Lone: The Wanderer-Chapter 74Book 3: : Kitty Questions and Kitty Blocks

'Okay, let's think for a second,' Lone said to himself internally as he applied his Agility but solely for his thought process.

That was a neat little trick he had learned to do a month ago after he had decided to dedicate a couple of days to testing the limits of the first stat of his that he could apply.

He quickly learned that could apply Agility to any one part of his body which doubled the effect but doing so also doubled the cost, meaning he was draining 15% of his SP per real-world second.

He didn't have a fortress shield active right now so he would be out of juice in six seconds but it gave him several minutes of thinking time to figure things out. Needless to mention as well that after killing Lady Carnation, his base Agility has increased from 6,007 to 7,915, an increase of almost a full third, which was then doubled by Scott's Beginner Booster, amplifying the applied effects dramatically.

'Not that the SP matters. If she really is a Divine, then no amount of SP will save me from her wrath if she wants to kill me. I guess I should do what she says? I have no idea what species she is or if she's telling the truth but she appears very cat-like both in appearance and personality so satiating her curiosity should be good enough, and I didn't detect her at all until she showed herself. It's not like I was doing anything nefarious,' Lone decided before he stopped applying Agility, having only spent a single real world second on his thoughts.

With all of that considered, Lone deactivate the 'Yes, I don't look like this. Stop Asking.' brooch that was pinned to the inside of his shirt in an effort to hide it.

Zelda Zaph's cat eyes narrowed in interest. "Well, aren't you mysterious. A nine-tailed golden foxkin who's awakened four times but doesn't look a day over 20 and who isn't using a skill or spell to hide your visible age? You must have an excellent skin-care routine."

'Lone,' Soph called telepathically in worry. 'I thought I could just focus on getting used to my new mana limits. Why is there a massive fluffy-looking cat in front of you that Sophie is telling me called itself a Divine?'

'No reason, but, uh, if it looks like I'm gotta get eaten or something, rewind time, pretty please? I think she's friendly,' he responded mentally while physically saying, "Only the best, just like your fur-care routine. I take good care of my tails but your fur is the most luscious I've ever seen. And uh, I don't mind answering your other questions, of course. I will, but, uh, could you prove you're a Divine? You guys are hardly super public besides a handful of you like the Empress of Taslo or Grand Guildmaster Sarah."

'You were supposed to be fishing with your sister, not provoking something you can't win against...' Soph grumbled a lot like Sophie might have were she in control.

"My, he does have a way with words," Zelda Zaph purred. "And of course. This shouldn't hurt but do brace yourself. It's been a while since I've used my Divine aura, so I might be out of practice."

Lone was used to being blasted with over-powered auras that he had no business being oppressed with at his strength but he wasn't prepared for this. Pure, unadulterated majesty. A holiness of untold magnitudes filled his being, embracing him, making the being in front of him the only thing he could see and she was Divine.

Just as soon as it had arrived, the golden waves of purity, holiness, and truth, disappeared, making him feel empty, as if he had lost all purpose. What point was there in living when one couldn't experience the grace of such a godly feeling?

"Told you it'd be painful," Zelda chuckled as she curled up on the boat. "You don't need to answer my questions. I felt all I needed to right then."

The ropes binding Hazel disappeared so the teen scrambled to her feet cautiously. "W-Why is he just standing there with a blank look on his face? W-What did you do to my brother?"

"He's actually your brother? You're not using that word in a 'he's like a brother to me' way or a 'he's adopted' way either... You're brave too. Very brave for an H-ranker. Commendable. Give him a moment. He's learning to cope," Zelda Zaph- no, Divine Tethered stated. "By the way, are you a summoned hero? You're a bit weak to know a skill that can so much as get close to my mind, let alone try to enter it."

Hazel paled and froze up instantly.

Divine Tethered laughed as she crossed her four front paws over each other in amusement. "There's no need to suppress the skill now. You've made me even more curious. If you're a summoned hero, and he's your brother, then that means whatever world you both came from is really strange to have natural laws that allow such wild and complete interspecies breeding. It's very rare to see heroes that know each other, let alone that are related. I guess he won't have any answers about the Golden Foxkin Clan then. Shame. I lost a good couple of trading partners when they vanished. Oh well. Still, well worth coming here. This has already been way more fun than I expected it would be."

"B-But I was reading your mind just a couple of minutes ago. Wha- How? I don't..." Hazel was terrified.

"Oh, you adorable child, you. I'm a Divine. Of course I can mimic a functioning mind and let your skill interact with it. What fun would it be if your skill just bounced off of my Divine mind and you got spooked? No fun, that's how much. So you can read minds, huh? Not very unique for a unique skill but it can probably become undetectable at later ranks, and it seems passive - that alone makes it very powerful. Needless to mention you can do it at such a low rank. I give it a solid eight out of ten," Divine Tethered rated.

She then turned her big cat head back towards Lone and hissed softly. "Snap out of it. Your not t- Oh. You've been back with us for a while. Busy, were you?"

"I was thinking," Lone said. "Are all Divines so insightful?"

With Basic Regeneration's ability to heal his mind, it didn't take him long to recover from the shock of her Divine aura and its retraction. He also had a new skill from the ordeal that he needed to investigate, of course.

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The host has developed the passive skill: Divine Aura Pressure Resistance.

