Catheroes Read online

  “Um, can I ask you one thing?”

  “Go on.”

  “Could you at least tell me my name? I don’t remember it at all”

  The aged turtle let out a chuckle.

  “You will have to be a fast learner than that, o little one! And to be a fast learner you must experiment. I believe you see health, mana and stamina bars in your vision, plus other icons? And there is one particular icon that has the symbol of a cat?”

  “Yes, I do,” I replied earnestly.

  “Well, go on, select that icon!”

  I did. Instantly, all details about me appeared in a rectangular box.

  General Information

  Name

  Kitty

  Level

  1

  Sex

  Male

  Race

  Cat

  Health

  100

  Mana

  10

  Strength

  8

  Stamina

  7

  Luck

  10

  “My name is Kitty?” I said. Come on, I should have had a better name than something so generic. A cat called Kitty? Wow.

  “Well, that was what you decided to call yourself when you created your avatar in your last life,” Goruk said. “The other red icon that you see is the log out button. Unfortunately you cannot use it in this life unless you regain 100% of your memory.

  “Also, one thing to remember, always keep an eye on your health, mana and stamina bars. They are important and that is why they have been provided separately in your peripheral vision so that you needn’t open all your details every time you want to check your health, stamina or mana. It’s best when the bars are full.

  “Since this is only your second life in this world, it will be possible for you to see the stats and details of others. You just need to focus intently on them and you would be able to see their stats just as well as you see yours. This ability would come in handy to you, especially in combat situations, as it will allow you to know whether your opponent is stronger than you. Though, of course, simply if an opponent is stronger than it doesn’t mean you would not be able to defeat them. In the past there have been many good players who were able to defeat others of much higher levels than themselves.

  “Now, I think I have told you everything that I can tell you, and I must go. I wish I could tell you about your past life, but alas I am not allowed to do that. But be assured that you were someone of great potential in your previous life that was unfortunately not fully realised due to some… let’s say, events that you failed to foresee. Goodbye, little one!”

  The giant turtle became translucent and very soon was one with the air.

  Chapter 3

  I remained staring at the empty space in front of me, until my stomach grumbled and I told myself that I should rather go searching for food.

  Just then, my nose caught the scent of a creature that was the natural food of cats: a rat.

  I turned and moved towards the scent. It led me to a bush. With extreme care I parted the bush. The rat was right there. I should have waited for it to come out of the bush on its own. The rat saw me and darted.

  Cursing myself I pursued it. It was one quick rat for sure!

  Pursuing the rat, I almost forgot that I had long left the glade, and when I turned back to take a look, I realised that I was quite lost in the woods. Okay, this wasn’t good at all.

  What if an animal larger than me comes along and decides to make food out of me? I gulped at the thought. Focus on your own food, a voice told me in my head.

  I turned towards the rat again, but it had disappeared. I tried to focus on its scent, but I seemed to have lost it. Just then I spotted the tiny creature enter a hole in the ground a good distance ahead in front of me.

  I dashed to this hole. It was quite large to be the rat’s dwelling, and staring at the darkness of the hole, I was rather fearful. But hunger pushed me to enter the hole anyway. I let the scent of the rat lead me. The hole was dark enough that I couldn’t see clearly, so I just closed my eyes, since trying to figure out any shape was merely being a distraction. The scent of the rat got stronger and stronger as I went deeper down the hole. Another thing I noticed was that the hole became larger down, almost some kind of a subterranean chamber.

  Then I heard a squeak. My ears caught movement ahead of me. No, I was wrong. The sounds were coming all around me. My heart was thumping hard, as fear gripped me. A fear of the unknown. More squeaks.

  I felt a sharp pain on my tail. I opened my eyes suddenly as a box appeared in my vision.

  You have been bitten!

  You receive -10 health!

  I held my breath, despite the intense pain in my tail. A sea of tiny glowing eyes stared back at me in the darkness. Closing my eyes earlier had not been a good idea. Some of the tiny eyes were not tiny at all. I focused on a pair of large eyes.

  General Information

  Name

  Rat4x32

  Level

  5

  Sex

  Male

  Race

  Rat

  Health

  30

  Mana

  10

  Strength

  10

  Stamina

  50

  Luck

  3

  The ultimate fear came over me.

  Was I going to end up as rat food?

  Even if I ignored the humiliating aspect of it, I definitely didn’t want to die. I decided I would die fighting.

  “MEOW!” I yelled. I pounced at the sea of rats. Some ran, others came to bite me, while others still met their ends in my jaws. The rats threw themselves at me. I hit them with my claws and bit them with my jaws. I saw my health bar and stamina bars rapidly declining. I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep fighting for long. I tried to crawl up the way through which I had come to the underground chamber. But the way up was slippery, and the extra weight of the many rats that had their teeth embedded into my body didn’t help at all.

  I wanted to cry. But I was quite sure no cute charm would ever work on the rats. This was going to be a shameful death. I would wake up in the glade I was sure, even as I wrestled, and Goruk would be disappointed as hell.

