I thought I was hopping into a weird dark hole. Instead, I’d plunged my front half into a narrow chasm that was tight and craggy enough that my hind legs and tail couldn’t follow.

The depths of the chasm went down, down…impossibly far down. Magic mist rose up through the gap, brushing past my face. I could barely see any detail around me, but what I made out reminded me of guts, of being a clot inside a single long artery.

Or being a fellow clot. I had a neighbor. One thing stuck out (not my legs) in my vision. It was hard and steel and right in front of my face, crusted over with rock and wildgrass roots. It was directly in front of my head—the fur on my skull was touching it.

Treasure!

If only it wasn’t so close to my face that my eyes were crossing and fisheye-lensing just to try and figure out what it was! Well, it was long and made of a weapon-like material. Possibly a sword?

I’d just established that the rock here was too hard for me to dig through it normally, but…maybe I could Swipe the Treasure out?

I double-checked my Stats.

Stats:

Taipha
Orange Tabby
Lv. 5
EXP: 80% (597/750)

HP: 29% (30/105)
SP: 81% (65/80)

ATK: 15
INT: 7
DEF: 11
WIS: 6
SPD: 11 (-1)

Debuffs:
Time Dilation
Effect: Gradually reduces Speed. Warning: while dilated Speed will never reach 0, it may reach otherwise-impossible fractions.

Ho yeah. Check that skyscraper-high Attack Stat out—

Oops…oh yeah, my Speed was going down.

Was that what had happened to the squirrel from earlier? Gnawing on a rock that slowed them down—imperceptibly at first, but more and more as they held the thing longer? A pretty horrible, useless item, I thought.

Immediately I voided the weird magic-sucking rock from my Inventory—an action I hadn’t thought through in the slightest.

PLUNK. The big flat chunk insta-wedged itself into the earth before me, driving insta-cracks through. I checked my Stats right as it left. Speed perked up immediately, not by a whole Stat point but by one of those impossible half-points. Even without checking, I could tell time around me had changed by the way all the magic mist around me seemed to slow a few degrees.

But there was also insta-danger. My surroundings had split into rocky debris coming my way.

Ack! Leap, maybe?!

SP: 63% (50/80)

Magic pooled in my back legs—terrifically useless. But critically, it was also pooling in my front ones. Not nearly as strongly, but it’d do. Pushing off from the nearest ledge-like rock available, I took a rough, awkward spring backward and upward.

I shrieked and rolled onto the grass as the rubble clattered and crashed inside the pit. Grass sunk in and heaved as if around a small sinkhole. Then things went still. A gentle white aura-mist trailed from it for a moment, and then…nothing.

The pit was no longer hidden, but with the rubble now surrounding it, it appeared just as hard to enter as before. Just as hard for me to get into.

After shaking myself off and taking a look around for potential enemies, I decided to try another one of those famous experiments which hadn’t killed me yet.

Inventory?

Message from Sierra, the Goddess of Nekomata

BEEP! Wrong! You can’t just think “Inventory” at an object you’re not even next to!

What if the object’s right under me?!

Okay, but it’s separated from you by a bunch of rocks! Besides, you also need to have a decent conception of what the object is.

Isn’t “old Treasure sword” enough?

I don’t make the rules, Taipha.

…I guess technically all the Arkmagi made them together, but at this point, I can’t bend them.

Hmph.

Maybe I could get Reed to come back here with me and bust the rocks up…

Maybe I could do it myself? I crouched down beside the rocks, looking back and forth from them to my own hardy claws, and considered a Swipe.

But…no. I had bigger concerns than figuring out what was under this rockfall. Besides, with all that magical smoke, it could’ve been more time-dying…time elation…slow…ers.

And why would I want a sword? I didn’t have arms ninety-nine percent of the time. Give me a set of cat gauntlets and I’d try it…

The stinging feeling currently throbbing in my front paws had started with my scratching landing from earlier, and only gotten worse with the backwards Leap up. That was my third reason not to risk it.

The fourth one was the ominous howl I heard in the near distance. Woo, yay, my first Vencian sign of wolves.

I moved on, setting my sights again on Reed’s Mountain.

New Sub-Location Added!
Check your Map to find Treasure Rockfall.

***

For the rest of that afternoon, I moved slowly, carefully, and a little bit painfully.

My front paws weren’t just scuffed up. They were sending fresh currents of pain through my body with every step. And according to my System, those currents were adding up.

HP: 26% (27/105)

A loss of 3 HP since I’d last checked in the pit, and I was only losing more. I’d never suffered this kind of gradual health loss before on Vencia, but then again, I’d never gone a long time with open wounds. Or irritated ones that constantly made contact with the ground…and all its potential infections.

My first move was to curve south and wash my front paws in the pond. For some reason, I expected to hear the creaking echoes of pondside insects—crickets, maybe—but all I heard was a chorus of unseen frogs hidden away under water and mud.

Water hurt my paws more. And I knew enough about science now to know that it had its own contaminants. Augh…if it wasn’t one thing, it was another. Did Leveling Up cure diseases? Kill mites? Anything like that? In any case, I had to get that next Level as soon as possible.

