Virtual Idol in the Beast World: Five Clans Fight Over Me

Outside, the cold wind howled.

Inside, the hairdryer whirred.

Cook sat obediently on the floor while Gu Ning circled him with the hairdryer, skillfully ruffling the little dog’s damp fur with one hand.

’Oh, wait, he’s a big dog now.’

Cook’s body was getting bigger and bigger, and his fur was growing thicker, making it very difficult to dry.

Cook loved it when Gu Ning dried his fur, but he was also afraid of tiring her out. He always dried himself once over first, only letting Ningning help with the spots he couldn’t reach.

Nearby, Barto was also using a hairdryer on himself. Gu Ning found herself glancing over at him from time to time, thinking he looked rather cute drying his own fur.

She had always wanted to pet the fluffy little fox, but she just didn’t have the guts. With his temper, she was lucky he even let her pat his head. She wasn’t tough like Cook; she couldn’t take a beating from him.

When Gu Ning glanced at him again, he couldn’t resist asking, "Why do you keep looking at me?"

Gu Ning had been drying Cook’s fur for over half an hour, and her arm was getting sore. She put down the hairdryer for a moment and wrote, "You bathe every day. Don’t you find drying your fur a hassle?"

Before Cook was injured and devolved, he had a normal humanoid form. Besides his beast ears and tail, he didn’t have all this animal fur, so a quick towel-off after a shower was all it took to get dry.

"Who says I bathe every day?" Barto said, grabbing his big tail to dry it carefully. "I don’t wash unless I’m dirty. Drying my fur is a pain. It’s not like it’s summer, where you’re dry in an instant."

Seeing that his fur was mostly dry, he took out a box of drying powder, poured some into his hand, and began patting it all over his body. It would keep his fur dry and clean for a long time.

He glanced at Gu Ning. "I’m not stinky like those other Beastmen."

Gu Ning didn’t know what kind of "stink" he was talking about. She didn’t have the advanced sense of smell that Beastmen and Mixed Breeds possessed; at most, she could only detect a little sweat.

"You should go wash up too. Can’t you smell the stench on you?"

Barto thought, ’Is Gu Ning’s temper a little too good? What Mixed Breed could tolerate being so heavily contaminated with another Beastman’s scent?’

’The guy comes back every day reeking of Alex’s wolf scent, so much so that it even overwhelms Cook’s.’

’Is Gu Ning trying to get Alex’s protection? Has he already pledged allegiance to him?’

’After all, he’s a Wolf Clan Mixed Breed, so it’s normal to want to follow a powerful wolf. But I still feel something isn’t quite right. No matter what, he shouldn’t be drenched in Alex’s scent.’

Gu Ning waved her hand at Barto. It was too cold, and there was no heating indoors. She really couldn’t bring herself to bathe, and she was terrified of catching a cold.

Right after Cook brought her back from the garbage dump, she had come down with a high fever. Cook, not knowing any better, had given her some kind of medicine that made her suffer from violent vomiting and diarrhea. She’d nearly lost her life.

Cook had been terrified, and in the end, could only wrap ice in a towel to slowly bring her temperature down.

Gu Ning had managed to pull through based purely on her own constitution, which was as strong as an ox (by human standards).

She caught a cold again later, and she got through it on her own by drinking hot water and staying out of the wind—the usual self-care routine.

It wasn’t that Zone 19 had no medicine; it was that she couldn’t take Beastman medicine. She didn’t dare try it again.

She planned to "borrow" Alex’s bathroom to shower tomorrow. Alex was usually out working all day, so she could take a shower while she was in his room to use the toilet.

Seeing that she was absolutely unwilling to go bathe, Barto grabbed the Beast Smell Agent and started spraying it all over her.

’This wolf scent is making me really uncomfortable.’

Alex was not like Cook. Cook was just an ordinary little dog, but Barto could tell from the wolf scent that Alex’s rank within his pack was not low.

Gu Ning sat there obediently and let him spray, taking the opportunity to ask, "Have you still been running your stall these past few days? Or have you been busy with something else?"

Barto was close to her now and caught a glimpse of her writing. A flash of confusion crossed his eyes. "Why do you always trace the words out once before you actually write them? Your terminal lights up, too. Is there something wrong with it?"

He’d wanted to ask for a long time, but he figured that since Gu Ning was a Dwarf hybrid, some strange behavior wasn’t too out of the ordinary. In fact, it was his excessive intelligence that made him seem more peculiar.

But he couldn’t help but ask anyway.

Gu Ning’s hand paused mid-stroke.

She gave a soft cough and wrote, "I’m not very good at writing, so I have to make a draft first."

In reality, it was to communicate more efficiently with Barto and the others. When she wrote, her terminal would scan the strokes on the paper and translate them for her in real time. She had simply turned off the screen projection, so the translation only appeared on her terminal’s screen.

That was why her terminal would always light up briefly whenever she wrote.

Barto was about to ask more, but just then, his terminal lit up. After seeing the message, he immediately ran to his little den, opened the box containing his personal belongings, put on a bulletproof vest, and tucked a weapon into his waistband.

Gu Ning and Cook watched the little fox bustle about, getting fully equipped as if he were heading into battle.

Once his weapon was ready, Barto slung his small backpack over his shoulder and said to the two Mixed Breeds—one large, one small—who were watching him, "I have to go out for a bit. I’ll be back late."

Gu Ning wanted to ask what he was doing, but before she could write more than a few words, Barto had already opened the door and hurried out.

Seeing the little fox geared up like that, Gu Ning felt a little worried.

Recalling that he had been going out often at night these past few days, she could only send him a message: "Let me know in advance if anything’s up."

After sending the message, Gu Ning opened PawPress.

It had been four days since she’d released her last video. Her account’s Like and Donation values had already reached their targets the day before yesterday.

At the time, she had excitedly tried to upgrade her account to Level 5, only for a notification to pop up saying her accumulated video duration was insufficient. To reach Level 5, she needed at least two hours of content.

When Gu Ning saw the newly added duration bar under her account details, she bonked her head against the heater in frustration.

’My few videos combined don’t even add up to two minutes! Let alone two hours!’

Gu Ning sighed, hugging the heater.

Two hours of content... she would have to film a lot of new videos.

Her account had leveled up so quickly and easily in the early stages, with almost no major obstacles, that she’d started to think later upgrades would be just as simple.

But Level 5 accounts were basically reserved for accounts run by film and television companies.

They could meet the duration requirement just by filming a few episodes of a show.

Gu Ning had plenty of video footage on hand, but it was all from similar scenes, making it highly repetitive.

If she uploaded those videos, the Beastmen might not buy it. They might even downvote her account into oblivion.

Leveling up again wouldn’t bring in new donations, but the Like value and other conditions would have to be met all over again.

It was just like a video game: you’d already collected the reward, so it was gone for good, but if you had to start over, you’d still face all the same difficulties along the way.

Gu Ning hadn’t been too worried about upgrading before, since she already had several million in her account. But then Barto told her that a single Advanced Inhibitor cost 300,000 in Zone 19.

Unlike Crystal Stones, Degeneration Inhibitors couldn’t be stored long-term. They had to be used as soon as possible after production, or they would lose their effectiveness.

Zone 19 had the facilities to produce Inhibitors, but they were prioritized for the Military Department. For anyone else, they were both expensive and difficult to obtain. This was why most Beastmen chose to either join the military or join teams that hunted Mutant Species for Crystal Stones in the No Man’s Land.