Chapter 279: Chapter 265 – Cat Business IV

Chapter 265 - Cat Business IV

A reluctant Claire closed her eyes and took a deep breath before scanning her surroundings. Though she stood upon the forest floor, she could practically feel the marsh’s moist mud wrapped around the tips of her toes. She could taste its disgusting frogs in all their glory and hear its squawking ravens. One particularly obnoxious bird even charged right at her, engaging as soon as it was alerted to her presence, but she crushed its half mechanical body with a series of vectors and threw its scrap metal corpse into a nearby tree. The bits of rocket fuel contained within its booster ignited on impact and transformed the meatball into a burst of blood and shrapnel.

One of the bird’s friends turned tail and ran, while the others rushed her down, but whatever the case, their fate was the same. All were crushed, completely destroyed by her magic before they were given a chance to act.

“I can‘t believe I’m back already,” said Sylvia. She bounced around, stretching from left to right and front to back whilst stamping her paws into the undergrowth. “It doesn’t even feel like I was gone for all that long.”

“Because you weren’t.”

“Mmmnnn, I guess you’re right.” Sylvia placed a paw on her chin. “It just felt kinda long because of all the stuff that’s happened.”

“Exactly. I wasn’t expecting to be back for another decade.” Claire lifted the canine into her arms and gave her a squeeze. “How do we find Alfred?”

“I dunno. Normally he just kinda shows up,” said Sylvia. “Oh, but if I had to guess, he’ll be here in a sec because he probably noticed me teleporting in.”

“And you’d have guessed right.”

The man suddenly appeared in the space in front of her following a brief, shimmering distortion. The aged pervert was almost exactly as Claire remembered. He was a megalith of a man with his two-meter frame adorned in a standard set of wizard’s robes. The hair on his head was white and thick like his massive beard, full on both accounts in spite of his age. In his hands, he held an old wooden cane, more of a walking stick than a wand or staff.

“Oh, hi Al!” Sylvia stood up on her hind legs and greeted him with a wave. “Long time no see!”

“It’s been a good few months.” He had a boyish grin on his face, one completely unbefitting a man of his apparent age. It was purely by choice that the contrast was present; the celestial was easily capable of altering his form. “How are you, child?”

“Super great! Claire’s been really nice to me, and our new friends have been even nicer!”

“You’ll have to tell me all about them sometime.”

The same was true of all the other gods and demigods as well. According to the scriptures, they had full control over their bodies and could assume whatever shape they wished. Their most common forms were simply their preferred, often selected to best confirm with each individual’s identity. The divine collective of art and song was most known for leveraging this feature, as its members would often take on whatever appearances they needed to best inspire their still-mortal peers.

“Mmk! But I think it’ll probably have to wait for a bit since we have some business and stuff. Oh uhmmm… speaking of, we should probably get to it since we promised everyone we’d be back soon.”

“Certainly, but before we do, I believe it would be worth mentioning that there is a bit of a… problem.”

“Uhhh, do you mean with the way I teleported back in or something? I know I overwrote a bunch of stuff but I thought it’d be fine.”

“It isn’t so much of a problem with your entry, but rather your condition.”

“R-really? Am I sick or something?”

Should any other gods engage in such an activity, its nature would surely be determined by the others as a political attack, a ploy to increase their influence and establish another believer over which they could exert their powers. But the divine collective was different. To the many artists, musicians, and playwrights that dominated the hivemind’s ranks, the bolstering of its numbers was but a happy coincidence. The collective had no interest in divinity, nor the struggle between the forces of order and chaos. It was only in the creation of masterpieces in which it saw its purpose.

“No, no, not at all. But why is it that you’re still a virgin?”

“That’s the problem!?”

“You’ve been surrounded by a flock of beautiful maidens for months. If I was you, I would’ve sunk my fangs into them all by now.”

“Uhmmm… I’m pretty sure they’d have strangled me if you were me.”

“Perhaps, perhaps not. There is no way to know.”

“Right… uhh… yeah, sure.”

Alfred, on the other hand, was a veritable bundle of ambition—a man that had stolen souls from the cycle and risked Flux’s wrath to pursue a lust for power—and it was precisely that ambition which Claire was guarded against. She watched him like a cat; her eyes were narrowed, her back was bent, and her talons were ready. There was even a hiss halfway up her throat, ready to be unleashed as soon as he did anything untoward.

When the demigod noted her behaviour, he immediately broke into a fit of laughter, a hysterical cackle that had the old man doubled over, slapping his knees.

“Hello, Claire,” he said, as he wheezed. “I can’t say I was expecting to see you anytime soon. I was under the impression that you weren’t coming back until you were capable of stabbing me in the face.”

