Chapter 11

Twilight Cat

“Theo, I’m home!” said a child with jet black hair, clumsily taking off his shoes.

“Haha! Not even a hello to us, what do we do with him, honey?”

It was a man in his early 40s, with a controller in his hand. He quickly paused the game he was playing to greet his son coming home.

“Axel, welcome home! How was school?” a woman in her late 30s asked the child in front of the door while stirring a pot filled with pasta sauce.

“It was interesting, I guess.” Axel responded, with doubt in his voice

“Hoho? What’s so interesting about school?” Axel’s dad said with a smug look on his face, crossing his arms and leaning against the wall.

“The um.. Math class was fun!” Axel said, sweating.

Axel’s dad put his hand in front of Axel, “Show me your notes.”

“Wh-what notes haha..” Axel gulped.

“Hello Axel’s mom, Axel’s dad speaking!” his dad shouted putting his palms open beside his mouth.

“Ah yes Axel’s dad, what is it?” Axel’s mom replied, following along with the father’s antics.

‘Just call each other by name..’ Axel sighed.

“Axel’s drawing Theo in class again.”

“Oh dear. You’re gonna run out of space for your notes” The mother responded, “By the way, dinner’s ready.”

“Ok mom, I’m gonna get Theo!” Axel rushed upstairs towards his room

“That kid’s gonna have pasta sauce on Theo again..” complained the father.

Kssssh!

Graww!

“That definitely came from upstairs right?”

“Axel!” Both of the parents dropped what they were holding and ran upstairs.

“Axel, are you oka-” Axel’s father stopped himself mid sentence. He saw a horrifying sight.

Theo, Axel’s only friend since he had a bad time socializing with people, has been dismembered by a cat.

The cat was black in color, with yellow, ferocious eyes. It had a red collar on its neck, with a carving of a raven on it.

Axel’s father checked on Axel’s condition. Axel only looked down, holding a torn apart teddy bear.

“...”

The father then quickly shooed away the cat, before it could do any more damage. He then saw where the cat was headed. It was the house of its owner, which patted him on the head once it sat on her lap. She saw the torn off arm on its mouth and smiled wickedly, patting it on the head as if she was saying, “Good job”.

“The lady next door..” mumbled Axel’s father, “What a witch.”

***

Mirrond Grasslands, a place where there are rarely any monsters due to overhunting of the chefs. Currently, there was a rare sight in that usually calm place.

“Raven.”

Grraww!!!

It was a male in his early 20s, facing a large black cat. The difference in size was spectacular. The cat was twice as big as him, contrary to what it would be in reality.

“Why are you just staring at me?”

Grraww!!!

“Alright then, I’ll attack first.”

[You have equipped the characteristic “Black Iron Body”.]

“Blood Gnaw!”

Blood Gnaw Active Skill

Bites at an enemy, deals damage proportional to 150% of a normal physical attack. 15% chance of ignoring armor on that target while also leeching some damage.

*Ravenous Arm can be used to bite an enemy.

Cooldown: 30 Seconds.

Cost: 50 Mana

Lost leaped onto the twilight cat, stretching out his arm, which deformed onto an ugly beast with iron skin. The beast then formed its mouth, gaping wide open, preparing to feast on some flesh.

Raven noticed this, obviously. The way Lost jumped up in the air was so flashy that even the most ignorant person would notice. But the thing that gave it away was the look on Lost’ face. Was it anger, sadness, or madness?

The cat quickly tried to dodge the attack, and it dashed away the opposite direction Lost was leaping towards.

Lost, knowing that his attack would miss. Flipped one hundred and eighty degrees on air, he stretched out his arm, hoping to get the cat before it was out of his range. However, the cat was faster than his flip. It quickly slipped away and went out of his range.

However, Lost was now a rare class. His arm had evolved from Hungry Arm to Ravenous Arm. Did it have a will of its own, or was it responding to its master’s wish? The deformed arm stretched out by itself, grasping the cat barely on its body. When it did, it quickly retracted itself. Lost was pulled towards the cat, and landed on its back.

‘Nice!’

The cat cried out in pain. The fangs of the beast formed in Lost’ arms sunk in the Twilight Cat’s torso, causing it to bleed.

[Usage of the two skills have formed another skill.]

Steel Fang Active Skill

Bites at an enemy, deals damage proportional to 125% of a normal physical attack. 100% chance of ignoring armor on that target. 25% chance of breaking a monster's part.

*Ravenous Arm can be used to bite an enemy.

Cooldown: 1 Second.

