The character’s Luck modifier influences your chance of hitting with any long-range weaponry, your chance of being wounded when falling or taking damage, your winnings in gambling games and your chance of dealing critical damage to a foe. Luck does not influence your chance to find trophies, but does increase your chance of a more valuable find.
Your current Luck means a penalty of -3 to all checks for parrying, dodging, maintaining balance, resisting injury and dealing critical damage. It also increases your chance of random negative events.
I had no interest in ranged weaponry or gambling games in the body of a kitten. These paws would hold a bow or rifle about as badly as a deck of cards. But that minus three penalty to all Agility checks and the ‘increased chance of negative events’ definitely bothered me. I tried to take a point from Agility and put it into Luck. The penalty to all the checks went down to minus two, but the special Daredevil attribute disappeared too. Although that didn’t seem to matter a great deal; my kitten couldn’t climb trees or jump far for another month on account of its broken leg. In a whole month of gameplay with such a terrible penalty to Luck, I suspected my kitten would get a bunch of new injuries, so Daredevil wouldn’t have worked anyway.
Another point would reduce the penalty to all checks down to minus one, but at the same I also lost the Hardy Brute ability, which gave my character ten-percent resistance against cold, heat and other extreme conditions. Probably a bad idea. That resistance could come in handy.
I reset the redistributed point and continued to mess around with my character stats, not yet confirming the changes, just playing around with the figures. Increasing or lowering physique increased and lowered total Health and Stamina. That was pretty predictable.
But then…
ATTENTION! Your character description has changed!
You are now: Kitten. Male. Sergeant’s pet
What happened?! I had no idea what was going on. Had my in-game master given his pet to someone? Or… here I laughed with the predatory grin of a Cheshire cat, because I guessed just what was going on. Whoever was playing as my human body had gotten rid of his lame double-barreled surname and changed his game nick to Sergeant. I would have done just the same.
Hmm… What was it the stranger in the bar said? “Two different characters can lead to the most interesting outcomes” and “Don’t forget to bring the kitten.” Incidentally, I’d figured out why I had to take the kitten with me. The little furball’s body had become my prison! And, as strange as it sounds, it was me playing the human master as well!
I tried to close the stat window to confirm that Sergeant was me. But…
ATTENTION! You are a pet and dependent on your owner. You cannot enter the game world until your owner is in it.
Damn! When would I be allowed to join the game? I went back to my character stats. This time I experimented with Intellect. Reducing Intellect by one, or even by two points, seemed to have no effect. Reducing it by three down to fifteen removed the note about the stat being high for the cat species, and the descriptions on all the stats and skills got simpler. What if I did the opposite and increased Intellect even more?
Intellect at nineteen. No visible changes except that my Stamina points dropped a little (probably because of the change in Agility from where I’d taken the point). Intellect at twenty. Even fewer Stamina points, but…
There we go! Under the kitten’s multicolored bars showing health, fatigue and hunger, another appeared, blue this time! A hint floated up to tell me that this was my mana bar. I had just three Magic Points. Not a lot. Very little, even. But this was just the start!
At the same time, another line about a special characteristic appeared in my character sheet:
Self-Taught Mage * Ability available to creatures with Intellect at 20 or above
Ability to use Magic Points to cast spells learned in your chosen sphere of magic.
ATTENTION! The character must have the corresponding skill
There it was — another weapon for my kitten apart from weak claws and teeth! Feeling like I was on the right track, I read about the possible spheres of magic my kitten could learn.
Illusion Magic. Healing Magic. Curse Magic. Transformation Magic. Elemental Magic.
Two more sections (Summon Magic and Death Magic) were inactive for me for some reason. I didn’t know why exactly. Maybe this world had some kind of balance limitations and didn’t invite cute and apparently harmless kittens to summon terrible demons or sow death and destruction. No problem. The five types of magic available should be more than enough. Although… Damn it!
Each section of magic required the character to have a corresponding skill. But those skills were incompatible with each other! I could choose only one of the five! Damn, not fair!
