[POV: David Wilson]

 

“You need to learn to pay attention to the situation in the future,” David said.

 

“I understand…” Billy replied in a small voice.

 

“Yeah! Now fix my door!” Pandora said from David's lap.

 

He was the only one who could understand the little cat, to everyone else they just heard her meowing. From her voice, he learned that she was even younger than he was, only a toddler compared to a human. She also seemed to think that everything that David interacted with was hers, the house, the van, the workshop, all of it.

 

“You thought we were some cult? As if we were going to sacrifice her to some terrible demon, apologize to Rollo right now, can’t you feel how sad you have made him?” David told the boy sternly.

 

“The hug poodle is a good poodle, stupid!” The cat muttered in annoyance to the boy, as David continued to stroke it.

 

“I said I was sorry!” Billy said in shame, his face going pale after his outburst.

 

David was currently sitting on a stool, pale, with his legs shaking. Behind him, with a much more lively complexion and a small grin as she got to help David was Lena, right now he was too weak to fend her off. She was using this time to adjust his hair and clothes to her liking, and to run her hands all over his body.

 

She was in much better shape than he was, it was as if she was getting a boost from something, that was what he was wondering. Both of them had just exhausted their mana but she was in much better shape than he was, it was vexing to him. He could only assume she had some innate ability that he didn’t know about, something that allowed her to regain exhausted mana fast.

 

“Alright, in the future you need to pay more attention, we will leave it at that.” He said and groaned as his head started pounding.

 

The boy had returned to his human form, he was sitting in seiza on the cold concrete ground with David and Lena in front of him. He was still covered in dust, and he was forced to wear a pair of David’s old sweatpants and a shirt that was held closed with a bungee cord to act as a belt. Harry had left to make food and his parents and aunt and uncle all went back to the house, now that the crisis was over to relax and recover. 

 

The sound of a tarp crinkling could be heard, as Jasmin came in with the little girl who was looking better and wearing a dress that used to belong to Bella. With the door broken, they had used a tarp to replace it until David’s father could fix it. Another modification was also going to be made to the loft to allow it to be used to house the children. 

 

“How long have you been a lycan for?” David asked with seriousness. “You might not want to lie to me either, this cat is unique.”

 

“Yeah! I don’t like that shit!” The little cat chorused from his lap.

 

David could sense what the cat was saying in general, but he lost most of the context, to him he just thought the cat agreed with him. As Lena pet him he decided to pet the cat, it was a triangular relationship that Lena let him somehow get away with. He assumed it was because she also liked to pet the cat.

 

“3 months…” Billy answered.

 

“So right before you came here. How many times do you transform in a week?” David asked the next question.

 

“4 or 5…” The boy answered.

 

“No wonder you lost your mind so quickly,” David said in horror. “Why did you change so much?”

 

“I had to get supplies for my sister.” The boy defended himself.

 

 “Why didn’t you tell me?” She asked him.

 

Billy went silent at this, he had also just found out from David that if he had continued transforming he would have eventually lost his mind. Instead of trying to defend himself, he instead asked the question he was most curious about.

 

“Are you healed now?” He asked her.

 

“No, even if we used all of the people on the property for mana, we wouldn’t be able to do anything for her,” David said. “She is not healed, she is just not currently in danger. She has a rare birth defect, so in a sense, she is exactly as she should be, and this is the problem.”

 

“Just like the poodle caller!” The little cat added in.

 

“She needs to have her body physically altered, in a sense she needs magical surgery to make a change to her body,” David said. “Just like Jasmin, someone else you should apologize to by the way.”

 

“Sorry!” He called to the woman wearing a nun’s dress, she smiled and nodded back to him.

 

“Alright, now while we are waiting for Harry to bring food, we can talk about your future,” David said. “You are lucky, you know that?”

 

“Why is that?” Billy asked.

 

“A lycan cannot be changed back into a human by an invoker no one would normally ever be able to help you at this point,” David said.

