Level Up!

Cat class has reached level 8!

Stat points automatically assigned:

INT +0.5

Intelligence threshold reached.

Charisma requirement already exceeded.

Congratulations, you have achieved basic sapience!

Unlocking additional system function.

Enabling interface translation.

Welcome to the world of Atlas!

You can summon your stat menu at will to assign your leveling gains.

Enjoy the fruits of your labor and continue to chart your own unique path through life!

Name:

Chairman Meow

Age:

6

Class:

Cat

Level:

8

Hit Points (HP) / Max HP

39/39

Mana (MP) / Max MP

409/416

Stamina (SP) / Max SP / Peak SP

134/160/164

Status

Healthy

Strength (STR)

52

Intelligence (INT)

30

Dexterity (DEX)

187

Perception (PER)

164

Constitution (CON)

87

Charisma (CHA)

118.5

5.5 Ability Points available.

0 Skill points available.

Assign points automatically.

View skills

Fang flattened his ears and shrank back as the boxes popped up in front of his face. The familiar cowardly box was there, but it had brought two bigger friends along with one very big friend. This could be a difficult fight if the bigger boxes got angry like the boar and could move as fast as their kin. He raised a paw, tense and alert as he waited to see how things would play out. Before he could make the first move, he was startled by a trickle of foreign information flowing into his mind, followed by a flood of understanding which nearly overwhelmed his (inestimably perfect) kitty brain.

As he processed the information in front of him, he realized the blue boxes were giving him information. Any time he looked at the white squiggles thoughts popped into his head, along with feelings, sensations, and connected concepts he could barely make sense of. He shut his eyes and the flow of information mercifully stopped. After a moment spent collecting himself, Fang cracked an eye open and focused on taking in the boxes one by one. He stared intently at the most familiar set of squiggles, the set on the cowardly box. After a while he was able to make sense of the complex impressions it was giving him. It was saying he had become better, and it was praising him for improving. It also said he was a bit smarter. Fang liked the emotion of the thoughts, it was the right tone for addressing one as magnificent as him. He did not like the box saying he had become better though. That meant he had not been as good before, when Fang clearly knew that he was and always had been the pinnacle of perfection. Fang dismissed the lying box with a flick of his claws and turned to the next one that had popped up.

This one hurt Fang's head. Even after a full minute of staring at it, the concepts of sapience, a system, and language (let alone translation) were all too far outside his realm of comprehension for him to fathom, even with the system's help. Fang scared off the painful box by teaching it the might of his claws, before moving on to the last reasonably sized box.

Fang liked this box. It was friendly and supportive, and it encouraged him to be happy and do whatever he wanted. A wise box indeed. It also told him he could make the big blue box appear and disappear when he pleased. He tried, and as he did, he realized he had something that felt like an extra paw. It had no form or location, but he could flex and wiggle it around, and its claws were extended. He tried retracting its claws, and the large blue box disappeared. He extended them and it appeared. Fang definitely liked this extra friendly box. He purred and leaned forward to rub his face on the box, wanting to mark it as his, but he felt nothing, and when he opened his eyes the friendly box was gone, leaving only the large, multi-segmented box.

Fang stared at the large blue box with its different parts, and a whole bunch of numbers. Fang dismissed it and went about his daily routine. He'd already had quite enough thinking for one day. He hunted some tasty rodents for the rest of the evening. He had gotten quite good at spotting the special ones that swam through the earth. He knew their favorite sunning spots, knew what they ate, knew what sorts of sounds scared them off. He had caught so many over the last few days that they were getting harder to find. In fact, all the prey in his clearing was becoming sparser. Even magical rodents couldn't breed fast enough to outpace a bored cat.

During the night he left the clearing to hunt some more. As he left the clearing it occurred to him that he should really go back and check out that big box. It seemed important, and putting it off wouldn't solve anything. Fang remembered the headache he got dealing with that second box though and had no desire to risk that again just yet. It felt like trouble and more importantly, he didn't want to. He snuck off into the forest and lost himself in the mindless joy of pouncing from shadows. He even encountered a bit of new prey, a bat that was almost as large as him, with needle-sharp teeth.

He saw it flying by below his branch and immediately pounced on it from a tree. He crashed through the lower branches and into the ground on top of it, the thud of his landing accompanied by the tell-tale snap of a broken wing. But before he could finish the creature off, it turned and bit the leg holding it down. Sharp fangs punctured the skin of his left foreleg and Fang yowled in pain, startling a few sleeping birds into flight. The bat released him and he jumped back, licking his wound.

