Chapter 1

『Pet World: Create Your Own World』 

It was the name of the most popular, yet highly controversial, game currently on the market. Despite the endless possibilities its massive degree of freedom offered, negative reviews flooded the boards due to its adult-rated, repulsive elements—namely, the ability to enslave pets or butcher them for food.

But I liked it just fine.

In Pet World, you could capture various types of pets, enslave them as laborers, force them into combat, or slaughter them to use as cooking ingredients. You could even force them to breed, selectively engineering offspring with superior stats.

“I hope they drop an S-rank egg today.”

As soon as I logged into the game today, I threw two pets into the breeding facility. Once inside, lighting a fire prompted them to mate and lay an egg, which, after a day in the incubator, would hatch into a baby pet randomly inheriting its parents’ stats.

Therefore, initiating this breeding cycle was the absolute first thing I had to do upon logging in. To minimize wasted time, I needed them to lay an egg so I could immediately shove it in the incubator and move on to other tasks.

“Ah, what the hell.”

[msg][System: The male pet is exhausted.][/msg]

Annoyance instantly flared at the warning window that popped up the moment I hit the Breed button. Sometimes, if you forced a single pet to mate too much, a warning about them struggling would appear, but I couldn’t care less about their pixelated stamina.

“So what if you’re tired?”

In the first place, this wouldn’t even be happening if you bastards had just laid an S-rank egg properly. I immediately hit the Ignore button and clicked Breed again.

[msg][System: The female pet wishes to rest.][/msg]

Ugh, I have to go mining today, and I’m out of bullets so I need to craft those too. What the fuck do you mean, rest!

I instantly hit Ignore on the new warning window that popped up the second I clicked the command. Then, I furiously spam-clicked the Breed button.

[msg][System: If you issue any further breeding commands, you will incur the Pet’s Curse.][/msg]

“…?”

I had been hoping for a status window confirming that breeding was in progress instead of these useless complaints about pets struggling or wanting a break. Instead, a warning window I had never seen in my life materialized on the screen.

“Curse? What fucking curse. At most, it’ll just be some debuff that drops their defense or accuracy.”

I scoffed at the unprecedented warning. In Pet World, the master only barked commands; the pets handled all the actual backbreaking labor and lethal combat. Thus, it didn’t matter at all to me if I got hit with some arbitrary debuff. Even if the pets received the penalty, I could just feed them a buff fruit to offset it, or simply discard the ruined pet and capture a shiny new one.

“Who gives a shit about some curse. Hurry up and fuck so you can give me an S-rank egg.”

I smashed the Ignore button once again and ruthlessly clicked Breed multiple times. This time, a window indicating that breeding was in progress popped up without any further resistance.

“What, it said I’d get cursed but nothing happened.”

[msg][System: Breeding in progress…♡ 1%][/msg]

I clicked around the interface, but that breeding window was the only thing active. It meant there were absolutely no debuffs tainting my status window. The same went for my other pets.

“What a completely useless warning.”

Tsk, tsk. They should use the time they waste coding useless windows like that to improve the quality of life features instead. Hey developers, when are you going to expand the inventory space? And hurry up and update the system so we can capture the boss mob’s master along with the boss mob after defeating them.

What was the point of creating big-titted female characters if you could only steal their pets after winning a battle? It was an adult-rated game anyway; they should let us steal the master too, strip her clothes off, and breed with her.

“The developers have seriously lost their touch. When are they going to get their groove back?”

***