Chapter 1
Outside Saintmei Food Processing Factory, in front of the lane where raw Star Spirit Grass was being purchased, a long line of vehicles stretched out.
The drivers were not factory employees. Whenever the season for abundant raw materials arrived, they would travel from faraway places to buy Star Spirit Grass at low prices, then sell it to the factory in bulk for profit.
At that moment, behind the neat, orderly line of vehicles, an extremely tiny hand-pushed cart slowly appeared.
Lynn asked nervously, “Mimi, can we really do this?”
Yomi was a little hesitant too. The tips of his ears were slightly red, and the eyelashes above his mask trembled uncertainly. “I asked yesterday. They said they do accept small quantities of Star Spirit Grass… but we only picked this little…”
Following Yomi’s tiny figure, Lynn looked toward the cart. There was indeed far too little Star Spirit Grass inside it. It only barely covered the bottom in a thin layer. And yet this was already the result of two full days of hard work in the wild for both of them.
The trucks ahead moved through transactions very quickly. After unloading, the goods were automatically inspected by machine, then payment was transferred to their optical brains, and the drivers could leave at once.
Now it was their turn. Yomi bent down, about to “unload the goods,” but the moment Lynn saw that, he hurriedly reached out with one of his octopus tentacles and lifted the entire little cart first, dumping all the Star Spirit Grass inside the inspection machine.
With Yomi’s tiny frame, he was truly afraid the cart might hurt him by accident.
Lynn was two meters tall, which counted as short among the Snarans. But compared with the young man in front of him, who was only one meter seventy, he looked overwhelmingly huge.
The goods were light, but they still passed inspection. A payable amount quickly appeared on the electronic light screen: 400 star coins.
The payment robot began scanning Yomi, then suddenly froze. Another line appeared on the screen: No optical brain detected. Payment failed.
Hearing the commotion, the supervisor came over. “What happened?”
Yomi pointed at Lynn and said, “Hello, I haven’t bought an optical brain yet, but my friend has one. You can pay him first.”
The supervisor paused, his gaze lingering on Yomi for a moment.
Standing before the enormous Snarans, Yomi looked like a tiny doll. Apart from the mask covering his mouth, there was almost no visible trace of any monster’s true form anywhere on his body.
He looked fair and soft, with smooth fluffy short hair and delicate flawless skin, even prettier than the perfect human-form dolls sold on the black market…
“Why are you so small?” the supervisor could not help asking.
Yomi froze for a second, but Lynn answered for him in time. “He’s from the Black Miasma Wasteland. He never had anything good to eat growing up, so that’s why he’s this small.”
“I see…” The supervisor understood at once. Hardly any Snarans lived in that place anymore. For this little fellow to come all the way to the capital, he must truly have been unable to survive there, otherwise he would not have ended up unable even to afford an optical brain.
The supervisor did not know what their relationship was, and he was worried that if he paid the money to a normal-sized Snaran, this gentle, easily bullied little thing might never get it back. Feeling sorry for him, he took out four one-hundred-star-coin bills and handed them over. “Cash payment is possible.”
Yomi accepted the money and immediately gave two of the bills to Lynn.
The two of them pulled the little cart and headed back. Lynn said happily, “We actually made money. This is more than what I used to earn in a day shaking milk tea.”
Yomi had also once found a job shaking milk tea, but the work counter had been too high for him. He lost the job before even making it through half a day.
He glanced at Lynn enviously and clenched the star coins in silence.
When they passed an optical brain service shop, Lynn said, “Let’s go in and have a look. You’ll have to buy an optical brain sooner or later.”
Yomi nodded, locked up the little cart, and followed Lynn into the shop.
The clerk kept recommending recently released new models to them, but Lynn ignored everything and took Yomi straight to the cheapest optical brain available.
“This one only costs a little over one thousand star coins to implant,” Lynn whispered. “If we put our savings together, we could definitely afford it. You live alone now, and without an optical brain, if something happened to you, nobody would even know…”
Yomi stared solemnly at the display case in front of him.
After hesitating for a while, he touched his mask again, remembered the prices of monster accessories he had seen at the black market a few days earlier, and shook his head. “I can buy a one-hundred-star-coin alarm bracelet first.”
At present, as the only human on Snar Star, saving money to buy horns was clearly more urgent.
One week earlier, before transmigrating, Yomi had still been living among ruins where supplies were scarce.
The apocalypse had arrived in his world, and then zombies appeared. He had not dared go outside, but unexpectedly, before he could even survive three days hiding at home, he lost consciousness during an earthquake.