  Just then I heard a voice—a girl’s voice— yell some word at the mouth of the tunnel that led down. Immediately following that countless bursting sounds reached my ears from all around me. The number of glowing eyes of the rats began to disappear rapidly as I felt the splash of blood against my fur. One of the rats that had bitten onto me burst so that his blood fell on my face, and I realised what was happening to the rats. The girl above had cast a spell to kill the rats and I couldn’t be more thankful.

  I threw all my effort into climbing up the tunnel and in a few moments I was able to emerge out of it. There was a female cat just near the mouth of the hole. She was dressed in a leather jacket and pants and she was standing upright much like a human. So in the world of Arun even cats dressed? Boy, I felt exposed in front of her. She looked at me with a pitiful expression. No wonder, for I was all drenched with rat blood and also my own blood as I was bleeding profusely from all the bite wounds. One important thing I did note about her was that she didn’t carry a bag unlike me. So maybe she was a player who had forgotten everything about her real life?

  “Thanks,” I managed to mutter to the female cat.

  “Who are you? What were you doing in a rat hole?” the female cat asked me in a flabbergasted way.

  “I am Kitty,” I replied. “I was hungry and followed a rat into the hole. I didn’t know that the rats were planning to eat me. I am bleeding, could you please point me any herbs that can stop my bleeding?”

  The female cat nodded. But she had a small grimace on her face, and she was obviously not very pleased with me.

  She however quickly brought me some herbs. Some she told me to consume, the others she told me to squeeze and then asked me to apply the juice that came out of the her
bs to the wounds. After a while, thanks to the treatment, my bleeding stopped and my health slowly began to rise.

  “Thanks for that,” I told her. She nodded, seemingly not wanting to have anything more to do with me. I understood her. But she was a cat. I couldn’t just let her go, right?

  “Um, if I may ask, where do you live and what is your name?”

  “I am Junaki,” she replied hesitatingly, “I am from the kingdom of Morum. The rats have been destroying our crops for a while, so I decided it was time to get rid of them. It took a lot of effort to find their hole though.”

  “That was one cool spell you used on them,” I said.

  “It wasn’t easy however. It’s a special spell that requires both mana and a magical powder. I have exhausted the powder so I cannot repeat the spell.”

  “Um, can I come with you—”

  Junaki raised a paw. Her face hardened. My heart should have sunk at her change of behaviour, instead only now did I observe that she was one strikingly beautiful girl cat. There was a sparkle in her eyes and she was quite elegant. I felt attracted to her.

  “Sorry, you cannot come with me,” she said indifferently, “our kingdom doesn’t welcome outsiders.”

  In a bid to make her change her mind, I cast the cute charm on her. After a while of trying to look pitiful, my charm seemed to have failed miserably. Junaki raised a brow.

  “What are you exactly doing?” she asked, like I had just committed a really weird act.

  I bit my tongue.

  “Please, I really want to go to your kingdom. I have nowhere to go!”

  “I understand that you have nowhere to go, otherwise you wouldn’t be following rats down rat holes, but like I said our kingdom doesn’t welcome outsiders. And to be honest, I believe you are a disgrace to the cat race. You cannot deal with rats, you walk on all fours which means you haven’t even unlocked the basic Human Hands spell… and you are naked.”

  My jaws fell open. Wasn’t she being too direct?

  “I have helped you enough, and it’s time that we should part our ways—”

  At that precise moment Junaki’s eyeballs abruptly rolled up and then she fell to the ground with a thud.

  When my eyes fell on a dart sticking to her neck, I understood everything. Quickly a message appeared in my vision.

  New quest available!

  Return princess Junaki to her kingdom.

  Reward 1000 gold.

  Princess? Really? I didn’t know princesses went about hunting rats. I mean, didn’t she have servants and others that could do the job for her?

  I didn’t accept the quest immediately. What if doing so landed me in unforeseen dangers? I pulled out the dart from her neck. Barely had I done so that I heard a cry.

  “Look! She was fleeing with her lover!”

  I turned towards the source of the sound. It was a fat cat who was moving as fast as he could towards us, and he was leading a few other armed cats. The fat cat looked like a noble for he was dressed in expensive clothes. He had a smirk on his face.

  “Did you shoot her with the dart?” I asked fiercely. Junaki hadn’t behaved very well with me. But it didn’t mean that someone should shoot her like that, and I was ready to stand up for it.

  “What did you say?” the fat cat said angrily. And then something strange happened with his paw— it transformed into the hand of a human. And the next moment the fat cat landed a punch on my face with his human hand.

  You have been punched!

  You receive -25 health!

  The other cats held my limbs so that I couldn’t move at all. The fat cat landed hard punches on my face several more times so that my health went down further. And then a vial appeared in his hand that contained a liquid. He took out a handkerchief, drenched it with the liquid from the vial and put the cloth over my nose. Barley had the peculiar smell of the liquid gone up my nostrils that the world whirled and I slipped into unconsciousness. The last image that my eyes captured was that of the malevolent smile of the fat cat.