“Don’t think I won’t do it.” The lyrkress produced a small blade of ice and pointed its tip between the old pervert’s legs.

“Oh, I’m sure you would,” he walked closer, in spite of the blatant threat to his manhood, and extended a hand. “You’re the first trial goer to ever return. It’s good to see you again.”

Claire narrowed her eyes even further, glancing skeptically between the outstretched limb and its owner before reluctantly gripping it in her own. The playful look in his eye was gone, replaced by a calm, sagacious smile.

“I’ll admit, your Llystletein classes deserve their reputation,” she said.

“I’d sure hope so. I’ve put more hours into refining them than I have the rest of my projects combined.” He released her hand and backed away to a more comfortable distance. “Now, what exactly are you here for? I doubt it’s another reset you’re after.”

Claire tilted her head. “You don’t know? Weren’t you watching?” 

“You make it sound like I have nothing better to do,” grumbled the old man.

“Do you?”

“I know you don’t think much of me, but you do have to remember, I’m a very important and very busy man. And like any other man of my stature, I’ve been stuck dealing with interpersonal relations, social obligations, and so on and so forth. You know how these things go, I’m sure.”

Claire paused for a moment before slowly nodding her head. “I guess I do.”

“So now that we have that out of the way,” the celestial snapped his fingers and transported the party straight into a familiar living room. They were placed right by the hearth, its warm flames flickering the cold spring air away.

The demigod was as tall as the ceiling, but the size of the room was hardly a hindrance. He was already seated by the time he materialised in the space, leaning as far back as his chair would allow. The bearded man crossed his legs while his pipe filled itself with some dried plant or other and floated its way into his lips. The resulting smoke, which he puffed from his lungs with a relaxed sigh, had a floral scent halfway between a lily’s and a rose’s.

“So? What did you need?”

“One of our friends has this really weird problem where some of her friends are like uhmmm… super diseased because of some weird mutant spell thingy. And I was kinda hoping that you’d be able to help her out.”

“Let me see…” A wooden stick floating on a nearby counter rose of its own accord and moved in a wide, circular pattern. The flames changed with every motion, the shadows within soon transforming into a picture-perfect projection of their last non-Llystletein location. “Very interesting,” said the celestial, “very interesting indeed.” He slowly pushed himself into an upright position and leaned forward on his chair, his eyes focused on the scene. “It’s certainly a fascinating contraption, likely made by a man after my own heart.” He started stroking his beard, the glint in his eye only growing sharper and more vibrant.

“Do you think you can fix them?” asked Sylvia.

“It won’t be easy, immediate, or even guaranteed. Treatment will take a few months at least, as I’ll have to reengineer their bodies and modify their microbiomes. I suspect that most of the survivors will suffer lasting effects, scars resembling cursed wounds, for the most part. I can’t say I’ll be able to do anything for their minds, nor the ones that are particularly far gone, like the cursed one.”

“So uhmmm… does that mean you’ll do it?” asked the fox.

“For a price, certainty.”

“I knew he was going to ask for something,” said Claire.

"It is only natural," said the old man. His eyes were laser-focused on the squid's chest, moving up and down as she paced around the room. "As much as I would like to help on account of this being one of Sylvia's requests, I hardly know this mutual friend of yours. And as she is clearly the primary benefactor, I feel like I might be more inclined to try a little harder if I had a good reason to. Even if she is to be... admired."

"Stop staring at her breasts," said Claire, with a roll of the eyes.

"I'll have you know I'm doing more than just that," chortled the human. "I'm very clearly admiring her biology."

"Oh, come on, Al! At least come up with a better excuse! That's literally the same thing!" cried Sylvia.

"It certainly is not." He reluctantly tore his gaze from the squidgirl's bosom and, after glancing briefly at Lia and licking his lips, turned back on the pair present in his space. His wand summoned a small vial in the meantime and floated it in the space in front of them. "I'll tell you what. This right here contains a highly potent aphrodisiac. Feed it to Natalya in secret, and I mig—"

He shut his lips when a potted plant flew into his potion and spilled its contents all over the floor. The pink liquid sizzled as it touched the old wood, bubbling like a potent acid. An equally pink gas slowly wafted off of the spill, floating into the air and spreading through the room.

"Oh dear." The celestial repaired the flask with a wave of the wand and drew its contents back inside. The flowerpot was given the same treatment. The earthy, ceramic container was molded back together, and the various bits of dirt channeled back inside. The plant itself, a tiny, growling mirewulf, was offhandedly scruffed and quickly reburied.

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"Be serious," said Claire. "You're wasting your own time."

