With nothing left to do in the depths, and a goal in mind, the primordial serpent headed out once more to the land above sea level in order to find the little black cat.

Their success was far from what one would consider spectacular - mostly because there had been no luck in catching the tail of the kitten. One would think that it would be easy to find a notorious crippled black lioness in a world where they had shiny golden & white pelts, however it had been two years since they sold those two weapons to Leviathan. This led to Dealmaker finally figuring something out that they had been admittingly doubting due to her being a ‘mere mortal’; that cat was god damn good at what she did.

In hindsight that should be obvious since she was creating chaos wherever she went which was certainly something the beings in power wouldn’t react kindly too. Despite that the cat had managed to get away scott free every single time while continuing to make a name for herself as an unchallenged mastermind. Due to her most recent actions she had begun to gain the nickname of {Dragon-Slaying Mind} by the other mortals & beasts.

From their research the girl seemed to have slowly been building up a rebellion of some kind through using her younger brother as an icon for everyone to look up to. Unlike herself the young lion appeared to have a beautiful golden body that shone like the purest holy light challenging the darkest night… Or so those that saw him and his heroics told.

Looking into things a little bit revealed that often the brother would shield the weak with his masterful use of the shield meanwhile things would just seem to ‘work out’. Those who were doing evil would have their plans foiled with the ‘True Hero’ standing proud while ensuring everything works out for the weak. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that the so-called ‘mind’ was doing the dirty work as the {True Hero} publicly stole the limelight and if she had to guess why the black cat was so aggressively pushing her brother in front of her…

She likely realised that someone like her, who seemed to already have one foot in the grave even before fighting, would never be able to become a symbol.

At the same time someone so easily able to dismantle the empire of those arrogant dragons would be smart enough to recognise the importance of a symbol. With a symbol you can manipulate the masses into unifying for a goal; you can inspire them with tales they can imagine themselves as part of. If she wanted to make anything happen on a global scale some kind of symbol would be necessary.

This did raise a larger question for the serpent though and one which would be answered by some theorising. She had gone out of her way with her weakened boy to free thousands if not millions of mortals and the rate she was going was only increasing. No matter how smart she was it could not have been an easy feat.

By now Dealmaker had heard news from the snowiest peaks of the north to the most desolate deserts in the south. Where she appeared may as well have been completely random and they somewhat doubted even the goddess of fate - the traitor - could predict where the hero and mind would next appear. Yet that didn’t answer one large question anyone would have…

What was Cheshire Stratos’ goal?

From what Tyrant found out the brother truly seemed to be just focused on helping the little man after seeing how cruelly his own older sister was treated just for her dark fur. If anything the serpent believed he truly deserved his title. Nevertheless the siblings could not be any more different when it came to their personalities thus likely beliefs.

Simply by looking into her history one could understand the dark abyss that made up her faith in the karmic principles of the world. A little cat so sickly she has never tasted the meat her entire species reveals in, abused by her egotistical father, sold to a sadistic man for petty benefits and a mothers pure love despite all of that. Dealmaker was sure of one thing… No matter how well she presented herself, Cheshire was in no way sane.

The death of those within the beast territory who crossed her was perfectly an accident where no one could be blamed while making the dead look foolish. Her fiance ended up overdosing massively on sexual enhancement drugs resulting in his genitals literally exploding meanwhile the father drunkenly fell down his own stairs. Nobody found him till he ended up bleeding out due to his own ‘anger induced’ orders after finding out about the former's death. Beyond those two there was her step-mother who took her precious mothers place, despite Cheshires own mother being higher ranking originally than either the man or woman who turned on her.

In some ways her death could be said to be nothing except horrifying as she was fooling around with some man only to fall backwards into a boiling pot that was left outside. Apparently it was being prepared to cook some massive game but ended up cooking her alive slowly with nobody able to help due to her perfume happening to work as a sleeping gas when mixed with the boiling water at just the right temperature. Not that it would have done the woman herself any peace as there was no way she managed to sleep through that process.

Although one may think the deaths ended there they really didn’t; the list was far longer and even involved members of the royal family. Some wished to punish her despite a lack of proof but her good hearted brother obviously wouldn’t allow that so defended her. Before those people managed to push beyond what the boy could do they too met with a ‘stroke of bad luck’ thus the rumour about ‘the cursed black cat’ was no longer meant to mock but was instead used to spread fear.

To some these incidents over the years would seem just like a set of weird occurrences that led up to the cat getting sick of it all thus leaving her life behind. Maybe upon seeing others suffer she requested her younger brother to become a hero she couldn’t as she supported him with her cultivation, martial arts and sharp mind. However, to someone as smart as Dealmaker, it smelled of a violent pathological sadist. Someone who had experienced the worst of the world found pleasure in inflicting it on those around her, especially those who think themselves better than her, likely having become a narcissistic sociopath who is willing to do anything if it means achieving her own goals.

Someone like that would have no intention of merely saving mortals due to feeling empathy for them simply because Dealmaker heavily doubted Cheshire had empathy. Perhaps she had some level of emotional attachment to her own brother yet even then the snake was unsure how far that went. Either way they were sure it wouldn’t overpower her own ambitions; there was no doubt that the cat had ambitions.

What those ambitions were was a mystery though.

At the very least Dealmaker had no intentions to listen to Gaia’s plan of helping the cat and in return have the cat teach Alice about her cultivation & martial arts. From what they had worked out it would be dangerous if that cat even knew that those of the ocean had any intention to contact her - they too would likely just be a piece in the cat's game however that was it. In truth even they couldn’t be sure exactly how far this game board extended.

There was nothing more fearsome than not knowing if someone was an enemy, what their plan was and exactly how far along they were with that plan. To the primordial trio it appeared at first as if these techniques Cheshire made were silly little things to gain strength beyond that of a normal mortal. Yet the more Dealmaker learned about her past the more they feared for what she planned to do in the future.

Obviously the snake has many different theories yet each of these were depending on many factors that they simply didn’t know about. For example it was said that her unique ability related to ‘light’, something that all radiant lions got in some fashion, was to connect shadows together in order to pass information between them. Based on the fact that it had no combat potential, couldn’t pass physical objects on top of being an ability that relied on darkness (opposite of the rest of her race) it was likely she would have been discriminated against even if she were a fully healthy white lioness.

Yet who was to say she hadn’t figured out some way to make this the most overpowered ability known to man & god?

Dealmaker themselves had thought up some potential ways and considered this cat to at least be on their own level when it came to intellect. This was also what made it difficult to predict the cat since her own mind clearly developed in a very different fashion to their own.In this way it would be hard for the cat to also predict themself yet considering Dealmaker wasn’t the one making the decisions for their side…

Well it was problematic.

On another random day where the serpent slowly found out more scary information about the little cat Gaia showed interest in helping the serpent on the balcony of an inn. There was truly nothing special about this door yet it was one this day where an owl flew and landed on the table.

First strange thing about this was the fact that owls were nocturnal and another was the fact that the owl had a pair of little glasses upon her beak. The other was the fact that the primordial god seed had no friends that were owls - making it far more confusing why such a creature would come to her own table. Another was that Dealmaker couldn’t sense the owl approaching but rather it seemed as if they just appeared out of nowhere. Yet it didn’t seem to care as it lifted up one of its legs to present a scroll to the snake which it proceeded to drop disrespectfully as they were reaching out before taking to the skies only to vanishing through a wormhole that opened up with clear expertise.

Seeing someone so capable being willing to not only act as servant but also a mere messenger (even if they clearly weren’t happy about it) only one person came to mind.

“Cheshire…” <Dealmaker>