Chapter 115

【Monsters, as existences, always serve as the force of destruction and threat toward something.】

【They represent natural strength, and researching why they are strong is the goal of monster studies—that's my view.】

【Actually, this discipline was established merely to understand monsters; after all, most researchers in this world treat monsters as mere animals, even once classifying them under animal science—I suppose you're one of those, Photon Particle-chan.】

【No, emotions are also a valuable research factor; Kailifu-kun, you also have a special understanding of monsters, don't you?】

【What is a monster, why is it called a monster—I once asked the trainer, and he said the point of the word "monster" lies in its two characters: it is sufficiently strange, sufficiently wild, and sufficiently unknown—】

【It is precisely the unknown that sparks the desire to explore and study! Kailifu-kun!】

The library of Torelsen is very deserted.

Not only because it's class time now, but also because horse girls generally don't like reading.

After all, the essence of horse girls can be equated to that of athletic students with exceptional sprinting talent; their lives and pursuits lean toward running east and west, and most of them can't sit still.

The only things that can make them honestly read books, aside from classroom teachers, are the trainers' admonitions.

But Ailisuzhi is different.

In Torelsen, few horse girls can sit with a book all day; she is one of them.

Moreover, the books she holds are basically unrelated to coursework.

Stacked together are books like "Crazy Chase," "Feynman Lectures on Physics," "Advanced Pharmacology of Peng Ze. Taver's Therapeutics," "From Alchemy to Chemistry, then to Differentiation," "Interspecies Genetic Differences," and so on—numerous and varied, even including an introductory programming text, clearly aiming to become a high‑end jack‑of‑all‑trades.

Pretty impressive, though at first glance it seems unrelated to racing.

But it condenses her extra understanding of racing—

——"Speed enhancement through scientific power."

There are many schemes to boost speed, strength, and stamina; why not approach it from a research angle?

Potions? No, not potions—they are merely by‑products of research, or rather a hobby.

Unveiling and strengthening the horse girls themselves is her main focus; she has many research angles for that, including—monsters.

【Monster strength and speed—this is already a decent reference point, isn't it?】

【I actually think horse girls are just like monsters themselves, especially after watching a few Horse Memorial races……】

On the other side of the screen was a rather blunt, rude reply—indeed, it wasn't even finished.

【Or maybe a weirdo? But a weirdo with a pretty girl's appearance would surely be popular~ Perhaps later they'll even be redeemed to join the protagonist's side.】

The expert introduced by the guinea pig is truly strange, not like a trainer's friend at all…… What does Digital-kun call such people? …Radio waves?

Seeing the topic drift, Ailisuzhi buried her head, glanced at her own notes again, then lifted her hand and typed on the screen: 【We've gone off track, Kailifu-kun, but the idea that horse girls are like monsters really intrigues me—could the earmonster the trainer mentioned possibly be a transformed horse girl?】

【It's not impossible, but the conditions are very strict; I actually lean more toward the synthetic beast theory—there's a kind of alien called the Abopo who excel at this tech… ah… this point, I'm going to watch the monster fighting version update livestream, Photon Particle-chan, you do your best~

The online course link I sent you should be enough for you to get the gist.】

【……Go on, go on.】

Online course, the monster studies online course.

Monster studies is inherently a niche subject that can't get any more niche.

Just as Kailifu mentioned before, it was once even lumped into "Animal Science," because although this world does have monsters, they aren't common, and the job prospects for researching rare organisms are obviously small.

And the opportunity for it to break free from the Animal Science subject came only from the troubles of modern times.

With frequent transmigrations, interstellar exploration entering stable high speed, and monster disturbances gradually increasing, monster studies gained some attention, was made a separate subject—but that's all.

Although monster incidents have increased, they haven't reached the frequency seen in tokusatsu series.

When a bunch of incidents are scattered across Terra's various regions, they appear even rarer.

The annual enrollment results for the Monster Studies course are dismal; it can only serve as an open lecture to attract a few students, while simultaneously producing low‑threshold online tutorials to boost exposure—

【Recommendation: Wild Fruit Reading Tracker is really useful; download. yeguoyuedu here and give it a try, everyone.】

——The outcome of taking the online‑course route turned out far better than the results of setting up open lectures at various schools.

But it is also declining year by year.

Many people like monsters, but those who truly study them—wanting to dissect, to exploit them biologically—are really few.

However, precisely because of this situation, it also convenience seekers of knowledge.

