the Byeol he had raised for such a long time.
It was difficult for him to treat both cats with perfect fairness.
Besides, most of the time Byeol only brought happiness into his life and never trouble.
Since the dirt covering the cats had only been picked up earlier that night, cleaning them was not especially difficult.
Using cat shampoo with a light fragrance, Joo Joowon carefully washed both cats until they were spotless.
He then used a chamois towel to dry the moisture from their fur before finally allowing them to move around freely again.
With the electricity gone, there was no way to use a hairdryer to finish drying them.
The moment they left the bathroom, the two cats each found their own corner and began licking their fur.
Joo Joowon left them alone and instead walked into the room where Bomi was growing.
He took out the normal grade half zombie core that still remained in liquid form and poured it directly onto the "soil" where Songi had rooted itself.
This energy should accelerate its growth and help it reach Level 1 faster, right?
Joo Joowon was not completely certain.
If it did not work, then he would simply drag over the mutated crab, whose level was obviously not low at all, and use it as fertilizer instead.
Perhaps driven by some instinctive desire for evolution, the moment the liquid was poured out, Songi’s tendrils immediately stretched out and wrapped around the liquid, pulling every drop into the mouse skin container beneath it.
Nearby, Bomi also seemed eager to move, as though it wanted to compete for the resource.
For some unknown reason, however, it eventually withdrew its tendrils and became quiet once more.
Joo Joowon guessed that perhaps it was waiting for Songi to bloom first.
Resources were limited now, and there was no way to divide them equally among everyone.
Even though Bomi had already settled down, Joo Joowon still spoke to comfort it. "This one was specifically brought back to help Songi bloom. Don’t worry. Once it blooms, I’ll treat all of you equally. If I have a bite to eat, there’ll definitely be at least a sip of soup for each of you too."
Whether Bomi understood his words or not, Joo Joowon did not know.
After confirming that Songi no longer required any help and that no resources would be wasted, he closed the door and left the room.
Finally, he used the waist pendant to store away the crab that had been left outside the apartment.
The crab meat is notoriously difficult to preserve.
In Joo Joowon’s memory, there had never been any method of turning crab meat into preserved foods such as dried meat that could be stored for long periods of time.
It seemed that crab could only really be eaten fresh.
Fortunately, with the Spatial Waist Pendant now available, this was no longer something he needed to worry about.
Although Byeol had apparently brought this prey back with the intention of giving it to him, just like the cockroaches and mice that Byeol had caught in the past, Joo Joowon could only appreciate the gesture without ever actually considering eating it.
There were several reasons for this.
First, mutated beast meat had never been properly tested, and Joo Joowon had no idea whether it was safe to consume.
Second, he had never encountered aquatic monster before, so he genuinely had no way of knowing whether this crab was truly a mutated beast or a zombie.
Third, the crab was covered in pieces of zombie flesh and filthy zombie blood.
Even if he cleaned it thoroughly, the thought alone would still disgust him.