I'm Just a Cat! (P.S. My Stand is a Menace)

Chapter 302: Chapter 3: A Quick Rummage

"Ah, got a bite."

For someone with hardly any fishing level, it came up even more easily than expected—though, as one would guess, it was a perfectly common fish.

Silica turned to glance at the kitten cooking on the ground. Yimi looked up at her hands, too. "You caught one."

"Y-yeah."

For all that it was a high-freedom FullDive game, SAO’s NPCs weren’t so vivid as to be exactly like real people; a situation like this was the first she’d ever seen. If it were an ordinary AI, Silica could even take the fish away or toss it back right in front of it and try for a better catch to turn in—though for a plain turn-in quest, most people would just pick the lowest quality to swap for the reward.

"A-actually, it’s the bait that’s the problem..."

She wanted to try nudging the pot toward the bait, but feared the little girl in front of her might have a sudden flash of inspiration and declare that there was a perfectly good bait standing right here.

As she watched Yimi reach out to take the fish from her hand, Silica glanced at her own Quest Log again and saw it now marked as turned in. Yimi, likewise, looked at Silica’s Quest Log, her little mouth parting a touch. It was the first time she’d seen someone who, like her, had a System—this person had to be another kitty in human shape. Yimi tried to spot cat ears atop Silica’s head.

Realizing she was being stared at, Silica went a little stiff, then hurriedly feigned nonchalance and turned. "Ah, the quest’s done. No regrets left for me—well, it’s getting late, about time I headed back."

"Wait a moment."

Yimi’s call made Silica stiffen slightly.

So this quest really had been a pretext to kill her, hadn’t it? Catch a low-quality fish and it triggers a boss fight on the spot, or something like that...

Yimi lowered her head, torn, at the pot in her hands—something she’d normally have to fuss over, minding the heat and the timing, yet in this world she only had to add the material and wait out the time.

"Here." Yimi ladled out a bowl of fish soup and held it out to Silica.

"Ah, thank you."

Silica took the fish soup, but didn’t dare let her gaze slip off Yimi for even a moment, and watched as Yimi set to work on the fish she’d just caught. It wasn’t the usual chef-NPC’s whoosh-whoosh instant prep—because Yimi had never once seen the process simply skipped, and was studying it closely, like she’d found a brand-new toy.

Seeing this, Silica tucked the fish soup into her Inventory and, light on her feet, began to back away—one step, two steps...

It wasn’t until her feet had carried her back into the woods that Yimi noticed her. Yimi held her eyes for a moment.

This person had taken her fish soup and left—hadn’t even returned the bowl.

"Don’t go!" Yimi shot to her feet.

Of course she was going to run! Up close she hadn’t dared, but now that this much distance lay between them, she’d be a genuine fool not to at least try to flee!

Before Yimi had even reacted, Silica was already gone in a flash, leaving her holding the endlessly writhing fish, blanking out on the spot.

The kitty had given her food, and she’d gone and stolen the kitty’s bowl! Diego’s accomplice for certain!

Only once she’d run all the way to the town’s true player Safe Zone did Silica let out a breath. It really hadn’t come after her... Having escaped alive from the boss of the urban legend, did that make her something of a legendary figure too? Though even if she told anyone, no one would believe it.

She opened the game’s system panel and flipped back to the quest from before. A turned-in, completed quest still showed, but its reward was no longer a slash—in its place sat the fish soup she’d just been ladled.

"What’s this?"

Puzzled, Silica opened her Inventory and looked over the food she’d just received.

@@’s Fish Soup: Eat it bowl and all—Level +1

Durability: --

"?"

Why eat it bowl and all? But more important than that was its effect. Silica looked at her experience bar, counting on her fingers.

As everyone knows, in games like this the higher your level, the harder it gets to push it any further—yet any game, given a veteran, will sooner or later have its level maxed out. That said, in a game with only one life, plenty of people lack the strength and the nerve to grind their level up. A single level was still just a single level—but if she could sell it to the Assault Team...

