I awoke some indeterminate amount of time later in a great deal of pain and discomfort. The gashes on my side were full of dried blood and gunk. In fact, all my fur was a painful clotted mess of dried blood. I felt so awful I didn’t even have the will to start grooming.

My head was also quite sore as a result of the psionic attacks I’d endured. Mental damage was different than physical damage. Mental damage was dealt against a value that the system called “sanity points” (SP), the system whispered to me. SP worked like health, but if they reached 0, the target wouldn’t die, they’d go into a coma. SP values were normally toggled off since it wasn’t used as often as HP, but I toggled the setting that made my SP visible so I could tap the description.

The description explained that SP was based on willpower and followed the same formulas as HP. I had willpower x (level + 9) max SP. That worked out to 210. My SP regen rate was 10% of max SP per hour.

It seems that every two points of SP damage would also reduce a target’s max HP by 1, and every two points of health damage would reduce their max SP by 1. To help illustrate how it works when the two damage types are combined, let me offer an example using someone with 150 SP and 150 HP;

You deal 50 SP damage, they go down to 100/150 SP and 125/125 (-25 max) HP.

You deal 50 HP damage, they go down to 75/125 (-25 max) SP and 75/125 (-25 max) HP.

You deal 50 SP damage, they go down to 25/125 (-25 max) SP and 50/100 (-50 max) HP.

You deal 50 HP damage and they die with 0/100 (-50 max) HP. They’d also have 0/100 (-50max) SP, but that wouldn’t matter to a corpse.

So, it takes 100 SP and 100 HP combined damage to kill someone with 150 HP. If they had started with more max HP but still only 150 SP, that 200 combined damage would have caused them to pass out with 0 SP instead. Any amount of SP damage will also cause a headache that won't go away until the target has healed the SP damage.

I tried to work out how long it would take for my own headache to go away. I had 94/150 (-60 max) SP and 125/245 (-28 max) HP. Both HP and SP healed at 10% of their modified max value per hour, so I was healing 15 SP per hour. Using the system calculator function, I worked out that 56 SP damage divided by 15 SP hourly regen rate meant 3 hours and 36 minutes worth of headache to go?

Wait no, during that time I’d heal some amount of physical damage which would increase my SP max, increasing my SP regen rate. And as my SP healed, my max HP would recover, so my HP regen rate would also be increasing, which in turn would make the SP regen rate recover slightly faster, and that would make the HP regen rate recover a tiny bit faster…

Yep, you would need calculus to solve that equation. I hissed as my headache deepened for reasons unrelated to psionic damage and I gave up on trying to work out a more exact answer to a surprisingly complex mathematical question.

I tried to re-summon my Death Wasp, figuring that in my current weakened state, it would be useful to have it available in case I got attacked.

Your Death Wasp has died. It can not be resummoned until a 24-hour cooldown has expired. You have 19:22 left until you may resummon your Death Wasp.

Absolutely doggo-rific, I thought to myself, there goes my dream of sustained aerial bombardment by summoning death wasps to go full kamikaze on my target from long distance. I guess repeatedly blowing up your summon over and over was something the system wanted to discourage.

Jason had left me a message on the party chat before quitting the party, I noticed. It read:

"Onyx, I used the money you stole from the kobolds to buy two health potions. Turns out the boat was full of catkin soldiers, including the same commander that mom thinks betrayed the village. He told me that the militia was ambushed by werewolves and only he was able to escape and flee to Fort Stonefang where he gathered some reinforcements to come check out the village.

I find his story unlikely. He was too surprised to see us alive, but not very surprised to see the village burnt. I think it’s lucky that the kids weren’t able to see the battle, because that means they can’t testify against the commander’s story. He wants everyone to believe werewolves destroyed the village, not kobolds.

This must be because his plan is to break the treaty, and kobolds aren’t actually a part of the treaty. If that one werewolf shaman is an outcast for some reason, he wouldn’t count as violating the treaty either. Mom’s testimony might be the only thing that could stop his plans, keep her safe. I left the potions with Anne in the village, go find her. Anne decided she’d rather stay behind and hide than go with the rest of us. The other kids will be fine, we are all going back to Fort Stonefang and it has an orphanage. But I am being drafted, so I have to leave the party and join the squad’s party. Good luck, may we meet again soon, Jason."

Ah ok, two healing potions and one helpless bit of cargo waited for me at the village. Should I go there or leave them behind? If it had been one healing potion, I might have seriously considered just leaving Anne behind, but two? It meant I could heal myself and not feel guilty about not healing Katrina. With two potions I could do both. It was worth the cost.

Moving somewhat slower than before, as my wounds, headache, and state of being a giant walking blood clot reduced my mobility, I made my way over to the village and found Anne.

