Since his health had regenerated by 33, about ten hours had passed. He noticed the feline was still snuggled next to him, trying to stay close, like if it let go for even a second the world might take him away.
“Hey little one, want some breakfast?” Ray asked the feline. “Look at me, talking to a cat like it understands me.”
To Ray’s surprise, the feline stretched its paws and moved to sit across from him, waiting expectantly for food. Ray produced a small bowl from his inventory along with a large amount of raw bacon. He placed the food down and the feline began eating with gusto, barely stopping to breathe.
Ray then took out the portable campfire kit the dark elves had given him. He set a small fire and used it to cook a large stack of bacon for himself. He added a few berries and a slice of bread to his plate, but otherwise ate mostly bacon. He ate slower than the night before, not because he wasn’t hungry, but because he was listening now. Every crack of the fire, every scrape of claws on stone, every rustle outside the cave mouth had him pausing mid-chew, waiting for the world to decide it wanted more from him.
The cave still stank like predators. Fur and old blood and something sour that clung to the stone. He kept catching himself staring at the entrance, expecting a shadow to fill it. Last night had been a win, but it had been a close win, the kind that could turn into a death sentence the second you started believing you were safe. Ray hated that his brain was already trying to normalise it. A day ago he had been in a village, eating skewers and pretending he could breathe. Now he was cooking bacon in a den, half bandaged, with a kitten watching him like he was the entire world. If that wasn’t insane, nothing was.
When he finished eating, he forced himself to do the boring stuff first. He checked his bandages. Tightened the one around his shoulder. Re-wrapped his leg where the cloth had loosened with movement. He didn’t have proper medical supplies, and he sure as hell didn’t have a healer, so crude had to be good enough. He also pulled out his dagger and inspected it the way you’d inspect a tool at work. Blade still straight. No obvious nicks. Leather brace still holding on his arm. Trash gear, but it was his trash gear.
The kitten finished its food and tried to push its head into Ray’s hand again. Ray scratched behind its ears, then hesitated and pulled his fingers back to check for blood. The stupid part was, the contact helped. It was warm. Real. It kept the panic in his chest from building into something worse. Ray hated needing that, but he wasn’t going to pretend he didn’t.
While eating, he spent time planning his next move. He was obviously going to be holed up in this cave for at least one more day. After that, Ray figured he would continue in the same direction he’d planned. That stream was just too much of an allure. He didn’t like the idea of chasing poison water like it was treasure, but he’d already learned one lesson on Arkus. Anything could kill you here. That meant anything could be useful too.
He kept thinking about siltvelt like it was a cheat code. Boil it, filter it, turn it into clean water and maybe poison as a side product. Even if it didn’t scale into late-game nonsense, it might still be useful now. He could already picture it. A vial on his belt. A smear on a blade. A splash in someone’s eyes. He wasn’t proud of that line of thinking, but being proud didn’t stop you bleeding out. He wasn’t trying to become a psycho. He was trying to survive long enough to decide what kind of person he was going to be on this planet.
Ray also decided he needed to get stronger. If he was risking his life over level one to five monsters, it meant he shouldn’t be adventuring alone. Ray wanted to get to a stage where he could comfortably fight beasts by himself. For the time being, he didn’t see himself working with a group. This was largely because he didn’t know this world. Even though he’d potentially made some friends, could he really trust them when they were obviously still hiding things from him? He didn’t blame them for it, but he wasn’t going to gamble his life on “probably.”
He’d been an accountant, not a soldier. The difference mattered. On Earth, mistakes cost money and reputations and sleepless nights. On Arkus, mistakes cost limbs. He’d already felt teeth sink into his shoulder. He’d watched his health tick down like a timer. He didn’t want to get used to that. He also knew he probably would.
Ray absently scratched the kitten behind the ears. During the hour or so he’d been awake, he’d come to realise the beast was looking up to him like a parental figure. Ray could still see the nervousness in the kitten’s movements, but he could also see the determination not to be left alone. It kept checking the entrance like it expected the bigger cats to walk back in and prove last night was a fluke.
