Catheroes

by A. J. Chaudhury

  The other kitty raised his blood stained sword and charged at me. I remained paralysed, watching him come. I felt like I was in some dream. At the very last moment, just before the other kitty was about to bury his sword into my stomach, my arm carrying the sword moved instinctively. Steel clanged against steel as I blocked his attack.

  But the other kitty was determined. He swung his sword again at me. Once more I blocked. He glared, as if angry that I should resist him at all. He kicked my leg, my balance was lost for a second and he used the opportunity to land another kick on my stomach, so that I fell to the ground. He raised his sword. I moved my head just in time to avoid the blade that instead hit the ground right next to me.

  I could have kicked him, as his sword seemed to become stuck in the ground. Hell, I could have even killed him even as he struggled to pull out his sword. But I didn’t. I just couldn’t fathom doing anything offensive to myself. To defend was something else altogether.

  Kitty pulled out his sword finally. I too stood up.

  “We are the same cat,” I said to him, my voice strangely devoid of emotions, “why are you trying to kill me?”

  Kitty didn’t reslake. With a yell he came to hit me again. I just moved sideways, evading him with ease. He glared at me, embarrassed that he was failing to cause me any harm. Shit, did I look so stupid when I was embarrassed? Next time I would keep a straight face when I was embarrassed about anything.

  Kitty picked up a fist sized rock from the ground and threw it with force at my face. This one hit me— actually I allowed myself to be hit for I was beginning to feet pity for my other self. The rock hit right at my nose. The pain was stinging, and blood streamed out of my nostrils. My health fell by fifty.

  My other self began to grin, almost looking victorious that he had at least caused some harm to me.

  “Happy?” I said to him. “Injuring yourself makes you happy?”

  The grin faded from his face as he realised I had let myself to be hit on purpose.

  Extreme anger convulsed the other Kitty’s face.

  I abruptly realised why he was failing at hitting me and causing me any real harm. Even my nose even stopped bleeding by now. Though the other Kitty did look frightening and he could perhaps kill many dogmen all at once, he could never harm me. Why? Because he was a poorer version of myself from the past. I had levelled up many times since that dark night of butchering dogmen. I had learned quite a few new things. I was better than him. By now, none of my initial fear on seeing him remained. He was a weaker version of me, even though he looked like a devil. Unlike him, I had acquired at least some control over my anger.

  It was my turn to laugh.

  “You can never kill me,” I said to him. “And probably you already know why.”

  Kitty was fuming now, seeing my laugh. He came at me again, swinging his sword. I blocked all his attacks with barely any energy spent. Finally I boxed him on the face and he staggered back, blood oozing from his lips.

  Kitty’s eyes began to swell with tears. He threw away his sword.

  “Tired?” I said.

  Kitty ignored me. He turned and walked away. He had gone a distance when the world around me began to fade, the mighty mountain slowly disappearing, the chill air getting warmer. A notification appeared.

  Congratulations!

  You have defeated the shape shifter by making it realise that it could never cause any harm to you.

  Wait a second. That had been a shape shifter? I had never bothered to check his details. But I was still happy that I could defeat him. Another message appeared.

  Congratulations!

  You level up!

  ***

  General Information

  Name

  Kitty

  Level

  8

  Sex

  Male

  Race

  Cat

  Health

  800

  Mana

  350

  Strength

  78

  Stamina

  77

  Luck

  80

  ***

  Chapter 53

  The fuzzy feeling took hold of me and I relished it. A few heart beats later, I found myself in the room with the female dogman. She was quiet. The kind of quietness that comes when one has been humbled. She stood up and moved her chair. I only then saw that there was a door before which she had been sitting for so long. She pushed the door open and gestured me to go in. This was not some trick of hers, right? With some hesitation I moved towards the door and entered the darkness inside it. The female dogman closed the door from the outside.

  “Hey!” I said, banging on the door. But the door dissolved, so that I was banging on thin air. Specks of light began to appear all around me. A swirling mass of light and darkness.

  A new place materialised. I was in a reasonably large clearing in the midst of a forest. In the centre of the clearing there was some higher ground. On that higher ground was a great throne, which strangely fit perfectly with the scenery of the place. On that throne a man sat—yes, a human male.

  He was in his mid-forties maybe and he had a bald head from how he looked. But he was wearing strange attire that adorned his body. The attire seemed to have been made from the skin of a dogman. The man also wore a helmet, one that was shaped like the head of a dog.

  The man was Nahom Htan. Lord of the Lair. Lord of the Red Dogmen.

  On the ground, right in front of the throne, four people were kneeling. King Rajasher, Prince Indrat, Queen Makrini and the dogman wizard that we had earlier seen. The Lord on the throne had the flying carpet in his hand, as though examining it.

  “… it’s my finest invention,” the wizard was saying, “it can fly fast. Very fast.”

  The Lord slowly looked up, his gaze shifting to me. The other four also looked towards me. The three cats gaped seeing me. But they did not utter any word in the presence of the lord. I pitied the king, who was under the influence of the substance that the queen had been feeding him.

