Chapter 59

  ‘It’s a cat,’ I repeated my observation to Rathar and Burning Darkness when they didn’t react, then I turned to Grash and the others. ‘Can you see it?’

  None of them said a word, instead they were all staring with their mouths open as the feline apparition took another, slow step towards us, keeping its single eye on our group. Well, it seemed whatever skill Rathar was using to mask our presence, it wasn’t working on the furry little ghost. Interestingly — or worryingly — I couldn’t sense the usual things I would normally sense looking at a demon, such as its approximate level. Weird.

  ‘A cat? I’ve heard about those things once, but that creature is not it! That’s the Miekdizraath-Jegronnod. Let’s get out of here!’ Burning Darkness urged us.

  Ah, that long, unpronounceable name again.

  ‘Listen, if you say the critter is dangerous, I believe you,’ I whispered both to Rathar and to Burning Darkness. ‘But look at it! It’s not doing anything, it’s not attacking, it’s just looking. Let’s just walk past it and get to the city before the real enemies, the minotaurs, notice we’re here.’

  ‘We need to retreat if we want to live,’ Rathar said, his voice deep as usual but as shaky as I’d never imagined it could be.

  This was ridiculous. A cat. Were we going to retreat and abandon our objective because of a cat? Where the hell had it come from anyway, and why did Hell have cats in the first place? Sure, it was large and it was translucent, and again, I was sure there was a reason everyone was panicking about it, but … it was a cat, for god’s sake. And I just didn’t feel like we were in danger. Not from the cat anyway.

  I took a few steps to the side, away from Rathar, hoping I would still be in range of his psychic camouflage. I squat down, not taking my eyes off the ghost-cat while it was turning its head back and forth between me and the Kralsenite. I was pretty sure it used to have both its eyes at some point but had lost one some time ago. Poor thing.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Burning Darkness screeched into my mind with a terrified voice.

  I saw from the corner of my eye as Rathar turned his head, and even though there was no way for me to see the expression on his featureless, pitch-black face, I could tell he was looking at me as if I was mad. Well, not the first time demons would bring my sanity into question, so what the hell.

  ‘Here, kitty-kitty!’ I whispered to the cat as I spent a Hell Mana point to access my storage and brought out a small piece of monster meat — one of Lanny’s lovingly cooked steaks — to offer to the stray animal.

  The big cat snapped its head to look at me, staring at me and the meat in my hand — just like a normal cat would do when noticing an offering from their humans. It took a tentative step towards me, sniffing the air.

  ‘Are you completely mad? Don’t call that monster over here!’ Burning Darkness yelled at me.

  ‘Oh, sorry. Shoo, kitty-kitty, shoo! Shoo!’ I whispered, then threw the piece of meat past the translucent animal.

  ‘The fuck’s wrong with you, man? Those abominations don’t eat meat. They eat dimensions.’ My sword informed me in a hysterical manner.

  Perhaps the cat had heard him, perhaps not, but as if to prove my sword wrong, it sort of solidified, turning from the ghost-like, translucent state to a real and tangible mass of flesh and fur. And it turned around, walked to the meat leisurely and took a bite.

  ‘Huh! You were saying?’ I whispered victoriously to my sword.

  ‘We need to leave.’ I heard Rathar’s nervous whisper coming from the side.

  ‘Calvin, we need to get the hell out of here. Right now!’ Burning Darkness agreed with the Kralsenite’s assessment.

  Well, I didn’t. No matter how I looked at it, I still didn’t feel or sense a threat from the creature nibbling on the meat. It looked like a cat, walked like a cat, behaved like a cat — at least so far — so as far as I was concerned, it was a cat.

  ‘Fine, we’re getting the hell out of here, but we’re not retreating from a cat,’ I stated. ‘We’re going past it and to the city.’

  ‘Uhm … whatever that thing is … it’s scary,’ Lanny said, pulling up to hide behind me.

  I looked back, and the squad members were all nodding in agreement. Ah. Look at this bunch of demons terrified of a cat!

  ‘Alright, follow me, while the critter is busy with the meat,’ I told them, and I began to walk forward slowly, absolutely convinced we’d be able to get past it without issue while it was distracted by the treat.

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  And of course, the animal had something else in mind, because why wouldn’t it?

  The moment I was about to walk past the critter, it dropped the piece of meat, its single, glowing eye fixed on me for a moment, then without warning it lunged at me. As it sailed through the air in a wide arc that would no doubt terminate right on my chest, it reverted back to its translucent, immaterial form. Then, after a split second, with its sharp teeth showing, it landed on me. And it vanished. Disappeared. Completely. Without a trace. All I could feel was a jolt in my soul and some Hell Mana stirring in there, but that was it, and the cat was no more.

  ‘Calvin! Cal! Are you dead? Or dying? It attacked you!’ Burning Darkness cried out in despair.

  ‘Hellfire Lord Hyde!’ Rathar also cried out in his own, overly calm and curt way, no doubt worried that if he lost me, his collective wouldn’t be able to make it back to the Fifth Ring.

  ‘Boss!’ Grashon jumped to me with his axe in hand, ready to strike at the foe that was no longer there.

  ‘What the hell just happened?’ I exhaled the words, looking down at the breastplate of my SAC, trying to see if there was any damage. There was none, and I was as shocked, puzzled and worried as everyone else.

