Chapter 3: Chapter 3: Dead body

Chapter 3: Dead body

 

Catnip skipped down the dirt road, trying to think positively. So yeah, they were in the middle of nowhere, they can’t die but still experience the pain, they lost their old world forever, etc, but whatever! Nothing that can’t be fixed by positive thinking!

Which they were terrible at since they historically just hated themselves and thought the world was actually kind of cruel and awful. 

 

Fortunately for Catnip, they were finding emotions to be coming to them a bit easier right now though than they ever did before as Richard, for whatever reason. Perhaps catgirls were natively a joyful species. Made sense to them, cats are cute and always made them happy in the past. Or maybe cat girls just felt emotions more or something. That or there was some mysterious reason why being in this body would suddenly grant Catnip happiness, more emotional range, and less dissociation. They dismissed that though, since that’s probably how a trans person would feel, and they weren’t trans.

 

Catnip continued skipping and almost tripped on a slight dip in the road, getting a little bit of mud on their boots. It made sense there would be mud about, as this was a very green area, and the various bits of ruins off to the side were quite mossy at times. Also, right, they were wearing boots. And a robe, and some pants, and a shirt, all varying shades of brown or tan for some reason, the robe being the darkest. They hadn’t taken note of what they were wearing up to this point, as it hadn’t seemed particularly important, but in hindsight they were glad it was a nice and comfy proper adventuring outfit. Like starter gear or something. The pants even had a hole for her tail! Her tail, hair, and the fur on her ears somewhat matched her outfit, being somewhat tanish brown with some variation. It worked well with their light brown skin tone.

 

Speaking of her tail, she was beginning to notice that now that she was getting used to it a bit, it was really helping with balancing and skipping and all that. Um, they, not she, since they weren't really a real girl. Anyway perhaps they weren’t going to die from tripping again thanks to their tail, though they didn’t really count on it.

 

Anyway, they kept skipping for a while. There continued to be sort of mossy ruins around, and at some point they decided that it might be fun to actually check them out. Or climb them or something, given that this area continued to massively remind Catnip of Breath of the Wild. 

 

They chose a small ruined looking structure on the side of the road, next to a nice copse of trees. Catnip had no clue what this structure actually was, it was just too ruined, and realistically it would not have anything like a random chest, but they still walked up to it and tried to climb it. 

 

Catnip tried to scramble up a stone brick wall, grabbing at some handholds in the structure. It was working so far, mostly, and she also found that her hands had produced little cute cat claws that allowed her to get a better grip on the stone. Cool! They almost fell a few times, but they found themselves up on the ruined second floor of the structure, where they promptly found literally nothing. However, Catnip was able to look into the distance a bit more with the whole gaining height thing, despite the forest sort of getting in the way. And low and behold, off in the distance they saw it. The quintessential fantasy traveling carriage, with presumably people, maybe like merchants or something, or even adventurers! There were a couple of people walking alongside the carriage, perhaps the guards against monsters or something. Not that Catnip had seen any monsters yet other than that one possessed bush. 

 

Though, looking into the forest below they did see a rather suspicious area that was trying its best to camouflage with the rest of the forest, but doing so badly. They wondered if they could identify it from a distance. 

 

Eastern creeper [Lvl ??]

 

Ding! Identify Lvl 2/350!

 

It didn’t give Catnip all that much information but presumably identify was the kind of thing that would get more useful with time. They hoped it wasn’t a minecraft creeper though, they were quite aware of their undying nature but exploding was still something they didn’t really want to experience. If they were thinking things through, they’d probably go kill it to level or something, but they were much too distracted by the prospect of actually meeting the people off in the distance, who they attempted to wave to before realizing they probably couldn’t see them from over there. 

 

Like most cats, Catnip had apparently managed to climb something that they didn’t really know how to get down from, so they first had to figure that out to go skip down the road or whatever. Bummer there wasn’t really anything up on the second floor, other than some chunks of rubble. They wondered what kind of conflict or situation led to all the rubble. Rubble implied explosions and stuff, which were kind of bad. Whatever happened wasn’t their problem though, and hopefully should remain so, so they focused back onto what they were doing. Anyhow, climbing  down. Yes. Cat’s always land on their feet though, right?

