Fang crept down the tunnel. His eyes were fully dilated, but he still couldn't see a thing once the group moved away from the entrance. His whiskers kept him from running into any walls though, so even without any sight he smoothly strode down the tunnel. It helped that the path was almost perfectly smooth and straight, so there was little navigation required.
With every step he took, that flow of delicious sunlight grew stronger, making his fur tingle with a pleasant warmth as he skulked down the tunnel, ears perked up and brushing against the top of the tunnel, listening for any sign of the ratty denizen of the tunnel. Before he found any though, Fang emerged into a large chamber. Unlike the chamber where he had found Red, there were no pillars or rock formations. The room was a completely empty circle, apart from two things. In the exact center of the room rested an ornate stone pillar topped by a pumpkin. Lines were cut into the pumpkin in complex and arcane arrangements that slowly shifted, and each line glowed with the flickering light of some inner fire. Fang paid the fruit little attention though, as it simply served to illuminate the true object of his interest, a small form scurrying along the ground.
As Fang came to the exit of his tunnel the creature was just scurrying out of its own burrow. Pointed nose, long, bare tail, long, clawed fingers, beady eyes, undoubtedly a rat. And judging by the sunlight wafting from the room, it had seasoned itself to perfection, practically begging to be eaten. The creature even had something resembling a marble stuck in its forehead, a glossy black sphere embedded in its skull between its eyes. Maybe it would provide him with the same sort of entertainment after its death as the boar had.
Fang crept out of his tunnel, staying low to the ground as he swept around the perimeter of the room. He activated Dimensionless Stride as he went, wanting to get behind his prey quickly and silently, without stepping into the light. He came to the hole the rat had exited from before turning in for the final approach.
Something was wrong though. The sunlight wasn't any stronger here, where the rat had just been. Instead, that nasty mana which tried to cool down his inner sunshine was more aggressive, seeping into the gap in his sunshine left by the skill's usage. However, Fang didn't let that worry him. A rat was prey, plain and simple, and either he would claim the sunshine for himself, or he would hurt the thing making this gross mana. Win-win. He set his back feet with a butt-wiggle, then launched forward.
However, the moment he crossed into the light of the pumpkin, the rat took off at a full sprint. It hadn't looked back, and on this smooth floor with his skill active, Fang wasn't making a single sound. The patterns on the pumpkin had begun to shift when the rat entered the room, but when Fang entered the light they started changing more rapidly, seeming agitated as the lines came together on the side facing him and the rat. They formed into a stylized face, with angry eyes and a large, toothy maw. The rat reached the pillar and scurried up it as Fang gave chase, continuing to ignore the glowing gourd.
That changed when the pumpkin opened its eyes. Fang was in mid-leap, aiming for his climbing prey, when the lines shifted differently, the area between them sliding open to reveal twin windows to a blazing inferno. Fang was distracted by the sudden heat and focused on the new threat, allowing the rat to slip between his paws. Then the same shift occurred for the pumpkin's mouth, and a wave of flames burst forth.
Luckily, Fang had had a long night of training conditioning him for the exact situation of a blast of fiery doom heading straight for him, so he instinctively blinked to the side, getting away with just slightly singed whiskers. The blink had taken more sunlight than usual, but considering the stones the fire had touched looked almost molten, Fang didn't mind. It only took one look at the glowing stone to move pumpkins up on his List. Far below flashy birds, he decided to rank them just below cucumbers in threat level. Sneaky green bastards.
Fang watched apprehensively as the face on the pumpkin turned to face toward him once again, before opening its mouth again. This time the flames did not shoot out but instead dimmed, and the rat Fang had been hunting scurried up into the open mouth. It abruptly vanished in a puff of black smoke which was quickly drawn into the mouth. A moment later the mouth vanished and the face dissolved into meaningless lines again.
Fang had just gotten over his surprise and taken a step towards the jack-o-lantern when the lines rearranged themselves once more, the spiderweb of arcane sigils straightening out into a more literal spiderweb. The outline of a spider appeared in the center before it opened to the inner inferno once more and black smoke absolutely poured out. The smoke filled the room, and Fang shrank away from it before catching a whiff and realizing the smoke was chock full of sunlight. It spread around the room, then condensed into a myriad of tight lines, disappearing in the flickering shadows of the jack-o-lantern apart from the occasional glimpse of a silvery strand.