  “Where is my master?” I asked the Lord.

  The Lord smile menacingly. He stood up from his throne.

  I focussed hard at him to get his stats. I knew he would be powerful, but just how much?

  General Information

  Name

  Nahom Htan

  Level

  1

  Sex

  Male

  Race

  Human

  Health

  100

  Mana

  10

  Strength

  8

  Stamina

  7

  Luck

  10

  The stats made my jaws drop. The guy was still at level one? How? Then how did he end up becoming the Lord of the red dogmen? How did he acquire so much power?

  “You are a hardy pet, aren’t you?” the Lord asked. “I recall that you also fell with the two of us in the pool. The last time I got you killed in this world, I thought that would be the end of the nuisance that I had been suffering from you. For a while I was happy and contended, working on my plans to dominate the entirety of Arun. But no, you must somehow return, right? I thought once someone died in this world and took rebirth they lose 99% of their memory. But you have apparently recovered all of it. Damn, you are one good player, no doubt about that, none at all.”

  The Lord’s gait was relaxed as he approached me. I feared he would use some weapon on me that he was hiding. I still failed to digest his stats.

  And then the answer abruptly came to me. It was the helmet he wore. It probably worked in a similar manner to the helmet that I wore myself. I could summon the insects and make them do my bidding. The Lord could summon the dogmen and make them do his bidding. I had to get that helmet off his head.

  The Lord smirked. His right arm changed its shape and transformed into a whip. The whip kept getting longer, and it crackled with electricity.

  The Lord threw his whip towards me. I jump
ed and it missed my leg by a mere inch.

  “Energetic, are you?” the Lord said.

  Wait, if the Lord was in level one, it should be easy for me to use spells on him, right? I motioned with my paw and threw the paralysis spell.

  Nothing.

  The Lord laughed.

  “How can you possibly expect to throw spells at me that actually work?” the Lord said, “especially with me being inside my Lair?”

  The Lair… yes. That was why he was called the Lord, right? He was invincible inside it.

  Which meant I could do nothing against him…

  But was it so? Ultimately, wasn’t this level just another level in the Lair? In the previous levels there had always been other elements that had helped me. There had to be such elements in this level too, right?

  Lost in thought, I missed the whip coming at me at breakneck speed. It hit me on the back, creating a snapping sound. My health fell by a hundred even as my back screamed in pain. Tears oozed out of my eyes. But I didn’t cry out. I would take the pain instead of giving the Lord any signs of weakness.

  My brain was still thinking fast, despite the pain. This was the boss level, so the elements that would help me would be very subtle. Perhaps, I already possessed the elements to beat the Lord.

  No Touching.

  Sure, I couldn’t use spells on the lord, but could I used them on other objects in the level?

  I made a stone hover.

  “You know,” the Lord said, “I am the Lord here. I know everything that’s going on in the Lair. You think you can hit me with a rock and kill me?”

  I ignored the Lord altogether. I hurled it towards the Lord’s head anyway. The whip blocked the rock just before the rock had struck the dog-head shaped helmet.

  The Lord looked at me in an amused manner.

  “What was the point of that?” he said.

  Well, I thought, the point is that you don’t know about everything that goes on in the Lair. I was almost grateful to the Lair, and making the stone hurl towards the Lord’s head had confirmed everything. The Lair had allowed me to keep the privacy of my thoughts. My mind was still mine. The lord had no idea about what went in my mind. Sure he could feel when I made a rock hover, but he couldn’t know whether I would hurl the rock at him or I would just drop the rock.

  “You know,” I began to speak, “initially I thought you were a good guy.”

  “You did?” the Lord said. The whip came at full speed towards me once more, but I leapt out of its way.

  “Of course,” I said, “you would cuddle me and bring cat biscuits for me. Why would I even imagine you to be a bad guy? But then, I began to see you spring like a thief when my master went out of the room for even a minute and then you would check his important documents.”

  “I appreciate that you remember everything from the real world,” the Lord said, the anger in his tone slowly rising, “but let me make it clear to you that I am not a thief.”

  Once again the whip came. Perhaps it was a result of the Lord’s anger, but the electricity around the whip doubled, and even though I was able to evade the whip, I got hit by the electricity. For a moment, I shuddered violently, as my health dropped by fifty.

  But once it was over, I still looked into the eyes of the Lord, intimidating him. I was going to kill him, and I had unlocked the process how.

  I made a stone hover again, this time behind the Lord. I took a few steps towards him at the same time.

  “Oh, come on,” the Lord said, shaking his head, a smirk on his face, “how can you expect a stone to work?” I took in a deep breath, preparing myself for the run. I got down on my all fours. I was a cat, and I would rather run like one.

  I made some more stones hover.

  “My whip is fast, you know,” the Lord said, “One or many rocks don’t matter, I will stop each of them.”

  I could detect the trace of fear in the Lord’s boisterous voice. The whip was fast, but it couldn’t multi-task.