The association's official promotional series of online tutorials has low tuition and no educational background requirements—even if you're still in elementary school, it doesn't matter—this clearly aims to ride the tokusatsu craze.

It's rather "despicable," yet one can see that the profession's enrollment situation is truly dire.

So it's great!

Although she already has a research certificate but is merely a high‑school student, Ailisuzhi is very satisfied; she immediately followed Kailifu‑kun's list, selecting and purchasing courses one by one, then going through them in turn.

Although she also wanted to sigh that some of the other's remarks made them seem more like a peer‑aged female student than she does, right now there's something else she's more concerned about.

It's even right before her eyes.

"Hey! Bourbon‑kun, wake up!"

She raised her hand, weaved through the piles of books on either side, tapped the opposite desk, and saw the horse girl with a head of chestnut‑red hair suddenly lift her head, straighten her back—only the arms that had just been serving as a pillow remained honestly resting on the desk.

"Are you awake?"

Tilting her head to one side, Ailisuzhi tried to find a lower vantage point to confirm the other's lackluster gaze.

Then she saw the other's lips twitch slightly, causing her ears atop her head to instantly bend slightly toward the source.

Then she heard a rapid string of:

"System functions……dulling."

"Source‑energy route……stable."

"System……allgreen"

"External environment……assessment complete."

"Miura Bourbon, activation complete."

"Hello, Suzi team member, may I ask why you woke me?"

"…Do you still remember why I invited you over?"

Looking at the other person's clueless expression, Ailisuzhi herself felt exhausted; regardless of whether they were under the same training instructor, she decided not to have any interaction with such people outside of experiments.

But who knows if it's indeed the case? Maybe the other party will become official, and then we'll all be Duìyou on the same team.

That training instructor is usually easy to talk to when handing out meals, but he just likes to worry about such things unnecessarily; if he doesn't act properly, it becomes more troublesome, and she doesn't want to be dragged out to socialize during experiments.

It's not that one can't resist, but it's very ineffective, and the outcome is likely to be unpleasant.

In that case, rather than being assigned, it's better to choose for oneself.

Being treated by that guinea pig as some kind of socially useless person also makes me inexplicably angry.

So……

"Confirmed, because today's morning class was a competition lecture and I applied to skip it, I decided to go to the training ground for self-training and met Suzi team member, who suggested I come to the library for further study."

"Are you sure you're doing further study?"

Seeing the unavoidable red marks on Meipu Bo Fang's face from sleeping slumped over, Ailisuzhi raised her eyebrows, feeling that his utterly shameless attitude was undoubtedly a formidable opponent.

It's already no less than the righteous confidence I had when caught by the discipline committee!

"Yes, confirmed: muscle soreness symptoms have appeared, affecting afternoon training with over eighty percent probability; confirmed to add relaxation exercises, immediately proceed with hibernation recovery."

"If you have muscle soreness, you should just tell Tunshu Jun directly—he already gave you rest time, yet you actually want to train more?"

"And if you're going to tell me that, I'll just send you back to the dorm to sleep!"

"What muscles can sleeping slumped over a desk relieve?"

Because it was in the library, Ailisuzhi had already lowered her voice as much as possible, yet she still couldn't help but admit.

When it comes to life matters, the other person is still stronger,

On the first day, how did the training instructor get that guy to come back and rest?

Ailisuzhi realized that not asking about this earlier was a major oversight.

"But Suzi team member invited me…" "We're not even a team yet?! I hadn't emphasized it before, but I invited you and you didn't go back to rest?"

"Yes, Suzi team member's invitation authority overrides self-training, and it meets the relaxation exercise criteria."

"……I'm beat." Suzi raised a hand to her forehead, fully realizing Aomo's great strength.

She finds it hard to respond to the other person's cyber-speak, and can't, while facing the cyber‑horse's excessive frankness, utter any decent advice; her habitual sarcasm is likewise completely ignored by the other party.

Even more, the other person is right now seriously asking: "May I continue the relaxation exercise, Suzi team member?"

It seemed as if they still thought this was all over, successfully raising Suzi team member's blood pressure.

"Go back to sleep, get a massage, apply external medicine! Now head to the infirmary!"

Ailisuzhi still kept her voice down, though her words were somewhat gritty.

"But Suzi team member's invitation... conflict, error occurred," "Alright, I'll go with you!"

"Wait for me to go register the book loan!"