“Onyx?” She asked hesitantly. She didn’t seem to recognize me in my befouled state.

“Yes,” I told her, “You have healing potions?”

“Yes. You can talk into my head now? Oh, you’re a psion now? I heard about psions, all the big cats in the city have that job.” She told me excitedly. She'd decided I was who I said I was despite looking like a giant red rat fresh from a blood sewer.

I nodded. Turns out mental communication makes my headache worse, but I forced myself to tell her, “Feed me a healing potion.”

A little hesitant to actually touch my filthy form, Anne managed to help pour one of the two small bottles down my throat. My HP immediately began to rise much faster, as I gained a temporary buff.

Healing Potion (lesser) - restores 10 hp per second for 10 seconds.

That didn’t directly help my SP damage, but at least after the 10 seconds, I was back at 226/246 (-27 max) HP, bringing my SP to 146/200 (-10 max). That meant my SP regen rate had gone up to 20 per hour, which reduced the time my migraine had left by a full hour. Well worth however much that potion had cost, I decided.

“Give the other potion to Katrina as soon as she appears. Quick as you can.” I instructed Anne. She nodded in agreement, and I popped Katrina back into reality. Anne immediately fed the second potion to Katrina before she could even say anything.

Katrina gasped a bit but managed to swallow the unexpected liquid poured into her mouth from the long slender bottle. Good reflexes there, I thought to myself, glad she didn’t gag and spit that out.

“Oh, thank you Onyx, and you too Anne. Looks like I owe you my life again,” she said.

“Read the message Jason left in the party chat,” I instructed Katrina curtly as she sat up. My mood was not great and I had no patience to explain things myself since it would only make my migraine worse to do so.

Katrina did a double-take and gave me a long stare as she realized how dirty I currently was. I looked, and felt, disgusting, but Katrina didn’t say anything, instead choosing to follow my instruction and read the message.

“Huh, well, I suppose it could be worse. At least they didn’t get picked up by werewolves.” Katrina finally said with a sigh. “This changes things though, now that we know what the commander’s objective is, we have to try to stop it. The villagers lost here will never rest in peace if we don’t bring those responsible to justice. If all of this was part of a deliberate ploy, we owe it to them to thwart that ploy.” She decided resolutely.

I nodded distractedly, my attention had turned to my status screens, particularly the newest ability I had unlocked right before falling asleep.

Telekinesis (novice) - allows the user to project 10 newtons of force, enough to lift a 1kg (2.2lbs) mass off the ground. Bonus force equal to amplitude x 10%. Mana cost equal to newtons of force used divided by 10, per minute.

Hold on, why was telekinesis in metric units? I'm an American alley cat, who is used to hearing US units, but now the system is throwing metric units at me? I thought to myself as Katrina explained some boring politics to Alice who nodded along.

"Newtons is the accepted unit for force in your world, even in your country that has its own units for other measurements." The system responded.

The system was giving me powers based on units that only I could understand. Didn’t that mean the units were completely arbitrary? Was I getting more or less power out of my abilities than whatever the system gave the locals? Were their base units bigger or smaller than mine? I had no idea, and the system refused to respond.

I was lucky that the dire doggo that had chased me hadn’t had this particular ability though, or she could have just picked me up and casually tossed me into her mouth. But if she had had telekinesis, she would probably have gotten it in units other than newtons.

"This world lacks a widely used unit for force, therefore, telekinesis is not normally awarded to psions. You can not be given an ability that the system can not explain. It is required that you have the adequate vocabulary to understand what an ability does before receiving it. Also, your understanding of what “psion” means as a word affects how it manifests for you, which is somewhat different than how it manifests for other inhabitants of this world." The system explained.

That was the longest, most direct answer I’d ever received from the system. This more vocal system was new to me. With telepathy, I could now directly reply to the system by pushing my thoughts back along the same channel I could feel it using to talk to me.

“You gave me those words, why wouldn’t you give me the words common to this world?” I asked.

"Your classification as an offworlder means I must interact with you in the language of your place of origin, even if it means teaching you the language and concepts of your place of origin." The system replied.

That meant that the system understood the language and concepts of my old world just as well as any native of my old world, I realized. Did it understand all the languages and concepts of all the worlds it had contact with? Were there more worlds than just this one and my old one? Who exactly was I dealing with, that it had such a deep understanding, I wondered.

“Who are you?” I asked it, curious as to how it would respond.

"I am an artificial intelligence composed entirely of magic, created by the combined efforts of all thirteen deities. I was created to serve as an interface between raw magic and the 13 species that have been claimed by the gods. You may continue to refer to me as “the system”. I do not possess any free will of my own but instead operate under preprogrammed rules, including this pre-prepared response, so addressing me as a person is not accurate."