 

Billy at first didn’t realize how bad the situation he was in, it was nefarious in its ability to slowly alter the victim's thinking. It was meant to be a slow and subtle process, something that was usually too late to do anything about once it got going. Then once Billy began infecting others, whether intentionally or unintentionally, it would be a problem for the entire camp.

 

“What is going to happen to me?” Billy asked.

 

“Your humanity is already gone, so at this point, your best choice would be to become something else. In this case, I would recommend signing a contract with a demon who has a connection to the blood sea and become its follower.” David paused.

 

“Is it like joining a religion?” Billy asked as he looked at the woman in the priest outfit.

 

“No, more like getting a job that you can’t leave once you accept it,” David said.

 

“Who would I work for?” Billy asked.

 

“Me! You can start with my door!” The cat said from David’s laugh, breaking out in evil laughter.

 

David reached down and lifted the cat and held her in the air, she looked smug as she smiled down at the boy on the concrete floor. For a demon, the number of their followers was a way for them to accrue power through the Blood Sea. At a certain point for demons to become more powerful they would need to build an army and a following.

 

“Pandora should be able to do it, she is only low-tier though, currently,” David said.

 

“I am a great one! I will become supreme!” The small cat declared from the air.

 

“You might just want to make sure that you die before me, if you don’t I can’t guarantee that the cat won’t do anything to your soul.” David decided to give some friendly advice. “Also, make sure you let me know before you die, the cat might not tell me after all.”

 

“What about if we choose another demon?” Billy asked.

 

“What?! You dare refuse my offer!” The cat began meowing angrily.

 

“That would be stupid, do you want to become a mindless beast?” David asked. “Who would take care of your sister then?”

 

“No, I just meant a diff-” David cut Billy off before he could continue.

 

“I have a partnership with this demon, one that no demon would ever give to another person. I can influence the terms that you will get to an extent, while you will be a servant at most you will only need to do some random minor tasks.” David paused to emphasize these next words. “You will never get the same offer from another demon, ever.”

 

“Okay…” Billy said silently. “What do I need to do?”

 

David reached over and was handed a piece of paper that had already been filled out by David and Pandora, at the bottom a small pawprint was already added to the contract. This was similar to the one he had carved into the back of the cat’s box, but this one made Billy the servant. Billy’s instincts were screaming that he should say no, but his sister holding his hand made him think otherwise.

 

For the first time since he had become a lycan, she didn’t smell like she was on the verge of death. While he could still smell that something was wrong with her, she didn’t smell like she was at death’s door. She had a smile on her face as she kept glancing at the cat who was throwing a fit in the air.

 

“You should sign it, I think we can trust them, besides the cat is cute!” His sister Aubrey said.

 

“I am not a cat! I am the future demon god! I will rule over everything!” The cat yelled out in anger.

 

The more the cat continued to say in its anger, the worse that Billy was feeling about this entire arrangement. He took a deep breath as he reached for the paper and realized he had nothing to sign it with.

 

“Blood, you sign with blood,” David told him.

 

The boy nodded, as he bit his finger and pressed the bloody digit against the piece of paper, the moment he did he could see the runes light upon the paper. They began to glow in a red color and then faded away, this brought a smile to David’s face as he reached forward and collected it, handing it to Lena for storage. The cat in David’s hands had finally calmed down, he had returned it to his lap and it was purring in pleasure.

 

“Welcome to the team,” David told the two. “We will be going hunting early tomorrow, so you need to get some sleep tonight. You won’t notice anything from the contract immediately, it will take a couple of weeks before it takes effect, also you might take on some physical traits of a cat demon, but it should be fine.”

 

“Wait, what?!” Billy asked.

 

“It might only be cat ears or a tail, you should be quite used to these features already,” David said this expressionlessly to the boy. “I would get used to wearing hats and baggy pants.”

 

“You didn’t tell me about that first!” He chimed in anger.