 

In a rather unwise course of action, Catnip tried to prove this theory by immediately jumping off onto the road. 

 

You have taken 10 damage!

Ding! Undying Lvl 4/100!

Ding! Pain Resistance Lvl 4/100!

Congratulations, you have died!

 

Instead of landing on their feet, they had landed badly on their ankle, breaking it and causing them to fall over with their head immediately finding the one stone next to the road and bashing itself against it. It was getting rather annoying how fragile they were, and annoyingly hitting their head this time caused some bleeding which was now getting all over their robes' hood! Annoying. They could still move a bit while dead, a bit better than before probably due to undying leveling up, but they couldn’t move enough to stand up, at least not with spending a few minutes to let their health regenerate. 

 

By the time Catnip was able to stand up again, the carriage that apparently moved far faster than they thought had gotten close enough for the guard to see them. 

 

“Hey um, guys I think there’s a dead body over there.” said one of the guards somewhat awkwardly. Catnip somehow managed to hear them, possibly due to their cat ears. 

 

“Wow, cool! I’ve never seen a dead body before” one of the other guards responded in a feminine voice. “Can we go take a look at it? Pretty please?”

 

The third guard, or well, perhaps hired mercenary or adventurer or something seemed to stare at their comrade in concern. 

 

“Flora there is something seriously wrong with you. I’m not even kidding. And besides, maybe that lady over there’s just knocked out or something.” Catnip ignored the happy feeling they got from being called a lady. 

 

“Na look at all the blood on her hood. Look at that, it’s even pooling around her head a bit! Wow!” the girl apparently called Flora responded. Catnip also ignored similar happy feelings resulting from the girl’s use of she/her when describing them.

 

“Seriously what the fuck.” he mumbled back. 

 

“Anyway guys um, I’m going to like, uhh, check out the body, or whatever?” the dude who first saw her body said nervously. 

 

“Not without me you won’t!” Flora said in a cheery tone, and promptly skipped in Catnip’s direction, one of their friends following after them. As they got closer, Catnip took note of what they looked like. Flora was wearing a green robe not unlike theirs, a skirt, boots and a basic brown shirt. Her hair was dark green, almost matching her robe. The guy who followed after her wore a bit of a dark outfit that covered most of his body and had a sword and some knives strapped to his side, black hair also matching his outfit, but instead of looking like a ninja his overall vibe and energy made him seem harmless. The guy back at the carriage was a bit harder to see, but he seemed to be a brunette and just wearing some leather armor and carrying a typical fantasy sword. Sadly, all three of them seemed to be human, at least at a glance.

 

Now, Catnip was aware that they were not a dead body. But given the stressful nature of dying and being transported to another world, they felt like they deserved a bit of a break. Other than the break they had just had via extended descriptions. Maybe a bit of an epic gamer prank could serve as that break. So instead of actually getting up and dealing with the situation Catnip just pretended to be dead and waited for the perfect timing to scare the bejesus out of these idiots for shits and giggles. 

 

Flora reached them first, staring at them curiously. They tried to make their eyes seem glazed over or whatever, channeling their inner vacant stare carefully cultivated by years of phone use. 

 

“Hmmmm,” Flora said absentmindedly, then picked up a stick and proceeded to poke Catnip over and over again. It wasn’t very painful compared to everything else they had experienced today, so they were able to hide their reaction. 

 

The other guard jogged over and stared down at them too, looking a little put off by Flora’s actions.

 

“Flora, I’m not sure this is actually a dead body. I think their chest is rising and falling a little bit.” Shit

 

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“Really? Bummer. Still looks pretty dead to me though, with all that blood loss.” Yes good, convince the other guy so their prank could continue

 

“Umm, generally someone not being dead is a good thing. But you might be right, maybe I’m just seeing things. I’ve never seen a dead body before either y’know” the guy mumbled in response. 

 

Flora just continued poking Catnip with a stick. Now that both of the people checking out their body were here, they could do the prank now. But what would be the most effective way to prank them? Maybe jump up and seem like they’re trying to bite at them zombie style? That would probably scare them quite a bit. Although if zombies were real in this world it might backfire slightly. What if it turned out like that movie zombieland where by pretending to be a zombie as a joke some guy got shot? They wouldn’t die permanently anyway, but death was generally something to be avoided still. Except for grinding the Undying skill, but grinding out a skill by dying over and over again was a questionable course of action. They were getting used to all the constant pain, but pain was pain. It sucked. 