He spent the rest of the day focused on recovering, but “recovering” didn’t mean lying down and hoping. He tried to make the cave less of a death trap. He dragged loose stones to narrow the entrance slightly, enough that something big would have to squeeze in one at a time. He piled a few more rocks near where he planned to sleep so he could grab them quickly if he needed to make noise or throw something. It wasn’t a fortress. It was barely a plan. Still, doing something kept his head from spiralling.
He also tested his inventory like a paranoid idiot. Put a bowl away. Pulled it out. Put his spare clothes away. Pulled them out. He tried to understand the “feel” of it. There was a mental click to storing something, like a thought becoming weightless. It wasn’t just magic. It was interface design. That realisation sat wrong in his gut. It made the world feel less like fantasy and more like a system wearing a fantasy skin.
Ray stored his bloody, tattered clothes into his inventory and equipped a fresh set. Not having to actually put clothing on was something he could get used to. When equipped, the clothes simply materialised in the appropriate spots. Unfortunately, size was still a thing. The clothes themselves weren’t inherently magical. Ray knew you could create or purchase items that were magical in nature, but that was far out of his reach for the time being.
After changing, Ray decided to meditate to pass the time. He didn’t call it meditation at first. It was more like sitting still and forcing his brain to stop chasing itself. He focused on his breathing, on the scrape of the kitten’s tongue as it cleaned itself, on the cave air moving in slow currents. It wasn’t peaceful, exactly. It was controlled. Like he was locking a door inside his own head and standing with his back against it.
It took longer than he expected. His thoughts kept running back to Earth, then snapping away like touching a hot stove. He didn’t want to picture his family. He didn’t want to picture the mushroom cloud. He didn’t want to picture anything. But every time he tried to go blank, the System felt closer, like it was waiting for him to crack. He kept breathing anyway. In. Out. In. Out. He let the cave sounds anchor him. He let the kitten’s warmth nearby anchor him. Eventually the panic stopped trying to win.
Unbeknownst to him, meditation was a way to increase recovery and even consolidate gains made when fighting monsters or training an appropriate craft. It seemed that doing certain things the System deemed appropriate, like smithing or other skilled work, could also provide experience, even if it was less than fighting System-touched beasts.
Ray didn’t realise he’d entered a trance until the light had left the cave. He blinked, stiff, and checked the time.
[The time is 10:26pm on Dundar… Day 8 of the 7th month. Year 2566]
Ray had learned there were nine days in a week, four weeks to a month, and ten months to a year on Arkus. That meant only three hundred and sixty days in a year. More annoyingly, there were twenty-six hours in a day. Days still ran AM and PM, but they went from 1:00 to 13:00 instead of 1:00 to 12:00. It was taking Ray a bit to get used to the extra two hours, like the world had decided it needed more time to mess with him.
As Ray cleared the clock from his vision, he noticed a blinking light in the top corner. He realised he must have gained a small amount of experience, enough to push him over the limit.
[Congratulations for learning the basics of meditation, you proved you can sit on your ass and do nothing. You have received +1 Mind]
[Ding! Congratulations, you have reached level 5]
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Ray stared at the notifications, then at his unallocated points. He expected five. He got ten.
“What the hell…” he muttered. “You’re kidding.”
He was still only level five. Maybe it was a bonus at certain thresholds. Maybe it was because he’d levelled from something other than combat. Maybe the System was just being weird again. Ray didn’t know and didn’t have anyone to ask yet.
He decided to keep following the same plan anyway. Get each stat to ten. Learn what they do. Don’t get fancy until he understands the rules. He allocated five to Dexterity, four to Body, and one to Strength.