I wanted it all. To launch fireballs at enemies, to heal myself and my friends, to summon treacherous illusions, to transform from a harmless kitten into something big and dangerous. After spending a long time studying the spells on offer, I settled on Curse Magic.
Weaken Enemy. Slow Enemy. Infect Enemy.
These spells were available right away at level 1, although using the last required a whole five Magic Points, and I only had three. Nonetheless, I made my choice:
I lowered my Agility from 20 to 18 to free up two stat points. Good-bye useful Daredevil ability, I’d have to do without it. Anyway, thanks to the broken leg, the kitten’s Agility would be just 16 for now. I got another stat point by lowering Perception to 17 (yes, I lost 5% range on my hearing, vision and sense of smell, but that was no disaster). The main thing was that I had three stat points to spend.
First of all, I raised Intellect from 18 to 20! There’s the magic bar! Welcome, furball mage, to a new world! And finally, I used the last stat point to raise Luck from minus 3 to minus 2, to make it a little easier for my kitten to survive to be the terror of my enemies!
Level one Curse Magic skill obtained.
You can choose a second sphere of magic at character level 10.
2 of 6 possible character skills at level 1 chosen.
Potential class removed: Pussycat.
Potential class added: Hexxer.
I read the lines of text and purred happily — the other sections of magic weren’t closed to my kitten after all. I just had to wait for level ten. Well, this was a start. Next I wanted to learn more about useful skills for my kitten, but at that very moment, I was dragged into the new world! Finally!
ATTENTION! This is a challenging and dangerous world! Any player who manages to survive their first days in the new world will get +2 character stat points!
Damn, nice bonus! I’d have to try and get it. Only… Where was I?! Winter… Night… A snowy forest… Snowdrifts so big that my kitten sank right into them up to his head. Wait. Voices? Yes! People were talking somewhere ahead! I galloped toward the voices, limping along and falling into the loose snow. And almost reached them, but then…
The unkempt thug glanced around furtively, didn’t see the tiny kitten. He pulled his arm back and brought down a rock with all his strength on the head of the young man sitting nearby. He killed him! I froze in shock.
ATTENTION! Your master Sergeant has died. Revival will be available in fifteen minutes. Would you like to move to your master’s respawn point?
Chapter 5 [Kitten]
First Meeting
YES, I WANTED to go to the respawn point. Losing my human body in this huge, unexplored world was all I needed! I’d need that body, because I planned to one day find a way to return my human form, and so I had to keep close to Sergeant. Although to be honest, I was pretty disappointed in my master; how could he trust so blindly, turn his back on that dangerous thug that killed him?
A blink of an eye, and the view around me changed. Still night, but the forest gave way to dark cliffs and snow-covered boulders. And an icy wind that cut through to my bones. My fur bristled instantly. For the first time, I felt glad to have my new form — my thick ginger fur protected my kitten’s
body well against the cold. A message flashed by, telling me that the Soundless Step ability had activated. Right — it was nighttime, the perfect time for cats.
In five leaps, already getting the hang of not relying too much on my injured leg, I climbed the nearest big boulder and looked around. Mountains. Not a single tree or bush. Just rocks and snow for as far as I could see. Was I supposed to sit in one spot for a whole fifteen minutes and wait for my human to revive?
I raised my face. Shame the sky was too cloudy to make out the stars. Otherwise I could have at least gotten my bearings, or checked for familiar constellations in the sky. My cat’s eyes told me even through the cloud cover that there was no moon in the sky. Was it just a new moon today, or was there just no moon in this new world? I examined the mountain slope, trying to figure out where I should go. Not further up the slope; the wind would be even more cold and piercing. Even my fur wouldn’t save me.
Wait! Did I imagine it, or did I see something in the distance between the rocks? Something dark and fast. All I saw was a quick, blurry movement. Probably imagined it. Nonetheless, I stood stock still and stared into the darkness, pricked up my ears, tried to catch a sound. And catch one I did; the sound of a rolling stone. A couple of seconds later, I saw yellow eyes flash for an instant against black rock. Someone was moving in the night! Some creature! And it looks like it noticed me!
