Chapter 10: Chapter 10

I stare out across the vast landscape before me, a tapestry of biomes, from deserts to primeval forests and glacial tundra, the sheer variety biomes present in a relatively small area was incredible, and would break many of my of my preconceptions of the world If I had not spent the last few millenia dealing with the same thing. I smile to myself a bit as I sit on my haunches, resting my head in my palm, supporting my arm with my leg, taking in the beauty of this new world. As for the first time in millenia, I could relax, up till this point every waking moment outside of my safehouse or lobby was spent in tension, as I constantly held myself at attention, ready for any ambush or creatures I may encounter.

Sure I had killed mighty creatures with relative ease, as even dragons were not safe from my hunt, but those hunts had always been built upon weeks if not years of study, preparation, and incredible amounts of powerful weaponry, and I knew for a fact that any normal encounter with a dragon would end in my death 9 times out of 10, as without my plans, ambushes, traps, and equipment, I had little chance against such creatures, so I had learned to never let my guard down when in the trial, especially when I slept, I rarely slept outside of my lobby or safehouse, but many missions simply did not allow me to return to my safehouse until their completion, so when I did find myself sleeping, I would surround myself in enough traps and alarms to make even the vietcong jealous.

But now, I could relax for the first time in millenia, I would say living memory but one of the effects of my survivor trait, one that is often both a blessing and a curse, was perfect memory, so I was incapable of forgetting my past experiences, including the traumas.

But I had long since adapted to it, my point was, combining my newfound senses, with a relative lack of creatures capable of killing me with extreme ease, allowed me to finally relax, and truly enjoy the beauty of the world, as muscles I never even knew I tensed relaxed, and I truly felt free for the first time in ages, no longer shackled by the damn trial, I could finally do as I wished.

One of the greatest things of this new world was the smell, a unique, everpressent smell filled this world. It was not a new smell, I had gained the ability to sense it long ago, but up until this point I had only ever smelt it on myself.

The smell I speak of, is life.

That's right, I could literally smell life, and it was amazing, as it assured me that finally, no longer was everything fake, a mere husk created by whatever entities ran the trial, but a real, living, breathing entity, with a real soul and ego.

It was the difference between speaking to an AI that was simply programmed well enough to pass a turing test, and a true sentience, capable of complex thought and problem solving, and it made me incomprehensibly happy.

To the point that I was able to ignore the pressing issue with my Safehouse.

I had just returned from visiting it, and to put it mildly, the sealing was far worse than I had originally expected.

I had expected to find all the advanced facilities sealed, but to at least maintain the basic systems like a basic forge, and farm, and the like.

But instead, I found absolutely nothing but basic tools, I had hammers, screws, screwdrivers, saws, chisels, etc, but nothing else.

This unfortunately, meant that any advanced weaponry was beyond my current capabilities, with the most I could do being maintaining my current sword and clothing, if my watch broke I would be incapable of fixing it now, and if not for its solar power cells I would have no way of recharging it.

This also meant even the most basic firearm was outside of my capabilities.

Sure I could create a gun by hand, in fact, with my knowledge, experience, and powerful body, I could form even advanced firearms with near perfect precision by hand, but the problem was I had neither the equipment nor materials to produce ammunition.

I could form the bullets and casings fine, but not the propellant, making such a venture futile.

I had, however, built a modern crossbow, as even though it was slower and less powerful than a firearm, it had the benefits of reusable ammunition, no chemical propellants, and relatively little maintenance.

My main motive for this was hunting, I was fast, incredibly so, to the point no mortal prey would find themselves capable of escaping me, but I was not faster than a bolt from a high powered crossbow, and it was easier to simply shoot the animal than chase, not to mention even if it does run, so long as I do significant damage, it would bleed and tire much faster.

To this end I had even built groves into the bolts tip, designed to allow blood to flow through the bolt, making the bolt itself increase bleeding instead of staunching it like a normal arrow.

The tips themselves were made of a tungsten alloy, and were capable of piercing 10mm of basic steel, an incredibly impressive amount of force.

You may wonder why I would make tools for hunting, well there were a few reasons, the most pressing of which being that I had grossly underestimated the energy requirements of my new form, the ivy rations I had expected to last me a week, lasted barely 2 days, meaning I had only 20 days of food, and considering I had used 3 just to reach this mountain peak, I would most definitely run out before I reached civilisation. And another was that I simply loved hunting.

It was a habit I had picked up during my time in the trial, and was seemingly enhanced by my new form, as I seemed to have gained some animalistic traits and instincts when I acquired it, to the point I actively craved the thrill of a hunt.

I would be worried if it wasn't so much fun.

Anyway, back to the towns and cities I was talking about previously.

I didn't have the equipment currently available to forge lenses, and unlike metal which I could brute force the forging of in exchange for lower durability and the like, I could not simply forge glass with brute force.

