They all call me an Outer God.

Chapter 154 The Slave's Wish
"Next, all we have to do is collect the ears. It seems pretty simple."

Ria turned to look at the prey behind him, jumped off his horse, approached it, cut off its ears, and stuffed the whole bear into Little Swarth's body.

He didn't want the creatures he killed to be taken away by others. If each student could only cut off the ears of their prey and ignore the body, the club would be getting a huge advantage.

After all, all the corpses in the forest could be recycled and resold by them, and might even be processed into canned goods in some factory and enter the market, where they would then be bought by Ria.

Even if we assume they are too proud to pick up the corpses, this wasteful behavior is undoubtedly even more infuriating.

To eliminate all possibilities, Ria decided to address the problem directly at its source.

He stood up, tucked the bear's ears into a special pocket, and then led the horse to look for other animals.

Adhering to the principle of not wasting anything, Ria truly proved what "equality of all beings" means. Wherever he went, even cicadas on trees had to give up a wing, and cockroaches had to offer up their antennae.

Perhaps this is an exaggeration, but Ria really enjoys the feeling of grabbing whatever she sees in the forest.

"Insects can be used as fish feed, meat can be sold for money, and fur can be sold to rich people to make genuine leather coats... Indeed, as long as you want to make money, plants, fish, and insects are all gold."

He reached out and grabbed the triangular-headed venomous snake on the tree, found a bottle and collected some venom. This venom could be applied to arrowheads, making it difficult for prey to put up much resistance once hit.

After doing all this, Ria put away the live snake, intending to invite it to become her magical assistant partner, tossing it to enemies when she had nothing to do, to surprise them.

"Let me see where the next prey is."

The young hunter parted the dense bushes, searching for any creatures that might be lurking within, when suddenly he heard the sound of fallen leaves being crushed behind him.

"Click——"

"Who?"

Ria turned around and saw a woman with a sallow complexion. The woman's expression was abnormal, and she was holding a knife, seemingly about to attack her.

Behind the woman were several children, thin and weak, their eyes filled with longing for food.

The marks on their ankles, marks that would be left from wearing shackles for a long time, immediately made Riyad recognize them as members of that group of slaves. Besides their thirst for food, these people probably also had a longing for death.

They had been hiding in the vicinity, and if they didn't take the initiative to attack the moment they saw Ria, they would only be discovered and then killed.

The woman tilted her head and roared loudly. The moment she saw Ria turn around, she disregarded everything else and forcefully stabbed at Ria with her knife, the veins on the back of her hand bulging.

Ria made no move, yet swarms of tentacles suddenly burst forth from his flesh, lunging directly at the woman before him, just a split second before they would pierce her—

"stop."

As Ria spoke, the tentacles froze in place, the closest one even touching the woman's eyelashes.

Her eyes were fixed, with bloodshot veins visible in the whites.

"Are you also a contamination patient?"

The woman's gaze bypassed the tentacles and stared directly at Ria behind her, even with a hint of inexplicable hysteria. Ria did not deny it, and just as he was about to get some useful information out of the woman, the woman suddenly burst into laughter and lunged forward, letting the tentacles pierce through her body.

"That's great, that's great, you're a patient! You're a patient!"

Hot blood dripped from the tips of the tentacles, which stiffened for a moment as if startled, before quickly retracting their bodies and hiding back into the host's flesh.

Ria sensed that its current state was not quite normal. Perhaps it was because the host had shouted to stop but the woman still died at its hands, or perhaps it was because it had suddenly tasted fresh, raw human flesh and was still somewhat unsatisfied.

“Calm down, no one will blame you,” Ria said to it, but it looked as if he was talking to himself.

The woman had already collapsed heavily to the ground; she was dead.

This was something that Lia hadn't expected.

People die easily in various ways. For Ria, death was a luxury. He glanced at the woman's corpse with some envy, but more than that, he was surprised. He hadn't expected someone who had acted so hysterically to die so easily.

"I thought you'd live a little longer."

As she spoke, Ria turned her gaze to her children.

"I'm sorry, kids, this scene might not be suitable for you to watch."

"..." The children stared at their mother's corpse on the ground, momentarily speechless, but when they looked at Liya, there was no hatred in their eyes, only a sense of entitlement.

They have become numb to death.

Ria also took this opportunity to approach the bewildered children, give them food, and extract the information she needed from them.

The children picked up the meat and devoured it, answering each of Lia's questions truthfully.

"Do you know her?"

"..."

“We don’t know the dead person; she has no connection to us.”

"Protect us? It seems she lost several children and then went insane, treating us like her children."

"Mother? You mean the person who feeds us vomit for no reason?"

“We don’t know why we were suddenly called slaves. Those people found us and said we were born to be slaves, so they took us away and forced us to do all sorts of things.”

“We don’t know any clown. He joined later and we heard he suffers from some kind of illness.”

“That’s a good thing. I heard that people who get sick can have superhuman powers. If we had that kind of power, wouldn’t we be able to avoid being so miserable and be able to say ‘no’ to those noble lords as a complete person?”

After some conversation, Ria roughly understood the woman's out-of-control behavior.

Perhaps she thought that being killed by a contaminated patient would make her sick; what some people avoid at all costs is something that others can only dream of.

The children stared at Ria, their eyes devoid of any emotion.

"You are a patient, right?"

“Yes.” Ria did not deny it.

"Can the disease be transmitted to us?"

"Are you sure? This kind of thing can't prevent real death; instead, it will shorten your lifespan. Every day that follows will be so terrifying that you'll never forget it, filled with nightmares."

Even so, you still want to contract this terminal illness?

"Yes, sir."

(End of this chapter)