Catgirl System

I didn’t have quite enough archival video game term knowledge to know what “high chance for critical” meant. Nor did I know the term for sitting in one place and defeating the same enemies over and over again, but that’s exactly what I did. And proudly.

EXP: 53% (878/1650)

HP: 93% (240/258)
SP: 67% (137/203)

The koi in this watering hole weren’t so tough once I got a couple of strategies down. The Guard skill I’d activated just before my latest Level-Up was still active, and my new power to Slash meant quicker kills with no loss of HP, albeit at a high SP price.

Slash was exactly as cool as it sounded—a seven out of ten on the scale of coolness. Charged-up claws with traces of firefly orange in their aura-steam. Somewhat less cool than setting things on fire, but a tiny sliver more cool than pseudomagnetically pulling things toward you. It charged my paws for such a brief window of time, but they definitely got stronger than an ordinary Swipe would’ve made a single one. Plus, when I swatted my third koi with my second Slash, it actually defeated the fish on impact. No detailed slicing necessary.

EXP: 81% (1333/1650)

HP: 93% (240/258)
SP: 35% (71/203)

Causing the fish’s body to fall deeper into the water, too deep for me to pull it up and save it for dinner…

Ah, whatever. Did I have too many things in my Inventory to hold it? (And…didn’t I have some owl remains to get back to? How…how long would it take for these things to start rotting? Did they rot in real time?)

Inventory: 4/5

Pink Lotus Flower

Screech Owl Corpse
Nourishing, but won’t heal HP or SP.

Reed’s Quilt
A worn-out, dirty, damp, very soft family heirloom. When pushed to max capacity, can fit twenty cat Taiphas and two nekomata Taiphas.

Rabbit Corpse

Good. I could fill the last space with the other koi sitting beside me.

--Hold on! The quilt I’d basically rolled down an entire grimy mountainside was a family heirloom?!

Weh… Maybe it was best to just never see Reed again, at that point.

Buck up, Taipha. Just focus on the road ahead and—oh yeah, the Treasure at the bottom of this pond.

The koi were starting to get wise to my tactics anyway. They were swimming away from my spot, too deep and far for my ordinary swatting paws to catch.

I stared as deep into the water as I could, past the bits of leafy debris and the thin layer of film. Then I—oh gosh here it comes—I swallowed in a deep breath and stuck my face in.

Instant stinging in my eyes and nose.

But everything was much clearer. I could see the floor of the watering hole—it wasn’t too far, actually. And it wasn’t rocky like a normal riverbed. It was all grass that wafted in the water.

Aha! This wasn’t a pond, it was just a divot in the hills that’d gotten filled in by rainwater!

…No, that couldn’t be true. Could it? Not unless the koi were in the raincloud too. Or maybe they flew in. Or they had expertly timed eggs?

Distracted, I pulled my head out to survey the whole landscape again.

It was all easy hills and valleys. Farther south were low mountains made mostly of stone and dirt, with the bigger, most southerly ones obscured by low clouds. But in the immediate area were those polka-dot ponds and these thirsty goats. A story built itself in my head. I wondered if there had once been a mighty stream weaving through these hills, carrying koi a long, long way. Had a big rain from a decade ago pocketed its koi in pools, before the main river dried in a drought?

I paused and thought about it.

Then I stopped myself and went, Well, now or never. I jumped i—

I stopped myself again.

I Morphed into my humanoid form, the one whose arms were so long she likely wouldn’t need to dive in just to grab some Treasure.

The puff of smoke caused several goats to shriek and scurry off. I found myself in a now-uncomfortable crouch, with my knees in the air and my feet right next to my hands. My tail hovered at attention.

Alright, let’s try this again!

With another deep breath, I flung my head, then one arm into the water. My fingers felt the grassy surface, squeezed.

Wow! I’d never paid attention to my human hands before. They were just as sensitive as my paw pads, but comparatively huge, and…coherent, for lack of a better word. Paw pad parts don’t connect—they’re just bunches of beans. Using my hand was like palpating around with a tongue made out of five different tongues. Human hands are an embarrassment of riches.

I quickly latched onto a chunk of what looked like marble stuck in the pond floor. Reaching my palm around it, gripping awkwardly with my clunky awkward thumb, I gave it a pull.

Ow! My upper arm told me that was not the right angle to pull from. I winced and got out of the water.

