A Cat and His Human (League of Losers Book #1): LitRPG Series

by Atamanov, Michael

  But my furry girlfriend didn’t look herself — she looked frightened, lost, dispirited. As soon as she got close, Shelly told me we had to leave at once.

  “What happened?” I said, not understanding.

  “Rrright over therrre in next house,” the furry Rider pointed a paw into the distance, “are Haze and Hulk. I not see Badass. But those two see me. I mean, I walked in on them. I heard noise and rrran therrre as fast as I could. I thought it was veichs, maybe someone stayed in Orrrshi-Urrr.”

  “What happened next? Did they hurt you?”

  “No. They werrre making dinnerrr and werrre verrry surrrprrrised to see me. Then Haze asked if it is trrrue that all veichs of village left. I said yes. Yes, the altarrr is empty. Shaman would not have taken idols that prrrotect Orrrshi-Urrr if the pack planned to everrr rrreturrrn. So Hulk asked, why did I not go with otherrrs? I answerrr honestly that I am chrrronic loser. That they sell me to humans. So I live on rrriver at Pan’s Landing, like they probably already figure out. Haze lose interrrest in me and tell me I can go. Then I rrran away. But I also hearrrd Haze tell Hulk that they need to check another veich village orrr two. And if the veichs arrre definitely gone, then they can go back to Pharrraoh.”

  The fact that those two deadly players were so close was very alarming. I didn’t tempt fate. I set off at once for the river, where we’d left the two creeping crocodiles a little ways downstream. But where was Whiskers..? I was tripping over the kitten just a couple of minutes ago. Now he was gone.

  “There he is!” Shelly pointed at the ginger critter. “Woah!”

  ‘Woah!’ was right. My little Hexxer was sitting on Badass’s corpse, lying facedown in the grass. Nearby was a club covered in sharp spikes from a local camelthorn tree. He must have dropped it. The ginger cat sat cleaning himself as if nothing was amiss. I approached with fear and looked around, scratching the back of my head, thinking. What just happened? With great care, in spite of Shelly anxiously asking for us to leave, I examine the tracks next to the prone body and nearby.

  Tracking skill increased to level ten!

  It looked like my enemy had been tracking me perfectly using the marker he now had on me — first he checked the abandoned house, then went to the unfinished canal. He’d taken out his spiked club in advance, with clearly bad intentions. And then… died. There were no signs of a struggle — Badass was just walking along, then fell down. I couldn’t see any wounds from weapons, teeth or fangs on the criminal’s body. There was a strange mark on the back of his neck like a bite from a cruel arachnoscorp. Only it was a really small mark. I doubted such small arachnoscorps even existed. And there were no arachnoscorp tracks on the ground.

  Could Badass have died of natural causes..? Maybe age and his less than healthy lifestyle caught up to him and his heart gave out? It’s not as if my fluffy little Whiskers scared him to death.

  “Serrrgeant, we must go, hurrrry! Haze will go seek Badass soon. He will think we arrre guilty of his death, and then we in big trouble!”

  She was right. It was dangerous to stay. It seemed the mystery of Badass’s death would remain unsolved. I picked up the kitten and ran after Shelly. We got away from the dangerous village as fast as we could.

  Chapter 29 [Kitten]

  Unavoidable Split

  I GOT ALMOST no experience for Badass. He was only level eight; I was already level sixteen. It was an easy kill. But it gave my skills a nice boost — Curse Magic and Stealth leveled up, along with Transformation Magic and even Hand-to-Hand Combat. First I weakened him and slowed him down to a snail’s pace, then finished him off by transforming into an arachnoscorp and attacking from behind. One bite, one body. I think I got a crit for attacking from behind. But even without the critical hit, Badass had no chance after the curses I’d put on him. While he turned and slowly raised his arm to strike as if moving through jelly, I would have had enough time to bite him another five or six times.

  It was a good chance to test out a method of fighting with my physically weak kitten — remaining invisible, cursing the enemy and then transforming into something stronger with a bite to finish them off. Naturally, that method wouldn’t work for any target — Haze, for example, would have detected me as soon as I cast my first spell on him. I had to pick my targets, play to my strengths and avoid fights if I wasn’t absolutely sure of the outcome. But all the same, I was proud of myself.

