Chapter 120: Bird Whistle
As he said that, Joo Joowon suddenly realized something. "Oh right, Bomi, how long does the flower on top of your head stay in bloom before it withers? It’d be a disaster if Songi finally bloomed only for your flower to have already disappeared."
Joo Joowon vaguely remembered that the flowering period of cacti was actually rather short.
Some flowers only remained open for a few hours before disappearing, while others could last for several days.
As for what caused such differences, he had absolutely no idea.
After all, he didn’t grow plants.
The only thing he understood reasonably well was raising cats.
Whether Bomi had understood the question or not, it offered no response whatsoever.
It remained peacefully rooted into the corpse beneath it, as steady and unmoving as a mountain.
Seeing this, Joo Joowon simply decided that his concerns were unnecessary.
Since communication wasn’t really possible anyway, wasn’t it better for his mental health to assume everything would work out for the best?
Plants didn’t require lively environments in the first place.
Joo Joowon closed the door and returned to his own apartment.
By now, Hwi had already stopped trying to figure out where that mysterious voice had come from.
Instead, it had crouched beside the doorway and was happily gnawing away at the zombie bird, eating with tremendous enthusiasm.
It truly was the perfect example of a creature that never learned its lesson.
Joo Joowon suspected that inside Hwi’s tiny little brain, it had probably concluded that all of the previous incidents had occurred because there was something wrong with the cat food itself.
Therefore, now that it had switched to a different kind of food, it could eat without any worries at all.
That being said, it had at least become slightly more cautious.
Although it still wasn’t exactly chewing properly, it no longer looked like a starving ghost reincarnated into the world.
At the very least, there was now the faintest trace of elegance visible in its eating manners.
Since Hwi had already been injected with the immunity serum, Joo Joowon wasn’t worried that eating zombie birds like this would cause any problems.
What he was genuinely curious about was something else entirely.
Did zombies that emitted terrible odors and whose corpses had already begun to rot slightly actually taste good?
Would it end up with diarrhea after eating all that?
Or perhaps, as long as one didn’t have to worry about the zombie virus, higher level zombies were actually incredibly nutritious?
Regardless of the answer, Joo Joowon still preferred normal food.
Even if zombie meat could somehow be processed and made completely harmless, he still had absolutely no desire to eat it.
However, seeing the zombie bird reminded him of something important.
He still hadn’t opened the common card that had dropped from the zombie bird earlier.
Joo Joowon pulled the common card out of his pocket and examined it.
...
[ Bird Whistle ]
[ Grade ]: Common
[ Description ]: After blowing the whistle, nearby birds below Level 4 will respond to the call and obey your commands.
[ Duration ]: 15 minutes.
[ Cooldown ]: 2 hours.
...
If he could understand bird language, this would undoubtedly be an incredible item.
Birds could be used as scouts and spies.
After all, who would ever suspect ordinary birds flying through the sky?
Unfortunately, if he couldn’t understand bird language, then the value of the whistle dropped significantly.
Perhaps it could only be used as bait to lure zombies over for easy kills.
Or maybe it could be used during escapes by making flocks of birds suddenly take flight and distract enemies.
For the moment, those were the only applications Joo Joowon could think of.
However, after carefully reading the description once again, he began to suspect that the Bird Whistle might not actually be as useless as it initially appeared.
The keyword in the description was "birds" rather than "zombie birds."
Could that mean that ordinary mutated birds nearby could also be summoned?
If that was the case, perhaps he could temporarily recruit a few mutated birds as backup follower candidates while Songi remained unable to level up.
After considering the idea carefully, Joo Joowon ultimately abandoned it.
The concept simply wasn’t realistic.
Unlike cats and dogs, birds were notoriously difficult creatures to tame.
Even birds raised from birth often ended up returning to the wild eventually.
Unless they belonged to particularly intelligent species such as crows, mynah birds, or parrots, success rates were generally low.
Furthermore, if those kinds of intelligent birds were already living in human settlements, they had probably long since accepted owners of their own.
The chances of them ending up in his hands were slim.
The idea had simply been a passing thought.
Since it had already been ruled out, Joo Joowon didn’t feel disappointed.
Instead, he continued analyzing the wording of the item’s description.
There didn’t appear to be any restriction on the number of birds that could be summoned.
Did that mean that as long as birds were nearby, he could summon as many as he wanted?
Then what about range?
Would every bird capable of hearing the whistle respond to the call?
If that was true, then the value of this Bird Whistle was actually quite high.
Aside from the level restriction, it practically had no limitations at all.
It only required blowing the whistle.
It didn’t even consume Mental Power.
Honestly, it was probably among the very best items within common grade equipment.
Even if the game had classified it as rare grade instead, Joo Joowon wouldn’t have been surprised in the slightest.
He reached over and rubbed Byeol’s head.
As expected of a cat favored by luck itself.
Even though it had only produced a single item drop, that one item was worth ten ordinary ones.
It seemed that in the future, Joo Joowon should try letting Byeol contribute more when hunting zombies.
If things worked the way he expected, the equipment drop rate should increase noticeably.
More importantly, there wouldn’t be any issue with experience points being split.