Holding my drippy hand before my drippy face, I recalibrated. My mind did heretofore-arcane mathematics. If my arm had joints like this…and if my body was this heavy and in such-and-such a position…then ideally I should have been pulling by…

By anchoring my feet in the grass, with at least one foot underwater.

Well, no way I was putting both feet in if I had an alternative. I stamped myself down, suffered the splash, and thrust my head and arm in afresh.

This time I retrieved the Treasure—and with only 50 percent of my body dripping wet! Sitting on the grass with a sigh, I cradled the object and examined it.

It was a tiny statue, its form somewhat like the thing I had seen Reed carving. The material, though, seemed to be marble. It had been tinted greenish-blue by water and weathering, and all its edges felt overly smooth, faded. It looked like a woman in a long robe or toga. One arm held a thin sword aloft…or maybe something else, like a staff or spear. I couldn’t tell—the end of it had been broken off long ago.

I ejected the Screech Owl Corpse (that meat was tough anyway) and Inventorized it.

Lady Canny Statuette
An antique marble figurine depicting Lady Canny, spiritual consort of the Shadow Kings who presided over the Age of Reversal. Could have been valuable if not for the erosion.

Oh. I was halfway disappointed. The info in the statuette’s description was just close enough to understandable that this felt like an important puzzle piece for the Vencian Wood’s secrets, but also, this Treasure was functionally useless. Maybe the most useless Treasure I’d found so far. Unless those time-reversing rocks from a few days ago had been classified as “Treasure”—a dang lie.

I’d done what I came to this watering hole to do, so I decided to move on. More exploring and training ahead. Also…

SP: 19% (39/203)

…no need to waste all my SP on maintaining a form I didn’t feel totally comfortable in. I poofed back into my cat form and shook off all the water I could.

Then I heard a weird honking noise from behind me.

A car horn? Here, of all places?

A whole chorus of honks—guttural—a flock of geese?!

Ugh! Crap! They were headed right this way, descending in a big V, a mere second away from touching ground. Goats hollered and fled, nearly stampeding me. I ran off along the water’s edge, so hastily that I got all my legs wet. The lead goose landed, honked again, and chased after me.

I’m going, I’m going!

Luckily they gave up after a few moments. A few of the goats weren’t so lucky—as I scampered away from the watering hole, looking over my shoulder, I saw gangs of geese getting into vicious, pecking arguments with the cowering mammals.

Ihh. I shivered. You couldn’t have paid me to fight one goose. Not at this Level, anyway. I was glad to escape.

***

When evening fell, I was approaching dense trees again. Locusts and night birds cooed all around me. Clinging ivy spiraled around the oaks.

Quest: Explore the Vencian Wood
Progress: 20% (6/30)

Current Location: Drippy Flats (S.A3)

EXP: 97% (1606/1650)

HP: 91% (235/258)
SP: 19% (39/203)

Picking off goats on my way here had been more difficult than I’d thought. Not because the goats themselves put up a great fight, but because once one goat was down, the rest knew better than to stay. Therefore, I’d hopped across three goats…and only then did I realize that their EXP yield was nothing to write home about.

So I set my sights on hunting koi again…until I realized the tactical advantage of where I was at now. I was right on the precipice of my next Level, meaning I could consciously tip that scale to get a recharge of all my HP and, most importantly, SP.

Admittedly, that advantage didn’t look as special when my typical SP-recharging bedtime was coming up in a matter of hours. But anything could happen, and life could change in an instant.

My pace was slowing down. I shuffled through tall grass, knowing that nocturnal predators would be on high alert soon, but not just yet.

Then I got a strange feeling. Not that I was being watched—I had a very literal Speed-boosting power for that, and it was constantly being tripped by so many moths glancing my way and passing out of reach—but that there was something in my vicinity that I would do well not to miss. Something that, unlike the statuette, I wouldn’t regret.

I wished I could’ve tweaked my Map somehow. Just to make a landmark for, you know, suspiciousness. Or coolness. Or just anything that might be worth coming back to later. And I wished I didn’t have to trust in my System to fill that stuff in.

Whatever…hopefully it wouldn’t matter in the here and now. I could find it today or the next day or in my lifetime.

A rhythmic pulsing made me twitch. My eyes widened and my heart rate quickened as a strange-yet-familiar, soul-deep sound suffused my whole being. I froze in the grass. Only after several seconds did I realize that the beat wasn’t just in my heart and mind. I was hearing a sound I should’ve been familiar with: human drumming.