"Yes! Finally, I've saved enough to buy a [Mana Refinement Pill]" A 13-year-old kid was practically dancing with joy.
"I can finally become a cultivator!" The kid shouted as he walked into the "Mana Items and Pills" shop.
"What would you want to buy kid?" The Clerk asked.
"One bottle of [Mana Refinement Pills] Please." The kid answered with joy.
"Here you go, one bottle of [Mana refinement pills], That will be 50 coppers." The Clerk answered.
After handing over the pills, the kid paid 50 copper. He felt a little heartbroken, years of saving money, gone. But, he wouldn't give up! He would temper his body to the muscle tempering stage, so he could work on a farm near the village, and donate his money to his home, the orphanage.
This was his future!
-----
A black cat was in a bush near a store in search of his next victim. Over its 1 year existence, it learned that there were many ways to get food.
[1] Hunt, 10% chance of catching a bird.
[2] Forage, 0% chance of a find.
[3] Steal from the humans, 60% chance of getting something.
He saw the third option as an absolute win, so he did the obvious and chose it. Only to find this place where humans went in and out of, it had discovered many things, like a weird wrapped object, a sharp curved piece of metal, and a transparent tube.
'The nom-noms are near' was his only thought.
Suddenly, the door opened revealing a young human holding another one of those tubes, at the exact moment, he launched himself at the bottle, like a black streak of lightning, but slower.
The moment his paw touched the bottle, it was like it was hit by a raging bull, or not.
'second plan'
-----
Meoww~
The kid was startled, to say the least, in fact, he froze in place for about 2 seconds, but that was enough time for that weird creature to attack the bottle in his hand. When the time came and the creature hit the bottle it was surprisingly weak.
The kid thought that was all and his mind started to calm down, that was until he felt a pain in his hand. as he looked at his hand he saw the cr-cat.
'Oh, it was a cat the whole time.'
he was extremely calm now, then another wave of excruciating pain came forth like his skin was being shredded into smithereens, wait... it wasss!
He immediately dropped the bottle of pills in his hand and screamed in pain.
-----
'Mission success!'
He snatched the bottle and ran like there was a flood of water going after him, wait... it was the baker next door. There was only one thing on his mind.
'RUNNn FASTERRr!'
He felt the wind on his face, the dirt on his paws, the wall in his vision...
'wall I will, jump I must'
He contracted his back legs while reaching out with his front legs and prepared to run up the wall. Once his front paws reached the wall he leaned forwards and pushed, rocketing upwards with the momentum.
Once he reached the top of the wall he used his contracted back legs to leap over the wall.
*Whoosh*
Now was the real mission success.
-----
The other cats looked at the runt approaching with irritation.
Meow~~~
"This dweeb stole my lunch the other day, like, hunt your own. So irritating"
Mew~~~
"Same, I think this kid is such a runt to our faction, barely providing any help when protecting our territory from the flame faction"
Meow~~~
"I heard the dweeb has an almost no mana force, not even in the [Fur strengthening stage]"
Mew~~~
"Such a runt- here he comes"
-----
This cat is also irritated from the others, but he who found a bottle of these suspicious orbs will not bow so low that he would take them to heart.
After going over the wall, he made it back to the faction, remembering about the flame faction, he took his secret path to get there, back to his box. after sitting down next to the other tube he realised there was one key difference between them. one was smaller, only being able to hold 1 orb, while the other was able to hold five.
So as any being with suspicious things, he pulled the cal off the bottle and ate one of the orbs, it didn't do anything do he decided to eat them all. Only then did he regret his decision.
Mmmeeeooooowww!~
"BITTER!!"
-----
The others heard the statement and looked at the box,
Meow~~~
"Look! The dweeb ate some of those suspicious orbs in that transparent tube, what a dweeb."
Mew~~~
"Tell me about it, last time I heard him meow like that he ate a lump of dirt, I heard he was sick all week."
-----
BITTER, extremely bitter. Imagine the most bitter object and multiply it by an orb and you get this.
*cough* *cough* *cough*
Once the bitterness was over, he felt an energy building up in his body. If he was a sealed pot of water, those dirt orbs would be the high-temperature flame.
'Must get water'
He hobbled out of the box and went over to the puddle the faction was built around and drank to his heart's content, calming down the burning flame in his body. After a 30 minute rest, he started to get up and back to his box.
'Nap time'
He got into his loaf position and started to rest his mind, not noticing how the raging fire in his body was nourishing it from a skinny dweeb to a regular house cat, he was still not nearing the next evolution when one passed the [Fur tempering stage] turning them into a [Dire Cat], The main reason his faction was being suppressed was that the leading faction, the flame faction was said to have two [Dire Cats] and one [Flame Dire Cat] a special evolution.
It was also said that their leader figured out how to use the power of the flame to make more nutritious foods, so the other factions were lacking with their newest generation. The reason that they were being suppressed is that their almighty leader stole the fire and took it as his own to raise the newest generation.
What the leader didn't know is that it was hard to keep the flame alive. One had to feed it, give it shelter and air, and in return, you would get what the leader called cooked food. It was said that the leader got the idea from the humans and copied them, making more tender meat. The meat is far more suitable to feed the kittens of the new generation because of its easiness to chew. Due to that the newer generation, including him, got to eat the meat every two days until they turned 1 year old, as of which the leader expected them to hunt themselves.
Due to him, being almost useless at hunting, the leader decided that the young would-be taught at a young age how to hunt, becoming the greatest generation to this date. even the 6-month-old kittens could hunt with strategy and be able to get at least 3 mice per hunt.
The leader also told the faction stories, his favorite to this date was how the leader went out of the village and found a forest full of creatures, but they weren't ordinary. the pigs had tusks that glowed red with anger, while wild herds of sheep had arks of power sparking in between their horns. It was even said that the leader found a one-and-a-half-meter tall cat that could snap a tree in half with the swing of a paw.
Of course, he wanted to hear more, but the leader said that only the [Dire Cat]'s could hear more.
So as any cat would do, he inquired more about the stages.
It went like this,
[Ordinary] Ordinary [pet-cat]
[Fur Tempering] Smarter and more Resistant [cat]
[Fang Tempering] Stronger [Dire Cat], May have a special attribute
[Claw Tempering] Smarter and Faster [Dire Cat], May have a special attribute
[Muscle Tempering] Stronger and Faster [Elite Dire Cat], May gain another attribute
[Organ Tempering] Smarter and more Resistant [Elite Dire Cat], may have 0-2 attributes
[?]?[?] May gain another attribute
Nobody knew what came after. It was said that the [Overlord] of the village was a mischievous [Claw-Tempering] [Dire Cat] That liked to snack on many things including other [Dire Cat]'s. Encouraging the factions to try and gain strength as fast as possible to be able to replace the throne with a worthy leader capable of leading their race to freedom.
That is why all the major factions banded together and created a tournament that would be held each generation when they reached 2 years. Then the winner would compete with the [Overlord] for the position. As the overlord did nothing to suppress the competition, everyone suspected that the [Overlord] didn't see them as a threat, creating even more fury amongst the top competitors to show him wrong.
After resting awhile, He slowly went to sleep.
[Ding!]