I don’t know how I didn’t piss myself in fear… Far more scary to me than the creature itself was the fact that I lost track of it instantly, and now my dangerous neighbor could be anywhere!
Choose the learnable skill Eagle Eye?
Choose the learnable skill Radar Ear?
Choose the learnable skill Sharp Nose?
I skimmed the info on these skills. The first one, as was easy to surmise, improved vision range and chance to detect creatures and hidden items. The second increased hearing range and chance of detecting living creatures. The third, in turn, improved sense of smell and chance of detecting creatures. If I was playing the role of an ordinary predatory cat, I should probably take all three. But did the kitten mage I hoped to turn my character into need all these skills? Wouldn’t I need skills more useful for survival?
Although it certainly wouldn’t hurt to take one of the three options on offer. My 17 Perception was far from a guarantee of detecting a dangerous enemy early enough, and my chances of escaping danger were pitiful with my maimed leg. What to improve? Vision, hearing or scent? I settled on hearing — detecting an enemy in total darkness or behind an obstacle might come in handy and save my life more than once.
Level one Radar Ear skill learned.
3 of 6 possible character skills at level 1 chosen.
Then my heart nearly leaped out of my chest in fear; a mere two feet from me, I saw a giant toothy animal carefully inspecting me and sniffing me! I shouted in shock and fear. Or rather, squealed pathetically. But then I realized that the creature before me was a cougar — a big cat. That meant it was no danger at all to my kitten until I hit level 10.
Chimeric Cougar Female. Level 78.
The cougar had strange dark fur. It was somehow flowing, not quite fur at all in the usual sense. Like a veil of darkness covering the creature. It shifted, hurt the eyes to look at. Made me want to turn away. Maybe it was some kind of magic that made the victim want to look away.
Nonetheless, I overcame myself and looked at my nighttime visitor, this time unafraid. I even looked into its mouth, impressed by the rows of sharp teeth, when it opened its jaws. Then the Chimeric Cougar leaned down and carefully took me by the scruff of my neck with its teeth. It wasn’t painful, just a little offensive that the big cat felt no need at all to ask permission. Fifty leaps later into the darkness, then a tight crawl, and the Chimeric Cougar opened its terrible maw, carefully placing me into a shallow hole covered in dry grass between three huge boulders, protecting the shelter from snow and wind.
And there was another creature in the den!
Chimeric Cougar Cub. Female. Level 1.
A dark, furry creature twice my size, blind and absolutely helpless. When the mother appeared, the kitten whined pathetically and crawled over to her.
Before I could look around in this new place, the mother flopped down nearby and let her cub feed. Then she nudged me insistently with her snout toward the nipples on her belly. I dug all four of my paws in. No, you don’t have to feed me milk! I’m already grown! The cougar seemed to get the message, rising and disappearing into the night. The blind cub span its head, trying to figure out where its milk went.
But just a minute later, the caring mother returned, bringing a strangled creature covered in fur and needles — either a spiny rat or a little hedgehog long overdue for a barber’s visit. This time I couldn’t avoid the force-feeding; the too-caring mother got angry and growled fearsomely at me when I turned my nose up at the bloody corpse. She even gave me a painful nip! Fine, so be it! I fought off my disgust and sank my teeth into the hot, bloody meat.
Uhm… It actually tasted pretty good! Apparently my tastes had changed significantly. I would never have eaten raw meat as a human. But it sure went down a treat as a kitten! Purring in pleasure, I tore the still-hot flesh and lapped up drops of blood. Moreover, I noticed that with each bite I swallowed, my level progress bar increased slightly. Apparently I was doing the right thing and the game algorithms approved of my behavior. And on top of that…
Temporary effect gained: +25 resistance to cold.
Duration: 6 hours.
Now that was sweet! After I gorged myself on fresh meat, I could handle any frost. But… what was that? I pricked up my ears and heard human voices. And the crunching of snow. There were two, no, three people passing by. The Chimeric Cougar raised her snout and listened too.