The bat tried to fly off, but it couldn't control its broken wing properly and simply crashed back into the ground each time. After the third or fourth attempt, it started squeaking pitifully and limping along the ground. Fang followed at a safe distance, wary of getting bitten again. He stepped in a few times and smacked the bat away from likely hiding places with quick claw swipes, but for the most part, he stayed back, licked his wound, and watched. Eventually, the bat's movements slowed, and before long it just lay on the ground squeaking. Fang finally moved in, putting the creature out of its misery with a quick bite to the back of the neck. He nibbled at his prey, but his heart wasn't in it. The only sunlight in it was a faint tinge in its blood, and his leg was still trickling blood despite his licks. He left the corpse on the ground and limped back to his clearing for a good sulk.

As he came out of the treeline he thought about how safe it was in his little domain. He might be better off staying here for a while. He strode up to his sunning spot and sat, continuing to lick his wound. It had finally started to scab over, though it still slowly oozed. He spent the rest of the night and most of the morning there tending to his wound. Once the sun came up enough to bathe part of the dais in sunlight, Fang walked over with his marble and settled down to nap. His marble had gotten much smaller over the course of the week. Where before it was a lustrous sphere the size of his eye, now it was barely the size of one of his beans and had gone from its blood-red hue to a greyish pink. It still gave off some warm sunlight though, so Fang curled up with it and slept his pain away.

When Fang woke his leg felt better. It was no longer bleeding, and it only twinged a little when he stretched. He felt refreshed, and after a short session of self-grooming, he decided to confront his lurking enemy: the big blue box. He flexed the mental muscle that controlled it and summoned his status.

Name:

Chairman Meow

Age:

6

Class:

Cat

Level:

8

Hit Points (HP) / Max HP

34/39

Mana (MP) / Max MP

423/423

Stamina (SP) / Max SP / Peak SP

127/127/164

Status

Healthy

Strength (STR)

52

Intelligence (INT)

30

Dexterity (DEX)

187

Perception (PER)

164

Constitution (CON)

87

Charisma (CHA)

118.5

5.5 Ability Points available.

0 Skill points available.

Assign points automatically.

View skills

Fang started at the top, maintaining the laser focus usually reserved for prey to keep himself from being overwhelmed. Name. He knew what that was, his name was Fang. The box disagreed. He swiped his claws at the box and it vanished. The nerve of the thing, calling him by the hated name without an offering of food or scritches. Fang mentally added the box to his shit list, just below the big flashy bastard, and above the small sunshine bird. Fang stormed off into the field in a huff, searching for something to kill.

A while later, Fang returned to the dais, his bloodlust sated, and reopened the menu, ready to take another stab at it. He aggressively ignored the existence of the first two fields in the way only a cat can, and he examined the third and fourth. Age, 6. Something about the weather changing a lot. Fang didn't see the point of these bits. Next up, class, cat. A class was a thing that he was, and he was definitely a cat. An odd thing for a box to say, but not wrong. Next was level. It represented how good he was overall, and it was 8. 8 was more than 2, which was good. Fang saw bigger numbers below though, so he stared suspiciously, uncertain whether the box was implying he wasn't good enough. He moved on though; it wasn't enough for the box to overtake the big flashy bastard. Health was simple enough. He was slightly hurt, but he was a sturdy cat. It was bigger than 2, so he was happy. Mana translated to the feeling of sunlight, and Fang was happy to note it was his highest number. That was good, he liked sunlight.

Stamina was confusing. He had a lot, much more than 2, but he also could have the same amount. But he also could have an even larger amount, for uncertain reasons. He got a sense of laziness, his injury, lack of sleep… Fang gave up on understanding it. It was a big number. Status was even more confusing. He was healthy, he knew that, but a stampede of all the alternate states it could take ran through his head whenever he looked at it. The only one that made any sense to Fang was the idea of bleeding as he had with the bat. He quickly moved on to avoid a headache.