Fang's tail twitched in confusion, and it tapped against one of the strands. A few loose hairs stuck to it as he flicked his tail away, but immediately after, the sound of chitin scratching across stone echoed through the room. Fang's ears swiveled and his eyes focused on the source, before his ears flattened back and his fur puffed up. A giant spider was skittering across the ceiling, at least the size of a corgi, though closer to a lab if you included the meter-long legs. He froze and slunk forward, but had barely gone three steps when he ran face-first into another strand of sticky web. The spider immediately changed course, and Fang activated Dimensionless Step, gliding through the thin filaments without disturbing them. He hunkered down nearby and deactivated the skill as he watched the spider descend.
Fang knew spiders. Spiders were small, defenseless, easily hunted. Sometimes their webs tangled up his whiskers so he hunted them out of spite. Other times they were just moving around in an appealing way, so he played with them until they died. Something about this spider screamed predator in Fang's mind, but at the same time, the rest of his instincts and experience were screaming that it was prey.
In the end, the tipping factor was that the spider had something to do with the pumpkin. Being friends with his enemy automatically put the creature on his kill list, and as it reached the ground where he had stood, Fang debated the best way to hunt the new prey. Swatting it around wouldn't work, it was too big. Tiring it out wouldn't work either, these webs were too annoying. That was fine though, spiders were weak, he just needed to squish it.
A quick blink into the air and Fang was falling towards the spider. Once again, the blink cost more than he expected, but he didn't have time to think of it, there was prey in sight. A strand of web caught him on the way down, but it snapped under his weight, and he fell down on top of the creature. Its legs splayed out to the sides and waggled as Fang pinned it to the ground with a slight crunch. The wiggling caught his eye and he immediately pounced on one of the legs, catching it with his paws before sinking his teeth into it. The exoskeleton crunched under his teeth, and a twist of his head separated the twitching leg from its body.
The spider let out a chilling screech and renewed its frantic scrabbling, prompting Fang to pounce on and rip off another leg, then another. By the time the spider managed to get its feet under it, it was down to four legs, three on one side and one on the other. The spider lurched to its feet and attempted to buck Fang off its back. To its credit, the spider succeeded in dislodging the persistent feline. However, its success was short-lived, as Fang blinked midair to appear above the spider again, flattening it once more as he attacked the remaining legs. After Fang ripped off the last leg he jumped off the limbless spider and actually chased after the last twitching limb, chasing it around between the webs until it stopped twitching.
Finally, he turned to the spider, a bit conflicted about what to do. For spiders, he usually just squashed them beneath a paw or crunched them between his teeth. This one was a bit too big for that though. For larger prey, he went for the back of the neck and a quick snap, but he couldn't even begin to guess where this thing's neck was. Fang sat back, contemplating his dilemma and licking the bluish blood from his face as he stared down the spider nugget.
However, before he could come to a decision, the blood stopped pulsing out of the spider, and it dissolved into smoke once more, along with the webs around the room. As the smoke was being sucked into the pumpkin, Fang stood indignantly, meowing at the pumpkin for stealing his prey before he had a chance to finish it off. Pumpkins had passed cucumbers on his public enemy list, he now ranked them just above the blue boxes.
Level Up!
Cat class has reached level 10!
+6 status points gained. Visit the Status screen to allocate them.
+1 skill point gained. Visit the Skills screen to allocate it.
Class evolutions unlocked. Visit the Status Screen for more details. Experience will be banked until an evolution is selected.
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Speak of the devil. Fang dismissed the screen. There was something new there, but he didn't have time to puzzle out new words, that shady pumpkin was up to something again.
The jack-o-lantern's lines arranged into an even angrier face this time, belching another line of flame at Fang's sitting spot. With the increased distance, Fang didn't even need to use a blink to dodge, he just jumped out of the way, channeling long years of caterwauling while dodging thrown boots and other miscellaneous projectiles. The fire spread out enough that after it passed Fang actually went back to the stone it had touched, enjoying the warmth under his paws. It was no replacement for sunlight or his new sunning stone, but it was nice. Maybe pumpkins weren't so bad after all.
The pumpkin's lines rearranged once more, covering the gourd in the glowing outlines of straps or bandages, and in the middle, a blocky, thick-set humanoid figure, with trailing strands that melded into the rest of the pumpkin's pattern. The figure slid aside to reveal the inferno once more, and smoke billowed out. This time it didn't spread to the whole room, but instead condensed tightly in front of the jack-o-lantern, resolving into a huge figure wrapped in ancient, tattered bandages. The mummy lumbered forward and glared at Fang, baleful indigo flames burning in front of its covered eye sockets. Fang felt something settle over his mind, and decided that the mummy looked cute, harmless even, and- omigod it has string!
