Back to the stray life.
From her spatial inventory Yimi retrieved a miniature pet tracker—heavily worn from her time in the Holy Corpse world. It was the only thing she'd brought from home. She used to hear Grandmother's voice through it sometimes, but she hadn't heard it again since.
Either way, this had only ever been a temporary place. The cat was always going to leave this world.
The problem was food. Wandering on her own meant supply was uncertain again, and a cat who'd gotten used to the finer things was not going to lower herself to digging through bins. Worse, the old fisherman who'd reliably appeared by the riverbank had, for some reason, stopped showing up entirely.
Should have taken the fishing rod when she had the chance. She'd given him more than enough fish to compensate.
Yimi lay flat on the bridge railing, staring at the water below, tail swaying.
The only option was to ask other cats if there was anywhere nearby good for scrounging food. Even with an intelligence well above any normal cat, Yimi hadn't forgotten the signals used for communicating with her own kind.
She trotted on four paws and quickly found the nearest one. She called out in friendly greeting: "Mrow~"
Other cat: "Mrow?"
Yimi: "Mrow mrow!"
"Hss!"
"..."
Oh—not one cat. There were two. A black cat was lying on top of another cat doing something she couldn't make out, but the calico pinned beneath it spat hostilely at Yimi for no apparent reason.
Yimi felt wronged and beat them both up.
Local cats had absolutely no manners. She'd greeted them nicely and been hissed at for it.
"Congratulations, Host—achievement unlocked: [Enlightenment Education] Reward: Portal Energy +5%."
"Mrow?"
Her energy had been overflowing for ages. It wasn't something she could eat.
She sniffed the air and caught a faint trace of cat treat—here of all places.
She followed it into a dim alley. At the far end stood a large, heavyset man. When he noticed her he stared at her ears for a beat, then slowly crouched down and squeezed a treat onto the ground.
"Mrow?" Yimi crept forward carefully, because she'd clocked the cage in his hand—a very familiar design.
Once, when Yimi had accidentally swallowed a wireless earbud, Grandmother had taken her to a veterinary clinic. She'd seen cats arriving in cages exactly like this one—they were wheeled into a room, and when they were wheeled back out, they had the look of animals questioning their existence, tongues lolling.
She didn't know what happened in that room. But the memory had lodged in her like a shadow she couldn't shake.
Yimi's tail flicked. Her steps slowed.
Within a meter, the heavyset man's patience snapped. A thick-gloved hand shot out like a sprinting cheetah for the scruff of her neck. Yimi planted a foot, sidestepped cleanly.
"Huh?" The man was visibly startled that something this round could move that fast—and pressed forward for another grab.
"Mrow!"
Yimi rolled, looped both front paws around a short stick lying on the ground—a little longer than her cat body—and planted it.
Insect Glaive technique: leaping lunge slash.
"What the—" The cat catcher stared, baffled, as the cat jumped higher than him and cracked the stick across him.
It stung but didn't break skin. Summer clothing, so it'd probably leave a red welt.
The main point was that using the swing of the stick as momentum, the cat finished a second-stage jump at an angle that defied all logic—and came down for another hit!
"What is going on?!" He threw an arm up to shield his face and neck.
Another crack of the stick. Again the cat used the rebound to leap. She hadn't touched the ground a single time since the first jump—it was exactly like some kind of spear technique!
"There's something unclean here! I'm done!" The cat catcher finally understood something was very wrong. He abandoned the cage, scrambled on hands and knees, and fled.
His mind kept cycling back to two urban legends that had been spreading online recently: a panda-like cat spirit that could talk; and a cat deity that helped fishermen catch fish.
He was quitting. Nobody had told him the job required outwitting a cat spirit.
"Mrow."
The little cat dropped the stick.
"Congratulations, Host—achievement unlocked: [What a Satisfying Fight] Reward: Gacha draws +1."
She'd forgotten to land the finishing blow again. She never seemed to remember.
The Insect Glaive's damage output was underwhelming—she'd gone at it for a while and hadn't even broken the skin. Her claws would have done more. A waste of effort.
The cat eyed the stick with disdain, feeling the hard-mode technique had let down her hard-earned effort.
"Host, the weakness in damage output stems from your current physical strength and the frailty of your chosen weapon. A cat's joints also cannot sustain high-force swings. Most importantly, now that you have mastered the Insect Glaive, you should understand the importance of the Kinsect."
"Mrow."
Yimi shifted back to her human form, pulled the bloodstained spear from her spatial inventory—the one that looked grotesquely oversized against a child's frame.
With this, the damage would be substantially higher—but she had no Kinsect.
She found herself missing the red rhinoceros beetle she'd traded for two Holy Corpses in the last world.
It wasn't completely impossible, though...
She stepped forward, went through the throwing motion with the spear. Famine surged out, rocketed forward, then snapped back at her side as she completed the follow-through—close enough to serve as a Kinsect substitute, for now.
"Draw." She remembered this time.
"Skipping animation for Host."
[Skill Book: Charge Blade]: Nothing a Super Amped Element Discharge can't fix—and if it can't, try two. Unlock Charge Blade techniques from Monster Hunter: World & Iceborne.
Learning difficulty: Hard
The Monster Hunter world again?
Yimi looked at the book with extreme distaste and did not eat it. Eating books was a test of her dental fortitude, and paper was the most disgusting thing she'd ever put in her mouth.
Her nose twitched twice. Another scent—quite fragrant this time, but not a cat treat. Instead it was similar to Shiori... no. More accurately, similar to Yoshino and Miku Izayoi.
Now that she thought about it, Shiori was something like a greatest-hits of scents—she carried notes of Yoshino, the one she could smell now, and the trace she'd half-registered while dozing in class (Tohka Yatogami), among others.
Because Shiori—the most fragrant of all—had been her first encounter, she'd never paid this type of scent much attention. Now, perhaps because the Spacequake energy she'd consumed had long since been fully metabolized and the Holy Corpse fusion had slowed again, hunger was sharpening her senses toward the things she'd been overlooking.
Strange. There were two scents. Two scents that were nearly identical.
Yimi put away the spear, ran out of the alley on her little legs, and opened her mouth slightly.
She saw two people who looked exactly the same.