He wondered what he could have done differently to avoid this situation, and the answer was, "nothing." He needed the weapon, he needed the clothes, and he needed the tools.

The uncomfortable truth was that this was the apocalypse, and things were beyond his control. A random rat swarm had attacked him out of nowhere, a random ball of light had saved him, and now a random pack of cats had appeared. There was no way to avoid these encounters. Even in his bridge, random echoes appeared to try to eat his mind qi or whatever.

He was just glad he was armed, to be honest. He would be dead if the cats came to his bridge the day before. Now, he even had a chance to survive.

He focused on the beasts to check their levels.

Evolved Black Cat — G-6

Mutated Cat — G-2

Mutated Cat — G-2

...

Cat — G-1

Cat — G-1

A single cat was at the G-6 level, five were G-2, and five were G-1. The G-6 was much beyond his power to deal with unless it also came straight at him and let him kill it. The G-2s were as strong as him without a weapon, so he had a slight advantage. The G-1s were probably barely stronger than normal cats, even their names hadn't changed.

Ricardo could probably survive a fight with the G-2s and G-1s, but he wouldn't come out unscathed because they were just too many, so he would rather avoid a confrontation if he could. Running was impossible. He froze, unsure of what to do.

The ten subordinate cats, of all colors, started circling him while the one he supposed was the leader sat on top of an exploded firetruck. It was black with green eyes and had no apparent change from common cats, except it was the size of a big German Shepherd dog. The G-2 cats had suffered mutations, from getting big to getting multiple eyes to growing tentacles to getting spiky hair to growing big teeth. The G-1s were common cats.

Ricardo felt himself tensing up more and more. They weren't attacking, but they also weren't leaving. What did they want? He had no food.

Then the leader came.

It stood up and walked slowly toward Ricardo. He clenched his ax firmly, prepared to fight, but not sure if it would make any difference. How likely was it for the leader to be as dumb as a capypard?

The cat showed no aggression toward him. Rather, it meowed like any other cat and soon had arrived at Ricardo. Once there, it started moving while touching Ricardo's leg, scratching its body. It was too big though, and he had to reposition himself not to be thrown on the ground.

And its weight wasn't the only thing that almost threw him out of balance. Its mere touch was overwhelming. After three days of crushing loneliness, he felt another living being's touch. It gave him goosebumps on his entire body.

He didn't dare to crouch scratch the beast though, it was still a G-6 one, and cats were ambivalent about strangers scratching their backs. Moreover, some of his mother's cats liked to bite playfully, and he wouldn't trust the cat to be fully adjusted to its new power yet. A playful bite could take half his good hand off. He just stood there, not daring to move.

His clock showed him the passage of time. What felt like an eternity to him was only around five minutes. That was still a lot of time for a cat to keep doing that.

Now that he thought about it, did the evolutions make most animals more aggressive too? The capypard had shown uncanny intelligence and sneak attacked him, but the hound had only attacked because he had invaded its territory. Rats were known for running from humans, but the swarm in the apocalypse attacked on sight. And the cat was acting like a domesticated animal.

He concluded there wasn't enough evidence for qi doing anything other than increasing the animals' intelligence. What they did with that extra intelligence was up to them. This G-6 cat wanted to rub on a human, so it was doing that despite how smarter it might have become.

Depending on how it was raised, the poor animal was probably feeling as lonely as Ricardo was.

At long last, Ricardo couldn't stand restraining his feelings anymore. It was risky, but he needed to touch the cat with his hand. He put the ax on the ground, the handle against his body, bit his glove to take it off—immediately feeling the chilly rain on his skin—then sat on the ground and started caressing the cat.

It looked at his eyes and blinked slowly, proof that it accept Ricardo. He blinked back and caressed it.

For all of ten seconds.

Then, like most cats, it decided it had accomplished its purpose of seducing or annoying a human until the human paid attention to it. Its superior charisma proved, it didn't want to stay anymore. It moved away for about a yard, sat there, and just started licking its pawn.

Ricardo had forgotten how much cats annoyed him. He was a dog person through and through.

No other cat approached, so he stood up again, put his glove back on with great difficulty, grabbed his ax, and tried to leave.

That was a mistake.

The leader meowed annoyed, and the other cats, who had sat down, meowed too. All subordinates stood up and started circling Ricardo again. He stopped at once.

Then the leader walked until it was in front of him and moved.

It was so sudden and ridiculously fast that Ricardo only managed to step back after the cat sliced the bottom his frontal backpack open in a single strike, bit the hound's horn, and took it away.

