image [https://jmassat.com/wp-content/Catgirl%20System/Map/Map97-1.png]

image [https://jmassat.com/wp-content/Catgirl%20System/Map/Map97-2.png]

Current Location: Bibbly Bark (S.E2)

As I hunted around this Map square on my way to the one further down, I began to realize something: there was no chance any of the dragons or flytraps needed for the hand-eye coordination cantrip would be living out here. I mean, it was a tranquil wood par excellence!

With some exceptions. Between broken bark and sickeningly adorable button mushrooms, I noticed a higher volume of snakes, their scales glowing in the slightest shade. And now and then, I swore I’d seen a glow floating in the middle of nowhere—only for it to disappear.

The first two times that happened, I chased after the light and smacked into a rock.

The third time, though, I really fought to restrain myself. Pulling on every point of Wisdom I’d ever mustered, I kept myself in place as that momentary reddish flash swooped across the leaves. And with every point of Intelligence, I asked myself two questions:

What is that light?

And why is it so…tantalizing?

But even with my vast storehouse of random human information, I couldn’t for the life of me pin down why I had such an urge to go running after these random, fleeting, incredibly fast points of red light. It couldn’t be that I just liked to chase after fast shiny things, right? I wasn’t that low.

It was probably magic. Yeah! That made sense. Just like the Attraction Spell, only, uh, totally different. I’d go with that.

(For the record, restraining myself with all my Wisdom only worked for about half a second before I went running, dodged around a birch, and stopped just short of a crash. Don’t underestimate me. No, I didn’t catch the light.)

image [https://jmassat.com/wp-content/Catgirl%20System/Map/Map97-3.png]

Well, as I made my way north and then south on my mission to thoroughly cover as much ground as I could, I had some run-ins with fellow animals and took every competition in a playful spirit. I thought a blue jay was giving me a contemptuous glare, but maybe they just wanted to race—they certainly joined in when I took off.

Once my toes almost butted up against a black-and-yellow snake, and while they didn’t strike me as too harmful as they uncoiled and hissed, I slowed myself down…and began mimicking their movements. This successfully intimidated them and actually counted as a Victory! My reputation around these woods was getting solider and solider.

EXP: 61% (1999/3300)

I was beginning to crave a challenge (and really fast red lights didn’t count), but I had a feeling that something called a dragon would certainly give me one.

As I hit the border, a notification went off, right on schedule.

Quest: Explore the Vencian Wood Progress: 43% (13/30)

Yay!

As sometimes happened with these squares, the terrain changed almost immediately. Trees were less frequent than grass. Grass was less frequent than rocks. All of that was less frequent than…mud.

It hadn’t even rained recently. Had it? Or was this place just a vast series of magical mudbaths?

That sounded way more romantic than it looked.

Remember the place where Chora and I had that run, which I renamed the Savannah of Future Victory because I know full well I will beat her next time? With the beautiful silvery watering holes interspersed everywhere? Imagine the really sad and dirty version of that. Lumpy slop heaps. I didn’t spot animals drinking out of them, obviously, but from a ways off, I did see what appeared to be a family of boars bathing. Good for them! But the sight of all this made my tongue shrivel.

Sure, my concept of “dirty” had been far different from a human’s before I came to the Vencian Wood—cats don’t have germ theory, our tongues are the epitome of clean—but come on, I had dignity. I wouldn’t wanna take a dip in that mud and come out smelling like all the billions of animals that’d come before me. At least water dried off!

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Still, something told me I wouldn’t be able to avoid these mud puddles for long. That “something” was the glaring fact that half the earth was mud puddles.

Map…zoomenhance zoomenhance zoomenhance—

image [https://jmassat.com/wp-content/Catgirl%20System/Map/Map97-5.png]

Okay, that was a little better. Now I had a more realistic portable bird’s-eye view of the northern part of the place. It still didn’t look fully accurate—there were about a hundred infinitesimal mud ponds with “land bridges” that were terrifyingly slim—but several of the larger ones were shown here.

Not to mention the eerie lack of cover. That was accurate.

And speaking of eerie, the fauna I was darting past were kind of…Halloweeny, is that the word for it? More snakes. Hairy spiders. On the surface of a brown pond, I actually found a scorpion.

A scorpion.

A huge and floppy scorpion.

I would have smacked it on sight if I hadn’t been wary about status conditions. Can’t really sleep those off in a place with no cover like this.

There was one essential thing I hadn’t seen on the enhanced Map: the Treasure. It was pretty far south, too far to have shown up.

I sighed internally. Alright, then…an eternity of mud for me.

Half an hour later, I’d crossed…not as much of the muddy expanse as I’d expected to. Loamy soil with a few too many rocks for comfort (and spiders masquerading as rocks) made navigation even more challenging than I’d anticipated. But I was southerly enough to get a clearer view.