 

“Think of it as a work uniform,” David said as he began petting the cat in his lap.

 

“Is it going to be just ears and the tail?!” Billy asked in alarm.

 

“Maybe?” David said and shrugged, this made the cat start laughing at the boy’s look of horror.

 

“You have been turning into a walking cat for months now, what is wrong with having some cat features?” David asked with confusion.

 

“I changed back at the end!” Billy said in anguish.

 

“You will be fine, this will just allow you and Jasmin to become even closer friends when you need her to remove your cat features. Even if she does it weekly for you it might still not be enough, I think that by the time you are my age you will treat it just like shaving.” David told the boy and patted his shoulder, as he stood to leave. “Sleep well you too.”

 

“You looked better transformed! You should hope that you get all of my features and look like that all the time! Mwrahahahahaha!

 

David nodded at them as he finished standing up, and Pandora sat proudly on his shoulder as she looked down on all of the humans around her. As a cat, she came from a species that already treated the world as their litter boxes, and yokai took this a step further. But the various cat yokai clans could certainly back up this behavior with their large variety of unique methods of attack.

 

David was certain that she was just happy that she finally had someone who could understand her talk. She had been meowing so animatedly since she realized he was a cat-type lycanthrope and couldn’t wait to take him in. She kept trying to convince David that he should allow her to convert him to one of her demonkin so that he could also delve into the complexities of the cat language, but he declined.

 

“If you want to talk so much, you should figure out how to turn into a human instead.” He told the little cat as he walked toward the tarp.

 

“Thank you big brother!” Aubrey called out to him as he was leaving.

 

“Sleep well,” he called as he walked through the tarp.

 

Behind him Lena was following, opposed to talking she preferred to use gestures where she could, he could tell it was her based on her footsteps. Soon he felt two warm masses encase his arm and her weight was added to his side that the cat wasn’t on. Soon the two of them were walking through the backyard towards the house, it was just getting late and most of the people had already moved to their areas for the night.

 

An old basketball hoop and concrete landing were added to the property, right to the side of the house, but it looked like it had always been there. Underneath the small, flat patch of concrete was a statue that was taken from the bottom of the church. David knew that someday those statues that could repel monsters would be worth a small fortune and it would attract unwanted attention, they were designed for that very purpose.

 

During the period when he had nearly destroyed Edea’s population, they had regressed so far that they were forced to live in cave communities to avoid monsters. They had lost their fighting systems and their ability to defend themselves, which meant they had no value as research subjects. To fix this problem dungeons were made that had valuable resources, weapons, and skills, he went as far as creating fake backstories for how they appeared and his gods and devils.

 

These dungeons also created areas like the one they were in, areas where mid-tier monsters could not go or they would be drawn to the dungeon. He was also under the impression that the vampires had avoided them due to this very reason, any mid-tier vampire would be led to the dungeon unable to escape. If Billy had ever reached the mid-tier he would also be under this effect, Pandora would only be spared due to her contract with David, this was because contracted monsters were ignored.

 

“You are thinking of something,” Lena said.

 

“Our future,” David said, suddenly he heard the woman’s breath hitch next to him and he turned to see that her face had gone red. 

 

What has gotten into her? David wondered.

 

“The dungeons were designed for people to enter when they are as powerful as the surrounding monsters.” David began. “Once we are all in the third layer it will be time for us to enter the dungeon, by then we should also be strong enough to survive it. Going in first is pointless if you can’t make it out alive afterward and I have decided not to take risks to try to make fast gains. There also isn’t any way that the people inside are all in the third layer and we know several groups have gone in already, so we need to be more prepared than they are.” 

 

“So you also want many children, I understand.” She said.

 

“No! I didn’t say that at all.” David said.

 

“So you want only one that you can thoroughly spend all of your time with,” Lena said.

 

“No, that isn’t what I said,” David said in fright.

 

“I was right the first time then, you shouldn’t make things so confusing.” She said in admonishment.

