Arthur looked at the Initiation Chart in his hands.
The plump, endearingly goofy orange cat, whose enormous body had crushed the bed and pinned the Great Dragon, Fierce Tiger, Raging Bear, Lone Wolf, and the others beneath it, moved.
From lying sprawled on her back, she rolled over.
Arthur sensed a benevolent trace of Spirituality.
It was gentle and mild, like a cup of warm water.
Arthur tried to make contact with it.
The next instant, the scene before him changed again-
Mimi!
It was still Mimi!
But she was different from the Mimi Arthur had seen before.
Her sleek, agile body was gone. Not only had she become large and bulky, she had also learned to walk upright like a human. She wore a gray linen vest and held a pipe with a long, slender stem. The back of her vest was embroidered with the image of a round copper coin with a square hole, and her whiskers and the fur atop her head were neatly groomed.
She wore a pair of cowhide boots, with a rapier at her waist.
Now Mimi was smoking her pipe, her azure eyes solemn as she looked at her friend Aeolia.
"Are you really going to do this?"
Mimi asked in a low voice.
"What else should I do?
Leave the future's problems to the people who come after us?
I'm not that shameless!"
Aeolia was as forthright as ever, his laughter hearty and his face still brimming with heroic spirit. Yet his body bore over a hundred wounds of varying depths.
These were the wounds left by his battle with those bastards from the Church.
The shallower ones were mere flesh wounds.
The deeper ones exposed his internal organs.
The deepest went clean through his body.
Anyone who saw Aeolia now would