Chapter 11 Accepting the Mission
Xiaozhen's room is clean and comfortable, which makes people feel warm. However, when a little mouse stands on the spotless floor, it will only make the human live show crazy.
Xiao Zhen, an alien parasite called the Heart Eater, is currently trying to disguise himself as a human and live in this house. He stared at the mouse on the floor in silence, wondering whether he should scream first or hit it with a broom.
The mouse's beard moved: "Calm down, I'm Mr. Han's customer service."
"I know you're Mr. Han's customer service." Xiao Zhen picked up the broom, "That doesn't stop me from entertaining the rats that break into my house."
Mr. Cat jumped to the mouse and said, "Stop, stop. I called it here."
"Why did you call Boss Han's rat over here?"
Mouse corrected, "It's customer service. Mr. Cat is going to take my boss's business."
Xiao Zhen was stunned: "I thought you were avoiding Fox Merchant."
Mr. Cat licked his paw. "I hate Fox Merchant. But I want to cooperate with him now. I need to make some pocket money."
Just like the universal currency of this planet, credit points are money. Money means they can buy more convenient equipment to improve their lives. Xiao Zhen admitted that he was jealous of the various alien products on Boss Han's side, but his Star Network account was frozen for some reason, and Mr. Cat also claimed that he was penniless. The only one who can pay the credit points is Captain Ban.
Obviously, they can't always let a bird pay the bill.
Captain Madara landed on the desk and said, "You have finally decided to be self-reliant and make your own money? That's great."
"So I called customer service." The cat stretched out its claws and pushed the little mouse.
The little mouse pointed at the air, and a screen popped up, with Han Junqian's handsome face appearing on the screen.
Han Junqian made an exaggerated smile and greeted Xiaozhen and the others: "Hey~ Hello~"
Boss Han's face was as flawless as a male star on TV, but his smile was always too forced. Xiao Zhen got goosebumps and thought that he must have some misunderstanding about human expression control.
He flashed a big smile and got down to business.
In short, he knew that Mr. Cat was a poor man who had fallen on hard times and was penniless. He was willing to offer a job opportunity. Boss Han had a legal license as an agent of the Galaxy Bounty Union branch, and now had many commissions from alien intelligent creatures living in this city, and could use Galaxy Universal Credit Points to settle the remuneration.
"The compensation is absolutely reasonable and generous," added Boss Han.
It is better to cut your own throat than to believe what Fox Merchant said.
But they need credits.
Xiao Zhen thought that some of the products from Boss Han might be useful to him in the future. Mr. Cat used his consciousness to hold a three-party meeting in the Heart Eater's mind.
"We need to earn credit points. We can take on some commissions from bounty guilds now. The three of us will be able to do it faster." Mr. Cat said.
Captain Spotted questioned whether the fox merchant was trustworthy. He asked Mr. Cat if he was ready to eat shit again.
Xiao Zhen thought for a moment and said, "The Fox Merchants are not trustworthy, but the Galaxy Bounty Guild is trustworthy. Even if it is the Fox Merchants' agent, it must be supervised by the General Association. I agree to accept the commission to earn credit points."
Afterwards, Captain Madara gave up and the tripartite meeting ended successfully. Mr. Cat became a part-time bounty hunter, while Xiaozhen and Captain Madara were Mr. Cat's assistants.
After Mr. Mao signed a bunch of agreements and completed the relevant formalities, Boss Han readily sent him the first commissioned task.
When the file is opened, a large photo of a husky dog is displayed on the screen, and the description file is as follows:
[Mission Title: Retrieve Pet 456A-5]
[Mission Level: C]
[Mission validity period: 7 planet rotation cycles]
【Task content: The client is in urgent need of finding a beloved pet. Attached is a photo of the pet. 】
The Husky in the photo looks sleek and cocky.
Captain Madara complained, "Find a dog? Are you kidding me? The Bounty Guild wants us to find a dog?"
"The reward for retrieving this pet is 10,000 credits."
Captain Spotted shouted, "Of course we must look for this dog!"
Mr. Cat said cautiously, "Isn't this mission a bit too high for finding an ordinary pet?"
Xiao Zhen nodded. He was quite familiar with the galaxy bounty mission levels. Normally, the pet search mission level should only be F. The C level and bounty were really unbelievably high.
Boss Han smiled and asked them to click on the second page.
(Continued from previous page)
(Omitted)
[This pet is wearing an optical camouflage device, and its disguised appearance is that of a husky as shown in the photo. Its true identity is unknown.]
"What does it mean that the actual identity is unknown?"
Boss Han replied with a smile: "It means that the client wants to keep it confidential."
Mr. Cat raised his voice slightly: "Do you mean that we should find a creature that looks like a husky, but actually we don't know what it is?"