Alfred sighed into his pipe. "Would it kill you to let an old man have a bit of fun?" Taking one last puff, he set the briar down on the nonexistent table in front of him and twisted his lips into a playful pout. It was the sort of expression that was out of place on anything but a teenage girl, but he wore it without an inkling of shame or regret.

"You can hardly be old without a lifespan,” said Claire.

"That's where you'd be wrong," he said, with a twinkle in his eye. "I'll have you know that I'm older than many of the common gods. If not for little Miss Puffynipples locking me up, I'd be a household name."

"I don't care."

"And for the record, there is a reason I take this old, shriveled-up form. Aside from the one you're thinking, of course."

"Wait, there is?" asked Sylvia.

"Naturally." He clasped his hands together and placed them in his lap. "I can't get anything done without it. My libido gets in the way."

"Huh?" Sylvia tilted her head, its incline growing by a degree each second. "But aren't you like super mega horny all the time anyway? I thought that was your whole identity!"

"I'd say I'm rather tame in this form. Do you remember Grant's stories? Most of those are from before I learned the whole getting sad and deflated trick."

"Uhmmmm... right." Sylvia took half a step backwards and hid herself behind her lyrkrian friend.

"What a cruel mistress, time is," Alfred placed a hand on his chair and faked a sob. "She's hardly been away from me for four months, and she's already starting to look at me with disdain." The old man buried his face in his hands, weeping with all the skill of an unemployable actor. "First the catgirls, and now Sylvia! My own flesh and blood! Must all my creations abandon me!?"

"Yes." Claire crossed her arms as she wrinkled her brow. “Now hurry up and tell us what you want.”

“You’re no fun.” He leaned back into his chair and breathed a sigh. “Sometimes, you just have to relax. Step back, take a deep breath, and just enjoy life for what it is. You don’t always have to be doing something or rushing towards some silly goal, Claire. The answers will come naturally with time.”

He grabbed an inkwell and a parchment scroll as he lectured her and dipped the latter straight in the former. Rather than staining its side, the thick, black goop crawled across the page’s surface and arranged itself into a series of letters.

“These are my terms.” He rolled the scroll up and handed it over. “I want a state-run temple built right next to one of Flitzegarde’s, with several priests to offer instruction on the commandments I’ve listed here.”

“That isn’t happening,” Claire rolled her eyes. “The goddess of order will have your temple destroyed in a heartbeat.”

Feuds among the gods were not terribly common, but neither were they particularly rare with the factions divided as they were. And though they gave their seal of approval and often served as the conflict’s impetus, the gods themselves abstained; holy wars were strictly mortal affairs, fought by proxy through the temples and people that each deity possessed. It was not just to prevent widespread destruction that the deities took the laid-back approach, but also because their conflicts were rarely as dramatic as their representatives declared. To the divine, war was but the result of a petty squabble, and a crusade a subtle jab of little lasting consequence. 

And even in the event that the two gods did take to the battlefield, as they did once every few hundred years, the victor would often find themselves incapable of ending the loser’s life. Divine politics and possible consequences aside, it was simply too difficult to kill a god for good.

One did not simply reach level 10,000 without learning the art of escape. And with their full control over the system, they could easily abuse loopholes and glitches to keep kicking and screaming. That was why the goddess of order had imprisoned Alfred in the first place; she didn’t have the means to reliably put out his flame for good.

His temples, however, could easily be raided. There was nothing stopping even the average Joe from razing them to the ground.

“Only if I give her good reason,” he said, with a confident grin. “You see, that's the trick when it comes to the orderly types. They can’t do much so long as you work within their rules, and there’s nothing that says I can’t have a temple near one of Flitzegarde’s.”

“Mmmnnn… I guess you’re technically correct, but are you sure she’s not gonna freak out?” asked Sylvia.

“Oh, she certainly will,” he said, with a chuckle, “but again, there’s nothing she can do.”

“What’s to stop her from marking us?” Claire narrowed her eyes. “I refuse to take the fall for your lunacy.”

“No need to be worried on that front. Procedure stops that in its tracks too. As the reigning goddess of order, Flitzegarde is only allowed to smite or threaten people that would otherwise throw the world off balance.” The god returned his pipe to his lips and lit it with a flick. “And before you ask, my case was just that. I was involving the gods in too many… let’s just say… mortal interactions,” he said, with a moist grin.

“I didn’t ask.”

“No, but you were going to.” He pressed a finger to his brow and breathed a sigh after casting a cursory glance in the scowling qiligon’s direction. “Okay, Claire. How about this? I’ll make you a peace offering, and you stop being so angry and judgemental. That’s all. No strings attached.”