Wow, some deity had even programmed a response to that question? Some part of me didn’t buy it. I felt like there might be half-truths in what I’d just been told, but I decided not to pry further. It was safer not to ask too many questions when dealing with an all-encompassing power like “the system” while I myself was still just a level twelve noob, I thought to myself.

Instead, I found myself thinking about the telekinesis ability. At novice rank, I had 15 newtons of force with the amplitude bonus. How much force would I need to pick my 10-pound self off the ground? I queried the system for an answer.

"Work it out yourself." The system replied, sounding grumpy. Absolutely not a person. Nope.

Well, ok, so gravity was a word in my head that was defined as 9.8 meters per second. Translating my weight into kilograms (4.5) and multiplying by gravity’s pull I came up with 44 newtons. Gravity was holding me down with 44 newtons of force. So I just needed to push myself up with 44 newtons and I should be able to float upwards. Every 4.4 newtons of force would let me pick up one pound.

Your math skill has evolved to Journeyman.

That was the system’s way of telling me I’d gotten it right, I realized.

Then I realized something else, the system was constantly judging the performance of every single person attached to it and awarding magical power-ups based on its criteria of what was skillful in a particular skill. The system had to be monstrously intelligent and able to multitask to a ridiculous degree to be able to do that. And it was watching and reading everyone’s minds all the time. It wasn’t just a magic AI, it was a godlike near-omniscient magic AI who cared nothing for the mental privacy of others.

"That line of thought is dangerous. Do not think about it and forget you ever did," the system whispered, and I forgot what I had been thinking about.

I blanked out briefly, distracted by some fleeting thought I could no longer remember.

Katrina was now talking about feline factions, how some supported the peace treaty and others didn’t, and how they struggled with each other. The so-called “war faction” had recently gained strength and needed only a spark to push itself back into power. Boring.

I tuned her out and instead I checked my status screen to see how many ability points I had left and discovered something completely amazing; I had 9 more points than I thought I did. Turns out raising my intelligence to 13 didn’t just give me 3 ability points per new level gained, it gave me 3 ability points per level past 1st. So at level 12, I had a total of 33 ability points, of which I had spent 7 on Dimensional Storage, 3 on Reanimate Insect, 7 on Insect Bomb, and 1 on Summon Death Wasp. I had 15 ability points left to spend!

I raised Telekinesis up to master rank by dumping 7 points into it, multiplying the max force I could exert eightfold to 120 Newtons, or enough to pick up 27 pounds. Cautiously, I picked myself up off the ground and balanced out gravity once I was a few feet up.

So I am certain someone will ask. How fast could I fly with 2.7g’s of thrust? The answer is; I don’t know, I’ve never tried, it would be suicidal if I did. Telekinetic flight is one of those things that sounds easy but turns out to require a ton of practice. I am limited to 1 vector of thrust, so it had to be balanced correctly against gravity and air resistance to fly me in the direction I wanted to go. I have no way to generate lift and nothing to provide stability.

It was hard enough to just hold myself steady as I hovered. As I tried to fine-tune my thrust correctly, I discovered the joys of slowly tumbling in midair as I missed my center of mass with my invisible telekinetic push. I whirled my tail and body around to try to reorient myself, but that only made it worse as my center of mass kept moving off alignment with the spot on my body my telekinesis was pushing against.

Spinning out of control was bad enough while just sort of hovering, but at high speeds, that would make me violently ill and probably make me crash. Telekinesis has no fall damage mitigation built-in, so if I crashed, I would probably die.

The root of the problem was that I wasn’t able to “grasp” an object, I was only able to produce an invisible pushing force in a single direction. Telekinesis acted more like a constant push than an invisible hand.

If all that sounds too complicated to you, just take my word for it; flying with telekinesis is not at all as fun or as easy as it sounds. Think about how hard it would be to “fly” a cat using only a high strength leaf blower. Sure, you could toss the cat like a helpless projectile, but could you sustain the cat in midair by following along underneath pushing upwards with the leaf blower’s jet of air? The cat is going to be tumbling constantly while in mid-air, fall off the pillar of air, then claw you to death in retaliation.

“By the Great Tiger, what are you doing?” Katrina asked, watching as I bobbed up and down helplessly while cartwheeling in place.

“Failing to levitate myself,” I told her grumpily, before giving up and carefully dropping back down. Katrina looked like she wanted to ask what the word levitate meant, or maybe ask more questions about the ability I’d just used, but instead, she decided that continuing her long-winded lecture was more important. As if a cat has any interest in human politics, I thought to myself with an internal snort.

