First Light of a New Age

Chapter 143: The Bakeneko & The King of Leviathans

“Is that a… cat?”

As Woods asked that flatly, almost disappointed. Riley blinked, processing what he was seeing until his brain stalled for a second.

'A cat. A damn cat… Why? Why did it have to be a cat?'

Both soldiers stood there in stunned silence, staring at the creature sitting casually in the middle of the glowing summoning circle.

It was small, barely larger than a football, and appeared perfectly calm with jet-black fur that shimmered under the dungeon's faint glowing light. Its crimson eyes locked onto them with an eerie intelligence, and its pretty long tail flicked once, curling lazily around its paws. 

Despite the absurdity of the situation, it radiated a strange sense of power that neither of them could immediately define.

“Meow~ :3”

The creature purred innocently.

“Well,” Woods scratched the back of his neck, still kneeling in front of the circle. “Not exactly the monster I was expecting.”

“No kidding…” Riley muttered as he was keeping his rifle trained low but ready. His instincts were screaming and warned him that something was off.

The cat didn’t move aggressively. It didn’t hiss, growl, or bare its fangs. But its glowing eyes tracked their every breath. Its expression was calm, too calm. As if they were the ones being summoned, not the other way around.

“Is it using a skill or something?” Woods asked as he narrowed his eyes.

Riley didn’t answer, he was focusing on the cat and the atmosphere. Something about the air had changed, like reality itself had shifted a little when the summoning circle flared to life. The sensation was subtle, but deeply wrong. The same way he had once felt right before a Transcendent-level beast tore an entire battalion apart.

He remembered Cottonball, Woods’ first Familiar. She too had looked harmless, a fluffy creature with cute quirks. But beneath that fur was the infamous Dark Nyxellith that even dragons feared, a 2nd-Tier Transcendent predator with an MEU rating of 700,000. And this cat? Riley had a gut feeling it was in the same ballpark or worse.

Without a word, he reached into his tactical pouch and retrieved a special artifact, which is a small palm-sized device forged in the Second Civilization Zone. It looked like a polished obsidian shard, inscribed with mana-conductive runes. 

It was an Appraisal Artifact, extremely rare, expensive, and powerful. Capable of reading the magical and biological makeup of virtually any creature.

He activated it and held it toward the cat. The artifact glowed faintly blue, before a translucent window of light appeared in the air between them.

[STATUS WINDOW]

Name: Nameless

Race: Bakeneko

Transcendent Tier: 3

Magicule Levels: 6,666,666

Skills: [Shapeshift] [Dark Magic]. [Magic Supremacy]. [Possession]. [Compulsion]. [Illusion]. [Undead Summon]

Alignment: Chaotic Evil

Additional Information: The Destroyer of Civilizations, the Traveler of Realms, a creature sealed in myth and forgotten by time, whose true form remains unknown, but takes the form of a cat as a deception. It is a great trickster and wicked entity with malevolent desires.

[End Of Information]

The moment Riley read through the Status Window of the creature before him… he trembled.