Chapter 14: Blood, Pain, and Regrets. (gore warning)_I'm an Alley Cat with a Status Screen

I was still running away from an enormous deviant female doggo who held a grudge because I’d killed her kobold puppies. My mind was still a bit shocked by the knowledge that a wolf could have kobold puppies under certain rather unsavory circumstances.

The she-wolf told me telepathically as she lunged forward, reducing the distance between us to mere yards.

I ignored that rather hypocritical insult and tried to come up with an escape plan. I could just run to one of the edges of the cavern, find a nice elevated ledge along the side of the wall, and jump up to it. The doggo wouldn’t be able to reach me.

The wolf pointed out with a mental smirk.

Could I live with myself if she did that? Sure. I’d probably feel guilty about it for a while, but I’d get over it. But who knew when her (ugh!) mate might come back. The equally deviant werewolf would only need a bow and arrows to kill me as I sat on the wall. Or she could just wait me out. If the kobolds brought her food, like say some fresh catkin, she could sit and munch on that for days while I starved away. It wasn’t a viable plan. Same for hiding away in that cave with the gated entrance. Even if the bars held against her assault, she could smoke me out.

The damned doggo pointed out.

I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder, wondering when a giant wolf would show up to eat me. I needed to turn the tables, attack while I still had mana to do something. And I couldn’t think about it too much.

In fact, to counter her mind reading, I had to think of something fast, and do it as soon as the idea crossed my mind. Any idea would do, I just had to commit to it instantly, giving my she-wolf pursuer no time to think of a counter.

The she wolf told me with a mental snort as I allowed the gap between us to dwindle.

Overconfident, much? I thought to myself, knowing she’d hear it. I could do this. I just needed something really unexpected.

Her jaws snapped closed inches from my tail.

No. Ingenious wouldn’t work, it’d take too long to dream up. I needed the exact opposite. Something so dumb it just might work. Something… a glimmer of a thought crossed my mind. Inertia is a female doggo, I thought to myself.

The female doggo chasing me sounded a bit concerned all of the sudden. She was pretty close behind me, really enjoying the chase despite all her rage, as her massive frame trudged along at upwards of sixty miles per hour. She didn’t know what inertia meant. Oddly enough, the system had given me more words than the wolf had learned naturally during the course of her life. She had to puzzle out what I meant as the plan took shape in my head.

I activated my focus ability. Forty-four seconds to pull this off, which would only be twenty-two seconds worth of time for the wolf chasing me. My thoughts would seem twice as fast to the mind reader behind me, and more than that, she’d have half as much time to react. I began to plan my next move.

She wasn’t going to be able to stop as quickly as me, but she tried, in the tiny amount of time she had to read my mind for what I planned to do, she dug in her legs and tried to brake as quickly as she could. Her paws dug huge trenches into the ground as her sprinting skill helped boost her traction.

It wasn’t nearly enough. I hopped up and slammed, paws first, against the side of a mushroom tree, killing my inertia as fast as I could, using the damage negation from jumping skill to prevent injury. The tree bent under the strain of bringing me to a halt, but I only weighed around ten pounds. The monstrosity behind me weighed a hundred times as much. In slow motion I watched her jaws lunge at me, desperately trying to catch me in the brief window in which her head was in position to make the attempt.

The speed of her sudden bite was almost enough. Spittle drenched me as I ducked under her massive jaws, jumping a short distance, aiming for the ground directly beneath her.

Passing overhead, the huge bulk of the dire wolf seemed to almost drift by in the slow motion of the focus skill. I heard the mushroom tree flex back upright behind me, slapping her in the face. Soon she’d tear right through it, but for the tiniest second, that recoiling mushroom tree had startled her. I poured 28 mana into my epic jump skill, everything I had left, except for 10 mana that I used to activate my pounce skill.

With all my strength, 6x greater than 3 days ago, multiplied by the 3x passive jump bonus and a 5.6x active jump multiplier, I shot straight upwards into the wolf’s unprotected underside. I barely had time, even with all my coordination and the focus skill, to put my paws facing upwards as I sprung upwards from the ground at terrific speed. Those paws carried an additional 3x damage multiplier from my pounce skill that generated a crackling white barrier of mana. Everything I had, I poured into this one single gamble of an attack. If this failed, I’d be out of mana, nothing left but to become dog food.

The she-wolf must have had incredible coordination, because she tried to dodge. Her body arched, instinctively reacting as if I planned to swipe or bite at her soft underbelly, but that didn’t help. As I crashed into her, I tore into her like a massive cat shaped bullet, catching her right below the ribcage. The force of the blow was enough to lift her entire mass off the ground briefly, then we tumbled across the forest floor, rolling over and over, me half buried inside her body. She came to a stop, stomach facing down, her weight making her massive wound worse as I was squished under her, shoving me in deeper.