image [https://jmassat.com/wp-content/Catgirl%20System/Map/Map128-1.png]
Current Location: Pond of the Night Queen West (S.B2)
There must’ve been a time where a small but significant bubble of land and air in the Vencian Wood simply seemed not to age…when the aura of unfamiliar stones spread wide enough to make the leaves fall at half speed, to keep the grass young without it truly living.
Now, though, when I looked at the spot my Map still labeled with an icon of three rocks, where a mysterious sword had been jammed too far in the rock for me to take, I saw a gash in the earth where DeGalle’s team, presumably, had cut. None of those geometrical stones I’d once seen on the surface could be found.
image [https://jmassat.com/wp-content/Catgirl%20System/Map/Map128-2.png]
If Logy were close by, I’d probably ask her if she could look inside this hole too. I could toggle her tracker on and off. With the way her icon was flitting around in the general southeastern quadrant, I assumed she wasn’t underground, possibly hadn’t started yet. She was apparently still alive …she just hadn’t started making her way back to me.
I could do my own chores once in a while. I paused in my journey and took a quick look inside the gash.
As soon as I did, a trace of miasma billowed into my face. Oh, I’d almost forgot: this hole reeked of magic. And I bet it went down deep, so deep that nobody had yet explored it…
And it was narrow, still narrow. I crawled down as far as I could. It was like squeezing down a megaphone. When the world around me was dark and misty, and my hind legs were solidly above my head, and my back lightly pressed against the opposite wall…I paused to hear what I could hear.
Rubble, moving.
I smelled what I could smell.
Creatures, dragons, reptiles.
You get to a point underground where the soil is so dry and hard and mostly-just-rock that nothing should be living down there. But if that abandoned underground castle had taught me anything, it was that Vencia didn’t have a rulebook for this kind of thing. For the moment, I summoned up some muscle and pulled myself partly out of the funnel. Then I Morphed, but only briefly, long enough to pull myself back onto the surface. It saved a few seconds. And I was supposed to be saving seconds!
Quickly I dusted myself off. Then I un-Morphed and licked myself off—ew. When dirt started tasting this bad, I didn’t know. Either way, it was time to storm north and go on exploring.
***
image [https://jmassat.com/wp-content/Catgirl%20System/Map/Map128-3.png]
I butted heads with a ram at the northern edge of B1.
It really hurt.
Those horns were practically denting my skull. Or maybe literally, at this rate!
My point is, blood would start getting in my eyes if I didn’t back off.
Guard! With a wild buck of my head that sent the ram’s head whipping off, I backed up and felt my bones grow stronger. I followed it up with two more Guards, knowing the weird icky feeling I got from stacking these Skills was much better than bleeding out. Besides, I was getting all the SP back in a moment, so what was the harm?
How dare this ram charge into me out of the blue! One minute ago, I’d just torn my way out of the tree line and paused to gasp at the meadows that stretched beyond the Wood when this ram whinnied and crashed into me.
This wasn’t even a mountain! It was, like, a cliff at best. A really shallow cliff that looked out on a seemingly endless plain studded with cities in fog. Was this really territory for a ram? How?! Stop!
Of course, fighting them was really in my best interest.
The ram was bleeding too, just below the horns. Had I headbutted them back with so much force that it hurt us both? Oho. That was enough of a triumph for me.
I ran back in, preparing a Slash. The ram, cocky as ever, charged right into me. I took another headbutt, feeling much sturdier this time, and while I dug my back heels in, I flung a claw at the ram’s flank and scored four long lines.
The ram gasped—then its horns suddenly burst with red aura, sending me rolling.
It was all fairly harmless.
HP 90% (768/855) SP 58% (479/820)
ATK 159
INT 98 (+5)
DEF 278 (+150%)
WIS 104
SPD 132
Now that I was engaged in combat, I didn’t really wanna give up the chance at more EXP. At the same time, I had no desire to murder this ram or go home with even more leftover meat. My Meat Locker still had half of a hell marmot! That locker was so useful it was useless.
So I had a thought: What about Morphing and using the Debug Blade in live combat?
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…Yeah, it was about time. I didn’t feel any actual danger from this ram, and at long last, I had a kinda-working strategy with this thing.
Enter clunky sword mode…
ATK 318 (x2)
Not an amazing Attack buff, but I was going for Speed here.