  One by one I made the stones fly towards the head of the Lord. At the same time, I broke into a sprint. The Lord seemed confused about what I was doing. He was able to block some of my stones, and he even sent his whip towards me. I made another stone fly towards his head, even as I jumped clear of the whip coming at me.

  The stone hit his head.

  “Ouch!” he cried, “You’d pay for—”

  I was already on him now. The lord tried to get me off himself, but I clawed at his face. The next moment, I had removed the helmet from his head with a quick hit from my paw. His whip arm became the arm of a human again. I bit into his neck with force. His health began to fall. I also kept making the stones hit his head. They helped. His health fell further. He died.

  As his body fell to the ground, I could barely believe what I had accomplished. I quickly activated the spell Human Hands and I picked up the fallen helmet. Not far away, near the throne, the dogman and the three cats were looking at me with open mouths.

  I knew the dogman wizard would be a problem, so I immediately put on the dog-head shaped helmet. It shrunk in size, and it fit perfectly over the insect controlling helmet that I had been already wearing.

  Congratulations!

  You are now the Lord of the Lair!

  You possess 40% power over the Dogman Attire. Hence you have control over only the red dogmen, who comprise about 40% of all the dogmen on Arun.

  Well, that explained a bit of things.

  I moved towards the throne. No one would harm me now. I was the Lord. Plus, they couldn’t get out of here either without my permission. I also knew where my master was. Behind the throne, there was a small lid on the ground. I opened the lid. There were steps leading down to a small chamber. At one end of the chamber, there was a human male. He was fastened with ropes. I moved fast towards him. The man was looking down. He seemed to have barely eaten anything for a long while, for his ribs were quite clear beneath his skin, and all he wore was a mere loin cloth. His hair and his beard grew long as well.

  “Master,” I said in almost a whisper when I reached him. With a lot of effort he seemed to look up. He squinted at me as if trying to know who I was.

  “It’s me, Kitty.”

  His eyes brightened.

  “Is that really you?” master said in a broken voice, “Mohan Nath did tell me that you had also come inside the game world. But then he also told me that he had gotten you killed.”

  Mohan Nath was the real name of the Lord whom I have just killed. Oh, I so hated the sound of that name!

  “Yes, master,” I said. With a single concentrated thought, I was able to remove all the ropes that bound my master. Master slumped to the floor at once, his energy was so low. “I have returned. My love for you has made me return.”

  I concentrated my thoughts again. The Lord had previously told the Lair to always suck master’s energy and health whenever they rose above 10%. I now demanded the Lair, with the help of the attire of the Lord that I wore, to fill master with energy and health.

  Master seemed to begin gaining weight instantly. After a moment, he looked quite healthy, although he still needed a shave and a haircut.

  It was only then that my thoughts reeled back to Junaki, Riya and Anuj. Wearing the dogman attire, I knew that they were in the dungeons of the Lair. Riya and Anuj had been killed in the first level, while Junaki had been killed in the second level. Thankfully, anybody that died in the Lair, didn’t respawn. Instead they were directly put into the dungeons of the Lair. The Lord whom I had just killed mere minutes ago was also now in the dungeon. There were many others in it as well, including previous victims of the Lord. I now freed everyone, except the Lord. While I let the other prisoners materialize outside the Lair, I made Junaki, Riya and Anuj materialize in the chamber itself.

  All the three of them seemed to be in a state of shock. In as few words as I could, I told the three of them, as well master, how I had killed the Lord, and replaced him. I was now the master of the red dogmen.

  Mast
er rubbed my on the head, just as he would do in the days of old.

  “Oh, Kitty, you are one brave cat aren’t you?” he said.

  “I did it all for you, master,” I replied. But there was one thing that still confused me, and I asked.

  “I do not understand one thing, master. Why did Mohan keep you alive?”

  “He didn’t know how to use the dogman helmet to control all the dogmen races,” he said. “It’s only the red ones that he has control over. I know how to make the helmet control every one, but I would not tell it to him. It is as simple as levelling up a few times after one wear the helmet. He kept me alive in hopes that I would tell it to him. The idiot couldn’t figure it out himself. It’s just that he got lucky when he first landed in this world that he discovered the helmet because of which he could get access to so much power.”

  “I saw you two fight and then fall into the pool,” I said, “and then I jumped into it to save you, but I ended up in this world instead. How was Mohan able to make you prisoner in the first place?”

  “You know, shortly after the first few trips to this world,” Master replied, “I began to hear about the Lord of the North who had gained leadership over all the dogmen. I also knew that there was an artefact that could be used to gain control over the dogmen, because I had received a quest to find it. But then, as I went about my quest I learnt from a multi-coloured dogman about the name of the Lord of the North, and it was Nahom Htan .

  “It took me a while to realise that it was Mohan’s name in reality with the letters in the reverse order. While Mohan had assisted me on a few small things concerning the pond portal that led to this world, I had not yet allowed him to come to this world. When I got to know about the name of the Lord, I realised that Mohan had been sneaking into this world in my absence without my permission. The fact that a month spent in this world is barely a day in the real world helped him as well.