Chapter 38. That F***ing Cat Bastard (3)
“KYAAAAAAAAA!”
The thunderous roar seemed to shake the entire world.
At the same time,
WHOOOOOSH!
A violent wind erupted together with a powerful shockwave.
Michael lowered his body and raised one arm to protect his eyes.
Gin and Absinthe flattened themselves against the spring, covered their ears, and resisted the sound and wind as much as possible.
“Damn it, of all things this bastard had to use ‘Roar.’ My ears are ringing like crazy!”
Roar.
It was a technique commonly used by demonic beasts.
Whenever the battle began turning against them, they filled their chests with air and unleashed a roar.
Depending on the demonic beast, it could cause fear, paralyze hearing, or produce other disabling effects.
“Well, my hearing seems to be regenerating pretty quickly.”
Fwoosh.
As Michael felt his hearing gradually recover, he covered the pipe in White Flame.
“Since you showed me one of yours, I’ll show you one of mine. You’ve never been beaten with a burning pipe before, have you?”
Despite how grand his words sounded, Michael’s White Flame looked rather pitiful due to his lack of aura.
Creating White Flame required a lot of aura.
With so little available, its power naturally suffered.
The flame was so weak that even a light breeze made it shake.
Still, Michael considered it enough.
It’ll be easier to counterattack than to move first.
The important part was reducing his aura consumption as much as possible and driving the White Flame into the cat at maximum efficiency.
That was why Michael took out the fluff he had prepared.
“You want this, don’t you? If you can, come take it.”
Wiggle, wiggle.
He even used his now signature finger provocation.
“Hiss….”
Tch, it’s become too cautious.
Michael had expected the cat to lose all reason at the sight of fluff.
Instead, it only threatened him while keeping its distance.
Perhaps after being forced to use Roar, the cat had realized that Michael was far from ordinary.
“Then how about this?!”
Whoosh!
Michael threw his bag of fluff toward the cat.
The bag opened, sending a large amount of fluff flying through the air.
“Kyao!”
Despite the mountain of fluff, the cautious cat remained where it was.
Instead, annoyed by the fluff blocking its vision, it swept the fluff away with its left paw.
That was its mistake.
STAB!
The stuffed cat’s surprisingly lifelike eyes widened.
Unexpected pain had suddenly struck it from below.
“KYAAAAAAAAK!”
“I, it works!”
Hearing the cat scream, Gin clenched his fist.
“Three! Four! Five! Let’s see how many you can take, you fucking cat bastard!”
After using the fluff to block its sight, Michael rushed in.
With the White Flame burning around his pipe, he repeatedly stabbed the cat’s right paw.
Stab! Stab! Stab! Stab!
The accumulated damage gradually slowed the cat’s movements until its body began tilting to one side.
“KYAAAAAA!”
Its right paw was becoming a complete mess.
Unable to endure the continuous attacks any longer, the cat pulled its leg back at the exact moment Michael tried to stab again.
“Hey, you bastard!”
Michael’s body suddenly leaned forward.
He lost his balance and dropped the pipe.
Jump! Scratch, scratch, scratch!
The cat awkwardly jumped toward a rooftop.
The distance was slightly too far, so it desperately scratched at the edge before barely managing to climb up.
That alone showed just how weakened it had become.
“Haa, that fucking cat bastard even ran somewhere high. Phew.”
Michael calmed his excitement and examined the situation again.
There wasn’t an entrance, window, or even a drainpipe.
With no way to reach the rooftop, he could not finish off the wounded cat growling above him.
Lick. Lick.
The cat sat on the edge of the rooftop and desperately licked its injured right paw.
The holes Michael had made with the pipe began closing little by little.
“What the hell, are you Jesus or something?! What’s with that ridiculous recovery speed? This is absurd.”
Its regeneration was not divine enough to match Michael’s Holy Relic, but the cat’s recovery speed was still abnormal.
“MEOOOW!!”
The broken pipe was still stuck inside it, so it had not completely healed.
However, apparently the wound no longer interfered with its movements.
The cat began wiggling its rear.
“Wow, look at this bastard. You calm down for a second and suddenly you think I’m nothing?”
Before Enoch hunted rats, he always took a similar posture.
In other words, the cat now viewed Michael as prey.
“KYAAA!”
Whoosh!
The cat launched itself forward.
It looked as though it was going to slam its left paw down at Michael.
Instead, its right paw swept upward from near the ground at even greater speed.
“So the right is your dominant paw!”
When hunting something or playing with a toy, cats often had one paw they preferred using.
That dominant paw was usually much faster, stronger, and more skillful than the other.
The cat Michael was fighting was the same.
So the left paw was just bait?
Because it had attacked with the left paw first, Michael had assumed that was its dominant side.
However, the speed of the surprise strike clearly showed that the right paw was its real weapon.
That also explained why the cat used Roar and retreated after Michael stabbed its right paw.
“Still, instinct never completely disappears. You’re repeating the exact same thing.”
Michael read the next right-paw attack.
Instead of dodging, he thrust his pipe forward.
However,
“No way! Gin! Is that even possible?”
“…Was that thing always this cunning?”
Under Gin and Absinthe’s shocked gaze, the cat’s attack stopped right in front of Michael.
It had predicted that Michael would stab its paw.
Instead, it deliberately made him lower his guard.
“…You disgustingly clever bastard.”
There was a wall behind him.
The right paw in front.
The left paw above.
He was completely trapped.
The left paw came crashing down.
With nowhere to escape, Michael was crushed beneath it.
BOOM!
“Guh!”
His insides shook from the pressure.
