What About Other Creatures?

Four-Player Mahjong, with one experienced hunter, one Novice Hunter, two enthusiastic ordinary citizens who were interested in the game, and a few ordinary people and other hunters who had come over out of curiosity to watch. Zheng Yichen wondered if he should make something like a copyright...

"Eight of Characters!" Zheng Yichen played a tile from his hand. He was pretty rough at Mahjong, just drawing and discarding tiles and leaving it to luck. He basically didn't bother with things like keeping track of the tiles—a standard, purely recreational pastime for ordinary folks.

He played completely by feel, too. If it wasn't a tile he wanted, he definitely wouldn't keep it.

"Pung." After a few rounds, Hunter Arno had gotten the hang of it. Mahjong's rules were simple, and Zheng Yichen hadn't added any of the more complicated rules. Maybe there would be some later, but someone else would have to develop those. He was fine with playing Mahjong, but he wouldn't miss it if there were no chances to play. It was just something to enjoy with relatives during holidays and festivals.

"I don't suppose people will start using this to gamble big in the future? If they do, I feel like I'll have made a mistake."

"You're overthinking it." Hunter Arno looked at the tiles in his hand, considered playing one, then put it back and chose another instead. "Gamblers don't care what they're playing. One more game won't make a difference."

He admitted that Mahjong was a pretty good game, but the board and tile games in this world weren't bad either. Just as he'd said, Mahjong might become popular in the future, but the games that already belonged to this world wouldn't fall out of favor because of it. At most, it would add one more option to all the games people could play.

"I won't be coming here for the next few days."

"Going on a mission?"

"Yeah." Hunter Arno didn't say much about the commission. As time passed, the ordinary citizens who'd joined in hadn't been the first to leave. Arno himself was the one who called it quits. "That's enough for today. Let's play together again next time."

Zheng Yichen checked the time. It was almost eight before he knew it. It was hard to feel time passing inside the Twilight Chapel; after entering, it felt as if time had been frozen at dusk.

Looking around, he saw that there weren't many ordinary people left in the chapel. The rest were hunters.

He left the Mahjong set with Hunter Arno, returned the Mule Head to the chapel's storage area, then packed up his things and took the subway home.

The next day, he checked his physical condition and clenched his fist. His arm, which had hurt badly whenever he moved it, had recovered considerably, and its movement was no longer much restricted. The wounds covered by the suturing strips had also healed on the surface.

He picked up the heavy barbell from the floor. It felt completely different from before—the thing seemed to have gotten lighter.

Back when the Withering Disease first appeared on him, Zheng Yichen had been terribly anxious. He'd been so worried and afraid that he even resisted getting examined, terrified they'd send him to some institution to be studied. After he'd figured out a few things, he'd felt less anxious, but the drawbacks still troubled him.

Now that he could effectively eliminate the drawbacks caused by his abnormality, he actually thought it was pretty great. He wiped down the parts of his body without wounds with a damp towel, then returned to the Twilight Chapel and found Sister Tia. Or rather, it wasn't that he'd found her—he'd simply come here and seen her.

When he wasn't paying much attention, the nun seemed to be nowhere around. But when he wanted to find her, he could spot her at a glance.

He'd seen plenty of strange things during his years living in Longcheng, but this experience still made Zheng Yichen feel that he hadn't seen enough of the world.

"I'd like to get my body checked again, preferably with a really thorough examination." Zheng Yichen told Tia what he wanted. After their few encounters, and since she already knew he was an aberrant, he figured it wouldn't hurt to make up for the physical examination he'd missed back then.

It would've been a lie to say he wasn't curious about the state of his body. As an aberrant, he really wanted to know how his constitution differed from an ordinary person's, and whether there was anything extra inside him.

What if he had a parasite in there?

Thinking about the abnormal forms those little animals took on, he immediately pictured the "Chrysanthemum Monster" from the Resident Evil series, the kind that could crawl out of a person's mouth. Just thinking about it made his throat itch.

"Of course." Tia nodded. "Come with me."

This time, they didn't go to the infirmary or the place where he'd had his body checked before, but to another large room. Zheng Yichen felt as if he were in a hospital rather than a chapel. Watching a nun operate some instruments made the whole thing feel even stranger.

"Lie down." Tia pointed to the examination bed. Seeing Zheng Yichen looking a little nervous, she spoke in her usual calm tone. "Don't be nervous. Your wounds won't affect the results of the examination."

That was only the beginning. After checking Zheng Yichen's basic physical condition, they moved on to other tests. He even went into a machine similar to an MRI. When he came out, he felt completely dizzy.

It was as if a dozen Unicorn Mules were right next to his ears, going, "Heeheehee—"

This time, Tia gave him a medical report, as well as scanned images. Zheng Yichen looked them over. Some of his bones still showed signs of fractures from his previous injuries, but everything else was normal. He didn't have any extra bones, and nothing had grown into an unusual shape.

There were no abnormal shadows inside him, either.

"Structurally, your body is exactly the same as a normal human's. There's no difference internally." Tia said to Zheng Yichen, who was sitting obediently. "On top of that, you have certain traits that ordinary people lack. Some aberrants panic because of their abnormalities and refuse all medical examinations, even treating their condition as an illness. In reality, that way of thinking is unnecessary."

"Then why do little animals all turn so bizarre after they become abnormal?"

A little rabbit could spit out a chrysanthemum-shaped mouth, a Little Chick's head could burst open and sprout a mass of tubular feelers, and a Giant Rat could open its mouth wide enough to tear through half its own body to bite someone. As for snakes, their skin could sprout dense tendrils, making their bodies look like caterpillars.

Every single one of them was just too adorable.

"You're sure you want to compare yourself to little animals?" Tia shot Zheng Yichen a glance.

"Of course not."

"Then that's that. When your abnormality first appeared, as long as you still considered yourself human, there wouldn't be any additional changes. You wouldn't change much in the future, either. You wouldn't even be reproductively incompatible with ordinary people."

Hearing that from Sister Tia put his mind at ease. Then he quickly asked one more thing. "What about other creatures?"

He regretted it as soon as he said it.

"Hmm?"