Chapter 17: Dwarf Deer
Xiao Ju finally got the roast meat as she wished.
The moment she got the roast meat, she immediately held the piece of meat happily and took a big bite.
Her chubby little face was almost completely blocked by the piece of meat, the golden ears on top of her head excitedly flicked back slightly, the tail behind her erected high, with only the tip bending and constantly wagging quickly from side to side.
While eating, she couldn’t help but let out bursts of joyful calls from her mouth.
“Wu wu wu~~”
“Miao ao~”
“Miao gu lu lu~”
That appearance made Su Ran’s desire to pet the cat in her heart surge upward!
However, just as she was about to take action, she was suddenly picked up by the waist by the werewolf and brought back to the campfire, placed down while it grumbled at her in a displeased low voice “Ao wu wu wu”.
Finally, it even ended its dissatisfied venting with an extremely delicate and aggrieved “Wu~”, then sat down again to eat meat.
However, the position it sat in was almost pressed right against Su Ran, with the wings behind it half-spread, enveloping her entirely inside.
Su Ran felt helpless yet amused, couldn’t help but reach out to rub the ears on top of the werewolf’s head. That light brown ear twitched, slipped out from her palm, ticklish.
Then, Su Ran looked at the prey that Xiao Ju had brought to exchange.
This animal’s body wasn’t too large, covered in brown-yellow fur all over, with only the tips of the ears and the fur above the tail leaning toward black. The ears on its head were very small, visually about half the size of a ping-pong ball, its face somewhat like a deer, but with very short legs.
Dwarf deer?
A name immediately popped up in Su Ran’s brain, and she nodded calmly.
She walked to the side of the dwarf deer that was completely dead, picked up one hind leg, looked at the werewolf, and regardless of whether the werewolf could understand, said to it, “I’ll go process this dwarf deer, okay~”
She hoped to make the werewolf get familiar with human language by constantly talking to it, so that when learning later, it wouldn’t feel too unfamiliar.
Although she wasn’t even sure yet if the werewolf had the talent to learn human language.
“Wu?”
The werewolf, who was eating happily, tilted its head toward her, as if saying “What are you saying?”
Su Ran ignored it and directly carried the dwarf deer toward the riverside.
Unexpectedly, after she had only walked two steps, the werewolf immediately followed, still holding the unfinished roast lamb leg in its hand.
Su Ran amusingly watched the werewolf squatting beside her, gnawing on meat while opening a pair of green glowing eyes curiously staring at the actions of her hand, then took out the tactical knife, preparing to gut this dwarf deer.
The werewolf was no longer unfamiliar with her tactical knife; upon seeing Su Ran take out the tactical knife again, it immediately understood that she wanted to process the prey in front of them.
Su Ran processing prey = roast meat
Its eyes brightened, black pupils dilated, it ao wu wu called at Su Ran. Then it bit the roast leg meat in its hand into its mouth, reached out to take the dwarf deer from Su Ran’s hand.
But it was dodged by Su Ran flashing her hand away.
Su Ran shook her head at the werewolf, pointed at the dwarf deer in her hand; “I’ll do this one myself, let me try.”
She had already decided that since she was going to live here, she couldn’t rely entirely on others.
Not to mention that the purpose of the werewolf bringing her back to live together wasn’t clear yet, she had no reason to expect it to help her with everything.
Even if the werewolf was willing to support her, she didn’t want the werewolf to position her as a role that needed to be taken care of.
Needing to be taken care of = weak
Weakness makes it easy to be abandoned.
In case one day the werewolf wasn’t by her side, she didn’t want to still be a life idiot when facing this world alone at that time.
Some life skills, she could choose not to do, but she absolutely could not be unable to do them!
Moreover, she needed an equal status with the beastmen, so that when she wanted to change these beastmen’s habitual living habits to make life more comfortable for herself, she would have a say.
So what she needed to do now was to quickly learn to be self-sufficient, learn to process ingredients, learn the living experience of these beastmen here, even learn hunting!
She was already considering making some weapons after getting familiar with the vicinity in a while, to try hunting some small animals.
However, those were things to slowly do later.
Right now, Su Ran held the tactical knife in one hand, looking at the dwarf deer’s corpse and feeling a bit dazed.
Previously, she had at most processed whole chicken meat, but that was also from the supermarket, already dead for a long time and defeathered.
And at this moment, just as she was about to start on the ingredients, she was stumped by the fur on the dwarf deer.
She had seen people in the village kill sheep and skin them before, but knowing the process and doing it herself were different.
No way around it, she gestured with the knife on the dwarf deer for a long time, finally pressing the knife tip against the dwarf deer’s belly skin, cutting bit by bit along the body length toward the butt.
As more of the meat skin was cut open, Su Ran discovered that, like the white-headed sheep, the dwarf deer’s meat quality was also very tender, and the meat on its body was also easy to cut.
The dwarf deer, from the neck onward, was cut open from top to bottom, the blood water flowing out dyeing a patch of the river water red.
Su Ran looked at the internal organs that had slightly emerged from the dwarf deer’s belly, endured the discomfort, used the knife to carefully cut them all down—heart, liver, lungs on one side, intestines, kidneys, and other messy things directly thrown behind, planning to bury them later.
By now, she began to think about the skinning issue.
In her future daily life, whether making clothes or bedding, she would definitely need a large amount of animal hide.
So now she also needed to start learning skinning and tanning animal hide methods.
She looked at the dwarf deer’s head for a while, thought about it, pressed the knife tip against that section of neck. Then she furrowed her brows, exerted force with her hand’s action, but her eyes drifted elsewhere, not daring to look.
Wu wu wu wu~~ Sure enough, no matter how much determination she had in her heart, how much mental preparation she did, when it really came to doing it, the fear was still there as usual!!
When she felt the dwarf deer’s body completely separated from the head, Su Ran felt all the body hair on her entire body erect!
So at this moment, she still didn’t dare look at the dwarf deer with head separated from body at her feet, almost closed her eyes to touch the dwarf deer’s head, then quickly pinched a tuft of fur and threw it aside.
As long as she didn’t see that scene, she could pretend it wasn’t her doing!
However, deep down Su Ran secretly decided that since the werewolf skinned animals so smoothly before, such work should be left to it in the future!
Although she needed to be independent and self-reliant, after processing this one, she would have experience.
Having experience is good, no need to force herself to do this every day; she could do more other things to make up for it, even going hunting would be better than this!