I’d seen this coming, and I hated it with every fiber of my semicleanly being: the Treasure was on—or more likely underneath—a big mess of mud.

But I reassured myself, stood firm. Come, now, Taipha, you’ll just lick yourself afterward!

That sparked a new fear in me: What if my mouth opens?

And another, even more mortifying one: What if it gets in my ears…and my nose?!

Part of me was not going in that disgusting excuse for water at all, but part of me was, oddly enough, fired up! Like Me wanted to prove Me wrong and was stoked to be audacious.

The daring Me put a not-so-tentative paw on the mud.

It’s kind of…solid?!

No more testing was needed. I dashed across, taking the shortest possible route to the site of the Treasure.

One growing problem: actually, this mud was not solid.

Every step sank far more than the first. In five racing bounds, I was chin-deep in nastiness.

Other animals were amazed. Boars turned their heads. A couple of beasts who looked like the children of a duck and a woolly mammoth honked with what had to be laughter. I could only keep running.

To be precise, I had to mix in my running with other, smarter stuff. There was Leaping at an angle—that helped, but it only got me so far, and it sent me soaring out of one mud pit and plunging onto another.

I even landed next to more bathing duck-neanderthals.

My reputation: destroyed.

Instead of just scamper-swimming as fast as possible and doing my best to ignore the hardening chunks of glop now clinging to me like I was their mother—and instead of using Cloak to at least salvage a bit of pride—my mind flew to my Spell arsenal.

First of all, ugh…if only I’d kept my Low Gravity Spell on easy access. That could’ve gotten me across with half the time and energy. Second, I wished this had given me a good use case for the Water Spell, but somehow I doubted it would produce a tsunami big enough to wash out even the smallest of these mud holes.

Third…hold on, I could make an Ice or Earth surfboard!

But only if I made my back legs the rudder. Or fired off constant Air Cutters from the back. Never mind, that was a terrible idea.

What I settled on was just as experimental and maybe just as bad. I fired an Ice Spell straight ahead!

Mint and berry smells crackled away as the mud was frozen together into a bridge. Just like I’d wanted, the ball of freezing energy had raced straight ahead for several meters.

I mean, it wasn’t that many meters, but it did get me to the shore. Halfway.

Look, at least it gave me a break. I clawed on, slipped and slid my way to the end of the platform, and took a breather.

Then I looked out at the distance left to cover. The pit with the Treasure wasn’t that far. Maybe another minute of racing?

And yet…I hated mud so much.

I can’t take this anymore, I said to myself, defeated. The mud hardening on me seemed supernaturally heavy, and had to have been doubling my weight. Oh, and also, my paw pads were really cold for some reason.

I Leaped, shattering the edge of the ice like a superhero taking off with a sonic boom.

From there I went galloping. First through the sky, like a Pegasus—or a star with useless legs. Then along the surface of the great unsavory pond, across a bend, and across the next. They squelched lightly across the backs of maggots and beetles and the smoothed hides of rocks, skittering again on the churning surface so fast that I doubted my legs were adding much momentum at all to my careening body.

Then I stopped myself precisely on the bank, and just moments after my paw pads had started to seep into the muck again. Finally, a case where keeping the Map right in front of my nose constantly was helpful! On mud flats like these, there weren’t many big predators to see to begin with. Anything smaller and squirmier could be scrambled away from, and had been.

image [https://jmassat.com/wp-content/Catgirl%20System/Map/Map97-6.png]

Current Location: Scorpy Mud Central (S.E3)

Plus, we got a name for this baby! The System’s auto-naming algorithms had to be reading my mind here. Or nightmares. I’d have to change this one when I actually got some ideas…soothing ones.

But now for the Treasure. It was in the middle of a mud ocean, and up close, that ocean looked just how I’d pictured it: mud!

I wanted so badly to use a Water Spell to spritz myself clean before working out how best to dive in…but I would inevitably have to dive into this gaping maw, so that would fix nothing.

Then I wanted so badly to spritz it apart with that water. Not happening either.

Wait a second…

I transformed.

The poof of mysterious transformation smog carried with it globs of muck and powder dust. The “force” of me Morphing apparently flung the worst of the mud off of me!

I mean, it wasn’t perfect, but would anything be, short of a three-day bath?

Immediately I changed back, began licking myself…and felt an ominous rumble from down below. From inside of the mudhole.

Instincts wanted me to freeze up. Knowledge and experience told me to Guard instead—and that I did.

The shaking was followed up by a roar. No, a chorus of roars, and all tangled up in the sucking sounds of the now-reverberating mud ocean. The lushly hairy ducks on the edges honked and scattered, but I stood my ground.

I was about to get my Treasure from—

(A very distinct and classic roar sounded.)

—From a bunch of mud dragons!