Ch. 138 Artoria hurried out of the warehouse

“Miss Mia! We must pursue it!”

Artoria hurried out of the warehouse, sword in hand.

“Yes,” Mia nodded.

The cat demon was moving toward the coast.

Forget the stereotype of felines landing silently; even with thick pads on its feet, a robust cat demon could not defy gravity.

Its weight made it impossible to remain silent while running across the uneven roofs.

They only needed to follow the undisguised noise to stay right behind it.

But after rounding just two corners…

A loud splash echoed through the night from not far away.

By the time the two reached the shore, the shimmering sea had already returned to calm under the moonlight.

“…It got away…” Artoria looked at the sea with a complex expression.

Mia also felt somewhat helpless.

“However, since it’s injured, it will surely stay quiet for a while, right?”

—

When moonlight bathes the sea, the ocean is quiet and peaceful.

The water ripples slightly, and the entire strait looks like a piece of dark blue silk embedded with sequins.

‘Splash—’

By the coast of Anglesey, something broke through the water.

The white cat demon limped onto the beach.

Under the cover of night, the beast that was originally the size of a tiger or leopard slowly shrank while shaking off the water.

Finally, it turned into a tiny white cat no larger than two palms.

Although the wound on its hind leg had also shrunk, for the cat, it wasn’t any better.

The cat demon limped toward the fishing village on the shore. It struggled to jump through the open window of a house, landing on a boy’s bed while still soaked with water.

“Mm… Cath Palug?” The boy was woken by the pressure on him, seeing the small white beast in his daze.

“Honestly, why are you so wet?”

The boy sat up and easily picked up Cath Palug by the scruff of its neck, lifting it up.

“Fuu~ Fuu~” The strange cat cried out weakly, and the boy discovered the wound on Cath Palug’s leg.

“How did this happen!” the boy questioned in a low voice.

“Fuu~”

But he couldn’t understand Cath Palug’s cries.

The boy sighed.

He rolled out of bed, tiptoed past his parents’ bedroom, and fetched some clean strips of cloth from the storage room.

“Come here,” the boy pulled Cath Palug toward him.

Though he had no ointment, the boy carefully bandaged the strange cat’s wound with the cloth strips.

“If Father finds out, he’ll definitely hit me again,” the boy sighed.

For a fishing family, even scraps of cloth left over from making clothes were precious.

Wasting precious fabric to bandage a pet was a great sin.

“There we go.” The boy clapped his hands and picked up Cath Palug: “To keep Father from finding out, you can only come home at night for the next few days, okay?”

“Fuu~ Fuu~”

It probably meant ‘I understand,’ right?

The boy nodded to himself, then leaned out the window and gently placed it outside.

“Goodnight,” he said.

Then he retreated back inside and pulled the window slightly shut.

Leaving the cat demon alone in the cool night breeze outdoors.

Cath Palug was in great distress due to the pain from its wound.

It curled its bandaged leg and limped through the fishing village.

It needed something to help it recover—for example, food.

In a corner of the village, a figure ran through a place where the Guards’ torches could not reach.

The figure climbed over a fence and entered a fisherman’s backyard.

If one looked closely, they would notice that the person was holding a dark dagger.

He observed his surroundings warily; the owner of this house was sound asleep.

No one would notice him. Thus, he raised the knife in his hand and reached toward the fishing net the owner had hung out to dry in the yard.

“Now you won’t be able to catch any fish,”

One rope after another was cut by the sharp knife, and a huge hole appeared in the once-perfect fishing net.

He seemed to sense someone watching him.

Turning his head, he saw a white cat with purple vertical pupils squatting not far away.

The beast’s face held no expression to speak of.

The strange cat just stared at him motionlessly, and he felt a chill run down his spine.

“Go, shoo,” after a moment of shivering, he waved his hand at the cat to drive it away.

He recognized that cat; it seemed to be a monster another fisherman had hauled from the sea.

Its appearance alone exuded an aura of evil.

Tugging at his clothes uneasily, the criminal ignored Cath Palug.

‘It’s just a cat,’ he thought.

There was another fisherman he wanted to take revenge on.

These two families had always been the ones with the largest catches; the fish they caught were big and high quality.

‘It’s those two households. They used some kind of trick to take all the big fish, which is why I can only catch small ones.’

That was the motive for this criminal’s actions.

Envy.

By ‘comparing’ himself to others and finding that their lives were better than his, he harbored resentment.

Envy drove that man to commit evil.

Cath Palug watched him.

Food found.

The limping white cat followed the man.

On its pure white tail, the tip had somehow become stained with an ink-like blackness.