The claim of innocence, of course, only caused the lyrkress’ already suspicious glare to sharpen.

“It’ll be something you want, I promise.” He formed a clump of ice in one hand, and a clump of divinity in the other. “As it so happens, I’m a much better teacher than Griselda.” He pressed his hands together, fusing the matter and energy together. The clear solid turned a faint blue as the divine spark pulsed through its frame, infusing it with his divine might. “This would be the most basic operation,” he said, “and if my understanding is correct, even it’s starting to give you some trouble.”

Claire lowered her stance. “I thought you said you were too busy to watch me.”

“No, no, I wasn’t watching you,” the man shook his head. “Well, maybe a bit, but that’s besides the point. Most of the time, I’m just checking in to see if you’re bathing or sleeping. Or if you’ve finally decided to fuck the cat.”

Grimacing, she turned Boris into a dagger and whipped him at the old man’s face, but he casually caught the lizard with a wave of the wand and gingerly set him back down on the ground.

“Consider it a celestial’s well-deserved privilege,” he said, with a confident smile. “Now, back to what I was saying, you’re going through a set of growing pains as just about everyone else that relies almost strictly on magic. You’re too sloppy.” He forged another chunk of divinity-infused ice, but unlike the first, the second was bursting at the seams, creaking and groaning as it cracked and exploded. “You see, child, divinity and magic leverage the same circuits, and they can certainly be used in tandem, but they are not interchangeable. To avoid muddying them, your spells must have a separate input for each type of energy.”

Claire twisted her lips into a frown. “I’ve used them together.”

“I didn’t say that you can’t muddy them,” he said, with a shrug, “but all that really does is make something unstable, and often something that’ll explode. Sound familiar?”

“No.”

“No?” The celestial cocked a brow. “That can’t be right. I’m pretty sure I’ve seen you doing it, and the library probably even has logs for when you first started exper—”

“Uhmmmm, Al?” Sylvia tentatively raised a paw. “She’s just messing with you.”

“She is?” He looked towards the lyrkress, his eyes briefly turning red. “Oh, for the love of…” Alfred pinched the bridge of his nose before pushing his fingers outwards and lightly massaging his eyebags. “Anyway, you need to separate them out. Pure magic through one end, pure divinity through the other. Everything gets messed up if you let the streams mix. Grow some horns or something if you can’t get things to go where you want them to.”

“What about chaotic divinity?”

“It’s the same process.”

Claire tilted her head. “Griselda said that ice is orderly by nature. They don’t mix.”

“She’s right,” agreed the chronic masturbator, “but it still works, and that shard of yours is all the proof you’ll need.”

For a moment, all eyes in the room were on centaur’s chest, with the lyrkress wrapping her arms around it and turning away after sensing the pervert’s leer.

“There’s really no reason to do that,” said the human. “Both of us can see right through everything.”

“Hey, wait a second! Al!? Don’t lump me into this!” shouted Sylvia.

“It’s true though,” he said, with a shrug. “And for the record, Claire, it’s why she’s never really cared for clothes.”

Claire ignored the rambling demigod as she kept her eyes fixated on the spike. She had certainly noticed that its colour had changed, but she had dismissed it as another sign of growth, given everything else happening to her body. The frosty longmoose was very much a fledgling in the process of becoming an adult. Her true form was a whole ten meters longer than it had been right after her ascension, her ears had grown a little larger in all her forms, and her riders had even found a pair of horns budding underneath her silvery blue hair.

That was why she had thought nothing, even as reds and blacks were mixed into the once pure blue crystal. In its current state, the shard was a light purple. It would reflect somewhat differently based on the lighting, but she had always thought that it was pretty either way.

“Is it because it isn’t entirely chaotic?”

“Sounds like I’ve done my part,” he said, with a chuckle. “Now, if you don’t have any other business or complaints, I’ll be seeing myself out.”

Claire straightened the angle of her neck and slowly raised her head to meet the man’s gaze. “The squid might reject your terms. I don’t make her decisions for her.”

“That’s fine,” he said, with a shrug. “I’ve set up the contract to react dynamically, and she can negotiate with it directly by extending it or crossing things out.” He floated the scroll over to Sylvia as he pushed himself up from his chair. His hat would have been crushed by the ceiling if he stood at his full height, so he had to remain half-crouched as he shuffled through his home. “Now, I’ll have to excuse myself, unfortunately, but you’re free to make yourself at home and ponder, or perhaps reunite with some old friends while you’re here. Whatever the case, I happen to have a few things to attend to.

He opened the door as he said the line and stepped outside. Into a room with an infinite number of shelves, and an even larger number of infinite records.

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