Sure I could easily sand down a piece of glass to create a perfect lens, and using my nails, I could cut through it like butter without worrying about it shattering, but the problem was, I couldn't make glass.

Glass requires at least ~1700°C to form, and I simply had no way of producing such temperatures without a powerful furnace or forge, which was currently sealed in my safehouse, and it would take far too much time than it was worth to build a new one.

So I had no scopes to make scouting easier, but my new eyes were incredibly things, with me being able to zoom in on distant objects, while still being able to see with perfect clarity, unfortunately the zoom was not so superhuman that I could perfectly take in the details of distant cities, but I could still see quite a lot quite well.

As a result I could infer quite a bit about the new world's civilisations, first of which was the buildings, they were distinctly late medieval in construction, although I saw many that looked ancient roman, greek, japanese, chinese, norse, etc. and many of the buildings I saw did not abide by the rules of conventional architecture.

The greatest example of this is a massive tower made completely out of brick and stone -at least on the outside, I can't see inside of it.- yet somehow stands at an absurd ~4 km tall, which should be physically impossible, its foundations should have buckled under the weight, and if not that, the very ground beneath the tower should have sunk, yet somehow it stood perfectly fine, my only theory for such a constructions existence was that magic existed here in some form or another. Which greatly excited me, after all, who doesn't want to learn magic, and as somewhat of a scientist myself, the possibility of learning new things brings me near euphoric joy.

Unfortunately I couldn't just stay at the top of this mountain forever. I mean I guess I could, just going down to hunt and stuff, but the thought of learning magic greatly intrigues me, and I really want to go see that tower up close, not to mention finally experience the joys of civilisation once again after millenia of solitude, I may be a sociopath, but interacting with others can be fun! Especially messing with others, I've always loved messing with others, which is one of the reasons I chose to give myself cat appendages, after all, I might as well embrace it.

*timeskip*

It has been a bit over a month since I was on the mountain, and a lot has happened. I had taken my sweet time to just enjoy my travels, and I actually haven't run out of IV rations yet, mostly because I decided to save them for when I actually needed them. and hunted for the majority of my food until now, although I did have to use a few in some areas that had no animals, or simply not enough to fill me. I ate a lot.

My crossbow had come in just as much utility as I had expected it to, although I did find myself purposefully doing some hunts without it every now and then just for the hell of it, as well as to make sure my skills didn't rust, and it had shown to be even more powerful than I had expected. Even managing to fell a massive bear with rock armor in a single hit, as it easily pierced the creature's armor and skull, a creature that despite being literally 5 times my size, only lasted two meals.

The amount of money I would probably have to spend on food in the future, at least until I regained access to my panacea farm -fuck you god- was worrying, but luckily for me when I was butchering the bear, I found a strange stone in its chest, about the size of my fingers, which if anime videogames and popular culture have taught me anything, would likely sell for a hefty sum, not to mention its rock armour consisted primarily of magnetite and schist, meaning it was rich in both iron and titanium, meaning that if I could manage to refine it, or find a blacksmith willing to buy it for a fair price, could likely net me a pretty penny.

I had hunted many other creatures along my journey, netting me a pretty large bag of those chest stones, which I have taken to calling magic stones given that's what they are usually called in popular culture, including another such stone bear, which, turns out, proved to me that the first one I hunted was either a juvenile or lesser species, as this one was double its size, and covered in crude iron instead of ore, which was surprising for sure, not like it was any harder to kill, a quick swipe with my sword easily freeing its body from the weight of carrying its massive head. It should thank me, its shoulders will be so much more relaxed now!

Alass, my journey must end eventually, as I find myself exiting the now sparse forest onto an impressively clean, -by my inferred level of this civilisations technology, it was still quite dirty- stone paved road, as the clean -actually clean this time- white walls of the city stood before me, the occasional soldier walking along the battlements in their shiny polished armor would be an imposing sight if I didn't know I could scale the walls in an instant and probably cut down all of the soldiers with ease unless some magic bullshitry interfered, but I would rather not be labeled a criminal on my first day, nor did I know if there were any people in the city capable of matching or surpassing me in strength, and I would rather not take the chance and die so soon after completing my trial. So I simply went to the gate like a good little citizen.

The line to enter the city was almost a kilometer long as numerous carriages lined up to enter the city, raising the likelihood that this was a very important city higher than ever before, if you know, the massive tower that was visible for hundreds of kilometers in every direction wasn't enough, oh another thing about this world, it seems to be much larger than earth, that or its flat, -unlikely since I could still see a curve from atop the mountain.- because god damn the horizon stretches incredibly far in every direction, anyway, luckily there seemed to be another, much shorter, much faster moving line entering the city for individual persons not traveling with a carriage or convoy.