Ray immediately realised it had been the right choice. When he allocated the strength point, he could tell he was stronger. Not in a dramatic way, but in that grounded, physical sense where your body feels more capable without you having to prove it. He clenched his hand, flexed his fingers, then lifted his pack with one arm. It didn’t feel lighter, exactly. It felt like his body stopped arguing with the task.
The Dexterity points were harder to pin down. He rolled the dagger in his palm, flipped it once, then twice, testing balance and control. The movements felt cleaner. Not Hollywood clean, but less clumsy, like the delay between intention and action had shortened. The Body points were the easiest to feel. His posture settled. His breathing felt deeper. The ache in his leg didn’t vanish, but it felt like it belonged to him again, not like something foreign that could decide to kill him at any moment.
For some reason, Ray felt like no matter what stat he allocated points to, he was getting the maximum benefit. Even Mind felt like a proper increase, like his head was clearer instead of just “more mana.” It made him uneasy, because nothing about Arkus had been generous so far. But he wasn’t going to argue with numbers he could feel.
He fed the kitten again, mostly because it looked at him like he was late. Then he tried to settle back down, but his body refused to relax. He kept thinking about tomorrow. About leaving the cave. About what might be waiting outside. About whether he could handle it now that he wasn’t actively bleeding to death. His brain kept circling the same thought like a dog with a bone.
If I die again, what happens?
He didn’t have the answer. He didn’t want to find out by testing it.
As Ray got ready to settle in for the night, the kitten suddenly pounced up and sat next to him. Ray initially thought he was about to be attacked and pulled away, but instead the kitten bowed.
[Miu – Panther Cat has requested a familial bond with you…. If you accept, Miu will become your familiar 1/3… Do you Accept or Decline?]
“Huh… Are you sure this is what you want?” Ray asked.
The kitten stayed bowed. Determination sat in its eyes like something stubborn and simple. It didn’t want to be alone. It had decided this was better than waiting for the world to finish it off.
Ray hesitated. This was the first time he’d truly felt like he belonged with something on Arkus. Sure, he’d made connections with the dark elves, but he still didn’t feel like he could be completely free with them.
The only thing that made him pause was the limit. Three familial bonds. He didn’t know if that was a hard cap or a warning, but it mattered. It meant this was a choice the System considered important. Still, the hesitation didn’t last. He’d killed the cat’s entire family and it still wanted him. That alone made him feel like maybe he could do one thing right in this world.
“Uhh… Accept,” Ray said out loud.
A wave of golden light flooded both Ray and Miu. The light pulled in tight, like two threads being twisted together into one cord. Ray felt something rush out of him, a strange pressure leaving his chest, replaced immediately by a matching inward sensation from Miu. The whole experience lasted an instant, but it left Ray sprawled on the ground, panting like he’d just run miles.
Miu wasn’t faring any better. If anything, the kitten looked worse than he did, body trembling like it had been dragged through something too big for it.
After what felt like forever, Ray finally managed to gather enough energy to sit up.
“Well,” Ray said, voice rough, “that was an experience and a half.”
A smooth female voice slid into his mind.
It certainly was, wasn’t it… uhm… daddy? Master? I don’t know. Is it ok if I call you daddy?
Ray jolted backwards so hard he nearly hit the cave wall. His eyes went wide. “What the fuck am I hearing?” he said, then caught himself, breathing hard. “Wait… you’re in my head.”
Uhh hi? Did I break you, daddy?
Ray stared at the kitten like it had grown a second head. “Uhh no. I’ve just never spoken to a cat before.”
Miu’s ears flattened, offended.
I’m not a cat. I’m a panther cat, we’re special. Separately, why are you speaking like that? You can just think your thoughts to me. I’ll get them. We are linked.
Ray swallowed. The weird part was how natural it felt when he tried it. The thought slid out of him and into her like it had always been there, like the line between his mind and hers had been waiting for permission.
So… by linked, are we like friends now?
No silly, we’re family. I’ll always be by your side from now on, daddy!
