The Despicable Outsider

Everything happened so fast that Mu You did not even have time to take out the Pocket Watch before he felt a monstrous maw close around his head.

For that instant, even Mu You felt a little hopeless. Yet the pain of his skull being bitten through never came. Instead, the savage monster passed straight through his body, as though clipping through him.

"Huh?"

Before Mu You could process what had happened, he saw a flicker of light and shadow ahead. Something else seemed to be charging at him.

He barely had time to raise a hand before a soft, furry mass slammed into his chest.

When he had backed away earlier, half his body had already gone over the railing. This impact knocked him completely off balance, sending him tumbling over it.

This is the third floor...

As his body plummeted, Mu You hastily thrust his hand into his pocket and pressed the Pocket Watch inside.

The next instant, time flowed backward, returning him to five seconds earlier.

Mu You was back at the third-floor stairwell, crouching on the ground with a hand held beneath the unconscious young man's nose to check his breathing.

Coming to his senses, Mu You immediately rolled into the shadows beside the stairs.

Leaning against the wall, Mu You let out a breath. He knew the creature was hiding just beyond the nearby corner, waiting to ambush him.

The creature was clever. It must have realized that Mu You was the strongest of the humans, so it had deliberately used the young man's cries to lure him upstairs, then hidden around the corner to attack him.

Yet its final method of attack had been to knock him off the building and let the fall kill him...

In other words, the creature's actual offensive abilities were not very strong. At the very least, it could not deal Mu You a fatal blow quickly, so it had to resort to this crude method.

As for that savage monster from earlier... it clearly had no physical form. It was probably an illusion or something similar, used purely to cover the creature's real body.

Having worked all this out, Mu You did not rush to confront the creature again. Instead, he crept downstairs, went through the second-floor corridor, and circled around to the stairwell on the other side of the building.

After climbing to the third floor from this side, Mu You crouched at the turn in the stairs, took out the Magic Wand, and quietly cast a Trap Spell on the ground.

Then Mu You crept up to the fourth floor and crossed its corridor to return to the stairs on the other side.

Viewed from above, the building was L-shaped, with a short section jutting outward at this end.

Mu You crouched beneath the railing at the bend in the fourth-floor corridor, quietly peeking over it to observe the floor below.

From this position, he could see the entire third-floor stairwell entrance below.

The stairwell below was so dark that he could barely have seen his hand in front of his face. Still, with his enhanced eyesight, Mu You could just make out the silhouette of an animal in the darkness.

It was a cat!

It lurked quietly in the dark corner, its tail hanging low, its back slightly arched, its hind legs staggered, and one forepaw raised, poised to ambush its prey.

Unfortunately, its prey had yet to appear. It was beginning to lose patience, its tail lashing wildly as it grew visibly restless.

Mu You quietly took out the Mithril Bow and drew the string. He tied a tranquilizer dart to the arrowhead that formed, then aimed down at the cat.

Whoosh!

The moment the arrow flew, the cat below seemed to sense something. It glanced upward and sprang backward on instinct, narrowly dodging the incoming arrow.

Too bad!

Mu You had no time to sigh. Seeing that he had missed, he immediately stood, stepped onto a crossbar of the railing, and leaped down toward the third-floor corridor.

"Roar!"

Upon spotting Mu You, the cat swiftly transformed back into the vicious monster from before. It roared and lunged at him, also leaping over the railing, apparently hoping to knock him out of the air and send him plunging down.

This time, however, Mu You would not fall for its trick. As the monster hurtled toward him, his movements did not falter in the slightest.

Sure enough, the monster passed straight through him without impeding him at all.

Mu You landed squarely on the third-floor railing, then vaulted lightly into the corridor and landed steadily.

"Meow!"

The cat seemed to have been waiting for this opportunity. The instant Mu You landed, it attacked from the darkness beside him, swiping both claws as it lunged to bite his neck.

Mu You rolled on the spot, dodging its pounce. Its claws caught his stab-resistant clothing but did no real damage. At the same time, he swiftly reached out, turning his hand to grab the cat by the scruff and restrain it.

But the cat proved unexpectedly agile. With a yowl, it twisted through a full turn in midair and wrenched itself free of Mu You's hand. Once it landed, it did not dare fight him again. Instead, it darted into the corridor's shadows and fled.

Mu You chased close behind, occasionally raising his bow to loose an arrow. The cat dodged every shot with its flashy, zigzagging movements.

Of course, that was partly because Mu You was deliberately holding back. His goal was not to hurt the cat, but to keep the pressure on it so it would overlook the trap ahead.

One pursuing and the other fleeing, they soon crossed the entire third-floor corridor.

Just as the cat rounded the corner at the stairs ahead and prepared to escape downstairs-

Snap!

The trap snapped shut, followed by a frenzy of scratching and yowling.

Mu You ran over and saw the carved wooden cage shaking violently on the ground. But no matter how hard the cat inside struggled, it could not break out.

Only when he got closer did Mu You see clearly that the cat trapped inside was actually a lean, long-bodied American Shorthair!

With evenly spaced tabby markings, brass-colored eyes, and an M-shaped marking on its forehead, it looked thoroughly purebred. It was baring its teeth at Mu You, looking like a furious little tiger.

"Meow, meow... roar... hiss..."

Clearly, the American Shorthair was very agitated. It battered and clawed at the cage, its fur bristling as it hissed incessantly, warning Mu You to stay away.

"Wait, don't be afraid. I'm not going to hurt you. I'm the Night Watchman who spoke to you that day. I'm here to save you..."

Mu You covered his eyes with a hand and looked away, speaking in the clumsy Star Spirit Language he had prepared in advance.

During their fight, he had begun to notice that the cat's illusion ability seemed to work only when someone was staring at it. In other words, as long as he was not looking at the cat head-on, its illusions would not work.

"Meow, meow?"

The American Shorthair froze for a moment, then abruptly stopped struggling and let out two meows.

But when those sounds reached Mu You's ears, they were no longer meows. They were words he could understand.

"Meow? A Night Watchman? Nonsense! You're clearly a Fool! You despicable outsider... but you can actually speak Star Spirit Language? Who exactly are you?"

"Huh?"

Mu You was even more astonished than the American Shorthair. "You can speak Chinese too?"

"What are you talking about? This kitty doesn't know any Chinese. This is mental communication, meow. All domestic familiars have to undergo mental communication training before they're sold. Once we learn it, we can talk directly to other creatures in their minds." The American Shorthair meowed twice more.