Catgirl System

This time, Reed was surprisingly quick on the uptake. A grazing bull stood a mere two meters away, took a placid step. Their horns were heavy, but we were nimble. Plus, the sword that Reed had taken into her calm hands could match the horns in size and beat them in weight.

We weren’t killing in self-defense, but in my book, self-defense isn’t the only law of nature. There’s also the law of self-improvement and the law of glory.

Fight for glory, Reed! Fight the way you once caught mountains of fish and trounced your older brother! Fight for our bond!

And fight for the thrill!

Adrenaline, a law of the body, sped us on. In a move that was simultaneously careful, artful, and lightning-fast, Reed thrust an opening blow into the bull’s flank.

The blade seared. In the blink of an eye, the sword caught fire, sending an orange blaze through the open wound.

She’d combined her sword stab with a Fire Spell!

And I was picking up the telltale smell of a Strength Up—this young lady was putting everything into it!

The bull howled immediately. Reed held firm and drove the blade in deeper while I charged in.

Attack Up!

And Slash!

I lunged for what was only a mostly grisly body part to exploit: the throat.

Man, we were really fighting dirty.

A flood of energy entered my front paws. It made me irrationally giddy as I slammed bodily into my target.

The bull’s head swung with the force of my impact. They even lost balance, stumbling sideways. Reed kept pace, hopping forward and driving the sword in.

As for me, I latched on with both teeth and claws. I hadn’t scored a critical hit, but that didn’t mean charged-up claws didn’t hurt. A newly delirious voice inside of me cried, Dig those claws in!

Another groan, this time with a hint of death-shriek in it, gurgled from the bull’s mouth. It was getting harder to scream, what with the neck wound I’m going to euphemistically call a “blood waterfall.”

I thought the battle was over. It wasn’t.

Only after our priority team attack could the bull begin to fight back, but when they did…

An explosive burst threw me off the bull’s throat. I hit the earth so hard that I left a hole—and dug it with that vertebra right where my head ended and my neck began. I’d just been cracked, in multiple places. (I had discovered a new vulnerable spot.)

HP: 56% (235/420)
SP: 60% (212/355)

What had that been? A sudden fire blast?

Nope, but the energy now coating the bull did have the force and fury of a sustained supernova. They were writhing on the ground, screeching all the while. Splashes of blood joined the yellow-white flares whipping off them. The temperature around us had been pumped up by what felt like a hundred degrees.

But this was the terrifying part: their wounds were healing.

Reed was in a position kinda like mine, only she’d hit her side and her sword was sitting between her and the bull, just out of reach.

Clearly the bull knew this, because they were flinging their horns back and forth over the sword, ready to give Reed’s reaching hand a good stabbing.

Ah, why didn’t we bring one of Bayce’s pully Spells…

To add to the inherent dangers of an angry, rapidly regenerating bull, we were also beginning to bake in the heat.

However…with workable HP and Healing Spells in the back pocket, we weren’t exactly down for the count.

Running was out of the question. For one thing, if we ran, there was a ninety-nine percent chance that the bull would simply charge after us. Leaving aside Reed, I wasn’t confident I could outrun them because I had a hunch their Level was higher than mine—and they knew the landscape better than me. Even if I was more agile, a bull that radiates continually rising heat in a general area around themself will get you whether you move clever or not.

So I concocted a plan, one I couldn’t communicate to Reed in any way besides just playing it out and trusting her ability to pick up on it. That was how it worked in the wild, after all.

I ran a short distance away from the bull, stopped when they raised their head my way, and readied a Fire Spell.

Reed froze in the middle of standing up, gave me a plaintive look. She didn’t know I had the Spell name floating in my head. But I’d run backward because I had a feeling she had higher Attack and Defense than me, and likely more HP too. Tanks stay in the front while the makeshift magicians stay in back.

No regrets!

Whatever hurt feelings or confusion Reed might’ve had at the start, she shook those off and got to her feet just as the bull was returning to theirs. The bull’s wounds were still dripping blood, but it was amazing how thoroughly they’d sealed up by now. Even the scars, under the relentless glow of their energy burst, were erasing themselves.

Didn’t mean they were closed completely, though. And a weak point was a weak point.

I launched my Fire at their throat.

Before the blast made contact, they shifted to catch the Spell with their shoulder instead. That move cost them—Reed simply jabbed her newly flaming sword through the other side of their throat. They’d had to choose between guarding against magic and guarding against physically assisted magic, and they’d unquestionably chosen wrong.

Now Reed, emboldened, went berserk.

With an out-and-out battle cry, she took her Attack Up-enhanced sword and began seriously cutting into the bull, all over, with relentless jabs and slices. All the while, the supernova bull was flailing and stomping. I watched as tongues of energy licked past Reed, burning her flesh.

And then, in the middle of a sword slash, one of those massive horns whacked her in the arm, goring it.

I was starting to regret pulling someone else into my own recklessness…but at least I realized I could launch a Minor Heal at her from afar.

I did exactly that. For the first time I saw how these heals looked when cast: it could’ve been a bullet of nothing but pulsing air. Think of ripples in the water and you have some idea about these ripples in the sky.

