First Skill, GO!

The first thing I did was find an out-of-the-way corner to hide in and study the Skills Store. I didn't know how often I'd get points, so I didn't know how hard it would be to gain additional skills. Presumably, I'd need to learn to fight, so some sort of offensive skill would be good, but... I couldn't believe that points were so rare that I wouldn't be able to get anything later, so I bought the standard first skill: Assess.

Look, I may have been a single mom nearing forty in my past life, but I'd also been a huge fan of both light novels and gacha games. My favorite genre? Isekai fantasy. So yeah, I wasn't done in by Truck-kun, but damn it! I wish I had been! What kind of isekai fan was I, dying of a blood clot of all things? If Fyth had warned me I'd be reincarnated in another world, I'd have wished to be sent off by Truck-kun instead. Since he was evil and denied me that chance, the least I could do was take the proper second step now that I’d gotten here.

Upon obtaining Assess Lv. 1, a new stat appeared. I now had 'Magic: 10/10' next to my Health. Assess, when I focused on it, had a description saying it cost five Magic. That seemed pricey, but I had no idea how much Magic I'd gain per level, so maybe it wasn’t really that much. I crept outside and to the stables to use a skill for the first time. Assess, I choose you!

Name: Heather                                                             Level: 1/80
Summoned: 10.21.19                                                  Master: Alicia
Type: Winged Horse - SR
Status: normal                                                              Health: 10/10
                                                                                         Magic: 10/10
Skills:                                                                              Available Points: 1
     Active: Fly                                                                  Passive: CHA UP Lv 1
Titles: --

Huh. It seemed like they'd correctly identified the horse, at least. That was good. If the sisters felt comfortable with their IDs, they were less likely to try Assessing me. I wasn't sure if being a Demon Cat was a bad thing or not, so if they wanted to keep thinking of me as a Shadow Cat, that was fine by me. I tried Assess on another horse, this one a normal, non-flying kind.

Name: Rusty                                                                  Level: 24/30
Summon Date: 10.21.14                                             Master: Brandon
Type: horse - Common
Status: normal                                                              Health: 10/10
Skills:                                                                              Available Points: 0
     Active: --                                                                     Passive: AGI UP Lv. 5, 
                                                                                         END UP Lv. 5
Titles: --

It was underwhelming. I turned my attention instead to my own Status again and watched my Magic slowly tick back up. When I reached four Magic, I tried using Assess again on another horse, but nothing happened. I nodded to myself and headed back inside. It didn't seem like running out of Magic was a problem. If I didn't have enough, I just couldn't use the spell. That was far more lenient than some game systems. I’d read stories where hitting zero Magic caused a person to pass out, which could be a quick ticket to dying if one wasn’t careful. I didn’t really mind having died, but that didn’t mean I was eager to do it again anytime soon.

As I padded back toward the room we were staying in, I continued to monitor my Status. I seemed to recover Magic at roughly one tick per minute. That meant I could cast Assess once every five minutes. I glanced through the Skills Store, examining the descriptions more closely to try to gauge how it compared to other spells.

It looked like ‘Claw’ was my basic magic attack. I could obtain Fire Claw, Water Claw, Wind Claw, Earth Claw, Light Claw, or Shadow Claw. All of them cost one point, but the four elemental Claw attacks cost three Magic to cast, while Light Claw cost six and Shadow Claw cost one. I assumed that was related to my affinity as a demonic entity.

Compared to those, Assess’s cost was absurdly hefty. I wondered why.

I returned to the room and found Nero and Alicia eating from small wooden bowls. When they saw me, Nero lowered his bowl and placed it in front of me. "Go on, you can have some, too," he said.

My stomach rolled. It looked fine, but the smell was horrendous. Imagine being offered a bowl of fetid urine and feces, and that’s about how my cat brain interpreted the smell coming off the soup. I’d always wondered why my cats sometimes scratched at the floor around my plates like they were trying to cover up my food; perhaps this was how they’d felt all along. With that in mind, I nonetheless attempted to lick up some of the broth within. After all, Nero and Alicia seemed fine after eating it. A moment later, though, I rushed to the corner, where I threw up gastric acid and bile. Apparently, I wasn't a broth-eating cat.

"Luna? What's wrong?" Nero exclaimed as he scrambled off the bed and over to me. Alicia made a small sympathetic sound and left. She returned just as Nero was cradling me in his arms. She had some rags with her, and she cleaned up the mess, casting worried looks toward me all the while. Nero stroked my head gently. "Can you not eat that?" he wondered as Alicia finished cleaning and left the room.

I had no idea. I'd never heard of a cat that threw up immediately upon tasting soup. Were Demon Cats allergic to garlic or something?

