Time was perceived differently by different beings. Humans in their meriad types were meticulous in managing it due to having a short life span. Even a fifth-category human would only have around 200 years to live, so not much more time than an uncategorized, unclassed human in the grand scheme of things. Wandering spirits lived for double that time on average, and those that turned into dungeon cores lived about a century or three more than them. So they perceived time on a slower scale. Legend had it that there were some dungeons from the last cycle that were still alive today, though nearing their deaths, so they were likely preparing their domains for inheritence.

That all led to the fact that dungeons delt with time differently than humans. Weeks to them were like days or even hours to humanity. They wouldn't begin to adjust their perception of time until they encountered humans and learned to work on a faster rhythm. That is to say, a dungeon core losing consciousness for a year was like a medium-sized vacation to a human, so it was normal for Lapo to become unconscious. But there was a creature that lived for even shorter than humans themselves, a creature that didn't understand just how long her Lazerpointer could live.

If this creature didn't develop enough, she would die before the core. Not even the system knew what that would do to Lapo, as its foundational pillar, its symbiote, practically the other half of the core, decayed and died without leaving a strong legacy to stabilize it.

Pawline was intrigued, scared and approving of her Lazerpointer, a curiously odd mix of emmotions for her. It had gone dark, its light dimming and its mind slowing down immensely. This scared her, as she worried for this thing she didn't even know the nature of, but wanted to protect. She felt a connection to it, not just because it hated dogs. The connection was strengthened by her new heart, which had merged with the concentrated ball of energy as they bonded together, and also the sense of the empty cave that belonged to the two of them.

But she could sense that Lazerpointer was napping. Pawline liked napping, as did all cats. Napping was good, pleasant, fit for royalty. So finding this being asleep reenforced their bond, as she reaffirmed the fact that Lazerpointer was closer to the purr-fection of felinity than the humans or any other creature. A living thing that looked like a ball with a pleasant light, napped like cats, hated dogs, what else could this catly creature be hiding? Even odd, never before seen creatures had the instincts of the feline within them, so this proved to Pawline that cats were the supreme race of mortals in the entirety of existence!

She dove deeper into the ball. She could see the strange knots again, but now they looked more orderly, thicker and more stable. Time was fixing them. Something alerted her mind. What was it? Her ears perked up, and she tensed. Was it another Baazhh again? No, it didn't feel like a Baazhh. It was more like the wil that had been preparing the bonding thread. It was good, right? She acknowledged the sensation and let it in. Words came to her mind like when she had been communicating with the human in his dreams.

*Hail, young Princess Pawline, welcome to the system! Utilizing newly created subsystem...

*Welcome to the Cat Progression Protocol! This is a special subsystem designed by the Cats, for the cats. That's right, furball, your queen is sneeky!

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

*For being the first cat initiated into the CPP, all killpoints, claw-wards and expurrience is doubled! All gains from killing rat and dog archetype beasts are quadrupled!

*You may now check your status. You have a lot of power to gain and steps you must walk to achieve purr-fection!

Wait wait wait, what in the furless cats was this? A... power system? Made by the Cats? The... Cats? The Cats, one of which had approved of her personally? She had always known she was special. From the moment she became a monster, Pawline had known of the Cats, two particular cats that were the strongest felines in the world; the Cat and the Cattess. She was the first cat to enter their system, and now everything she gained from it would be doubled, and rats and dogs gave her quadrupled rewards? Like instead of getting one dog's worth of good stuff, she'd get four dogs' worth, and if she killed four dogs, she'd get four dogs' worth of reward for every dog, which meant...Four and four and four and four, that was eight and eight, sixteen? Sixteen!

"Stah-tus", she mentally hissed joyfully, purring like crazy. But before the stats page opened, another notification came.

*Your Skill (Self Purr-fecting [1]) has generated 2 expurrience pawnts!

*Status:

*Name: Princess Pawline.

*Species: Felis Catus Monstrum Symbioticum (unique dungeon core varient)

*Cat ascention tokens (cat): 0/1.

*Level: Kitten[1].

*Expurrience: 2/100.

*Condition: purr-fect.

*Attack: 6.

*Agility: 10.

*Furtitude: 7.

*Mind: 7.

*Purr-ception: 9.

*Fur-midability: 3.

*Killpoints: 0.

*Skills:

**Meownd Speech[3]: Communicate with any sapient being by appearing in their dreams, with a 3% chance of conveying your message to a target that is awake and aware.

**I'm Not That Fur-getful[2]: 2% chance of remembering something you'd likely forget.

**Impawssible To Defeet[7]: +7% firmness to your feet, increasing your resistance to any attempts at defeeting you (making you fall on your belly, side or back.

**Sense Energy[5]: You are able to sense energy, determining its affinity, nature and intent. Higher levels will increase your ability to penetrate through any attempts to mask the nature of energy from you.

**Self Purr-fecting[1]: Purring heals your condition, generates expurrience, and soothes your allies. It also draws energy into you, cultivating your core and that of your dungeon companion. Healing is based on your furtitude stat. Purring generates 1xpurr per level, and decreases the time that has to pass for the boosts to trigger again by 1 minute.

**Sense Dungeon: your dungeon core is unable to sense its domain, and you possess this sense instead. You can transmit information to the core about the area it controls, any life present, and the state of energy in the domain. This skill cannot level, increasing with the power of the dungeon core and your own.

**Synergy: Boundless Cat Slumber. If you activate Sense Dungeon, Sense Energy, Self Purr-fecting and go to sleep, all the effects of the aforementioned skills will be enhanced by 50% per species tier during your sleep. You will sleep for a long period of time, sustained by energy until a significant event happens to the dungeon core, its domain, or you. Once you wake up, you will feel hunger proportional to the duration of your sleep. A cat always seeks good food, no matter how much energy can sustain her. This hunger is real, so do not think to use this skill concecutively unless you are in grave danger and need quick healing, and there is bountiful prey nearby.

*Claw-wards: 0.

**eyes: 0, maw: 0, crown: 0, noze: 0, throat: 0, heart: 0, blood: 0, stomach: 0, fur: 0, claws: 0, paws: 0.

*Core: Spiritborn dungeon-enhanced unattuned Ether core, 100%/100%, second density threshold, heart type.

What in the Meow was all of this? She had all of those things? She was a princess, even this system or see pee pee thing knew that, cats were again proven to be the apex of mortality! She needed to explore all of her stats, but she honed on the important things, like the fact that she had double the gains from all kills and skills, that purring healed her, and the greatest thing to ever happen to her; Boundless Cat Slumber!

*You are about to activate Boundless Cat Slumber. Beware the Hunger.

As usual, Pawline jumped straight into anything that looked good at first glance.