Strength gave him images of cutting deep with his claws, wrestling beasts to the ground, sprinting like the wind, and leaping vast distances. Dexterity was graceful movements, agile dodges, precise jumps, and quick, accurate claw swipes. Constitution was something about resisting getting hurt, but that was ridiculous, Fang didn't get hurt. His leg was perfectly fine. Perception seemed useless. The flashes were about seeing in the dark and through walls, or picking out a trail by scent, but Fang could already see well, and he had enough trouble catching the amount of prey he already saw. Seeing more prey would just be more work.

The rest were harder to understand. Intelligence made him able to understand more numbers. He didn't really know what higher numbers were, but more intelligence might help him figure it out. Similarly, the flashes he got hinted at a lot of concepts he couldn't understand, except that intelligence would help him understand. It was by far the most frustrating stat to look at. The things seemed interesting, but he quickly moved on to avoid a headache. Charisma was about making others do what he wanted. Fang was well versed in coercing his humans to serve him, but he had always had trouble getting his points across. It also had to do with determination and force of personality. Fang thought his personality was pretty normal, but being so strong-headed that the universe bent to his will was definitely appealing. Fang liked Charisma.

Lastly, he had his points. Skill points were a strange concept, but they had something to do with his blinking skill, which he liked. However, he had zero of them, which was a strange concept. It was less than one, but then wouldn't he just not have skill points? How could he have zero? Fang put it out of his mind and looked over to stat points. Those would make his stats better. The number made his head hurt. It was five, which was a bit bigger than two, but it was also a half, which was less than one 0 zandlevenstraat. It was a bigger than two and a less than two, which didn't make any sense! The number for Charisma was the same way, and he did not like it! These were important numbers and he couldn't understand them! He wanted them to change to something he could understand.

Suddenly, something twitched in his mental limb, and his stat points changed to 5, while his charisma changed to 119. He didn't know what those numbers were, but they didn't hurt his head nearly as much, so he was happy. At the same time, a new blue box popped up.

Confirm changes?

Yes

No

It was asking if he liked the changes, and he most certainly did. He stared at the box for a minute. It was a fine box, he didn't feel the need to scare it away. But he also didn't know what to do with it. Yes was clearly more right than No, but he didn't know what to do with that information.

His strange new limb seemed to have something to do with the boxes, so he tried to pick yes with it the same way he would lift a paw, by just doing it. The box disappeared, and his stats stayed the same, so Fang figured he must have done something right. Now for the rest of his points. However many 5 was. Something had happened with them and charisma, but Fang still had no idea how it worked. He liked charisma the most, so he twitched the limb the same way he had before, and both his charisma and available points changed again with the same blue box popping up, asking him to confirm.

Fang picked no. It wanted him to pick yes, so he didn't. The box disappeared and his stats went back to normal. He put a point back into charisma, then refused again when the box appeared. He gleefully repeated the process several times. Now he had not just one blue box at his beck and call, but two! Fang had no thoughts about how to get a third, primarily because he was still unaware of the concept. He put a point into charisma again, but this time he tired of the cycle and selected yes. Now he had 4 available points. That was still more than two, but a thought occurred to him. What if he spent two at once? If 4 was big this could be a lot of work, and doing two at once could make it go faster. Sure there was the "Assign points automatically" button, but that just made decisions for him. Nobody made decisions for Fang but Fang!

Fang flexed his mental muscle a bit harder and put two points in charisma. He was about to hit yes when a thought occurred to him. With his blink, two smaller things were better than one big one. What if it was the same way with stats? Fang canceled the two points and thought real hard, focusing on two points and two stats at the same time as he finessed his phantom limb. A point each went into intelligence and charisma, and better yet, his remaining points were 2! He knew that one! He quickly selected yes before assigning his last two points. He decided more small things were still better, so he put them in strength and dexterity.

Name:

Chairman Meow

Age:

6

Class:

Cat

Level:

8

Hit Points (HP) / Max HP

34/39

Mana (MP) / Max MP

423/423

Stamina (SP) / Max SP / Peak SP

127/127/164

Status

Healthy

Strength (STR)

53

Intelligence (INT)

31

Dexterity (DEX)

188

Perception (PER)

164

Constitution (CON)

87

Charisma (CHA)

121

0 Ability Points available.

0 Skill points available.

Assign points automatically.

View skills

The problem was… Now he had two zeroes! His blue minion had only become more difficult to understand! Fang decided he'd had enough of these blue boxes for a good while, and he slunk off to the middle of the dais to continue his rest in his favorite spot.

The sun would wash all his problems away.