...

...

The people of this world were far too rude.

Displeased, Yimi bit into the fish Silica had caught. If her own catch tasted a ten, Silica’s fish was a one—good for nothing but filling the belly. She’d had few bowls to start with, and now Silica had made off with one. The little bowl Marisa had prepared for her had a kitty pattern on it, and Yimi was rather fond of it.

Utensils tidied away, she sniffed at the scent lingering in the air, then clambered onto Famine’s steed and set off running in that direction.

Time in SAO tracked reality—not just the divide of day and night, but even the turning of the seasons kept pace with the real world. For many floors, though, the scenery held to a fixed state. Since a good number of monsters could hunt by scent, and given this game’s rare, genuinely enjoyable food system, tracking a person down by smell was no difficult thing.

"Look at that..."

"For real? That’s not the boss from the rumors, is it..."

"Idiot, you said yourself it’s a rumor—how could a monster come waltzing into the Safe Zone?"

"Hey, little girl."

Arriving in town naturally drew no shortage of stares. Out in the field, most people—top-tier players aside—would have fled as far from the rumor as their legs could carry them, but inside the absolute safety of town, there were a few bold souls who wanted a crack at the rumored bug.

Yimi looked up at the armored man barring her path. "Have you seen, Diego’s lackey?"

"Diego’s lackey... what kind of quest is this?"

The armored man pulled up the quest panel and, sure enough, found a quest to help @@ track down "Diego’s lackey"—but the reward was blank.

"What’s this, a half-finished NPC got let loose? Figures the boss-disguised-as-an-NPC was fake after all."

Seeing him answer beside the point, Yimi simply walked around him toward the room Silica had rented, ignoring anyone else who tried to stop her. The people of this world were forever brushing aside what she asked and prattling on about baffling things of their own. But when she ignored them in turn, they only believed all the more that she was a bugged NPC—an NPC being all but obligated to respond to a player’s attempts at conversation.

"So then—do you have some channel to sell this fish soup?"

Before she’d even reached the door, she caught a voice dripping with mockery. A woman’s voice, thick with scorn. "Hand it over to me. I’ll line up a buyer for you, and we split the payment. We’re partners, aren’t we?"

"Split it?! This is a quest I finished with my own life!"

Silica had meant to keep this newly won key item under wraps, but, being a child, she couldn’t hold back the urge to brag about running into a BUG boss. Stung by the doubting tone, and just to prove herself, she’d taken out the fish soup and shown it to this "partner" she’d known only a short while.

"But you know—it really wouldn’t be great if word got out that Silica has an item like this, would it?" The red-haired woman licked her lips. "Oh, that’s right, I forgot—Silica’s an ’idol’ who’s never short of white knights."

"Anyway, both of you calm down for a second." The other two companions still tried to talk them down.

"I..."

Treated like a decorative vase, Silica was ready to break with the woman on the spot—but the first syllable had barely left her mouth when her expression froze on her face, her gaze fixed on Yimi, who had appeared behind the red-haired woman at some point unknown.

Why would she chase all the way into the Safe Zone?!

"Hey, hey... for real?" The two men, who’d spotted her as well, tensely dropped into battle-ready stances, even though the Safe Zone couldn’t deal a scrap of damage.

"What’s the matter?" The red-haired woman sensed something was off.

Yimi shot her an unfriendly look, then shot the red-haired woman an even less friendly one. This woman had just been talking about the fish soup too—so was the bowl in her hands now?

Yimi didn’t understand it, but she was a good cat who’d never wrong the innocent. She thought back to how Silica had checked her quest earlier, reached out to touch the red-haired woman, and, just as she did when opening her own System panel, silently intoned the words.

The red-haired woman’s panel opened up for Yimi.

"?"

And then, beneath the red-haired woman’s astonished gaze, Yimi clumsily flipped through her Inventory, checking to see whether her little bowl was inside.

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