The Spell hit Reed, right on target, and now she was regenerating with the best of them.

Of course, a one-time heal wasn’t going to work the same way as this constant-explosion Skill (or whatever it was). It didn’t bring full recovery, but it worked thoroughly and fast.

This got her spirits up. Somehow, maybe from experience, I could tell that the aura of strength around her was flickering out. She took this as her cue to dart to the side of another fierce horn swing.

Then, raising her head high and her sword higher, she rasped out another cry.

The sword came down, chopping the bull’s head cleanly off.

The head fell. Then the body leaned until it toppled. It fell into the grass with so much weight that the earth shook for a moment. Only after that did its healing aura begin to drift away, until all that was left was a battered corpse.

Level Up!

Lv. 18 → Lv. 19
EXP: 1% (32/2850)

HP: 100% (443/443)
 SP: 100% (373/373)

ATK: 72 (+1!)
INT: 48
DEF: 51
WIS: 38 (+1!)
SPD: 63

I ran to Reed and looked up at her, wide-eyed. She dropped her sword with an exhausted clatter. Her panting and sweat were heavy, and she was staring blankly at the dead body.

My only feelings at that moment were gratitude and awe. How did she get such good aim under pressure? And had she, like me…Leveled Up?

Maybe I could find out? But cat gestures would never be enough. I went into nekomata form.

“L-l-l-lev…?” I asked, pointing upward. (For those not in the know, this gesture cleverly signified “up.”)

She looked at me with the same empty look.

“I don’t know what a ‘lev’ is,” she said.

A few seconds later, I managed to get out a “level.”

“I don’t know what you mean by that either—oh, but thank you for that battle!” She changed subjects with a sudden fling of her body into mine.

Her attack-hug came so out-of-the-blue that my arms couldn’t properly respond. They were just raised in quiet surrender.

“We worked well together, I think,” she said into my hair. “Thank you for the Spell support.”

“M-meow.”

“And thank you for the workout. And for the reminder.”

She backed up a little so that we were face-to-face. I lowered my arms, though I was aware that my face still looked a little frazzled.

“I used to be envious of my mother and father. The way they fought together. But now…” She chuckled. “I really do take after them. And I have his aim!”

Softly she let go of me, picked up the sword again.

“…Yeah,” she said, seeming mystified. “I really don’t mind if I’m protecting someone…”

She began moving the blade around. First in what looked like standard practice moves, then like a bunting pinch hitter. She almost seemed to be rediscovering the thing, and an exuberance she’d once had.

I was a little dazed myself. Already the final blow I’d just seen was blowing up in my mind, becoming more…cinematic. Like the world had frozen when she chopped off that head. Like the cool music had cut out, then risen to triumph.

But also, I’d realized something had changed about me, and it couldn’t quite be boiled down to “becoming semi-human.” Way back when I’d met Reed on the mountain, I had wanted nothing more than to show off my own talents in front of her. Like that would repay her for the good turn she’d done me. But now that I knew Reed had mixed feelings about violence, I also gathered that this…wasn’t exactly the coolest way to show off in front of her. I mean, she could show off to me this way and I’d be dazzled, but not vice-versa.

And on top of that, I was beginning to feel other things about combat besides “this is necessary” and “this is cool.” And feel them maybe too deeply for comfort. I guessed that among humans, that was a sign of maturity. But for predators, getting lost in that mire is the height of immaturity.

So…there was nothing else for it. I definitely had to work out a code of ethics for myself sometime soon, didn’t I?

Gah. I wasn’t supposed to sound this cerebral, I didn’t even have glasses!

As I un-Morphed and cat-tiptoed up to the waiting corpse, Reed stopped me by saying, “If it’s alright, please don’t put it in your Inventory yet. I want to give it a look, because…” She blushed and turned away. “I might want to use the horns.”

Somehow I knew that that one wasn’t even innuendo (even though it sounded vaguely, halfway like innuendo). But then…why the blush? I mean, she hadn’t blushed when she was making any skin contact with me—at least it made some sense to me that physical contact could be embarrassing sometimes. So…was it just…her blushing at the idea of performing hunterly chores in front of me?

It would’ve been worthy of a sigh, if I could do that right now. If my theory was right, she was blushing at chores.

I meowed enthusiastically. Yeah, Reed! Come on! Please geek out over something you have deep knowledge of!

“But this might not be the best place to do it,” Reed said, followed by a sudden pause.

We both realized that the evening had turned to night. Forget that it’d be hard to look this body over in the almost total absence of light—there were creatures about, and tall grassland was good for wolves.

“Let’s set up camp someplace less open and exposed. Then we can have a barbecue! (If you’d eat that.) So for now, let’s move the bull!”

“Meow!” I said, meaning, Great idea! I’ll just stash it in my Meat Locker.

“Let’s—huff—see if I can lift it,” Reed said, so carried away by enthusiasm that she was doing the Reedy equivalent of leaping headfirst into a well when good water was a pump away. She, squatted, thrust two arms underneath the bull, and then, like a forklift, began to rise. “Hnnrgh…”

“Mraow-w…”

Reed fell over.