Chapter 441 – I’m the Boss

Mo Lan also made a special point in the letter to ask Mama Shanna to take more photos and send them whenever she had the chance.

Mama Shanna was always traveling, so the photos she sent might even serve as references for their own future travels.

Once the letters, cards, and photos were all prepared, Mo Lan reached into her spatial ring for a golden bird letter box, but came up empty. She peered into the section of the spatial ring where she kept stationery, letter boxes, and wrapping cloth, and only then realized that all the golden bird letter boxes and golden bird wrapping cloths she’d previously made had been used up. Only a small stack of golden bird stationery remained.

Mo Lan opened the Book of Cards and created several material cards for magical cloth and magical wooden boards, then crafted a fresh batch of golden bird letter boxes and golden bird wrapping cloths.

Golden bird deliveries could only use these specially made materials as carriers—only they could travel with the golden birds as they shuttled between the Elemental Plane and the Material Plane.

The letter boxes and wrapping cloths were far more complex to make than the golden bird stationery.

Mo Lan first crafted a small wooden box, packed up everything she’d prepared, summoned the golden bird, and had it deliver the box before continuing to stockpile letter boxes and wrapping cloths.

She also made some extra golden bird stationery.

Although she could directly use the Book of Cards to create golden bird stationery cards, golden bird letter box cards, or golden bird wrapping cloth cards, Alchemy Magic grew precisely through the daily practice of crafting magical items. Mo Lan didn’t want to miss even a small opportunity to practice.

When she finished making everything, she sensed intense emotional fluctuations from Zhizhi through the magical familiar contract.

“Did it wake up?” Mo Lan hurried downstairs.

On the sofa, Zhizhi and Clack sat and lay respectively, staring at each other wide-eyed, completely motionless, like two statues.

After quite a while, Zhizhi finally processed the fact that its underling had been born and was lying right beside it.

It reached out a finger and poked the little skeleton’s bony hand, then slid its hand through the gaps between ribs into the chest cavity, and finally reached toward the little skeleton’s hollow eye sockets.

Mo Lan thought this was bad—the soul fire inside the skull was a skeleton’s vital point, and this kind of behavior would be seen as a provocation.

But before she could call out to stop it, the little skeleton squeezed its own soul fire out through its eye socket and nuzzled it against Zhizhi’s finger.

“Zhi!” So cold!

“Clack~” Hungry!

“Zhizhi!” You’re my underling, got it?

“Clack~” Slurp~

“Zhizhi!” If anything happens, I, Zhizhi, have got your back!

“Clack~” Food food!

“Zhizhi!” But normally you have to listen to me!

“Clack~” Hungry!

“Zhizhi!” Here, chill this jug of wine for me!

“Clack clack!” Meal meal!

…

The two little creatures were talking completely past each other, like a chicken conversing with a duck, yet somehow kept the exchange going back and forth.

Zhizhi chattered on endlessly in monkey language about the proper dynamic between a boss and an underling.

The little skeleton had Zhizhi’s wine bottle stuck in its left eye socket, chilling it with soul fire, while the soul fire peeking out from its other eye socket was full of longing—the little flame flickering so fast it nearly left afterimages, its entire mind consumed with eating.

Mo Lan now understood why the little skeleton had been so eager to snuggle up next to Zhizhi. It turned out that having been fed by Zhizhi so many times, it remembered Zhizhi’s scent. Whenever it wanted to eat soul essence, it would seek Zhizhi out.

She watched the show for quite a while before finally speaking up: “Zhizhi, it can’t understand your monkey language!”

The little skeleton was her undead servant. It had no vocal organs and couldn’t speak. Apart from her, its master, who could communicate with it through the undead servant contract, it could only exchange information with other undead creatures using the unique vibrations specific to undead beings.

Zhizhi: “…”

So after all that, the little skeleton hadn’t understood a single thing it said? Then what was all that “clack clack” about?

Mo Lan sensed what Zhizhi was thinking and said: “I named it ‘Clack’ because it’s always rubbing its bones together and making that sound.”

“Zhi?” Isn’t there any magic that would let it communicate with me?

Mo Lan spread her hands. “There’s nothing I can do either. Heart Speech doesn’t work on it.”

Undead creatures and corpses were the blind spots of Psychic Magic.

“But even though it doesn’t have vocal organs and can’t speak, it does have hand bones and can hold a pen to write.

As long as you both know common language, you can communicate using it together,” Mo Lan said.

Zhizhi: “…”

Its common language proficiency hadn’t reached a level where it could smoothly educate an underling!

“If you want to be the boss, you have to take on the responsibility of training it!” Mo Lan said.

Zhizhi lifted its chin and thumped its chest: “Zhi!”

Training an underling—that was its specialty!

“Don’t agree so quickly. It has some intelligence, but not much. It’s still a blank slate that doesn’t understand anything.

You need to teach it basic life skills, teach it to brew its own potions, and feed it soul essence. You don’t need to stick to a strict schedule like before, and you can’t overfeed it—just a piece about the size of your fingertip each time, and no more than a fist-sized lump per day.

You can use that as a reward for it listening to you.

More importantly, after I give you both common language lessons, you not only need to learn it yourself, but also supervise and tutor it until it learns too.”

Low-level skeletons had the ability to deeply learn one simple skill. Mo Lan had already decided what she wanted the little skeleton to learn.

Common language!

Language was an essential tool for acquiring new knowledge. When the little skeleton’s level increased in the future and its intellect grew stronger, allowing it to learn more skills, having mastered a language would mean it could study on its own by reading books.

After hearing all this, Zhizhi didn’t respond with the same brimming confidence it had shown before.

Mo Lan could tell at a glance what it was worried about.

Zhizhi was very clever—one might even say smarter than many humans. Its learning ability was quite good too. Whenever Mo Lan taught it something it found interesting, it would pick it up immediately.

The only problem was that a monkey’s innate nature of being playful and restless left it short on patience.

Common language, which required long periods of memorization, practice, and accumulation, felt to Zhizhi about as exciting as being locked in a prison cell.

So after learning the pronunciation of some simple, commonly used words, its learning progress had plummeted.

Written language was especially problematic.

It wasn’t that it couldn’t learn—it just couldn’t sit still and didn’t have the patience to study.

The little skeleton was its polar opposite. It lacked intelligence and needed many repetitions of instruction before it could learn something. If it learned too much, it would exceed its capacity and frequently forget. But as an undead creature, the one thing it had in abundance was patience. Repeating a mechanical task over and over was what it excelled at most.

One active, one still. One clever, one clumsy. One wanting to be the boss, the other only wanting to eat essence. Together, they complemented each other perfectly.

Being able to solve both little ones’ learning problems at once meant she, as their master, could have one less headache.

Why didn’t she want to create more undead servants or raise more magical familiars? Because contracts were easy—teaching was hard!

Mo Lan wasn’t about to let Zhizhi back down. She deliberately provoked it: “Is Zhizhi afraid it won’t learn as well as Clack?”

Zhizhi immediately perked up and said in common language, enunciating each word: “Not! Possible! Boss, is me! I boss, it!”