When he woke up again, he had arrived in this otherworld filled with monsters.
After careful observation, Yomi gradually learned more and more about this world called Snar Star through the news on the street screens.
The people of Snar Star revered the already-extinct human appearance, so in daily life they transformed themselves to live as humans. But they would more or less still reveal monster traits—horns, tentacles, scales, fangs, tails, and so on… The stronger the monster, the fewer the flaws, but there would always be flaws.
Before transmigrating, Yomi had already been wearing a mask, and that mask had helped him tremendously!
The first Snaran who spoke to him was Lynn.
At the time, Lynn had just finished work and was heading home. Seeing Yomi standing at the intersection, looking around in confusion, he had thought he was some lost child and stepped forward to ask, “Did you get lost?”
That was how the two of them met.
In Yomi’s eyes: compared with the gigantic monsters he had seen before, Lynn’s build was much more human-like and made him feel far safer.
In Lynn’s eyes: there was actually a Snaran this small! Anyone who did not know better would think he was just a slightly larger doll. Too adorable!
Yomi lied and said he came from a remote deserted village so isolated that hardly anyone lived there anymore, and because he had never had anything good to eat, he was much smaller than others his age. Recently, he could no longer survive there and had no choice but to come here, but because he had cut himself off from the world for so long, he was completely unable to keep up with life here… As for the mask, it was to cover his fearsome fangs.
When he said all this, his palms were slick with sweat.
Seeing that he did not even have an optical brain, Lynn believed him completely and warmly invited him to visit his home.
Lynn was an orphan living in the slums. Facing this tiny Snaran who had nothing at all, he felt a sense of shared hardship and took the initiative to introduce him to a job at the furniture factory where he worked.
Yomi successfully entered the factory and even got an employee dormitory to stay in. But after carrying in the bedding he had received and stepping into the dorm room, he was so frightened that he backed right out again.
Inside the dorm stood three enormous, horrifying alien creatures. One of them was even devouring chunks of meat with a gaping bloody maw…
Yomi gave up on the dormitory that very day. After all, he was just a weak little human. Living day and night beside those monsters, one careless moment and his identity could be exposed… Although he did not know why humans had gone extinct here, looking at those monsters, it was really hard not to let his imagination run wild.
Housing in the capital was extremely expensive. Forget buying a place—even renting was beyond reach. So Yomi simply moved into a pet wooden house he had picked up. He was so small that the abandoned pet houses discarded by monsters in the villa districts were perfectly usable as homes for him.
Lynn was short on money as well, so after work he would go collect scrap. Yomi followed along with him. While scavenging, he could also recover unwanted doll clothes from monster children, wash and dry them to wear, and the toys they picked up could double as furniture.
However, on his fifth day working at the factory, Yomi was fired. The reason was that he was too weak.
After that, he began doing odd jobs everywhere to save money.
Yomi had already figured it out. Compared with the apocalypse, where he might die at any moment, this planet at least allowed normal life. As long as he disguised himself as a monster, everything would be fine.
Inside the optical brain shop—
“Welcome again next time!” The clerk, whose skin resembled a lizard’s, bowed toward the tiny figure who did not even reach his knees.
Yomi carried a handbag out of the shop. “Besides calling the police, it can also project images so I can watch TV.”
Inside the handbag was the alarm bracelet he had just bought for one hundred star coins.
Lynn said, “Of course. That’s a basic function.”
Yomi gently placed the bag into the little cart. “I’ll look for a new job tomorrow. I want to go home first and study the new bracelet. There are still some settings I don’t understand.”
Lynn truly could not understand what there was to study about such an outdated alarm bracelet, but then again, Yomi had come from some faraway wasteland village, so it was only normal that he had never encountered these things before.
Thinking of that, Lynn could not help going to the nearby convenience store to buy him something to eat. But before he even entered, his attention was caught by an electronic flyer posted at the door.
Yomi, who had followed behind him, looked in the same direction:
[Urgent] XX Restaurant is about to appear on a smash-hit variety show and is recruiting a music-box dancer model! No dancing required—just stand inside the music box! Daily pay starts at 700 star coins! Height must be under two meters!
Just as Lynn was about to sign Yomi up, the electronic flyer refreshed the very next second:
[Urgent Urgent] XX Restaurant is about to appear on a smash-hit variety show and is recruiting a music-box dancer model! No dancing required—just stand inside the music box! Daily pay starts at 1,000 star coins! Height must be under two meters!
“…” Lynn looked at Yomi, who was standing on tiptoe. “Maybe we should sign up tomorrow instead.”
“Mhm!”
