Curse of the Kat – ch W1

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Hey, sorry for the big break again. To be honest, ‘stuff’ is happening in real life and it was really hard to find the enthusiasm and motivation to write lately. But, I still don’t want to drop this, so, I guess the ‘3-4 chapters a week’ will simply change to ‘whenever I can’. Hope you understand.


Chapter W1 – Panther of wrath

Nobody knew what would happen if the sword is unsheathed.
The girls warned him that it’s a bad idea.
But he didn’t listen.
As soon as he loosened the sheath a bit, it instantly shot out from all the pressure inside.
A massive surge of blackness spewed out of the sword and hit the prisoner’s cell in front of him.

“Holy shit! What’s with this sword?!”
That was the pirate king’s first reaction.
He has never seen such a concentrated mass of mana before.
Moreover, mana this sinister and frightening.

But looking at the damage it caused, he noticed she woke up.
The girl who was unconscious since the very beginning, her eyes were open, peeking through the sea of shadows all around her.

“Oh, hey! She woke up! Ahahaha! Is this thing her personal alarm clock or what?!”
The pirate king laughed at her predicament.
All while her eyes wandered around the cell and noticed her cellmates.

“Hmm? What’s with that dumb look, girl? Are you surprised to be in a cell? Thank your friend who lost to me!”
The girl looked back at him and attempted to stand up.
But the chains held her down.

“Hah, are you trying to break free? Those chains are special! They not only seal magic, but even skills!”
And then.

“…eh?”
The chains crumbled and let out a black smoke, which blended in with the surrounding darkness.

“Y-you burned through them?!”
As he stood there dumbfounded, all of the black flames in the cell began moving in a swirling motion around the girl.
The other prisoners, who were covered with is just a second ago, were clean again.
Though, all of them have already long lost consciousness.

“How can you control that much mana so freely?!”
The mana continued to unify and covered the girl in a thick cloak, only letting her red eyes peek through.

“…he…hehehe! I get it! So you are the strongest one of them all, aren’t you?! Not that other bitch!”
The pirate king felt excited.
He would get to fight someone really powerful, after all!

However, that excitement soon turned into fear.
Where her mouth should have been, the cloak opened, revealing even blacker black than the cloak itself.

“DIE!”
Her distorted voice carried the aura of pressure and chill.
The pirate king froze up for a fraction of a second.
And that fraction of a second was enough for the monster to somehow bypass the cell’s bars and close in on him with her claw already ready to swing down on him.
Swish. Crash.
The ground beneath him cracked and a wave of darkness bled through the surroundings as she swung her arm through the empty air and wedged it into the ground.

“S-so you are a monster, huh?!”
The voice came from a few meters away from where the pirate king stood just a second ago.
He dodged at the last second by teleporting.
However, in his panic, he left the Kat clothes as well as the sword behind.
The almighty undefeatable pirate king stood there naked, pointing at the ‘monster’ with one hand while covering his crotch with the other.
The shadows around the ‘monster’ immediately swallowed up the items he left behind and the unsheathed sword appeared in her hand.

“Well, I’m not gonna yield to an animal!”
The boy turned his head to one of the surrounding prison cells and did a hand grabbing motion in the air.

“I’ll show you what I can do!”
But the monster didn’t care.
She leapt at him again at speeds quicker than he could parse, raising her sword, which leaked shadow mana like an open water tap.
But her advance got stopped by something invisible.
She bounced back with a clinking sound.

“Hah! How is that! An indestructible magic barrier! You’re trapped again! Now-”
But his victorious stance didn’t last long.
The swor sword cut through the air and its tip touched the barrier.
As the leaking shadows touched it, it went out in a puff of smoke.

“What?!”
His moment of shock was enough for the monster to close in and do an overhead slash with her sword.
She only barely missed his skull and instead sent his left arm flying, while releasing a burst of shadow mana into a wall behind him.

“GAAAAAH!”
The sheer air pressure made the pirate king fly away, splattering blood from his armless shoulder all over the ground.
But the monster didn’t give him any breaks.
She dashed at him once again.
This time though, a blast of wind sent her flying the other way.
A barrage of fireballs closely followed, bombarding the airborne monster, but not really dealing any damage whatsoever.

“Mirim! G-get over here!”
The boy’s voice echoed in the spacious rocky room.
But before any answer came back to him, the sword’s blade, still overflowing with shadow mana, approached him once again.
A side swing meant to decapitate.
The sheer circular pressure from it created a black mini-tornado.
But as it settled, the monster’s prey was nowhere to be found.
And this time, not even her ears or nose could detect his location.

Upon realizing her target escaped, the monster roared.
“WHERE ARE YOU?! PIRATE KING?!”
She stood in place as her cloak extended down to the floor and crept through the room.
A few seconds later, the monster turned its focus to a certain spot.
A place, with two feet-shaped imprints in the shadow rug.
“THERE YOU ARE…”
The shadows converged once again, swirling around the sword this time.
The monster held the sword in both of her hands and pointed it at that spot.
She pulled her arms backwards.
And then, stabbed it forward again.
That motion released an unimaginable surge of mana, gouging out the floor and walls as if digging through soft snow.
The whole place shook as the shadows ate through whatever got into their path.
If anyone carefully observed the spectacle from the side, they would notice the light coming from objects behind the attack being warped.
Almost as if space itself got torn.
However, that distortion only lasted for a brief second before it got corrected.

“H-holy shit! You are crazy!”
Only a pinkie’s length away from all the destruction, the pirate king lied on the floor, sweat covering his pale face.

“B-boss! What’s going-”
Finally, someone came from upstairs and peeked into the room, freezing upon seeing the state it’s in.

“Mirim! Get Toel! Quick!”
Holding his bleeding shoulder, the pirate king shouted instructions at his underling, before returning his attention at the living calamity in front of him, not daring to look behind him at the destruction.
The monster’s cloak of shadow magic has been used up quite a bit, now allowing the pirate king to see her actual body shape instead of just a black mass with eyes.

“Y-ye-GRRH!”
The underling woman had the air punched out of her lungs before she even finished replying.
She keeled over and fell on the floor, desperately trying to catch back her breath.
The monster who punched her turned to the pirate king again.

“YOU WILL NOT RUN AWAY.”
But as the monster said this, she could see him doing the same grabbing motion at the prison cell.
After he did that, he grabbed a random piece of rubble and threw it at her while screaming in desperation.
The monster did not care for his pitiful acts of desperation and simply deflected the rubble with her free hand.
… not.
The stone pierced through both her hand and the shadows covering it, making it burst in blood.
The monster grimaced and looked at her broken hand.
And then at the pirate king, who had the expression of shock.
Which changed to an evil grin.

“A..ahahaha! So she wasn’t a useless idiot after all! HAHAHA!”
With the sudden influx of adrenaline, he stood up with another stone in his hand.

“What is it, monster?! How does it feel to be injured by your own friend’s ability?!”


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