Ah, I suppose you won't be much of an agent if you starve to death, Fyth's voice suddenly said within my mind. So I'll tell you this much: demonic entities need flesh and blood to survive. Vegetables and fruits won't do you any good, and grains are a mixed bag. Herbs are generally pretty poisonous, so there's a lot of human food you can't consume. Sorry about that!

They didn’t sound sorry at all. In fact, their voice trembled with ill-concealed laughter. Jerk. I wrinkled my nose, and the sensation made me sneeze. Nero's panicked petting sped up all over again, and I sighed.

"I asked the sisters," Alicia said as she returned. She had a rat hanging from its tail between her fingers. "They said Luna might be allergic to some herb or something, so they helped me check the traps, and we found this. Here you go, Luna. We're sorry about that."

My human mind rejected the rat entirely, but my cat body didn't have any problem with it. I forcefully turned my attention away as my body pounced upon the vermin and eagerly sucked the blood out of it. Ew. I felt sick all over again, but this wasn't the visceral, automatic reaction my body had had earlier. I was able to swallow it down and take shallow breaths to avoid throwing up again.

When I was finished and had licked the blood off my paws (and fur on my tongue was another disgusting sensation I had to turn my human mind away from), I glanced at the humans, but they didn't seem disturbed by my actions. I guess humans in this world were more acquainted with the original form of the food they ate. I considered myself relatively non-squeamish when it came to things like blood and dead animals, but that was when I was comparing myself to people whose only exposure to the like was purchasing tidy, plastic-wrapped cutlets in the grocery store. People in another world were something else entirely.

Nero looked worried, still, so I rubbed my head against his hand before wandering off again to continue experimenting. Hey, Fyth, what kinds of things will you be asking me to do as your agent? I wondered. It'd be a problem if I got all attached to my human only for Fyth to order me to murder him. What did it mean for Fyth to own my soul anyway? If they told me to do something, would I have to? Would my body move on its own the way it had earlier, following instincts I didn’t understand? Or would it be my choice, with some sort of hellish punishment for disobedience?

I got no reply. It seemed Fyth was serious about giving me time to adjust to this new life, whether I wanted it or not.

I explored the kitchens next, and more than one woman bent down to pet me while I walked past. I received many coos and headpats, so apparently, cats were considered just as adorable in this world as in mine. I was quietly pleased about this. Imagine if I'd been reincarnated as a slug. Even if it was some kind of SSR slug, it'd still be a slug, you know?

I heard some rustling sounds that made my ears perk up. They flicked back and forth, locating and then tracking the mysterious creature's movement. I crouched down and crept closer to the source of the sound, distantly amused by my body’s instincts. I heard a tiny squeak and smelled a musty, warm scent nearby. I tensed my muscles as the sound grew closer and held my breath. A rat about half my size rounded the corner, and I pounced.

Have you ever thought about how sharp a cat's back claws are? I'd noticed it plenty as a human whose lap was regularly shredded by an affectionate but clumsy cat, but it was a very different kind of understanding to look at the creature my claws had disemboweled. It was pretty disgusting, so I let my body do its thing and turned my attention to my Status.

There was now an experience bar, and it showed me as being halfway to level two. I Assessed the dead rat, and it showed that it'd been level one. I prowled through the church, hunting down two additional rats. They were both level one as well, and I ended up at level two with a tiny bit more of my experience bar filled. Leveling up didn't do anything noticeable. It didn't restore my Magic, so while I hadn’t lost any Health and couldn’t check to be sure, I thought it was unlikely that leveling would restore Health either. However, I did get one point when I leveled up. I opened the Skills Store and bought Shadow Claw.

Shadow Claw
Mana Cost: 1                                          Cooldown: 15 seconds
Effect: Deals 3 points of Dark magic damage to the target per second for 5 seconds.

Immediately, knowledge of how to use the spell entered my mind. I tried casting it in an empty area. The result seemed impressive to me. It looked like a section of space simply broke apart. I prodded at it with my real claws, but all I could say for sure was that it felt wrong. After about five seconds, reality reasserted itself, and the area returned to normal. I wondered what it would look like if I used that skill on a living creature. Unfortunately, it seemed that I'd depleted the church's stores of low-level mobs, so despite searching for another rat to kill, I concluded my hunt without getting to properly test out Shadow Claw.

I returned to the room. This time, Nero and Alicia were asleep. As my last task before falling asleep myself, I Assessed them.

Name: Nero                                                                  Level: 2/120
Birth Date: 04.13.06
Race: human - G
Status: AGI UP, INT UP                                                Health: 100/100
Skills:                                                                              Available Points: 2
     Active: --                                                                    Passive: --
Titles: --
Summons: Luna - Shadow Cat - SSR