"Exactly."
“…”
Xiao Zhen asked: "Is there any other information that can be revealed?"
Boss Han replied: "This husky is called Qiuqiu, and it will respond if you call its name."
"Anything else?"
"All the necessary information is on the file. It got lost here a week ago." A map appeared next to Boss Han's face, and a location flashed in red. "Its owner is extremely worried now."
"Is this creature aggressive?"
Boss Han grinned and said, "It's a pet. The customer said it's very well behaved."
This guy is definitely full of shit.
"Don't forget the independent civilization code. Good luck to you!" After saying a few words, Boss Han's face disappeared from the screen. Mouse wiped his beard, turned around and said goodbye to the three Heart Devourers.
Mr. Cat said: "This commission is very suspicious."
Captain Madara quacked, "But it has ten thousand credits."
"The 10,000 credit points are also suspicious!" Mr. Cat turned to Xiao Zhen and said, "This is a lawless place in the galaxy. Without the direct jurisdiction of the Security Committee and the Eye of Supervision, who knows what kind of dangerous illegal pets these guys will come up with."
"Boss Han said that if it makes big news, it will also attract the attention of the committee and the Eye of Supervision. I think the alien residents here don't want to cause any trouble to destroy the tranquility of this secluded place." Xiao Zhen touched his chin, which was the posture of humans thinking that he learned from TV. "I hope this husky is within our ability."
"Do you really want to accept this commission?"
"Take it." Xiao Zhen looked at the map on the screen and said, "Because the dog was lost at my school."
Xiaozhen's school is the city's famous key middle school, the Fourth Middle School, a high-quality middle school that many parents are eager to send their children to. It is summer vacation now, and the school is very quiet. Except for a few students playing ball on the playground, the school is empty.
The guard at the school gate said he hadn't noticed any stray huskies. Several students on the playground also shook their heads and said they hadn't seen any. There was indeed a dog in the school, but it was a large yellow dog that often wandered around the school gate.
The big yellow dog lay lazily on the ground basking in the sun. Only when Mr. Cat passed by, he half opened his eyes to look at the cat, then closed his eyes, turned over and went to sleep.
Unlike humans, animals retain some wildness and are somewhat alert to potential dangers. The yellow dog is so relaxed and doesn't look like it has been frightened by any creature. On the bright side, maybe the lost husky is really a harmless alien pet.
Mr. Cat developed a new channel to find out. There were a few stray cats living in this middle school, eating and drinking for free as school cats. Now that the students were on vacation, the cats were playing with each other. Mr. Cat walked over, and the frightened cats all bent up and whined to drive away the intruder.
From Xiaozhen's perspective, Mr. Cat meowed a few times in a bluffing manner, and the cats let down their guard and communicated with Mr. Cat in their own way. After a while, Mr. Cat ran back to Xiaozhen.
"Go buy some sausage." said Mr. Cat.
"What?"
"Those mentally retarded cats requested chicken sausage and cod sausage, not the ordinary ones."
“…”
It was summer vacation, and luckily the school store was not closed. Xiaozhen bought a few sausages.
The cats gathered around the sausage and ate it happily, making whimpering sounds.
Mr. Cat sat on the ground, asking the cat questions and translating them to Xiaozhen and Captain Ban.
"They say the janitor's big yellow dog is a fool."
Xiao Zhen: "I don't want to know whether the dog has a high IQ. Have they ever seen a husky?"
"Cats have a lot of weird ideas. They're always jumping around when answering questions. You need to be patient."
"Any other information?"
"They said your ham tastes so-so and it would be better if it came in a can."
“…Ask them if they’ve seen the husky in the photo!”
"Be patient."
Ten minutes later, Xiao Zhen found that she even knew about several of the cats' long-term meal ticket students, but the cats still didn't get to the point.
Captain Ban flapped his wings, "This is why I often want to peck cats' tails. They are so stupid."
"Stop making excuses for your host's quirk!!"
When the sausage was eaten up completely and even the ground was licked to leave wet marks, one of the fattest cats licked its paws and told Mr. Cat some concerning information.
"Missing?"
Mr. Cat nodded. “It said that its companions often disappear mysteriously.”
"What does this have to do with Huskies?"
"Several cats have gone missing from this school, and the cats suspect there is a terrible cat thief."
"Does this have anything to do with the Husky we're looking for?"
"It seems not at this time."
"…Give me back all the sausages I bought!"
"Calm down." Mr. Cat whispered to the cat again, "This cat said there is a scrap collection station on the street behind the school, and there is a suspicious uncle. They suspect that uncle is the cat thief."
"We're not here to handle a missing cat case!"