 

David found his footsteps halting, he also found his jaw-dropping as he turned to stare at the blonde woman at his side. As usual, she had a deadpan expression, but over the last few days, he noticed that her body seemed to have improved. Her figure was already good before, but she seemed to be becoming even prettier lately, her breasts had gotten even larger as she needed to replace some of her bras the other day.

 

Pandora also seemed to respect the blonde woman for some reason, which was surprising since she didn’t seem to respect anyone. This could be seen by the fact that the cat was ignoring the two of them in favor of a small child who was being held by her mother. The child was complaining about how he didn’t have any sweets, and that must have attracted the cat's attention as she was staring at him.

 

The boy also stared at the cat and scowled at it, so the cat did an open eye scowl of its own. It opened its eyes wide after it set its mouth in a sneer, then its eyes started bulging forward and pushed out of the sockets completely. They then slowly began extending towards the boy like two peas attached to two bloody strings made of nerves, this caused the boy to go pale and his mouth to drop open.

 

“Aaaaahhhhhhhhh!!!” The boy screamed in horror, causing the boy's mother to turn towards the cat on his shoulder. 

 

The cat retracted its eyeballs at near lightning speed and put on her cutest expression as the mother turned her head towards the little cat. She looked adorable, and the mother couldn’t help taking a step towards her with the child.

 

“Mom, No! That cat isn’t right, there is something wrong with it!” He screamed in fright, he was pushing against her trying to get her to move away from it,

 

In response to the boy's behavior, Pandora put on a touching expression and sat down and opened her paws like she just wanted a hug. There were tears in the small cat's eyes and she was shaking slightly, it was causing critical damage to the mother. She found herself taking another step towards David and Lena when the child began going ballistic in response.

 

“No! Noooo! It wants to get me! Let me go!” He began shrieking and flailing, this finally caused the mother to turn away and lose her grip, dropping the boy on the ground.

 

“Wait! Stop that!” The mother cried.

 

The boy fell face first, knocking out one of his teeth which he spits on the ground with some blood, he didn’t care as he began scrambling away as quickly as possible. The boy's mother was also hot on his heels, stopping briefly to collect a child’s baby tooth and placing it in her pocket before chasing after him. This caused David a second shock as he found he couldn’t turn to either side of him without some kind of problem.

 

“We can talk about kids later, and Pan, you need to stop casting illusions on kids who upset you.” He said.

 

David had watched the exchange between the two, and he had heard the ring of the cat’s bell that summoned minor illusions. Pan in response to this began grumbling in cat, and Lena smiled as she got her answer with kids being plural. Then she decided that she should give him another piece of news before they went hunting the next day.

 

“I am ready to move into the second layer.” She said.

 

This was another curveball, moving into the second layer was easy, the third was also considered easy but after that, it became hard and time-consuming without a lot of powerful monsters to act as fuel. One of the reasons for the creation of the dungeons was to ensure that monsters never went extinct on Edea, something that had almost happened before. Without them, there wasn’t an easy way to get above the mid-tier in a single lifetime.

 

“That is amazing, the process isn’t hard, you just need to use all of the mana you have accumulated to create pressure inside of your magic stone. As long as you force it hard enough, then the stone will naturally begin forming another layer inside of it.” David began. “It doesn’t start to become difficult until you reach the higher layers and it is almost a battle to create enough pressure to form another layer. It becomes a-”

 

“I’m done.” She said.

 

“What?!” David said in shock, the two had just reached the back door of the house, she didn’t even stop walking.

 

In response to his and the small cat’s shock, she raised a finger and channeled mana through it, and began drawing a symbol in the air, she left a small heart traced in the air using her mana. It shimmered in the air in a light blue and slowly began to fade as it fizzled out and dissolved. It was something only someone could do when they reached the second layer and beyond, and only if they hadn’t tempered their body and tried to use that part of their body to project mana.