  In the meantime, Sergeant and Shelly set off in their race downriver again on their pets to Pan’s Landing. My master’s furry girlfriend was unrecognizable — from an uncertain and incompetent Huntress, always walking with her ears laid back in fear and embarrassment, she’d transformed into a proud and exuberant representative of the veich peoples. Laughing with joy, her piercing blue eyes gleaming, not doubting for a second in her skill and inevitable victory. And so it was — the creeping crocodile Katy under the control of the female Rider was the first to burst into the lake and crawl onto the shore by the Marsh Mistress’s spiderweb lair. Sergeant was almost half a minute behind.

  Ugh, the stench! That was the first thing that hit me as I jumped off Sergeant’s backpack onto the ground. It smelled so bad, my eyes teared up.

  “Hey, don’t throw that out, that’s bait!” The big oaf human rushed over to a group of villagers taking apart his pile of stones and preparing to take the fetid corpse of the hairy crab somewhere far away.

  “This yours? Then get the damn thing the hell off the island!” Grip shouted, his face wrapped in cloth to ward off the penetrating stench.

  The other residents of Pan’s Landing nearby were also less than impressed. They had words of their own to say about Sergeant and his ‘bait.’ Rude words. I even heard calls to punish Sergeant, even to give him a beating for these experiments of his. I hurried to intervene before the matter came to blows.

  Soothe skill increased to level fourteen!

  The humans quickly calmed down and returned to the village. Sergeant just stood there and scratched his head thoughtfully. The stench didn’t seem to bother him much — my master had high resistance to poisons. But even that big lumbering idiot knew that he couldn’t leave the corpse near the villagers’ homes. The rotting hairy crab had to be taken off the island on a creeping crocodile, but first he had to unload all the scaly armor off Katy and Tick-Tock, plus the still-fresh giga-komodo meat. My master sent Shelly to give the bouquet of wildflowers to Varya in her sickbed, asking her to invite the injured girl’s father to the lake shore to ‘discuss something important.’ Then he got to work unloading the scaly plates.

  * * *

  Max Dubovitsky appeared ten minutes later, grimacing from the unbearable stench and covering his nose with a damp cloth.

  “Don’t worry about the dead crab, I’ll get it out of here soon,” Sergeant promised. Then he gave a short army-style report about the mission outcome and the veichs’ disappearance from the neighboring settlement of Orshi-Ur. He also mentioned the dangerous encounter with Haze and his gang in the abandoned village.

  The Engineer examined the boy attentively as if seeing him for the first time. He was silent a while, then spoke thoughtfully:

  “Haze and his thugs plan to check the other veich villages. Which means they’ll be leaving Orshi-Ur soon. I wonder… Don’t tell anyone else about this for now, Sergeant! It stays between us! Otherwise I’m afraid there’ll be a split, and most of the residents of Pan’s Landing will leave for the abandoned veich village today. Then we won’t be able to get anything done. The new house will be left half-finished. Let’s wait at least a day, if not two. And then very delicately tell the rest about the possibility of resettling. Agreed?”

  The boy nodded. The Engineer was obviously grateful for the Beast Catcher’s understanding, but asked:

  “What took you so long out there? You can get to Orshi-Ur in an hour, and it’s even faster on the way back, with the current.”

  Sergeant did not reveal their mix-up with the route, meanderings along the river and his long and very
intimate interactions with Shelly. Instead, he provided a somewhat redacted version. He said that he and Shelly had decided to check the other villages to find out if the other packs were gone too. So they swam to the distant meadow, the territory of the Un-Talavi pack. But there they were suddenly attacked by an aggressive invisible sherkh, a level 38 Scout who was out there with his even higher-level Swordmaiden sister.

  “Wow… I’ve never met anyone of that race, just heard from our neighbors that the sherkhs are uncivilized and attack unprovoked. My sympathies, Sergeant. Where did you revive?” Max Dubovitsky asked. It didn’t even occur to him that we might have survived the encounter.

