Evening. On Earth, this would’ve been the time when the lights of the city blinked on. Cars would switch on their white headlights, bright enough to blind. And they never stopped racing past.

Here, though, things were slower. It wasn’t that the forest ever stopped. It was just more deliberate.

…Except for stuff like owls, I guessed. I’d seen an owl in flight once. It was pretty fast.

And terrifying.

Luckily, now I could match their terror. I was getting stronger faster than my Earth self could’ve ever imagined. Which was ironic, since I now looked about like my old self.

When the dazzling glow of my Evolution cleared, I had my yellow-orange fur again.

Currently No Branching Paths Available.

Auto-Evolving…

Evolution Complete!

Orange Tabby

Style: Prance and Play Known for their impetuous nature and delightful antics, these cats are nonetheless not to be underestimated. What they lack in smarts, they make up for in sheer brawn and reflexes.

Stats

Taipha Orange Tabby Lv. 2 EXP: 5% (16/300)

HP 95% (38/40) SP 100% (30/30)

ATK 6

INT 3

DEF 4

WIS 2

SPD 4

Traits Morph (Stage 1/5) Human Language (Stage 1/2) Perfect Human Vision

Skills Swipe

Nice…my Attack Stat felt so high now…

As I sat underneath a sea-blue oak tree, moving nothing but my whipping tail, I wondered about how strong I was. Level 2 in my Gray Tabby form hadn’t felt much different from Level 1. Maybe a mathematician would say, “Oh, it doubled everything, that’s amazing,” but having 2s pretty much across the board had felt so…dinky.

Evolution, on the other hand, had taken my Attack Stat from 3 to 6, doubled my Defense and Speed, and even—

Oh yeah…my Intelligence and Wisdom were about the same, weren’t they.

Well, inevitably I’d keep going up and up. The changes from 1 to 2 were bound to not be as impressive as 3 to 4, or 6 to 7 to…

8. The magic number. According to that goddess, the Level of most squirrels.

Which were supposed to be pretty easy prey? I mean, they were on Earth, so it was only logical?

My stomach gave a slow rumble. My call to adventure.

I stood up, and my ears pricked at the sound of a low coo from a bird far away. Leaves rustled.

If a squirrel was Level 8, what was a robin here, Level 15? Ugh, it was making me sick just thinking about it.

But then I knocked some sense into myself.

What are you talking about, Taipha? You’ve always been a loner-survivor! You made it through harsh winters, betrayals, and cruel teenagers all on your own!

If anything, I told myself, you have an advantage: your current body is brand-new!

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She-slash-me was so right.

I was a younger me. Smaller, sure, but also sleek. While poking and licking at my fur, I realized that I did have some muscle mass. This could be fun. I could do a decent run and pounce with this body…

Plus, I had my brain! My crafty brain!

Wait, that was still a big weakness.

The four-cornered goddess was right: I had never been that smart. Instead of going back to eating my safe garbage flakes, in the end I had eaten…my own demise. And that wasn’t quite an isolated incident.

On the other hand, I had a bunch of weird human knowledge now. Had it come with the Human Language trait, or the Morph one? I wasn’t sure, but I was trying hard not to think about any of it. The implications of being part-human or whatever both gave me a headache and brought back hazy memories of tail-yanking children.

But maybe it was a boon. Maybe as my Intelligence Stat grew, so would my ability to concoct plans like humans? I could plot, I could scheme, I could build skyscrapers…?

Was that how that Stat worked? Huh?

Error: Sierra, the Goddess of Nekomata is unavailable. Please leave a message.

Wh-what the…

My stomach rumbled again, and I moved on, making my decision.

I would strategize my way into my next kill.

***

An owl’s cry echoed across the Vencian Wood.

There had been forests on the fringes of the city where I’d lived, but I’d always stayed out whenever I had the choice. The dangers were different and, to me, unpredictable. Namely at night.

In the light of day, I might’ve been tempted to romp across the grass and fallen twigs. Right now, though, I was slow and stoic.

I remembered that I was a hunter. I forgot how to play.

…Uh, that’s not true. I was fighting my instinct to play with and poke at many, many things I passed by. Like that fallen maple leaf over there. It was not only crisp—and probably green, though my night vision didn’t bring out the color too well—but strangely thick. Good to bat around? Chewy?

A certain scent on the air stopped this train of thought.

I’d noticed that upon coming to the Vencian Wood—or getting dropped in?—all of my senses had either been preserved or enhanced. Except for smell.