Fang perked up, going wide-eyed at the plethora of tangling bandages on the mummy, dangling around it and fluttering with every step. He launched into motion, blurring across the ground before throwing himself at one of the bandages. He swung two full circles around the mummy before the rotted flax snapped off and he tumbled to the floor, tangling with it as he failed around. The mummy lumbered over, but by the time it raised its arms, Fang was already on his feet. He leapt at another bandage, claws tearing into the cloth as he scrambled up the mummy's thigh to attack his next target.
The mummy's smash splintered the stone floor of the room, but similar to the zombies, it's movements outside of the downward smash itself were too slow and clumsy for Fang to even register as a threat. To a human, the lumbering hug of death would be difficult to avoid, but Fang simply ran between his new yarn ball's legs or clawed his way up its side.
The 'fight' lasted quite a while. By the end of it, Fang has accumulated a nice pile of ancient shredded linen, and the mummy was looking skeletal, rather than hulking, the thick layers of bandages strewn around the room rather than providing it bulk. It had gotten slightly faster as it shed the layers, but far weaker, and now its slams were feeble even for a human.
Fang attacked another ribbon, and this time it did not uncover more cloth when it was peeled away. It instead revealed the blackened, shriveled skin of the mummy's face beneath. As the cloth fell away the mummy seemed to panic, clutching at the strand, before it burst into flame. The ghostly embers denoting its eyes spread across the cloth and inside it, though the cloth did not seem to blacken. The visible patch of flesh shriveled and burnt away to ash and dust, and the heatless flames spread to the entire pile of bandages as the humanoid figure collapsed into a pile of bandages and dust.
Fang sniffed at the strange fire for a moment, before trotting over to the biggest pile of fabric scraps and lying down for a nap amid the seemingly illusory flames. He had just gotten comfy when the fabric rudely dissolved into smoke, depositing him on the cold, uneven stone created by the mummy's attacks.
Fang glared over at the pumpkin that was guzzling down the smoke which had made up his bed. He was getting pretty sick of this overgrown orange bell pepper. While it was occupied with the smoke from the mummy, Fang trotted up to the pillar the jack-o-lantern was resting on and quickly turned around to mark his territory. Then he leapt to its top in one bound, and on top of the pumpkin with another. He settled down on top of the gourd and curled up around the stem, sinking his claws in to perforate the pesky pumpkin.
His seat was nice and warm. The pumpkin radiated an inner heat. It wasn't anywhere close to the inferno it had belched out at him though, merely a pleasant heat, coupled with a different type of warmth. The sunlight he had sensed flowing through the tunnel was much stronger here, and it seemed to be coming from the pumpkin.
As he sat and took it in directly from the source, he noticed it wasn't quite sunlight. It was warm, it was pleasant, but it didn't elicit the same stillness and peace he got basking in the sun. On the contrary, it seemed restless, constantly in motion. It was ready to, no, needed to consume and destroy at every moment. It was quite pleasant, but he preferred sunlight. There was also another current of energy coming from the pumpkin, that unpleasant mana which had made him dislike the dungeon from the start. However, with a small exertion of his mighty powers of ignoring, he found he could spurn the bad mana and let it flow past him, so long as he was absorbing the good, warm mana.
The lines on the pumpkin were glowing brighter as he began to doze off, and the trickle of mana coming up increased with the light. Some veins on the pumpkin's surface flickered between brilliant orange and sickly black, as though some internal battle was taking place. Abruptly the veins of black concentrated in one place, and the pumpkin's mouth opened, spitting out the rat from earlier in a burst of flame. The eyes appeared again right after, glaring at the singed rodent, and words issued from the jagged inferno of a mouth, sounding like the merry crackling of a pyre. "This was not the deal! You think you can steal control from me and get away with it? A two-bit corpse puppeteer aspiring to tame Jack of the Lantern?! I will burn the very soul from your pathetic chest and rip your-"
The pumpkin abruptly stopped as the black-furred form of Fang descended on the disoriented rodent, a fraction of a second passing between the leap and the bite that severed the creature's existence. Fang wrinkled his nose, spitting out the rotten rat, and sniffed at the jewel in its forehead. He recoiled from that as well, the flow of unpleasant mana hitting him like a spray bottle to the face. He turned around and habitually attempted to kick some dirt over the disgusting thing, then trotted back towards the pumpkin.