Fortunately, his regeneration had recovered enough to keep pace with the damage.
When Michael tried stabbing the left paw with the pipe, the cat immediately retreated.
Tap. Tap.
Michael stood and dusted himself off, his face twisting into a frown.
“Fuck, how is that thing supposed to be a demonic beast?”
It was not blindly following instinct.
Its intelligence was not low either.
At this point, fighting it almost felt like fighting a demon.
Wait. A demon?
A disturbing possibility suddenly entered his mind.
According to the rat bastard, the cat was definitely a demonic beast, especially considering it could use Roar.
However, if a demonic beast somehow acquired intelligence, then that was not something to take lightly.
It meant it was transforming into a demon.
Not every demonic beast becomes one, but this bastard definitely is.
Michael could feel demonic energy leaking from the stitched scar across the cat’s face.
Apparently, the experience it had gained while fighting Michael was pushing it toward awakening.
“Haa…. God, you bastard, did I kill your family or something? Why does everything I do go wrong? It feels like you keep throwing nothing but trials at me. Fuck….”
Ever since waking in the modern world, Michael had suffered difficulty after difficulty.
At this point, he was starting to wonder if God had personally decided to torment him.
“Phew. This is bullshit. I need to kill that thing as quickly as possible before it becomes a demon.”
The more he thought about it, the more exhausted he became.
Maybe it was better to force himself and finish the cat immediately.
“I’m raising the pace from here. Get ready.”
Michael had spent the battle counterattacking.
Now he charged first.
The cat lowered its body and prepared to leap.
Using its excellent eyesight, it tracked Michael closely.
Tap!
Michael ran forward, planted his foot, bent his legs, then launched himself into the air.
As he drew closer, the cat tried to hit him directly with its right paw.
“Idiot. You don’t even know what I’m going to use, and you’re already sticking your paw out!”
Looking closely, there was no White Flame on the pipe in Michael’s right hand.
Fwoosh!
Aura erupted from Michael’s hand, transformed into White Flame, and wrapped around his arm.
To minimize the strain from his overload, he had retrieved the White Flame from the pipe beforehand.
The flame was still weak.
Michael did not care.
He pulled his arm back and continued toward the cat.
“Kyao!”
A demonic beast that had only just begun acquiring intelligence was weak against the unknown.
Proof of that was how the cat remembered its previous exchanges with Michael and prepared to knock him away instead of dodging.
“There we go. Now you finally look like a proper beast. Learn by getting hit, you fucking cat.”
The cat’s right paw shot toward Michael.
Michael took advantage of the opening and thrust his arm beyond the paw.
“ignícŭlus [Igniculus].”
WHOOOOM!
It was the only aura technique Michael could currently use.
Michael’s tiny Igniculus flew past the rushing right paw and entered the gap of the cat’s open mouth.
BANG!
Since Michael had thrown the Igniculus, he could not avoid the cat’s attack.
He was smashed into the ground again.
Michael immediately stood.
Now that his regeneration had begun recovering, small wounds were meaningless.
“KYAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!”
The cat rolled across the ground, unable to endure the burning pain inside its body.
Such a small amount of White Flame should not have caused that reaction.
However, the cat had eaten the fluff scattered all the way to the spring.
I used this against Hagenti before too, but damn, the effect is incredible.
Michael had infused small amounts of aura into the scattered fluff.
At the monastery, he had concentrated aura inside his own arm.
Here, he had planted tiny traces of aura inside each piece of fluff.
The result was that the White Flame inside the cat began consuming those traces of aura, making the fire stronger and stronger.
“I almost dried myself to death making all of that. So from now on, don’t eat random things off the ground, you fucking cat.”
The cat’s entire body trembled.
White smoke continuously poured from its mouth.
“Keh, keh!”
No matter how much it coughed, the smoke did not stop.
The White Flame spread deeper and deeper, threatening to consume the cat completely.
“Hmm. It should be about time….”
Once the White Flame consumed all the stored aura, it would rapidly expand and explode.
Michael lifted the pipe while waiting for the cat to burst.
“You’ll probably die even if I leave you alone, but I’m still annoyed about what you did earlier.”
Hummm.
Michael covered the pipe in aura and stood in front of the collapsed cat, which could only weakly breathe out smoke.
“Just one hit. Not more, not less. Understand?”
Michael raised the pipe and swung downward.
Grab!
“Huh?”
A mysterious black hand suddenly emerged from the cat’s forehead and caught the pipe.
ZZZT!
Michael’s aura reacted immediately.
That meant it was the hand of a demon.
Michael tried pulling the pipe away through brute force.
The black hand refused to release it.
“You want to play that game?”
Michael increased the amount of aura he released.
The aura became slightly brighter.
Still, the demon showed no intention of letting go.
Screeeech!
Normally, contact between a demon and aura should have created the sound of demonic energy burning away.
Instead, the aura itself seemed to scream as the sound of scraping metal rang out.
The demon’s demonic energy was overpowering Michael’s aura.
“Hup! Let’s see if you can stop this too!”
Realizing something was wrong, Michael transformed the aura into White Flame.
Even if using too much aura was dangerous, his instincts told him that he had to escape from this hand.
BANG!
The collision between White Flame and demonic energy caused a small explosion.
“Haa, haa. Damn, that took a lot out of me.”
Cold sweat ran down Michael’s forehead.
Fortunately, the demon could not endure the White Flame, allowing Michael to pull the pipe free.
The black hand, now visibly burned, withdrew to where it had come from.
Then,
Crack, crack, crack!
Something dark began crawling out from inside the cat’s forehead, splitting apart the stitched wound as it emerged.