HP: 25% (26/105)

There was, it seemed, one guaranteed way of stopping the chip damage of walking on wounds: using Morph. Then my front paws would just be hands. But that would wipe out my SP far faster than my HP was currently going. It would be a few minutes of relief at best.

So what if it drove away birds and rodents? There was at least one wolf out here, a creature that even humans tended to fear.

Plus, I would still have cat ears. Cats hated dogs.

I stuck the idea of transformation in my cat back pocket—admittedly it could come in handy if I needed to flee quick. But my main mission right now was to pick off easy prey.

I checked my SP against my Skills.

SP: 63% (50/80)

Swipe
SP Cost: 25

Leap
SP Cost: 15

Okay, not bad. So I either had two Swipes, a Swipe and a Leap, or three Leaps in my arsenal.

And my EXP:

EXP: 80% (597/750)

About 150 to go… I hadn’t been keeping good track of the EXP yield most of my victories gave me. About all I remembered was that insects gave me worse than nothing.

At the hoot of an owl, I quietly retreated into the thickets. Though I’d wanted to play hide-and-seek with those frogs, leaving the pondside was probably for the best anyway. One wrong move from me—worse, a missed Swipe—would send those frogs jumping back into the water they knew so well. And what if it ended up dunking me in the water too? Horrible.

Alert and evasive, I lingered just behind Mirror Pond for a minute before striding onward.

The mysterious soundless bubble north of the pond was going to have to wait. I wasn’t going to get caught in the clutches of a weirdo time void, not tonight.

Along my path, I found many adversaries. All insects, naturally. Once I found a line of pill bugs crawling along my path. I got down next to it, could almost feel the little roly-polies with my whiskers. Fearless, I reached my mouth around and ate a whole bunch of them. Dauntless, I smacked the rest wildly with the knees of my front legs as if it were a big game of Whack-a-Mole.

Then it was over. The pill bugs were all dead, escaped, or crunchy. I realized, too late, that I’d definitely gotten overexcited.

First of all, ow my aching legs. Even the leg parts of the legs were remarkably sore, probably from all the falling-through-acres-of-needles I’d been doing today. And that was remarkably sad, since I was deliberately keeping my paw pads away from combat just now. Second: where was my Experience at?

EXP: 91% (681/750)

HP: 16% (17/105)
SP: 63% (50/80)

That HP! Th-this was so irritating! It was hard to keep my anger in check, but I had to for the sake of stealth. I held back a scream and replaced it with a yawn.

As the sun began to set and the overcast clouds became a reddish-brown fire, I found an anthill. Surely that would end things—there had to be like a hundred bugs in there at least. If every one of those bugs was worth the bare minimum of EXP, I’d be good.

I watched the hill from the shadows. Tranquil. No ants going in or coming out.

I flexed my claws and…

Aw, darnit, what if they were fire ants? Or what if they just had really painful jaws? Even if I coaxed them out without touching them at first, would I really be able to tell for sure without touching them? After all, even bumblebees could sting…

Cowardly self-doubt. Resignation. Not wanting to inflame some already painful open wounds, and not in the mood to risk it all (or risk at all), I soldiered on.

A breeze blew through the forest. Every now and then, I pawed through the dirt in search of worms or other prey, and found an incredible lack of them. Or a single one and an all-too-quick kill.

Two hours passed, and much too slowly. I charted my trail westward, hoping that the ecosystem around the mountain might start changing in my favor.

My stomach began to rumble. And I was definitely hungry enough to wanna pull out my Inventorized wood duck corpse, but…

If a predator smelled it, would I be able to forgive myself?

Things in these woods always felt so peaceful until a roar came along.

Current Location: Rust Point (S.B1)

When it was solidly nighttime, I had better luck. I found another tree teeming with beetles, and this time I had a bit of fun dragging my claws straight down the grooves. Then I spotted a worm writhing its way into a hole, snagged it, and chewed on it. Like stale jerky. From the corner of my eye, I glimpsed a nest full of bird’s eggs and…decided not to hurt them. Poor babies. Poor me for having too much sympathy for poor defenseless babies.

EXP: 99% (747/750)

HP: 7% (7/105)
SP: 63% (50/80)

…You’re kidding.

The sunlight had faded, and I was tired in every way: tired of too-slow results, tired of my sore paw pads and aching bones.

Then I took a few more steps, found myself in a clearing, and all that became a good ache.

Reed’s Mountain. Ahead. Imperious in the dark. I wished I could’ve seen it shining in sunset, but the way that solid, dome-like shape stood proud against the empty sky struck a chord within me.

What were those shadows I saw moving up and down along its meandering curves? Were they creatures? Humans? Or just tricks of the light, winds playing along the trees?

Just a few more minutes of walking—and fewer of Leaping—and I would reach the base.

My tail swayed and my back legs readied themselves for a lunge—almost without me realizing it.

I can’t stop moving now, can I? I told myself. Not when I’m so close!

But I caught myself.

Dead of night. Low HP. Subpar SP. General exhaustion. Stomach forced to subsist on beetles and worms.

And now, as a sudden wind passed over me, I braced myself in the chill.

…It’s okay. Just turn around and murder three more worms, I told myself. My common sense guided me backward into the trees, back where the soil was good and moist.