A cat flipped off a spire, slicing open one of its brethren as it landed on another. A dozen blows were traded in less than a second, blood and fur splattering the floor, the cat’s momentum and experience proving too much for its opponent. In another two seconds it stood alone. For now.
The cat had no name; had never needed one. Some might have called that a tragedy, but the cat didn’t care. All it cared about was the conflict.
It barely noticed Granite repairing its body as a reward for the kills, primal brown eyes scanning wildly for another target, its every action driven by a single primal motivator. Rage, pure and unreasoning. There was no source for the rage, there was no ending. It was as simple as it was intense, something that transcended mere emotion, becoming a near physical force.
The cat’s head whipped around at the sound of combat, the all too familiar death shriek of its kind. In an instant it was a blur of muted brown, streaking through gaps barely wider than itself. Just as it was about to reach the sound of ringing steel and bleeding felines, something happened.
Some may call it fate. Some intervention of the gods. Others would say it was pure, unreasoning chance. But Granite, looking back later, would attribute it to one thing and one thing only.
The power of Jinx.
Whatever the cause, the cat paused its mad rush to a near certain demise, something… odd staying its momentum. Unknown to it, the feline was the oldest of its subspecies, having survived four days in the Melee. Four days of constant struggle; of battle after battle after battle without rest or pause. Though it was by no means anywhere even remotely close to a cultivator, the dense mana its kill’s released had slowly, ever so slowly, raised its cultivation.
So it was that as the cat paused over a bipedal corpse it could sense a jumble of dense mana released by the body’s matrix. And for just a moment, be it from the Jinx or the power granted by its cultivation, for a single, fateful split second, its rage subsided.
And it willed.
And if there was one thing gained through 100 hours of consecutive combat, it was the willpower to enforce Intent. The mana stirred, hesitating for the briefest of moments as old Intent faded away, before rushing into the feline. The cat froze as if struck by lightning, and that wasn’t far from the truth. Its matrix struggled to handle the combined mana of an entire C ranked cultivation technique, lacking a technique to direct the energy. But the cat didn’t need one.
With a hissing yowl its will descended like the heavens, slamming into the mana with the force of celestial judgment. The energy warped, twisting away from its Emerald attunement, forced into the only principle in the cat’s life, the only concept it completely understood. Conflict. The cat stood, attuned mana raging around it. There was no refined technique, no way to channel the mana into Infusing its body or converting itself into magic. But as it ripped forward, winds of Conflict swirling around it, the cat embodied that most ancient of cultivator sayings:
Limitless are the paths to power.
Life has a way of being unfair. To some it provides squalor and a quick death, while for others it provides an Empire as a birthright. In this case, as the cat stumbled across another human corpse, fortune smiled on it. Smiled as it forced that mana into its new aura, smiled as it repeated the process with another fallen Leeko, another C ranked body Granite forgot to collect.
And another.
And another.
And another.
And another.
And another.
And another.
Until finally, a hurricane of Conflict driving every action, the cat reached a Leeko unmarred by any wound.
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Leeko slid under a KingCat, his blade flicking out to slice off an offending paw. Without pausing he rolled away from a second KingCat, rising to send out an arc of attuned mana. The energy slammed into two of his opponents, driving them into a third KingCat before it could attack. He ripped forward, his blade arriving a split second after the energy to carve a path of death before him.
He paused for a moment, standing over the powerful corpses. For a moment, he felt something blur. A shortening of the distance between him and his bloodline, between his current existence and perfection.
At least, the Emerald King's version of perfection.
Leeko suppressed the stray thought as another cat entered the chamber. He once again rose, bloody sword held in a lazy hand as he stared at the simple filler mob below. He was far from the child he’d once been, now experienced enough to treat all opponents as a threat. Still, he wondered what the dungeon had been thinking to send such a lowly animal against an Awakened of the Emerald King.
Their eyes locked, pale green meeting dark, dark brown.
Leeko stopped smiling just as the cat lunged.
The cultivator flickered forward, the pride of his bloodline demanding he advance. His arc of attuned mana reached the cat a hair’s breadth before his katana, the one-two that had killed almost all other mobs. His mana reached the cat and recoiled, bloodlust and rage rippling through Leeko’s cultivation before the blade of mana was absorbed, the Intent fueling it shattering like glass.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Even so, Leeko wasn’t daunted. His blade arched faster as he gave up mana attacks, falling back to the forms that started it all. The cat seemed to glide around the sword, the ambient mana shifting in strange ways as its momentum impossibly changed. It whipped past Leeko, a last second jerk turning a killing blow into a slice along the Adventurer’s cheek.
He whirled around, his opponent somehow already charging back towards him. Fast, ludicrously fast. Still, speed wasn’t everything. Leeko set himself, allowing the whispers of his bloodline to guide him. A claw strike was blocked, another redirected as he flicked out a kick. The blow caught the cat under the chin, flipping it up as Leeko whipped around his blade for the killing slice. An impossible twist, like gravity meant nothing, brought the cat almost out of reach.
Almost.