"Ahem. I suppose I will have to find another way of tracking down that irritant. No matter, it should be easy enough once I am free. The prospect of cleaning up the mess left by that hack's involvement seems tedious regardless, so I suppose it is about time to- Are you listening to me? Can you even understand me?"
Fang could not, in fact, understand a word the pumpkin said. He ignored the crackling words, taking them for the pleasant pop and sizzle of a warm fire. He hopped back up onto the pumpkin and settled in for more cozy napping.
Jack sighed with the sound of a campfire collapsing in on itself. "Of course not. Naturally, the first to clear my upgraded dungeon is a thrice-charred immature beast. What did I expect? A taste of someone with actual power? A young hopeful eager to make a bargain? No, all Jack gets is a rotting rat and a… Whatever this thing is. Infant Khalor? No, not enough shadow affinity. Meh, I suppose its soul will be a passable snack for the road." The lines coating the pumpkin began to grow in brightness as Jack rambled, tongues of yellow flame beginning to flicker out of them as the heat and mana flowing into Fang intensified.
Fang's fur was beginning to smoke, but oddly enough he wasn't in pain or distress. He took in the fiery mana, stretching his pool of sunshine with every beat of his heart until he felt as though he couldn't take in even a smidge more energy. Yet the heat and light kept flowing in, pressurizing and straining some part of him that Fang never even knew existed. It didn't feel painful or wrong though. It felt like drinking his first bowl of water after licking dew from grass as sustenance for the first year of his life. It was something he had never known, but which was intrinsically right.
Finally, something gave. The energy inside him started draining away. It was moving to a place in his chest, but at the same time, it was also swirling into the center of that strange stretched place he had just discovered. Within seconds, all the energy within him was gone, but not the warmth. Fang felt like he had a miniature sun inside him. It radiated out to fill him with warmth again, tendrils of fire from the pumpkin beneath his paws being drawn in to feed it.
Speaking of the pumpkin, the flames licking at Fang's fur had shifted from yellow to blue, and he saw white flames beginning to expand outwards to supplant them. Somehow the fire wasn't burning him, but as the flames began to shift he noticed his fur starting to smoke again. Time to leave the stupid pumpkin behind to burn up. He stood up, and at that moment a familiar voice cut through the hiss of fire,
"Chairman Meow?"
Fang looked to the source and saw the party had just come around the corner and into sight of the pumpkin chamber. Lillian was standing with her mouth open, and the others were all squinting against the pumpkin's his blinding radiance. He was feeling forgiving, so he decided to ignore the foul name and go to his pets. They deserved to bask in his glory. He leapt from the pumpkin just as its eyes fell on the party, and activated Dimensionless Stride to hurry over to them.
"Fantastic! More guests, how did I ever miss you? Now this is a proper picnic basket for a long trip!" The grinning pumpkin began to cackle maniacally with the sound of popping wood, and the light and flames quickly grew more intense.
Lillian continued, bewildered, "What are you doi-"
"Shit! Angela! Wall, type 3, now! Alex! Shield for a breakpoint! Everyone else, stack up!" The squad was shocked by the sudden orders, but true to their training, they flowed into the prescribed formation without hesitation. Alex's shield glowed as he set his stance and hunkered down behind it. Angela summoned up a thick stone wall blocking off the tunnel, bowed outwards for stability, and the rest of the party lined up behind Alex.
Moments later, the pumpkin detonated, a wave of force and fire (And chunky pumpkin salsa) sweeping outwards from the center of the room. It swept right through Fang as he was in the air. Somehow the pressure and heat didn't flatten Fang completely, seeming to ripple through his ephemeral form with reduced effect. It still sent him flying forward at speeds no cat was ever meant to travel. The wave smashed into the wall, buckling it inward, but for the most part it held. Alex's shield arm broke from the force that carried through the earthen barricade, and the entire squad felt as though they had just sprinted full speed into the side of a mountain.
Around the same instant the wall broke, Fang impacted the ceiling above it with a sickening crack, and he watched his body drop away to the floor. He struggled to orient himself with his newfound weightlessness as a brand new box appeared.
YOU HAVE DIED
Fang decided he very much did not like mysterious red boxes appearing from thin air.