Which sucked, because that was obviously the best one! Smell was so useful for figuring out whether food was okay to eat, or where it even was.

At least I could get enough information to smell the approximate identity of creatures standing…oh, about two meters away. Ugh. So “impressive.”

Standing before me was another mighty oak. I looked up to see a hollow, impenetrably dark to human eyes but full of life to mine. From this angle not too far below, I could see the slightest hint of fur rising and falling.

My nose told me that this rodent was a species I hadn’t quite run into before. Since I was likely on another planet, that didn’t surprise me, and it was good to be able to pick up information as specific as “rodent,” but it was too bad that I couldn’t even determine whether this was a squirrel or not.

I took a very slow seat, careful not to make any noise.

Yet.

What would humans do? They wouldn’t hunt the food, they’d make the food hunt them—they’d use lures, they’d use traps! They were the smartest! They were the weakest!!

I was stalling because the idea of setting a trap still had me completely stumped.

I mean, for one thing, I didn’t have hands, so I couldn’t make cages too easily. I did have Morph, so, using my advanced ninety-nine-percent-cat, one-percent-human brain and the infallible memory it contained, I determined that such a power could possibly Morph my paws into hands. Right? Yeah. But that would look weird and give me nightmares.

And I didn’t wanna call up Sierra because then Sierra would laugh at me.

…Okay I would call up Sierra.

What’s a good trap to use, huh?

Error: Sierra, the Goddess of Nekomata is unavailable. Please leave a message.

NO I’m not leaving a message!

Fine! I’d just keep this simple by…throwing a rock or something. Wait, still didn’t have hands.

Okay, I’d do the next best thing. I located a rock that was sorta big, but not too big to fit in my mouth. Then I snake-jawed my mouth around it, picked it up, walked over to the roots of the tree, and dropped it on a big one.

HP 90% (36/40)

Oh, come on, that rock in my mouth hurt my jaw enough to take off HP?!

Whatever! I dashed away as soon as the rock made landfall. A surprisingly deep note echoed from the impact of rock on surprisingly hollow root.

Ducking behind a bush, keeping the oak tree in view, I waited.

A squirrel’s head sleepily poked out from the hollow.

This could be it. If that squirrel came wandering out, I could sprint out with my youthful, hopefully-faster-than-ever, Speed-Stat-enhanced legs. With surprise on my side, maybe I could take them before they could take me.

They were crawling! The squirrel was crawling down!

I got tunnel vision. Focusing on nothing but my prey, I charged.

You might be thinking I started running a little too early, at a point when the squirrel was still easing their way down the bark. I say my charge was too late—because the moment I jumped, I felt just how nimble my new self was. In the heat of that exuberant moment, I was only thinking, “Weak cat, low Level”? I don’t think so.

I was jumping ever so slightly higher than an Earth cat in their prime. That meant I was a cut, even two, above myself before my death.

I nearly overshot my target. With a vicious landing, I latched onto the squirrel’s side and sent us both tumbling into a patch of dirt.

Now the squirrel was howling. Good! They were more horrified than vicious. Even if this state wasn’t going to last much longer—even if the squirrel was about to realize how low my Level was—I still needed to exploit this. And I was glad to.

Swipe!

My claws lashed across their face, then their chest. Having only one paw to scratch with wasn’t an issue—I needed the other one to pin the squirrel down.

But after three successful, blazing-white hits with Swipe, I was literally overthrown.

Like a coil released, the squirrel showed their true power and, with a jump up toward my face, tossed me off. The back of my head banged into a tree trunk.

HP 75% (30/40) SP 67% (20/30)

No real problem—my mind, high on a mix of adrenaline and Swipe-given power, convinced my body that all it needed to win was Speed. All that really mattered was keeping up with the squirrel—and if they’d called reinforcements during my first attack, I just had to end them before their friends got here.

So naturally, I got right back up again and, with a snarl, ran in for more.

My first Swipe was still burning. It swung for the squirrel’s side, but by now the squirrel was on their feet. And ready. They rolled swiftly out of my paw’s path and landed right on their feet again.

A white glow sparkled off their front teeth—and tore into my other front paw.

HP 30% (12/40)

Holy—!

For the first time since my arrival, I saw my own blood.

And in the same instant, it hit me that I hadn’t seen the squirrel’s.

I had to run. Put that Speed to a different purpose.

The chatter of several more squirrels met my ears. They were crawling down from the same tree hollow—and from other trees, evidently here to help their own.

If they had the same power as that first squirrel’s two little glowing front teeth, I was done for.

Run run run run run.