Silly Cat could not help remembering an afternoon a few months earlier. She had been sprawled across a desk while a warm breeze stirred the curtains, and Annan had sat there writing a story called "The Farmer and the Snake."
A farmer found a snake frozen stiff and tucked it inside his coat. Once it recovered, the snake bit the farmer to death, only to freeze to death itself.
The farmer had paid for his kindness in the end... But the lesson of the story was not about ingratitude. It was about defying the laws of nature.
The farmer had brought it on himself. He knew perfectly well that a venomous snake did not understand gratitude, yet he had saved it anyway. What else could he expect?
I brought this on myself, too!
Distracted, Silly Cat stepped on a scrap of flesh. What she had taken for a merely disgusting bit of meat seemed to come alive. It clung to her paw pad, and those hateful, venomous whispers surged back, seeping into her mind.
Half a second later, the giant spider lunged at her in a foul wind. Silly Cat had no choice but to use Divine Power to drive out the malice clinging to her.
"Idiot, what are you doing?!"
Little Spider's furious voice rang out from the darkness.
Silly Cat's fur stood up even more.
You betrayed me, and now you're calling me an idiot? You're picking on an hon!est! cat!
Silly Cat was about to burn her Divine Power and throw herself at Little Spider, taking them both down, when a strand of silk shot out of the darkness. It wound around her and yanked her backward.
Silly Cat flew out of the Royal Bedchamber like an arrow from a bow. She hit the ground, rolled several