  ***

  Chapter 4

  It was cold. I knew I was going to die.

  I was in cardboard box. Garbage heaps surrounded me on all sides. And then the man came along. He was tall and gaunt and wore a black jacket. I was afraid of him and I cowered when he squatted near me.

  “Ooh, you are poor little kitty aren’t you?” the man said. His voice was soothing and warm unlike his appearance. He rubbed my head tenderly and I purred. “What kind of a devil had the heart to leave you here?”

  He rubbed me for some more time.

  “Would you like to come and live with me?” the man said. “I’ll feed you and take care of you. My life is going downhill anyway. Only recently did my wife leave me since I am too absorbed in my work. Perhaps we can be good companions, what do you say?”

  And the man lifted me up from the cardboard box I had been in. I purred.

  “Come let’s me get you some warmth,” the man said.

  The memory dissolved as a splash of cold water contacted my body. My eyelids felt heavy. The man had said he would get me warmth, and now I shivered.

  I was in a prison cell. I was bound by shackles. Junaki was on the wall next to me and she too was bound by shackles. Thankfully, no one had taken away my bag.

  In front of us were five people. The fat cat was among them. And two elderly cats were there, one male the other female. Both of them wore cloaks and had crowns on their heads. It was evident who they were. The remaining two cats were of a lesser rank, perhaps soldiers. One of them was holding the bucket that had been emptied on me and Junaki.

  I focused at the king, queen and the fat cat one after the other. Their names were Rajasher, Makrini and Indrat respectively.

  “Look father, how he stares at us!’ Indrat, the fat prince, said. “I cannot believe that my sister ran away with such a lowly being as him. He is not even wearing clothes!”

  “I didn’t run away with the tramp,” Junaki said. It hurt me considerably more than the punches I had received from the fat cat, to hear Junaki call me ‘tramp’. “I went to kill the rats! Why don’t you believe me? Didn’t you check the rat hole?”

  “Nonsense,” Indrat dismissed, “my men and I killed the pests after we found the rat hole near you two.”

  Junaki gaped. I noticed just the tiniest trace of a smile in the smirk of the prince.

  “Indrat, would you please stop with your lies?” Junaki said to the fat cat, venom dripping from her words.

  “Enough!” the king finally spoke, and I observed that the queen seemed pleased by the king’s anger at Junaki. “After committing such a lowly deed how dare you speak such to your brother?”

  “He’s no brother of mine,” Junaki said, “he’s a… a bastard.”

  Indrat let out a dramatic gasp. And so did the queen. Despite the heat of the situation I felt rather distant from it and was observing the queen and Indrat. Both of them seemed to have a similar facial structure. Junaki’s face however was similar only to the king.

  “You are a disgrace to our family,” the king told Junaki, “and now you have insulted your brother, your mother, and me by calling him that. I have had enough with you, Junaki. You and your lowly lover shall receive capital punishment tomorrow.”

  The eyes of the soldier with the bucket bulged, and the other soldier standing behind seemed to have forgotten the art of breathing upon hearing the king’s words and he coughed.

  A tear rolled down Junaki’s cheek.

  “I cannot believe that you are my father,” Junaki said, “what charm has this wife of yours thrown on you?”

  “Your death shall be painful, daughter,” the king barked back, “the world shall know that King Rajasher didn’t flinch from giving capital punishment to his daughter because she deserved it.”

  Saying so Rajasher whirled around at the spot and thundered out of the prison cell, accompanied by his wife and son, who looked like someone had just given the elixir of life and happiness oozed from thei
r faces even though they tried their best to look angry. The soldiers too left, closing the oak door of the cell behind them.

  Junaki burst into sobs, and she kept crying for quite some time. I felt sad for her.

  “Why do they want to kill you?” I asked more to engage her in a conversation than to actually know why, so that she could stop sobbing. It was a moment before she replied, in a voice that was quite broken.

  “My brother—no, the evil bastard— wants to become the ruler of our small kingdom. So he wants to get me out of the way. I have been escaping numerous attempts of his to frame me, but I never thought that he would get to me today. After all I had gone to kills the rats for the people of our kingdom. Perhaps he planned to kill me there since I would be alone. But when he saw you with me, he probably decided not to get his hands dirty when he could just make the two of us lovers and then father would kill me for him.

  “My father, King Rajasher used to be a good person, but after my mother died and he married that scum, he absolutely changed. And now he’s prepared to kill me! They will be burning the two of us tomorrow, that is the capital punishment in this kingdom.”

  Fresh sobs burst from her. I meanwhile recalled that man wearing the black jacket who had promised me warmth. I wondered if that incidence had ever truly occurred in reality. Perhaps it had, in a different life altogether.

  “You know,” I found myself saying, “our focus as of now should be how to get out of here.”

  I just couldn’t imagine myself getting burnt on a stake. We needed to get out of this situation by any means.

  “Perhaps you are right,” Junaki said. “But being in these shackles it’s impossible to use any spell.”