I was no longer happy with my purchase of master level telekinesis, disappointed that my dreams of flight had been squashed. I reasoned that with practice I might be able to move straight up without tumbling, but sustained controlled flight would never be possible unless I built myself some sort of miniature airplane first. For now, I had no way to make such a thing, and no way to refund the points, so I would simply have to figure out some other ways to make use of my new disappointing ability at a later date.

I still had 8 ability points left, so I put 4 more into raising my Reanimate Insect to master rank to increase my capacity to 12lbs worth of bugs, and 2 more to raise my summon Death Wasp to journeyman rank so next time I summoned it, it would be even more impressive.

I was also disappointed to learn that my Death Wasp didn’t double in size per level, instead, they started at base 2lb and went up to 3lb at apprentice and then 5lbs at journeyman. The system helpfully informed me that I was looking at a Fibonacci Sequence progression. With an amplitude of 5, I could expect to see a 7.5lb Death Wasp next time, but at least the mana cost of summoning had stayed at 40 for some reason, just as the cost of reanimating a bug was always 10 mana no matter what the size.

How did the system even decide these seemingly arbitrary values, I wondered. The system did not reply. Well at least this meant that next level I could spend my ability points to improve my Summon Death Wasp ability to master rank, and it would summon a 12lb wasp that would exactly match my max undead bug weight capacity.

“So after hearing about the politics involved, what do you think we should do?” Katrina asked me.

Doggo, I was busted. I hadn’t actually listened to half of what she’d spent so long explaining. I hadn’t actually thought she was going to ask my opinion, I had just thought she’d offer a plan and I’d magnanimously agree to follow it. Wait, that could still work.

“What do you think we should do?” I asked her in return, remembering to broaden my transmission so Anne could hear it. Anne was still staring at me in amazement as she hadn’t heard my earlier comment about my levitation.

“We should go to the elevator leading to the nearest city using Jason’s repaired canoe.” Katrina suggested, “The three of us will fit, but it might take a while if I’m the only one rowing. I suspect Anne will have to be bailing out water the whole way too, but once we get to the city we can go talk to…”

I tuned out the rest of her plan as she started to lay out how she would use her connections to do her boring “human politics” related things.

Ah, a long ride in a leaky canoe, what a fun suggestion, I thought to myself.

“I should be able to help,” I told Katrina, “my new skill lets me push things. I can push the canoe so both of you can focus on keeping me dry.” I’d found a use for my telekinesis; canoe pushing for a drier voyage.

“About that,” Katrina said hesitantly, “before we go, you need a bath.” She told me.

“I can groom myself,” I told her, indignant at the suggestion.

“You’re covered in dried blood and worse. I don’t think licking yourself vigorously is a good idea. The carrion beetles are already starting to sniff you out, you’ll get sick if you tried to groom all that off yourself.” She pointed out, indicating a few beetles that had already started to gather around me.

“Nonsense,” I replied, rasping my tongue on the side of one of my filthy paws. I felt individual hairs being yanked out as I struggled to break up the massive clot my fur had become with my sandpapery tongue. And the taste? Not great. “Yeah, ok. Maybe I do need a bath.” I conceded reluctantly, “but that lake is far too cold. I’ll take one when we get to a place with a nice warm soapy bath.”

“We’ve got a cauldron, lake water to fill it, firewood to heat it, and soap scavenged from the ruins. You’ll be fine, we’ll give you a proper warm soapy bath right here.”

I sighed deeply but didn’t object. Before subjecting myself to the torture of a warm bath with soap, I did remember to distribute 6 ability points to raise my willpower to 13 in the hope that it would somehow reduce my suffering.

Status Screen Name Onyx Species "Alley Cat" Level 12 HP (Max) 273 SP (Max) 273 MP (Max) 105 Jobs Insect Necro. Psion Phys. Stats Strength 2+2+10=14 Coordination 14+2+6=22 Constitution 5+1+7=13 Mental Stats Intelligence 4+5+4=13 Willpower 6+3+4=13 Empathy 1+4=5 Magic Stats Amplitude 0+1+4=5 Attunement 0+1+4=5 Luck 9+4=13 Combat Skills General Skills Abilities Pounce (Master) Jumping (Epic) Reanimate Insect (Master) Swipe (Apprentice) Perception (Journeyman) Dimen. Storage (Master) Stealth (Master) Math (Journeyman) Insect Bomb (Master) Intimidate (Epic) Identify (Apprentice) Focus (Novice) Bite (Journeyman) Swimming (Novice) Sum. Death Wasp (Journeyman) Courage (Novice) Haggling (Journeyman) Control Minion (Novice) Sprint (Grandmaster) Telekinesis (Master) Tracking (Novice) Telepathy (Novice)