 

Were they really going to put a prank above their own mental and physical well being?

 

Yes. Of course they were. 

 

Catnip suddenly snapped up in what they hoped was a kind of creepy possessed way and moved to grab at Flora while making a groaning sound. The dude next to her jumped in fright and gripped his weapon, but Flora didn’t even react at all. 

 

“Huh. Cool. Guess you were right, she isn’t dead after all” was her only response. 

 

Damn. Well Catnip had other ways to introduce themself fortunately. 

 

“Hewwo!” they shouted shamelessly, jumping up and attempting to do a twirl. “I’m Catnip! Nice to meet ya captain!” they continued, doing a rather awkward salute at the end. 

 

“Oh hi! I’m Flora! Nice one pretending to be dead, that was hilarious” Flora said, bouncing a little.

 

“Uhh… Hi I’m Jacob… Are you like, okay? You seem to be bleeding a lot…” the adventurer said, shifting out of his battle ready stance.

 

“A little bit of excessive blood loss never hurt anyone silly!” 

 

“Actually I’m pretty sure it has - “ he tried to reply

 

“Anyway can I join y'all's uhh party or something? At least till the next town?”

 

“Uhhh….” 

 

“Sure! You seem cool and interesting! Though the name is a little on the nose.” Flora interjected. 

 

“Um okay, yeah what she said I guess.” Jacob mumbled.

 

“Cool! Where are we by the way? I have no clue!” 

 

“I forgot! Jacob, where are we again?”

 

“I think we’re in Liveria right?” he said hesitantly 

 

“Isn’t that the name of the entire continent?”  Flora replied

 

“Oh yeah it is. Whatever um Frank probably knows” 

 

“Hmm he does tend to know things doesn’t he,” she commented, then looked back at Catnip. “Anyway so yeah, you seem cool, and traveling is boring without company, it doesn’t really matter where we are just come with us.”

 

“Nya-kay!” Catnip responded, in a misguided attempt to fit into cat girl stereotypes. They were really getting into this ‘being a really annoying and positive cat girl that actually hates herself on the inside’ thing. 

 

Jacob looked at her a little bit weird but Flora just didn’t react, instead jumping up enthusiastically and grabbing their hand in an attempt to pull them back towards the wagon, muttering about ‘finally something interesting’ happening under her breath. Catnip, of course, let her drag her along. They didn’t really have anything better to do. 

 

“Flora, who's this? Is she okay?” presumably Frank asked, looking far more competent and serious than both Jacob and Flora. 

 

“She’s Catnip! Can we keep her for a bit? Pretty please?” Flora responded, pouting. Catnip waved to show that they were there. “Also both me and Jacob forgot where we are again, but Catnip wanted to know, so um. She also seems okay to me, other than all the blood.”

 

Frank sighed in a dramatic manner. “Fine, you can keep her. And we’re in the eastern part of the Verbon kingdom. Don’t tell me you also forget who we’re escorting and why?”

 

“Um I’m pretty sure we’re escorting people who are important and noble or something?”

 

“Good enough. Catnip, do you want to travel in the carriage or alongside us or something? I think the Lady knows a bit of healing magic” Frank asked politely. 

 

“Nya I think I’ll stick around talking with Flora or something,” they said after a moment of consideration. Their regeneration meant they never really needed healing magic, and Flora seemed like an interesting, if a bit concerning person. Whoever this Lady was might also be annoyingly stuffy since she was a noble. Catnip didn’t want to make big assumptions based on fantasy stereotypes, but they also kind of still did make some assumptions anyway. Everyone has various biases and assumptions after all, and while they strived to not act on them much Catnip didn’t want to upset this important noble Lady just in case. 

 

“Jacob! We’re moving again!” Frank yelled, cupping his hands. Jacob skittered over and took a position on the side of the carriage, Frank taking the other side. Flora just stood where she wanted. Catnip wasn’t sure how the carriage was going to move given that they just now realized it had no horses or anything, but maybe it was just magic like that. The carriage started moving at a walking pace, and they were off.

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