"That uncle recently got a new dog, a husky."
“…”
The three alien heart-eating demons quickly came to the scrap collection station that the cats mentioned. The block behind the school belongs to the old city, and the scrap collection station is deep in a narrow alley. A pile of unsorted waste garbage is dumped on the side of the alley, and sewage is flowing on the ground. Behind the pile of waste is a mottled wooden door.
Xiao Zhen walked forward and knocked on the door. The door creaked open, and it was so dark inside that he couldn't see the inside. He walked in, and the air was filled with a damp smell. There were piles of debris everywhere, and wherever he stepped, there were bundles of old books and magazines.
"It stinks." Mr. Cat muttered. A cat's nose is 80 times stronger than a human's, and the smell of the warehouse obviously makes it very uncomfortable.
"Is anyone there?" Xiao Zhen shouted. He heard running noises behind the shelves, and just as he was about to go over to check, a figure walked out from behind the shelf. "Who is it?"
The person who came was a short man who looked to be in his 60s and looked tired. He should be the suspicious uncle that the cats mentioned.
"Excuse me, are you the boss of the scrap collection business?"
The uncle nodded.
Xiao Zhen took out the photo and asked him if he had seen the dog.
The uncle stared at Xiaozhen, was silent for a while, and replied: "No."
"Someone said you had a dog..."
"No, no." The uncle said impatiently, "I don't have any dogs here."
"Really not raising one?"
"There are no huskies here. I told you there aren't any!"
Xiao Zhen activated his exploration skill, and his invisible tentacles tried to probe into the uncle's brain. The uncle was obviously resisting something, and panic and desire spread like rain around Xiao Zhen's tentacles of consciousness. He saw a smiling child and other unclear fragments. He wanted to spy more clearly, and these image fragments screamed and ran away.
The door was pushed open and a young man walked in. "Old Wang, I sell waste paper." The young man saw Xiao Zhen and said in surprise, "Yan Zhen? What a coincidence."
Who are you?
Xiao Zhen looked at the man in front of him. Yan Zhen's empty brain did not leave any message for him. Except for Liu Xingquan and Cui Mingzhi, he knew nothing about Yan Zhen's social circle. The young man wore a pair of glasses and looked very gentle.
The uncle smiled and said, "Teacher Feng, is it a magazine again?"
The young man dragged out a large bundle of magazines from behind him: "Yes, see how much these can sell for."
Xiao Zhen quickly called out to Teacher Feng. This Teacher Feng and Uncle Wang seemed to be familiar with each other, like they were regular customers. Teacher Feng smiled and said, "Yan Zhen, are you here to sell scrap too?"
"I'm looking for a dog, a husky. Teacher, have you seen a husky around here?"
"Erha?" Teacher Feng said, "I didn't notice that."
Naturally , Mr. Feng turned his attention to Captain Madara behind Xiao Zhen. "Why... is there a chicken behind you?"
"It's my friend."
"Oh..." Teacher Feng's eyes began to wander. He probably couldn't understand why his students kept chickens as pets.
After that, the topic between the teacher and the student inevitably turned to homework. When Teacher Feng asked how Xiaozhen was doing with her summer homework, Xiaozhen quickly ended the topic and left the scrap collection station.
That uncle Lao Wang is hiding something.
This is the unanimous conclusion of the three Heart-Eating Demons.
Consciousness detection is an inherent skill of the Heart-Eating Demon.
After seeing the photo, Lao Wang's emotions suddenly fluctuated greatly. Although he tried his best to hide it, he couldn't hide it from Xiaozhen and the others.
He must be hiding something. But now that Teacher Feng is here, Xiaozhen and the others can't just force their way in to look for him.
Mr. Cat said, " I think the Husky should be with him."
Chicken corrected: "It's the thing that looks like a husky."
This is exactly what Xiao Zhen is worried about. A C-level commission, with a reward of 10,000 credit points, has only two possibilities. One is that this pet is very rare and precious, and the client is afraid of causing trouble so he deliberately hides its type. The other is that this pet is difficult to capture. Either it has extremely high hiding and escaping skills, or it is dangerously aggressive.
In the Milky Way, 10,000 credits are enough to hire the best hunter to hunt a ferocious giant Tyrannosaurus Rex. At this moment, Xiao Zhen sincerely hoped that the customer was just a generous sponsor who loved to spend money and offered such a high price for his beloved well-behaved pet.
They were not actually afraid that this unknown pet might be some ferocious alien beast, but they hated the endless trouble that would come with making a fuss. For example, the Eye of Supervision. For example, the Safety Committee.
The most troublesome thing is that if this pet is really a big monster that causes a lot of trouble, they still have to make the local humans feel that everything is normal and nothing has happened.