A bloody rent ripped down the cat’s side, cutting muscle and bone alike. The cat hissed in pain as it landed, weakened legs barely able to keep it upright. Leeko smiled as he closed in for the kill, confidence returning as he once again proved himself superior. A strike was blocked, a dodge outmaneuvered, a lunge kicked aside. The cat came again, only to be met by a wall of steel, the imperious technique he’d formulated over the past week taking every attempted strike while sending out innumerable retaliations.
A dozen inch deep gashes were opened, blood loss weakening the cat’s small body each second. Leeko slammed his foot onto the cat’s chest, holding it in place as he drove his sword home. He looked into the mob’s eyes, watched as blood pooled around the broken form, its breaths seizing as punctured lungs frantically tried to inhale.
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The cat looked up at the human’s green eyes even as the world began to fade. They were cold, calculating eyes, embodying the feeling the human’s cultivation gave off. That of a hard, calculating warrior, one superior to all others. One who could stare at this dying mob and rest assured that it had once again proved itself superior.
As the mob looked into those eyes, it was shocked to the core. Not by what it saw, but by what was missing. And though it didn’t have the sapience for internal dialogue, the impressions fluttering through its dying mind could be translated as:
“Does this being truly not see? Does it not understand?”
The cat’s eyes flared amber as its new mana spiked.
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Earlier
I manifested a few KingCats for Leeko to play around with as I checked on the Underworld Adventurers- they were fine-, and the murder kitty. The thing was meditating as usual. I really needed to come up with a name for it. Mittens? Death, slayer of cultivators? Probably something in between.
When that was finished, I searched for Ryia. I found her staring at a cat. That wasn’t too unusual, half my mobs were cats, but I’d only felt her aura act like this once before, when a certain arrogant young master was stuck as a “baby wisp”. I glanced between her and the cat, confused. Sure, the thing was cute, it was a cat after all, but it wasn’t that-crapping crudding Zimisite on a stick, what is that!?
The cat in question had enough attuned mana to literally detonate my entire first floor just swirling around it, no cultivation technique or nothin’. It was just walking into the throne room going woopty doo, who needs a cultivation technique anyway? I’m a big fancy insane cat who can just stroll into a big boss chamber holding a bloodline cultivator without giving… a…
Ohhhhhhhhhh. Impending carnage… a kitten with mana practically screaming in bloodlust swirling around it… yeah, this was totally something Ryia would be into.
If Leeko won he’d probably advance in skill, and if he lost I could always bring him back. What’s the worst that can happen?
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Somewhere high above, the heavens rumbled as Jinxes accumulated.
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The cat stared into the human’s eyes, eyes widening with surprise as the feline pushed.
Instincts that any but the truest form of combat would be weak had held it back. But as his power coursed forward, the cat realized that this strong, skilled human, had no conception of what truly made a warrior. It had no idea of what it was to fight on with only your will to survive keeping you going, no idea of dragging yourself across the bloody ground to kill just one more enemy, one more beast to heal yourself. No idea of watching your guts spill out and fighting on anyway, knowing you were dead and not caring.
For all this human’s strength, all its skill, it didn’t know.
So the cat showed him.
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I watched the impaled cat, waiting for it to die. I don’t wanna sound callous or anything, but I’m running a whole dungeon while constant expanding and preparing to open the Underworld. I’m a busy Core and staring at a mob as its light went out wasn’t the best use of my time. Maybe it was the 24/7 carnage that was the Melee room, but the sight of blood didn’t bother me anymore. An ENAD might see that as a bad thing, but I wasn’t an ENAD. This was literally my job, hobby, and pastime.
Get over it.
Anway, I watched the cat stare at Leeko for a moment before it's inevitable death when that hurricane of swirling mana suddenly slammed into Leeko like he owed it money. The guy jerked away from the cat, ripping his sword from the thing as he fell to his knees. His cultivation flickered like a candle in a tornado, pulsing as it tried to rebuff the relative ocean of mana flooding into him.
This would be the part where, if I actually cared about Leeko, I would unmanifest the cat and help the cultivator recover. But the guy could die and I’d just bring him back, with more experience under his belt to boot.
So, I stood by and watched as the guy rapidly lost control, foreign mana flooding through his cultivation, and from there into his base matrix itself. The cat slowly clambered up to all fours. It was a long, long way from fighting condition, but now that Leeko’s cultivation and sword weren’t actively ripping him up, his wounds began healing. He’d probably still die, but now he’d die in a minute or two.
The cat looked at Leeko and in its eyes I saw no hesitation, no remorse. It was a killer, born and bred. I began reaching for Leeko’s matrix, peremptorily preparing to remanifest the guy, when all that foreign mana embedded in said matrix moved.
Leeko’s body seemed to twist as his cultivation was shredded into a thousand pieces, the matter the matrix manipulated collapsing to the floor in a dissolving heap of skin and bone.
And thus died the first reincarnation of Leeko, Awakened of the Emerald King bloodline, last inheritor of his branch, Initiate of the Flowing Mountain style and, briefly, and Adventurer.
Over the years, decades, and centuries that followed, his name was never forgotten.