Radar Ear skill increased to level two!
“… who the [censored ] cares that those two didn’t want to come voluntarily? Our orders were to take them all. They went to the pass, so we’ll grab them on the descent!”
“Hell yeah. I want that young guy’s combat boots and nice jacket. I call dibs!”
“As if AXE will let you take two valuable items at once! One, maybe, and that only if we catch both the runaways.”
“Well, then I’ll take the boots. These shitkickers of mine are falling apart. I’ve already had to sew the [censored ] soles back on!”
“Shut up, both of you! Keep shouting and they’ll hear us a mile off. The zone border is very close now. There might be predators around. And it’s still night. We don’t want to run into a beast .
Radar Ear skill increased to level three!
Your character is now level two!
Reward: three skill points and one mutation point.
Wow, level two! As soon as I got a spare minute, I’d need to check my kitten’s altered stats and distribute the new points. Now wasn’t the time. The voices and footsteps drifted away. Soon I could no longer hear them.
I didn’t know who AXE was, or which two runaways they were talking about. Although, thinking about it… combat boots, nice jacket, young guy… Were they talking about me? I mean — about Sergeant? Then the runaways must have been Sergeant and his killer. After all, the pursuers didn’t know that the thug had killed my master. But then who were those three?
The barely visible shadow that was the Chimeric Cougar waited thirty seconds and then slipped out of the lair. The cruel gleam in her eyes told me that the trio of men was not fated to reach the descent from the mountain pass today. They’d come far too close to her lair; they might notice the tracks, and so a careful mother couldn’t leave them alive.
As for me, I took advantage of the obsessive nanny’s absence to climb out of the hole and run back as fast as I could. Thanks to the Chimeric Cougar’s tracks, it was easy to find my way. But what took a big cat fifty leaps to travel took my little kitten a whole five minutes.
Just as I hauled myself over the top of the boulder I’d recently used to view the area, suddenly, a few paces from me, rig
ht out of thin air, appeared… me. Only in human form. He groaned in pain. I mean, I did… Damn, I looked so big from a cat’s perspective!
“Finally! I hope you’re smart enough to look at the tracks in the snow here and not walk toward the dangerous predator?” I shouted at the man, and the young men turned at my whine.
He looked at me in surprise, then smiled, leaned down and picked the kitten up.
“There you are, little dumbass! I thought I’d left you back in the old world. Wow, look at you, level two already! Nice to be a kitten — nothing to worry about, no problems, just sit and meow. Whereas I have to rack my brains to figure out where I am and how to get my ass back to civilization. Well, might as well go together.” Sergeant lifted me up onto his shoulder and I dug my claws into his jacket. “Just the two of us!”
I wasn’t sure the human had seen the panther’s tracks and was taking the right measures to avoid meeting the sharp-clawed beast. However, Sergeant did go in the other direction — perpendicular to the trail of tracks. He began to climb higher and higher up the slope. The wind up there got ever colder and more piercing, and visibility fell sharply when we reached the cloud level. But my master, shivering and rubbing his hands, stubbornly continued to climb still higher.
“Where are you going, idiot? You’ll freeze!” I tried to talk some sense into the Sergeant, but the human interpreted my meowing in his own way.
He took my furry form from his shoulder and carefully put me inside his jacket, protecting me from the cold. At the same time, apparently feeling the need to talk, he spoke to me:
“You cold, kiddo? I know, me too. Don’t worry, it’ll be over soon. We’re going the right way, to the east. AXE told us newcomers that the mountain pass is in the east. I’m following the compass, so we won’t get off track!”
Now I understood the human’s behavior, at first glance so strange and illogical. Sergeant, it seems, was walking strictly in one direction, hoping to hit the eastern mountain pass. And with a compass, he could stay on the right track. But all the same, I thought for a moment and found at least three errors in my master’s logic.
A Cat and His Human (League of Losers Book #1): LitRPG Series Page 5