Cost: 75 Mana

But Lost ignored that notification. He was no longer the user named Lost, he was a human Axel. He just wanted to take revenge for his childhood friend. He pulled his arm away and said once more, “Blood Gnaw.”

He lunged his arms onto the cat’s torso. It was a grim sight of a predator gnawing away at his prey. But he wasn’t satisfied just yet. Flashbacks of his memory kept repeating in his head.

“Blood Gnaw.”

“Blood Gnaw.”

“Blood Gnaw.”

He was able to repeatedly use the skill in a short amount of time despite its cooldown, why? It was the effect of his weapon.

Ravenous Arm Rare Weapon (Growth)

A weapon that is embedded to the owner's body. It starts off as a poor quality weapon, but it has the ability to evolve into a better version of itself.

At this stage, the Hungry Arm will generate the skill [Greater Devour]. When used to attack, Hungry Arm will recover health with the same amount of 10% of the damage dealt.

When this weapon is equipped, all defeated enemies will stay as corpses until user exits the area.

Using this weapon with another skill will remove the cooldown of the skill.

The owner of this weapon can choose to make this weapon active or dormant on command. When dormant, it is not physically visible and unusable.

Attack power and speed depends of the stats of the owner. It is powerless by itself.

“Blood Gnaw.”

"Blood Gnaw."

“Blood Gna...”

“Blo...”

.

.

.

[You have ran out of mana.]

“Fuck.”

The Twilight Cat’s health was still around 90% left, and Lost had already wasted all of his mana. The cat quickly noticed that the human attacking it stopped all of the sudden, and didn’t waste any time.

Raven violently shaked its body, knocking Lost away from itself.

“Ack!”

Lost had lost his cool, so he was thrown onto the air. He tried to lessen the fall damage by equipping the Hungry Viscosity characteristic, but the cat was faster. It flew into the air, and extended its claw.

Grraww!!

The cat attacked Lost with its claw, slamming him downwards at an immense speed. It caused his health to decrease by 50%

‘Shit… from just a normal attack?’

Lost got back up. He quickly calmed himself down.

‘Should I just use the hungry viscosity to attack?’ He pondered for a bit, ‘No, I won’t be satisfied with that.’

He took a look at his inventory.

‘Hm..’

“Yeah, that’ll work! Just like the old times.”

He pulled a single item from his inventory, a health potion.

Glug, glug.

His health had recovered, and was now at 70%

“Out of mana? When I was a KnB player, there was no such thing.” Lost smiled, pointing his dagger at Raven. “And that is why, I’ll win.”

[You have equipped the characteristic ‘Hungry Viscosity’.]

[You have equipped the characteristic ‘Black Iron Body’.]

However this time, he only equipped the characteristic on certain parts of his body. Both of his legs were covered in black iron, while the rest were equipped with Hungry Viscosity. He did this instinctively, like he would know that it would work.

He then ran forward as fast as he could. He then propelled himself towards the sky using his metallic legs. The viscosity was lighter than black iron. As a result, his velocity was higher than if he did it with only one of either. He quickly transformed both of his hands into a spear-like shape, facing the sky. As his foot was about to leave the ground, he unequipped his hungry viscosity characteristic, and covered his whole body with black iron. His velocity remained the same, and black iron could pierce the air resistance better than the viscosity ever could. As a result, he was now as fast as an F1 racing car, if cars could drive upwards.

Whoosh!

He was now 5 kilometers up in the air. He quickly switched from ‘Black Iron Body’ to ‘Hungry Viscosity’, so that he would fall slower. He also made his body shaped like a parachute’s canopy.

He scouted the area below. While it was true that Mirrond Grasslands was a Grassland, true to its name, there were still trees and other structures around.

“Water?” Lost mumbled to himself

Lost saw that there was a body of water around this area.

“Hmm.. I can use that.”

Lost quickly searched for where the Twilight Cat was, and quickly skydived with the “Black Iron Body” characteristic.

“Inventory!”

He pulled out a dagger from his inventory.

Grraww!

The Twilight Cat noticed the rumbling sound of the wind, as well as

The shadow that was going smaller and smaller. It looked up, and saw a man with a dagger with evil intent trying to kill it. It opened its mouth and generated a ball of dark magic.

Grraww!!!

The cat shot its magic upwards

The sphere was around 2 meters in size, and was headed towards Lost. It looked like a purple sun. But lost didn’t hesitate, or even tried to dodge. No, instead, he pointed his dagger towards that magic ball.

[You have reflected the attack!]