The cat took the hound's head a few feet away, and then it started eating the rotten meat with absolute delight. Some other cats tried to approach, but the leader hissed at them and they moved away. Ricardo made as if to leave again, using the leader's distraction to his benefit, but the cats meowed loudly once more.

So he just stood there, looking at the cat eating his anti-beast charm.

He wasn't sure if the head worked anymore, but he would rather have it than not. Yet it had been so easily taken from him. He hated it, but he was weak and couldn't do anything about it. Even rats had gotten to him when he tried to run, much less cats.

The leader ate fast and thoroughly. The head's skin, eyes, and tongue were gone in minutes, and the cat started eating the insides with great pleasure. The more it ate, the more it seemed to like the food. It ate from the behind, where there was a small opening on the skull already, but had to break the bone to widen the opening and put its head inside. It had no trouble at all breaking the bone that Ricardo couldn't.

About twenty minutes later, it was licking the skull clean. Finally, it looked at Ricardo, burped, and walked away.

It kept walking past the firetruck it had sat before, and the G-2s followed. Ricardo sighed in relief and looked at the skull.

His Hunter side gave him an idea on how to weaponize it.

The opening created by the cat on the back of the skull was wide enough for him to put his stump through, and the skull was big enough to cover his entire forearm. It would be great to double as both a shield and a secondary weapon with those horns. The issue was that the broken bone on the opening had sharp points that would hurt him, so he needed to either sand it or use something to protect his forearm. Fortunately, he had a damaged backpack and hoses to try.

He crouched to take the skull and put it away when the cats stopped walking. At the same moment, a system window appeared in front of him.

Personal Directive: Bring Honor to Humanity!

The 2nd boon is over. The Interactive Tutorial has been turned off.

Analyzing your exploits during the 1st and 2nd boons... Done.

No impressive exploits found. The 3rd boon quest will be kept as a G quest.

He was actually happy about that. Though a higher-tier quest would probably come with higher rewards, he didn't believe himself ready to deal with whatever an F quest required.

Quest: Explore and Learn!

Tier: G

Description:

Your efforts have been analyzed and seen as lacking. Your mindset is wrong, your actions are pathetic, your suffering is an offense to everything the Omniheaven did for you.

Yet, the Omniheaven is merciful—regardless of your settings that don't want this system to praise the Omniheaven.

The Quest: Explore and Learn! is usually found only in Dedicated Tutorials. It was imported to your Personal Directive as a last effort to have you Bring Honor to Humanity. It aims to give you an opportunity to grow and become experienced in the ways of the world.

Duration: 7 days

For the duration of this quest:

1. No non-sapient stronger than G-2 will attack you unless you invade their territory and ignore their fair warnings, or attack them first.

As Ricardo read, he couldn't believe what he was reading. That should be wrong. It was impossible that the system would be really merciful and give him three entire days of rest.

The next lines told him he was right.

Quest: Explore and Learn!

For the duration of this quest:

1. No non-sapient stronger than G-2 will attack you unless you invade their territory and ignore their fair warnings, or attack them first.

2. All non-sapients at G-2 power rank or lower will be compelled to move your direction whenever you are within fifty yards from them and will be forced to attack you whenever they see you.

3. Dungeons won't be affected by the aforementioned behavior

4. Treasure guardians won't be affected by the aforementioned behavior

Objectives:

1. Explore at least 1 dungeon

2. Find at least 1 treasure

3. Increase your Power Rank by at least 1 level

4. Stay away from your base

5. Do not stay in any place for over 2 hours (the timer is frozen during battles and sleep)

On Success:

If you succeed in all objectives, you'll be given 1 cultivation method fit for you.

The cultivation method's grade will depend on your performance during the quest.

On Failure:

Failure to complete any objective will lower your Power Rank by 3 levels.

On Abuse:

Abusing this quest's protections to hunt for beings stronger than G-2 will count as a failure and lock your Experience Module for 99 days.

The quest will start in 9 seconds.

Ricardo hated the quest. He hated everything about it, from being forbidden to return to his base to being forced to fight any G-2 beast that looked at him. He hated even more that the system claimed it was for his own good.

He didn't think much before taking his bag off, then his backpack. He opened the backpack, put his forearm through it using the opening created by the black cat, then pushed his arm into the hound's skull. He immediately found an issue: his arm was kind of loose in there. He would have to find a solution later.

Now, he put his bag back on—he had only removed it because he needed to remove the backpack—clenched his ax, and prepared himself.

Quest: Explore and Learn! is now active.

The instant the white message appeared in the middle of his vision, all G-2 and G-1 cats turned to him, then attacked.

Ricardo swung his ax at them with all his might.