Chapter 75: The Sleeping Cat
Byeol stared at Joo Joowon pitifully, looking as wronged and miserable as a cat possibly could.
He was an exceptionally well-behaved cat and rarely turned into a nighttime menace, so Joo Joowon walked over and picked him up.
Only after shining the flashlight from his phone around the room did he notice the Zombie Core lying on the floor.
It was obvious that Byeol had somehow dug it out.
Sticky saliva still coated the surface of the Zombie Core.
Since Joo Joowon had already chopped the Zombie Core into pieces beforehand, he had no way of telling exactly how much Byeol had eaten, which left him rather surprised.
After all, earlier he had placed Zombie Core directly in front of Byeol and the cat had done little more than sniff them before losing interest completely.
He had never treated Zombie Core as food in the slightest.
So why had he suddenly become interested now?
"Could it be...?"
Joo Joowon’s eyes immediately lit up as he placed the Zombie Core back in front of Byeol once more.
Having just been frightened, Byeol was still grumbling and complaining in cat language and had absolutely no desire to eat anything.
However, the scent coming from the Zombie Core was simply too irresistible.
It was practically comparable to canned meat.
Unable to resist, he stretched out his tiny tongue and gave it an experimental lick.
That single lick immediately opened the floodgates.
Byeol began chomping away enthusiastically, eating with slow but unwavering determination as the Zombie Core visibly shrank before Joo Joowon’s eyes.
Watching the Zombie Core disappear little by little, Joo Joowon hesitated.
It was not because he was reluctant to part with the Zombie Core.
Rather, he was worried that Byeol might lose control and overeat, resulting in some kind of tragedy.
Although adult cats were not as clueless about food portions as kittens were and generally knew when to stop eating, it was still common for them to overindulge when faced with something they truly loved.
While Joo Joowon was still hesitating, Byeol suddenly stopped nibbling slowly and simply opened his mouth wide before swallowing the remainder of the Zombie Core in one gulp.
Joo Joowon: ∑ ( °△° l|||
Meanwhile, Byeol appeared completely unaware of Joo Joowon’s horror.
He curled himself into a little ball in Joo Joowon’s arms, let out a satisfied yawn and promptly drifted off to sleep with an expression of complete contentment.
Joo Joowon: "..."
He let out a long sigh and no longer dared go to sleep himself.
He was terrified that something might happen to Byeol while he was asleep.
And if something really did happen...
Joo Joowon genuinely had no idea what he would do.
As a left behind child, there were not many children in Joo Joowon’s village to play with him, so from a young age he spent most of his time playing with all kinds of animals instead.
Unfortunately, there were too many dangers in the countryside.
The cats and dogs his family raised were either stolen or ended up dying after eating poisoned rats.
Sometimes they would simply disappear without a trace, leaving their fate unknown.
So strictly speaking, Byeol was the pet that had stayed by Joo Joowon’s side for the longest time.
He had adopted Byeol not long after he started working and now it had already been nearly six years.
Byeol could no longer be considered a cat in the prime of his life and had already begun entering old age.
Byeol was intelligent and understood people well.
He loved acting cute and asking for affection, never damaged the house, and would even comfort Joo Joowon whenever he was in a bad mood.
Back when Joo Joowon was unemployed, Byeol had even caught mice for him every single day.
Their bond ran far deeper than ordinary companionship.
The more Joo Joowon thought about it, the sadder he became.
Byeol was the only family he had left.
The countryside was full of superstition.
People all considered him a jinx, or rather, they used that excuse to cover up the issue of who would inherit those possessions.
After he started working, Joo Joowon never returned to the village again.
For all these years, it had only been him and Byeol relying on each other for company.
Perhaps nighttime always amplified people’s emotions.
Even someone like Joo Joowon, who usually disliked overthinking things, found it difficult to keep his emotions under control at this moment.
Still, he forced himself not to dwell on those thoughts.
Instead, he directly connected the search thread from the Spider Web Launcher to the search threads constructed by the Spider Chimera and concentrated on distinguishing the signals transmitted back through them, making sure not to waste his energy.
The search threads drifted with the airflow and the wind.
To spiders, the movement and vibration traveling through the threads were enough for them to determine whether prey had become trapped or whether the disturbance was merely caused by natural forces.
However, Joo Joowon was like a Muggle who had accidentally wandered into a magical world.
He lacked that kind of innate ability, so all he could do was work hard to learn how to distinguish and become accustomed to the countless disturbances transmitted through the search threads by the surrounding environment.
As time slowly passed, Joo Joowon gradually became able to tell apart the movements caused by the wind itself.
The search threads were like a giant sensor network.
The sound insulation in old apartment buildings was generally poor.
If someone upstairs dragged a chair across the tiles, the people downstairs could hear it immediately.
The sounds coming from the bathroom area were even more obvious.
With sound insulation this poor, there were simply far too many things for the search threads to detect and respond to.
However, Joo Joowon was not the Spider Chimera after all and did not possess such powerful sensory abilities.
Even relying on the relic left behind by the Spider Chimera, he could only sense the movements occurring one floor above and one floor below him.
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