And there was nothing faster than a blunt whack with a sharp edge. The ram barreled toward me, too committed to their charge to even pause in surprise at my quick transformation. Just before their horns connected with my stomach, I brought the blade down.
Thwack!
The ram gasped again—and then so did I, because their horns still mashed into my stomach. But I had the strength to sidestep and the ram did not. They collapsed onto soft grass, a glassy but still-living look in their eyes. In that face I saw, more than anything, disbelief that a creature like me could be stronger than them.
If I had a sheath, I might’ve been using it to stand over the ram in a very cool fashion. This day is mine, I would think. Instead, I squeezed one arm against my side so I could then slide the sword in and have it stay in place. This day is mine, I noted.
Sliding my sword against my arm this way produced a trail of blood. Whoops.
That was as good a sign as any that I should put away this stupefying blade and go back to cat form. Luckily, there must’ve been a slight delay on my Experience gain, because then my Level Up happened and washed away the pain!
Level Up!
Lv. 31 → Lv. 32 EXP: 11% (503/4650)
HP 100% (883/883) SP 100% (855/855)
ATK 165 (+1!)
INT 96
DEF 115
WIS 109 (+2!)
SPD 137 (+1!)
I lingered on the windows long enough to deduce that I had no new Skills.
Then I refocused on my goal, turned away from the vista, and took off.
***
I glimpsed a lot of intense things on my way. A magpie attacking another bird’s nest…two long-antlered stags clashing against a pack of wolves, their families behind them…gackerns or alligators snapping in the deep.
But I was almost in a trance. A serious trance. I’d been serious about very few things in my Vencian life. And yet when you let the complexities of life melt away and whittled it all down to a game, a single goal…
Don’t stop anymore! Don’t stop for anything!
image [https://jmassat.com/wp-content/Catgirl%20System/Map/Map128-4.png]
Quest: Explore the Vencian Wood Progress: 70% (21/30)
Current Location: ??? (S.D4)
There’s another partially explored space just east of here, I thought.
No—no, my legs are giving out.
They were burning, no worse than they had when I raced Chora.
Scratch that. It was worse. And logically speaking, no wonder; I’d been sprinting on and off for longer altogether than just one single race.
It was getting dark out, and now that I was far enough south, I was back in swampland. The ground was trickier to navigate, especially with the patchy shadows thrown down by the willows.
I’m going to be late, I thought, if I stay out any longer.
It felt like my brain itself twitched.
You’re just saying that because you’re a wimp! I raged! (Against myself.)
The burst of seriousness stopped, coinciding with a perfectly timed stumble. But in a flash, I got my footing back—and silenced my thoughts.
Funny how that was so much easier to do now that I had higher Wisdom, yet I was pretty sure that as a cat, I hadn’t had such conflicted monologues. Probably because I never monologued, as a cat.
I bounded over a stretch of scummy water, then took some meandering turns to make sure I’d explored this land. The temptation to stop and rest was only growing greater and greater, but, I convinced myself, so was my ability to resist it.
image [https://jmassat.com/wp-content/Catgirl%20System/Map/Map128-5.png]
Quest: Explore the Vencian Wood Progress: 73% (22/30)
In fact, instead of telling my “other” head-voice off this time, or reveling in the victory that was clearing yet another Map square, I found myself drifting off.
Almost as if while one self yammered about my legs and how destroyed they surely were, and a quiet self pressed the gas of the car-cat that was my body, another one looked with starry eyes at the futures that lay ahead.
At those cities that studded the land in the far distance of the northernmost edge.
One self looked at the darkening swamp path and navigated. The other wondered: what kinds of skyscrapers were those? Or were they castle spires? I thought I’d seen swooping roofs and onion bulbs, and a dome or two. Then again, maybe I was making things up, smashing ideas and half-forms together. I had purposefully tried not to look at them for long.
They promised a world beyond the Wood. One I would eventually…go to?
There was no rush for that, though. There was seemingly no pressure at all. I only had the urge to explore what was beneath me: the spread of a very self-contained Map. Whether that was strange or perfectly natural, I couldn’t even guess.
But it gave me an existential thought, which was nearly enough to stop me in my tracks.
Once I’ve gotten strong enough to stop fearing the Vencian Wood…once I’ve helped the people around me…what is there left for me?