So I simply joined that line, I did notice a few shady looking people watching the line from afar, one of which looking at me with distinctly lecherous eyes, like god damn, I know im hot, but really? Anyway I simply took out my sword and playfully swiped it through the floor, leaving a thin but deep gash in the road, as I watched the man suddenly stop looking at me as I suddenly became a much less attractive target, 'Ha, suck it bitch.'

I also got quite a few regular appraising stares, likely considering my strange attire and equipment, after all, my clothes, backpack, and sword looked very different from what most others wore, although I did see a few modern looking clothes among the masses, so this is probably one of those worlds that despite being primarily medieval has modern traits mixed in, I can work with that.

Luckily there are quite a few people here that are most definitely not homosapiens, and none of them seem to be treated differently than the others, so I probably don't have to deal with any racism in the future due to my cat-human body. Although I do see an elf trying his best not to touch anyone, so I guess there are still some species based issues, but he doesn't seem to be looking down on the other races present or treating them as inferior, so he looks more like a germaphobe than a xenophobe.

Anyway, time passed quickly, and I found myself at the front of the line.

"Next."

'God damn look at that poor girl, she looks fucking exhausted.' Seriously, the woman who called me up, a very tiny person, probably some sort of very short race like a dwarf or something, although they aren't very wide or stubby, they look like a 10 year old. In fact I would think they were if their life didn't smell middle aged. Yes, I can roughly tell age by their smell, although it seems to work based on their age relative to their species, at least that's a guess considering the elf smells the same as that human, and I doubt they are actually the same age.

Anyway I went off on a tangent again, she doesn't smell like a kid -damn that sounds wrong- and she looks super tired, her eyes have the deepest darkest circles I have ever seen under them, and she looks like she could really use a coffee.

"Name?" oh right we already started the identification process or whatever, hope it isn't a problem I don't have an identity here, although it probably won't considering there doesn't seem to be any high speed communication so they probably just assign identification at the gates like old cities did in my world. Anyway, what should I name myself? I don't really like my old name, so I wanna use something else, but what? I could do something like John Doe but I doubt anyone in this world will get that reference, it's also a shit name.

'How about… Catline? Clawrence? Yeah no I would rather not have a joke name, god fucking damn it I suck at naming things.' despite having this rant in my head less than a second has passed irl, perks of having a powerful soul I guess.

Know what, I'm a cat, and I'm insane, and I also like japanese culture, so Ill name myself Kyōki Neko, or literally insane cat, not to mention Kyōki sounds pretty similar to my most commonly used online name Koki, which also just so happens to be inspired by an old cat of mine from when I was a child, Kokinelis. It all leads back to cats! It's a catspiracy!

"Kyōki Neko." She looks at me for a moment.

"Would I be correct to assume you're from the east?" oh so japanese culture exists here, I mean I could already guess that based on the presence of japanese style buildings, but it's also eastern? The coincidences are beginning to become too much to ignore. Am I in an anime world or something? I am, aren't I, come to think about it, that god or whatever said something about choosing my world, so they probably chose some sort of fantasy world or something, that sounds like something they would do, sucks that I don't know which, but I'm sure I'll be fine.

"You would be correct."

"Great, age?"

Damn, another hard question, I mean not really, it's just what age do I want people to know me as? Oh I know, I'll do the tried and true method.

"Bit rude to ask someone's age innit?" she doesn't look amused.

"I'll just mark you down as 18, you look 18." well ok, not like it matters all that much, I'm a few millennia old, but I act like a carefree 20 year old on most occasions, or sometimes, a nihilistic 80 year old, it really just depends on my mood, im sure there are alot of long lived species here so I wonder how age dynamics work? Pedophelia better not exist or I will probably go on a genocide.

"Sure, that works."

"Great, finally, do you come here for a visit, to trade, or to get a citizenship?"

"Citizenship." I'll probably live here for a while, might as well.

"Civilian or Adventurer?"

"Adventurer."

"Do you have a guild card or do you need one?" huh, guess there's an organized adventurer's guild, now im almost sure I'm in some anime world, well that could be fun, so might as well join it.

"I'll need to join."

"Great, you're all set, go to the guild first thing upon entry and give them these papers and they will set you up with an adventuring Identity."

Damn really? That's it? I wonder if they just have no crime or something but security here is a fucking joke, or maybe they just have enough powerful adventurers they arent worried? I wouldn't be surprised if there is some sort of system that allows adventurers to get incredibly strong, so that's probably it, I guess I'll go sign up at the guild? Yeah why not, should be fun.

(an, I hope you liked this chapter, I liked writing it, also it's pretty long, so be thankful, (NO! I didn't do it for you, B-Baka.) anyway if you can't tell by my writing i'm in a good mood today, so that's nice, I have monday and tuesday off of school so that's nice. Hope you guys enjoyed, have a good day.)