Ray exhaled, then rubbed his face with both hands like he could wipe the day off. “Alright, hold up.” He pointed at the kitten like that would help. “Don’t call me daddy. It feels… wrong.”
There was a pause in his head. A small, uncertain shift, like she was rummaging through words.
…Dad then?
Ray hesitated, then gave a tired little nod. “Yeah. Dad’s fine.”
Miu practically glowed with pride, even without the light show.
Dad!
Ray didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. The warmth in his chest was dangerous. It made him forget where he was for half a second, made him forget that the world outside was full of things that wanted to eat him. He didn’t want to need that comfort. He needed it anyway.
“But you know I killed your family, don’t you?”
Miu’s reply came instantly, like the thought had never been a question to her.
No, you didn’t. The System is at fault for that. If anything, I’m just happy you put them out of their misery and saved me. You’re my hero.
Ray blinked. Well. That was one way to frame it. It wasn’t logical, but it made him feel lighter anyway. Somehow, in another world, he’d adopted a cat. A talking cat. A talking cat that had opinions about what to call him. His life was officially stupid.
In front of Ray’s eyes, Miu began to shrink. Her body pulled down smoothly until she was the size of an ordinary house cat. She jumped into Ray’s lap and snuggled there like she’d been doing it for years.
“You can change size at will?” Ray asked.
I can do a lot of things, though I’m only level one now. I’m sure I’ll catch up to you soon! Don’t forget to check yourself. You’ll have new stats because I’m awesome.
Ray snorted despite himself. “Right. Because you’re awesome.”
He brought up his character sheet. At first he didn’t notice anything, then the System messages appeared.
[Congratulations, you have adopted a unique cat. You have received a new title: Panther Cat Tamer (Unique)]
[Congratulations, you have learned the skill: Telepathic Communication – Familiar (Common)]
Ray stared at the messages, then felt that subtle shift run through his body. Not just one stat. Everything. Like someone had pushed him one step forward across the board.
====================================
Title: Panther Cat Tamer (Unique)
====================================
You have tamed Miu the Panther Cat. As she is the last known Panther Cat in existence, this title is considered unique and thus upgraded.
Title Benefits:
- +4 to all stats
====================================
Ray let out a breath he hadn’t realised he was holding. “Holy crap…”
He opened his character sheet and inspected it.
“Fuuuck…” he said slowly. “Are you kidding me?” The first thing he noticed was that his character sheet had evolved. It now showed Base and Modifiers, presumably because he now had multiple titles or maybe because of his connection to Miu. He had no idea and he wasn’t about to try and work it out now.
He mentally clicked the More Info+ button and noticed a new section for Modifiers. The System really was a piece of work. It locked him out of shops, refused him convenience, treated him like a disease, then quietly handed him a UI upgrade like it was doing him a favour. Ray stared at the option, half tempted to open it out of spite, but he stopped himself. He wasn’t going to get baited into menu surfing when he should be sleeping.
Miu preened in his lap like she could feel it too.
See? Awesome.
Ray looked down at her, then at the cave mouth, then back at the cat in his lap. A familiar. A bond. A bit of companionship in a world that had been trying to crush him since he arrived. He should’ve been suspicious. He still was. But he couldn’t pretend it didn’t feel good.
He also couldn’t ignore the practical side. If she was linked to him, could she warn him? Could she sense danger? Could she fight? He didn’t know yet, but the thought alone made him breathe easier. Not safe. Just easier.
“Are you going to be ok?” Ray asked quietly. “You’re the last of your kind.”
Miu’s mind-voice softened, smaller than it had been.
It’s not ideal… but I have you, Dad. I couldn’t ask for more.
Even through the link, Ray could feel the truth of it. The loneliness. The grief that she didn’t have words for. The way she curled tighter like she was bracing for reality to come back and take something else from her.
Ray swallowed. “Alright. Let’s talk more in the morning. We both could use sleep.”
Goodnight Dad!
“Goodnight Miu.”