After my brief anger at having my nap interrupted began to fade, I had second thoughts about heading off to kill the kobolds. For one thing, I wasn’t confident that I could win against four kobolds who were all probably on high alert. Certainly any one kobold was no threat, but four? I had concerns.

I was somewhat tempted to simply leave and find somewhere a little more quiet to nap. It felt like a lot of work to go kill some kobolds just so I could rest comfortably when I could just pick a really tall mushroom and rest up beyond their reach. Stupid doggos couldn’t cimb trees, or mushrooms, in this case.

But could kobolds? I didn’t know. I also didn’t know if kobolds had the tracking skill. It seemed like most skills had both a passive bonus and an active use. I doubted I could stay hidden forever if kobolds could use magic tracking skills to find me.

It was that uncertainty that finally convinced me to do something about the kobolds. I mean, I did hate doggos, but I wasn’t going to put in the work to get rid of them if I could safely ignore them. These kobolds didn’t seem safe to ignore. What if they went and found more friends and organized a big search party? Now that they knew what I looked like, they might decide to hunt for me. This is why it was best not to leave witnesses, I realized. No, I would deal with the kobolds at hand, so I could nap more safely.

I yawned again, and pondered how to go about it. I noticed a ugly black beetle-like bug, as large as both my paws together, had shown up to drink the spilled blood of Krok. Ah, they must be carnivorous or scavengers. Because of course they were. Flesh eating, blood drinking, poisonous bugs; perfectly normal. I pounced on the large beetle, activating my skill mainly as a way to avoid getting gross bug juice on my recently cleaned paws.

*Splat!*

I then spent another 10 mana reanimating the bug, I now had a second, larger cat toy.

Well, now I was down to only 40 mana, so I decided to hop back up on the boulder and relax for a few minutes with my eyes half closed. It wasn’t a deep sleep, but an alley cat has to learn how to occasionally catnap with one eye open. I could be a very light sleeper when I wanted to be.

You successfully rest while maintaining a state of mindfulness. You focus on recovery while maintaining awareness of your surroundings. Meditation skill (novice) awarded. Meditation skill (novice) - Increases mana regen rate by 25% while in use, must be used while stationary and awake, can be used while being carried or transported, prevents accidental loss of awareness due to falling asleep.

Was I meditating now? I didn’t feel like just catnapping should count, but who was I to argue with the system? The skill mostly gave me a boost to mana regeneration, so I couldn’t really complain. Three minutes later my mana was back to full, just in time to catch a hint of movement.

Another largish bug drawn by the smell of blood.

*Splat!*

A second cat toy flattened then fixed via the magic of reanimation. Then it was back to my rock to wait a while longer, to “meditate” my mana back while watching alertly for any hint of movement or or noise.

In this way, I spent about twenty minutes gathering a squad of cat toys. I almost accidentally killed my first cat toy again when it finally showed up, but I could somehow feel it in my head which beetles were mine. There was some sort of passive mental link that let me be aware of them, vaguely, at all times. I now had five of them. One for each surviving kobold, and a spare if necessary. I had the vague sense that 5 large (by Earth standards) beetles was my current limit on how many I could control at once. The ability felt strained somehow, and I got the impression that my limit was actually based on the total weight of undead bugs, about 1.5 pounds, not the number of bugs.

I briefly considered waiting around to see if I could get more beetles, but I was extremely sleepy and that made me grumpy. No, the sooner I dealt with the kobolds, the sooner I could take a proper nap. Also, I would rather not waste an ability point in Reanimate Insect if I didn’t have to. I did decide to put an ability point in Insect Bomb, just in case, evolving it to “apprentice”. Better safe than sorry, I thought to myself.

But, did I really have to get up now and go fight the kobolds? I’d been lying on my boulder for long enough that my body heat had finally warmed it a bit, and I was feeling pretty comfy. I yawned and let my eyelids droop most of the way as I lay there languidly.

I mentally instructed my beetle bombs. I was satisfied to learn that the undead beetles were smart enough to understand my intent. Or maybe it was the system, acting as a control interface that turned my general instructions into more specific commands. Either way, the four beetles left on their mission and I waited. Some time later I got notifications:

You have spent 10 mana, Insect Bomb ability (apprentice) has been activated. Beetle 2 has exploded! 35 damage dealt to kobold (Brog), Poison cloud inflicts 2 hp per minute for 30 minutes poison debuff on kobold (Brog). You have spent 10 mana, Insect Bomb ability (apprentice) has been activated. Beetle 3 has exploded! 37 damage dealt to kobold (Tuko). Poison cloud inflicts 2 hp per minute for 30 minutes poison debuff on kobold (Tuko). You have spent 10 mana, Insect Bomb ability (apprentice) has been activated. Beetle 4 has exploded! 32 damage dealt to kobold (Tonk), 23 damage dealt to kobold (Tuko). Poison cloud inflicts 2 hp per minute for 30 minutes poison debuff on kobold (Tonk). Poison cloud could not inflict poison debuff on kobold (Tuko), reason: kobold (Tuko) already poisoned. You have spent 10 mana, Insect Bomb ability (apprentice) has been activated. Beetle 5 has exploded! 36 damage dealt to kobold (Nuug), 12 damage dealt to cat tribal (Katrina), poison cloud inflicts 2 hp per minute for 30 minutes poison debuff on kobold (Nuug) and cat tribal (Katrina)

Ah, looks like I got the catwoman in the blast too. Oh well, that didn’t look like it was enough to kill any of them, as I hadn’t received any exp notifications. I yawned again. I’m sure this Katrina wouldn’t die with just that much damage. Even if she was only level 1 with constitution 8, she had to have at least 80 hp. The kobold known as Tuko took two separate explosions for some reason, perhaps he had been standing too close to Tonk after the first explosion? If Tuko was still alive after taking 60 total damage, it probably meant none of the other kobolds would die soon.

I told the last cat toy beetle. I figured it was worth giving up my first and last remaining cat toy to see if another blast would finish the most wounded kobold off. In the meantime, I catnapped some more, using meditate skill to help prevent me from actually falling asleep.

Aproximately 40 seconds later, I received another notification:

You have spent 10 mana, Insect Bomb ability (apprentice) has been activated. Beetle (cat toy) has exploded! 29 damage dealt to kobold (Tuko) Kobold (Tuko) has been slain! Bonus XP awarded for killing a canine. Bonus XP for killing an enemy higher level than you.

And thus, there are only 3 ugly doggos left, I thought to myself. Tuko had taken 91 points of damage before dying, including 1 tick of poison, so that gave me a rough idea of how much hp the rest probably had. They were possibly due to die from just the poison debuff if they had no means to counter it, I realized. That made me feel warm and happy inside.

But then I frowned. It had only been 40 seconds between the time I sent this last beetle and the time in which it reached its target. That suggested that after the first wave of beetle attacks, the kobolds had headed towards me, for they had gotten closer.

They must be coming to get me, I realized. This made sense, if your opponent had the ability to send remote controlled, self propelled, poison bombs at you, your only chance of survival was to find the source of the bombs. Also, as the poison was from my ability, maybe it would go away if I died. That could be their only hope of survival; they must be desperate.

I only had 16 mana left, as I’d just recently paid for 5x10 mana worth of explosions, and had only recovered 6 points since. Even with meditation, I still only recovered 1 mana per 8 seconds.

I stretched, gave another yawn, and stood up. Eh, I would have to fight on a full stomach, while incredibly sleepy, and I wouldn’t have enough mana to pounce three times. What to do? My brain felt slow and sluggish with drowsiness, and I wanted more time to think about my next course of action. Well, that was a solution of sorts?

I would buy more time. I looked around for the tallest mushroom nearby, and saw one that was over twice as tall as the typical human. I easily made a clean jump, arcing through the air to land flawlessly on it’s flat surface. Really, was I even in any danger? There was no way the kobolds could possibly catch me with my current (epic) jumping skill. I could leap from mushroom to mushroom leaving them far behind if need be.

For caution’s sake, I activated my (master) stealth skill, and for 5 mana per minute, or 1 mana per 12 seconds, I faded from view and became resistant to any magical attempts to detect me. So long as they had no (master) perception skill or (master) tracking skill users, I was probably safe.

At the time, I did not wonder how I knew that, since I had no way of knowing how the various skills interacted when used against one another like that. That information was placed in my head by an overly helpful system that seemed willing to feed me the knowledge I needed. It was much the same way I knew that I was at my limit with Reanimate Insects (novice). The information was simply magicked into me. To my regret, I would not learn to distrust the system until it was almost too late.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. On that day, my thoughts were more focused on the numbers. If I continued to meditate while stealthed, I could actually earn 1 mana per 24 seconds more than what I was spending. During that time, my prey would be taking poison damage. I might not have to do anything at all to win. Feeling smug, I settled in to wait to see what the kobolds would do once they reached the corpse of Krok below and found no cat.

Watching from above, I saw as the three remaining kobolds, covered in many small puncture wounds and looking somewhat green, dragged an equally wounded looking Katrina, still tied up with crude ropes, into the clearing. Not all of her wounds looked to be caused by shards of exploding chitin though, Katrina was heavily bruised, perhaps she would die from the poison debuff if she had other wounds in addition to the ones I’d given her.