  ‘Where is it?’ Grash whispered, looking around but not finding anything.

  That’s exactly what I wanted to know myself: where was it? And what was it? Was it really a cat-ghost? I had no clue. But then I discovered the answer to the question of the feline menace’s whereabouts.

  ‘Uh … my dimensional storage is … purring.’

  ***

  It was definitely in there, right in my Dimensional Storage of Unearthly Horrors. How the hell it had managed to get in, I had no idea. But I could hear it purring, not with my ears but with my soul, somehow, and so I was sure the damned cat was in there. It was unsettling, but it was also … kind of nice, actually, the purring. Soothing.

  I had never owned a pet in my life, but I had known people who had, and the cat people would swear blind that there was nothing more relaxing than having their cats napping and purring on their laps. Unbidden images came to my mind: the large ghost-cat curled up next to my sentry gun, hovering in the middle of a dark and empty space — for that’s how I pictured my storage dimension.

  ‘Your storage is doing what?’ Burning Darkness and Rathar asked at the same time.

  ‘It’s purring. Well, it’s not, but the cat’s in there and it’s purring,’ I explained.

  ‘What is “purring”?’ Rathar asked.

  ‘Oh no! Now you’re the one who’ll die!’ my sword wailed.

  ‘I … don’t feel like I’m dying.’ I shared my observation with him.

  ‘The creature is a dimensional devourer,’ Rathar said. ‘You are in danger.’

  ‘Am I? What does that mean? How am I in danger?’ I inquired.

  ‘Listen, my man, that creature eats space. Dimensions. Or something. You have a soul. And what is a soul? A dimensional phenomenon, at least in part, and those vicious little bastards eat stuff like that, alright?’ the sword blurted out the explanation rapid fire style.

  Honestly, it was hard to believe it. It didn’t feel like my soul was being eaten — not that I had any idea what it would feel like — and I felt fine. On the other hand, if the cat was indeed on a diet of space and dimensions, perhaps my dimensional storage itself was on the menu. If that was the case, then it made sense that it had singled me out. I’d never looked too closely at how big the storage was or how it had actually worked, but it was a large dimensional space, and as such, it might have been an appetising meal for the cat. Unfortunately, I wasn’t a physicist or a jump drive engineer, so I didn’t have any understanding of how dimensional phenomena or space-eating cats worked, but I honestly didn’t see or feel any indication that I was in danger.

  ‘Button, what’s going on in my dimensional storage? Is the cat eating it?’ I asked my trusty assistant.

  [To obtain information about the contents of your Dimensional Storage of Unearthly Horrors (Dynastic Skill), please consult with the skill itself.]

  The unsatisfactory answer came. So, I turned my attention to the skill, but beyond getting a feel for the contents of the storage space — which included my sentry gun, a large number of crates from the shuttle, flameslime, catapult designs and parts, some food and water, and of course the cat — I couldn’t determine anything else. Was the cat really eating my storage?

  ‘Button, is there some kind of measurement unit for storage size? Can you get that info from the skill? Like, how large is it?’

  [Please wait!]

  Huh?

  [Dimensional Storage of Unearthly Horrors (Dynastic Skill) has 7450 SDU listed and available for item storage.]

  ‘Okay. What’s an SDU?’

  [Standard Dimensional Unit.]

  ‘Right. Good stuff.’ I nodded. ‘Can you check with the skill if the number of SDUs is decreasing or not?’

  [Dimensional Storage of Unearthly Horrors (Dynastic Skill) log has been updated. Storage Log reports a negligible decrease of available SDU by 0.003 in the past three minutes.]

  ‘Okay, not bad, Button, not bad,’ I said. ‘And just for reference, how much of the total is being used at the moment?’

  [Dimensional Storage of Unearthly Horrors (Dynastic Skill) log indicates 147 SDU is being used to store physical items.]

  I brought up the calculator on my NeuroHUD and quickly worked out that if the cat would eat non-stop at a rate of 0.003 SDU per three minutes, it would mean about 1.5 per day, and about 570 per local year. I mean, well, that was a lot of space. But compared to the 7450 SDU I had available it wasn’t too bad and given the fact that the enormous amount of stuff I had chucked into my storage was taking up only 147, I didn’t think I had to start worrying just yet. And I doubted the critter would be eating non-stop anyway — from what I’d heard, cats loved to sleep as well. And thus, I concluded that while the presence of the furry menace in my storage did pose some problems, I wasn’t in any immediate danger. I could afford to deal with this later and focus on the pre-existing issues of the day instead.

  ‘Okay. For now, let’s get going before the minotaurs notice us. Orroth is waiting,’ I ordered the team.

  ‘Are you sure Boss? What happened to the scary critter?’ Grash inquired.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure. And that critter is a cat. It’s in my storage now,’ I answered him, then turned to Rathar. ‘Alright, please lead the way, and tell me everything you know about the … uh … Mickeymouse-Juggernaut, while we’re walking.’

  ‘Miekdizraath-Jegronnod.’ Burning Darkness corrected me before Rathar could.

  ‘Ah hell! Too long. It needs a shorter name,’ I said, shaking my head as I began to walk again, intent on trudging through the path along Camp Rubicon and to reach the city before we all became minotaur-food.