It was an effect of his item.

Mermaid Dagger +4 Epic Weapon

Melee Dagger

Damage 69-130

Speed 1.80

A dagger made with mermaid's scales and tears. It is stronger in water. Merpeople might become enraged upon seeing this weapon.

Effects:

+21 Agility

+30% Critical

Durability 104/105

Random chance of reflecting magical damage.

When underwater, user's damage will be doubled.

50% chance of mermaids to instill "Rage" on Mermaids and Mermen.

‘Thank god I stole this!’ he thought to himself, with no signs of remorse whatsoever.

Grraww!?

The cat was hit by its own magic, and suffered heavy damage.

[The Twilight Cat, Raven is Enraged!]

‘Well that makes this a lot easier.’

“Come here, you little shit!” He provoked the cat even more.

The enraged cat took the bait and chased Lost around. Although Lost had a better mental state, the cat was faster and stronger. When Lost had taken a step, the cat would’ve taken one step and traveled ten times the distance.

As a result, the cat managed to catch up with Lost. But the twilight cat was enraged, and so its attack patterns were easy to read.

Scrawsh!

Swoosh!

Lost easily evaded the cat’s attacks, and continued to sprint away. This repeated for about eleven times, and Lost had finally reached towards his destination.

The cat was flustered. How was this human avoiding its attacks? Wasn’t he weak? His barrage of attacks at the start didn’t even deal a quarter of its health, so how is he doing this? The cat wanted to kill the human even more. He put every bit of its strength and dashed towards the human.

It was late afternoon, heading towards the evening. Lost knew that the name of monsters in Freedom Fantasy wasn’t just for decoration. The twilight in ‘Twilight Cat, Raven’ definitely meant something will happen at twilight. Lost couldn’t waste any more time.

As the cat was about to attack Lost..

[You have equipped the characteristic ‘Hungry Viscosity’.]

Lost turned into a blob and made himself flat on the ground. He opened his inventory and consumed a low mana potion.

The cat jumped over Lost, and Lost couldn’t miss this chance.

After that incident with Theo, he looked up the weakness of cats. It was their belly. Since Freedom Fantasy was a game that was pushing the bounds of reality, surely the designers put that in mind when making monsters.

[You have equipped the characteristic ‘Black Iron Body’.]

Raven’s belly was right above him.

“Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”

-Sun Tzu

“Speed Burst.”

Lost jumped and pushed the cat’s body towards the air.

Both Lost and Raven were now in mid-air. Lost regained his humanoid form, and grabbed the twilight cat like a wrestler. He directed their fall towards the body of water nearby.

Splash!

They had both fallen into the water. Thankfully, it was deep. Noticing the cat’s silence, Lost concluded that the cat had little experience being in water.

Lost took out the mermaid dagger, and started attacking.

[Your damage had been doubled!]

[You have dealt 210 damage!]

[Critical! You have dealt 310 damage!]

[You have dealt 212 damage!]

[You have dealt 195 damage!]

[You have dealt 202 dam..]

[You have dea...]

.

.

.

Raven’s health was at around 10%, and his body started to glow purple.

‘Huh? I need to finish it fast!’

[You have dealt 203 damage]

[Critical! You have dealt 305 damage!]

[You have dealt 209 damage!]

[You have dealt 198 damage!]

‘Huh!?’ Lost was startled.

With each attack, his health didn’t go down, rather it went up.

“Is he healing?”

Not knowing what to do, Lost just stood at the bottom of the water, trying to analyze the situation. But the cat didn’t wait, the cat attacked Lost with its claws underwater, causing him to bleed.

[You are bleeding.]

[You have lost 1 health point.]

[You have lost 1 health point.]

[You have lost 1 health...]

‘I need to go back up!’

“Speed Burst.”

Lost jumped from the bottom of the water upwards, hoping to get to land as fast as he could. The cat misunderstood, and thought that the human was trying to run away from him. So he did the same as the human. The only difference is that the cat was faster.

Grraww!!

Thwack!!

The Twilight Cat headbutted Lost, which damaged him. They were now both in mid-air, just like before. Lost looked to the side and saw two users, a male and a female. The female one was dressed like a swordsman, and was charging up a skill.

Lost stretched his arm in a hurry, and shouted. “No don’t-” But it was too late. The female swordsman swung her sword, and unleashed a fire slash.

“...”

Lost suddenly went silent, and he realized something.

‘Ah, it’s twilight right now.’

The twilight cat’s HP was now back at 90%.

“Fuck.”