  The Engineer didn’t believe Sergeant when he said he’d won. In fact, he was so far from believing him that he even lectured him on the sin of lying, assured him that there was no shame in dying to a stronger opponent. My master had to call Shelly over and show off the dagger they’d won.

  “Wow! Impressive,” Max Dubovitsky admitted. He asked them to relate the fight and the conversation after it in as much detail as they could. Pan’s Landing had little information on the mysterious sherkhs.

  After listening to the boy’s detailed tale, the leader of Pan’s Landing was silent a while, then asked Sergeant to take a walk with him. Shelly took the hint and left so as not to disturb their private conversation. I didn’t follow the humans as they walked over to the far end of the island. I could still hear their conversation just fine from here.

  The Engineer began with a very unexpected subject.

  “I don’t know how seriously things between you and Shelly are. No, don’t say anything. It says clearly in your character profile that Shelly is your girlfriend now. That means something happened between you two. But it’s such bad timing! Varya likes you. She’ll be very upset. And she’s only just starting to get better. I have hope that she’ll recover. I’m afraid that my daughter will get worse, or even decide to go back into the mist. So please, don’t tell her. I’m the only one that can see the information in your profile, and maybe the Philosopher. I’ll talk to him. Nobody else has enough Intellect.”

  Radar Ear skill increased to level thirteen!

  Perception increased to 18.

  Your character is now level seventeen.

  Reward: three skill points (total available: twelve) and one mutation point (total available: nine).

  Wow! Not only did my listening skill level up, so did my total Perception! Cool! Now my kitten could see further and hear better. Trouble was, the smell of the rotting hairy crab was now unbearable. Ugh… As it turns out, better Perception isn’t always a good thing. I hurried away from the hairy crab.

  In the meantime, the two humans finally ended their discussion of Sergeant’s love life and got down to business.

  “Sergeant, you need to tame that last giga-komodo as soon as you can, before it dies or someone else tames it! I understand that taming takes time and is difficult, but you need to do it today! Such a strong beast would be a lot of help to the village. We badly need beasts of burden, and the giga-komodo can help us build, too. Consider it my official order. Your next mission. Take everything you need to complete your assignment and set off as soon as you can!”

  “I’ll need some thick steel wire, a whole roll!” the Beast Catcher requested suddenly. The Engineer agreed.

  In addition, the leader of Pan’s Landing even promised to make the boy some bulletproof armor from the scaly plates he’d brought, and construct two comfortable and safe saddles out of wood and cured leather, one for each creeping crocodile.

  “Try to make it back before nightfall. Pan’s Landing will appreciate your help against the night beasts. But if you think you can’t make it back before dark, then don’t take any risks. Grip is almost fully recovered. We can fight them off…” The Engineer paused mid-sentence, thought for a moment, made some simple calculations in his head and then suggested that Sergeant take not only Shelly with him on the long journey, but another player too.

  I’d made the same calculations and realized that Max Dubovitsky wanted to make sure there were no more than nineteen residents left at Pan’s Landing by nightfall. That meant they would avoid a second Alpha and other dangerous beasts. Sergeant answered instantly:

  “Alright. My sister can come!”

  The leader of Pan’s Landing had no objection to the choice, although Julie had plenty to do in the village.

  “Now for the most pressing matter…” The Engineer lowered his voice to a whisper. “The information about the veichs will get out sooner or later. Either we tell them the day after tomorrow or our Hunters will start wondering why they haven’t seen a veich for a while. I’ll try to keep the Hunters busy in the village as long as I can, but the truth will out sooner or later. And then there’ll be a split. Glutton, Rumbler and almost all the Hunters will want to leave Pan’s Landing and move to Orshi-Ur. The forests there are richer, and there’s iron ore there. And it means we won’t have to worry about the night beasts every night. Rita also said that she wants to leave for the safer village with her newborn babe as soon as possible. And that means Ashot will go too, he’s very attached to Rita. Less than half the people will remain here at Pan’s Landing. I plan to stay — the smithy is here, and my bean beds. We’ve put too much effort in to just leave it all behind and start fresh. So I want to ask… will you stay? Or will you leave for the abandoned veich village?”