Except for Nuug, who’d already seen it, the group had a strong reaction to seeing the gruesome corpse of Krok. I was interested to see a look of joy cross Katrina’s exposed face. She was still gagged, so I couldn’t see her smile, but the way her ears perked up and her eyes grew brighter, gave it away. I had little difficulty reading her expression with the visual aid of her cat features, including the suddenly more energetic movements of her tail, as clues. How convenient, I thought to myself, a human who has cat mannerisms that make her easier to read. Really, they should add that feature to all humans, would make life much simpler for us cats forced to deal with inscrutable humans.

The other two kobolds looked terrified, but Nuug, clearly the leader, just looked grim. He knew they would probably die, but Nuug clearly had a plan. Raising his voice and yapping loudly, he addressed me. “Tiny terror! If you be tiny god, you know kobold speak! Nuug want to bargain! Spare us! Stop poison! Pack release catwoman and leave! You be feline! Nuug saw! You want catwoman; make her yours!” Nuug sneered suggestively, then added, “Do nothing, she dies! Nuug kill!”

To emphasize his words, the evil doggo put his stone knife’s tip against Katrina’s neck. She did not flinch even as a tiny drop of blood formed and dripped down the stone blade. I was impressed with her bravery, but there was a bit of a problem; I had no way to cure the poison I’d inflicted. There was no way for me to meet that doggo’s demand. Nuug would kill Katrina unless I foolishly risked myself, and I was already sleepy enough that I was seriously tempted to just do nothing.

Despite Nuug’s insinuation, I wasn’t even remotely attracted to human women, no matter what kind of ears they had. She wasn’t even in heat, why would Nuug think I would be interested? It was gross. I suddenly remembered that doggos would try to hump anything. I felt dirty just thinking about it. Doggo had said a perverted thing and it made me want to kill him, more than I already did.

Putting that aside, did Katrina offer any value to me worth risking my life? Probably not, other than a vague possibility that she might maybe someday give me chin scratches? Meh. It would have been a different story if I were still hungry and had reason to believe she might offer food. But, then again, I would eventually run out of Krog meat, and this human probably knew how to cook tasty treats, maybe much better than raw kobold meat. Also, she had hands, maybe make me a pouch to store my coins in. Decisions, decisions...

What was a drowsy cat to do?

Skill List Tracking (Apprentice) Allows for the detection of trails and spoor to determine the presence of nearby animals. Can be activated with mana for additional bonus. Jumping (Epic) Passively multiplies by 2.5x the distance and accuracy of jumping. Allows for powered jump using mana for even greater distance (max 8x jump for 40 mana), also negates fall damage when jumping great distances. Perception (Journeyman) Passively increases the effectiveness of all senses. Can be activated with mana for additional bonus. Pounce (Master) Passively increases pouncing speed and accuracy. Also provides an active skill that consumes 10 mana to provide +200%+(20%xm.amplitude) bonus kinetic damage. Math (Apprentice) Assists with mental math that involves simple algebra. Activate with mana to use system calculator. Swipe (Novice) Passively increased damage from swiping targets with a clawed paw. Increase skill to unlock magically boosted attacks. Intimation (Grandmaster) Provides bonus when attempting to inflict fear, or persuade via threat of violence. Can be activated with mana for additional bonus. Resisted by courage skill and willpower. Identify (Novice) Allows system to display simple basic information about a target when used. Stealth (Master) Provides bonus to avoiding detection. Attacks made while stealthed against an opponent who is unaware of your presence have a 3x damage multiplier. Can be activated with 5 mana per minute for additional bonus and resistance to magical means of detection. Courage (Novice) Provides passive resistance to fear effects. Increase skill to unlock active effect. Meditation (novice) Increases mana regen rate by 25% while in use, must be used while stationary and awake, can be used while being carried or transported, prevents accidental loss of awareness due to falling asleep. Abilities List Reanimate Insect (Novice) Reconstruct any dead insect and bring it to unnatural life as your servant. Size of target and number of followers limited by skill, level, and m. amplitude, mana cost varies by size. Duration indefinate. Limit 1 + (0.1 x amplitude) pounds total insects controlled. Dimensional Storage (Novice) Allows for upto 10+(1 x amplitude) pounds and/or 10+(1 x amplitude) individual items to be stored. Increased skill provides additional storage. Objects in storage are frozen in time and do not age or decay. Insect Bomb (Apprentice)

Force any reanimated insect you control to explode. The explosion deals damage proportional to the ability rank, bonus damage equal to caster’s amplitude x 10%. Damage is also influenced by the level and size of the undead insect being exploded. Certain bugs have additional special effects when exploded. Example; most poisonous bugs will produce a poison cloud when detonated.