  I knew Sergeant’s answer already. As today’s journey to Orshi-Ur showed, it was no terrain for creeping crocodiles — the slope was too steep, the stream too shallow. Those heavy river giants couldn’t climb cliffs. And the Marsh Mistress liked it here in the oxbow lake. It reminded her of her swamp. Sergeant wouldn’t abandon his pets. The conclusion was obvious. But Sergeant didn’t answer quickly enough. The Engineer continued.

  “We’d really like you to stay here in the village — Pan’s Landing doesn’t have many warriors, and you and your tamed beasts would be a big help to us. I guarantee you’ll have full freedom — do whatever you think necessary. You’ll be free from all chores. And I’ll help you catch and tame beasts — I can make you all kinds of traps and snares. You’ll have your own room in the new house, for you and your sister. And Shelly can stay there, if she’s important to you. What do you say?”

  The Beast Catcher was silent for a long time, then gave an unexpected answer:

  “I looked at the map we bought from the Cartographer. I saw a way to Hundred Skull City from our river. Without crossing the snowy mountains. I’ve been interested in that place since the day I got to the new world. Like something’s pulling me there. An organized expedition into a challenging zone full of exciting artifacts — that’s my price for staying in Pan’s Landing!”

  I meowed in shock. Sergeant had just repeated my own thoughts! I couldn’t explain why I wanted to go to Hundred Skull City, I just knew I had to! As if a voice on the edge of hearing called me there. I’d even seriously thought of leveling up a little, strengthening my magic, and then leaving my human for a few days. I’d go over there, see what the mysterious city was all about. But Sergeant’s suggestion was so exciting!

  Now it was the Engineer’s turn to take a moment to think. I could tell that he had no desire whatsoever to go to the mysterious land. All the same, he didn’t risk trying to talk Sergeant out of the dangerous venture. Finally, Max made his decision.

  “Agreed. Just give me a few days to prepare for the hike, and to deal with this resettlement business. We’ll need to get together a group of five or six people. Warriors, Scouts. Wouldn’t hurt to take the Philosopher along to solve puzzles. It’s a dangerous place both for traps and monsters. We’ll need to train and equip the whole party, make armor out of the giga-komodo plates and some good weaponry. Give me five days and you’ll have your expedition to Hundred Skull City! I promise!”

  The two humans shook hands, sealing the deal. My soul sang — the trip to Hundred Skull City was on! With luck, I’d find some interesting artifacts and new spells fo
r my kitten there. And hell, maybe even a spell to turn back into a human.

  Chapter 30 [Sergeant]

  The Last Giga-Komodo

  THE WORK WAS far from pleasant… I cut the the giant crab’s rotting corpse into pieces with my axe, put the pieces into black plastic garbage bags and tied them up so they wouldn’t smell so bad. I couldn’t leave the aromatic lure on the river island. The people of Pan’s Landing would have thrown out the rotting remains, not appreciating their worth to a Beast Catcher. And I had big, big plans for these stinking bags of meat.

  Not far at all from the river meadow where I was headed for the giga-komodo, there was the lair of some monstrous and terrible forest monster in the faraway woods. I’d only seen a glimpse of it in a flash of lightning while galloping by on Dinotard, but the many-toothed monster covered in fur had made an impression. It was just as big as the Marsh Mistress. It had sharp teeth, long legs, predatory eyes burning with rage. Just what I needed! And most importantly, it lived somewhere near the giga-komodo meadow, and I could probably find the path to its lair. Of course, it was a very dangerous plan. But I’d have such an awesome pet if I could pull it off! And what kind of Beast Catcher was I if I didn’t try to tame such a mighty creature?

  Physique increased to 21.

  Oh, nice! Three hours ago my Sergeant had gotten a Strength boost, and now he’d gotten the same for Physique! Before the upgrade, there were a dozen messages in a row informing me of successful poison resistance checks. The events were probably related. Well, the upgrade came just in time. It increased my character’s Health and Stamina. I had the feeling I’d need a lot of both today.