Passive Skill: Divine Aura Pressure Resistance

A skill that allows the host to resist the pressure of Divine auras, only earned by those lucky enough to earn the ire of a Divine but still be granted the mercy of life.

All Divine aura pressure applied to the host shall be weakened by 5%.

Cost:N/AMastery:Beginner Level 1

'That confirms she's Divine. Could have been a powerful illusion or something until now, but skills don't lie. At least, they don't lie thus far,' Lone thought.

"Not all, but come on, I'm a big old pussycat. Observational skills are to be expected. Very few Divines can match my abilities in this aspect. What's your unique skill then if you're her brother?" Divine Tethered asked curiously.

'She doesn't already know? So she's never heard of me before. I guess that makes sense. I'm not the centre of the universe, I suppose,' Lone thought then answered, "I can heal really fast."

Divine Tethered's smile widened and her cat eyes narrowed even further. "Hmm... Show me."

Lone didn't like that one bit but he still took the initiative to do as requested. He presented his left arm and said, "Cut it off, please."

Divine Tethered chuckled deeply. "It's not every day someone asks me to remove a limb and I actually consider it. Sure. What now?"

Lone didn't even see her move. No, he was almost certain she hadn't moved, but not a moment later his severed arm slammed against the boat's floorboards beneath his feet with a meaty thud and blood began spilling out of his shoulder.

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He didn't have the time to marvel at her immense power, however. Instead he pumped his Basic Regeneration with MP while also trying to add SP - he'd been trying to earn an additional effect that let him use both resources to boost the healing rate even further for a while, to no avail thus far.

Within three seconds his arm was fully restored. "Ta-da."

Divine Tethered's cat eyes sparkled. "That's a ten out of ten, no doubts. To be able to regrow an entire limb so fast and while using so little magi- no, it's passive, you just increased the speed with your magic. Even more incredible. That, while obviously not offensively capable, is perhaps the strongest life-preserving skill I have ever seen. Can it do more than just heal your body?"

Lone fought the urge to frown and instead replied honestly, "It heals the mind too, and it heals more than just injuries. Poison, disease, even the aging process. It all gets combated by it."

"What about your head?" the massive multi-limbed cat asked.

"I've had it be injured before and recovered, but I've never had it severed and I'd rather not find out if it can heal that or not by way of testing," Lone expressed.

Divine Tethered chuckled and nodded. "Fair."

Lone was hesitating. So far, this all seemed quite cordial minus his little sister being trussed up like a Christmas turkey. 'She just seems curious, and earning her goodwill would obviously be to my benefit...'

He opened his mouth and said, "I'm Lone Immortus, by the way. I'll answer your original questions. I didn't sneak in here so to speak, I'm just well-known in Golden Pass City and this outing was for my sister's sake, so I didn't want to attract attention, hence the disguise. I didn't lie about my identity because we are siblings and I used to look like that, and my name was Darren McCullen once upon a time. I may only be a B-ranker, but I've been through a lot and I kinda push myself to my limits a lot what with my super healing so my aura bears the scars that I heal."

Divine Tethered 'hmm'ed once more before she licked one of her paws. "So you don't have parents of different species, you just changed somehow. That's a bit more boring. Okay. Well then, wanna get back to fishing?"

Both Lone and Hazel looked confused. "Just... like that?"

The massive cat with too many limbs glanced at Lone. "Would you rather I revealed myself to be a disingenuous businesswoman and not provide you with the experience you paid for? You've stated more of less that you weren't trying to steal trade secrets or anything, and if you're wondering why I don't care about your obvious secrets, I've seen a lot of stuff. Your species situation is quite interesting, but I'm not uncouth."

Hazel stepped forward and asked. "Will... will you actually teach me and not tie me up this time?"

Divine Tethered cackled and purred at the same time, making quite the facisination sound. "Of course I will."

"But... you're a Divine," Hazel pointed out. "Teachings from someone like you must be worth... I don't know, a kingdom or two."

"More than that, sweetheart, much more," Zelda Zaph replied as a blinding light filled Lone and his sister's vision. Not a moment later and the catkin woman from before was back, looking just as youthful and full of energy as before, lacking all of the grace of her true form. "But you two have already paid and I already gave Jezlo leave for the afternoon so I could take his place. Besides, it's been a while since I've trained a newbie in anything, let alone two. It never hurts to brush up one's skills, right?"

"Can't argue with that," Lone replied.

Divine Tethered smiled, showing some cat fangs that weren't there when she first assumed this form in front of them. She then stared at the sky with her head tilted all the way back.

"Uh, you okay?" Hazel asked.

Something deep and profound twinkled in the catkin's eyes before she leaned her head back down and grinned. "I'm fine. Was just dealing with a peeping tom."

Meanwhile, in Ardetia, Zel's personal pocket dimension from which the Arch Devil governed all of the 14th Blasphemous Hell, Zel wore a curious look as he felt his visual connection to the mortal plane snapping.

"No surprises there, I suppose," he said as he tapped his fingers against the table in front of him. "Troublesome. The minor Luck deity must have steered him and Divine Tethered to meet."

He doubted the lazy Divine would interfere, but he couldn't be sure and to count on her inaction would be foolish. Zel sighed and began rolling his dice. Plans needed to be changed to account for this unexpected variable either way now that the two had met.

The fishing session had come and gone with Divine Tethered gifting a card to Hazel that she explained was a VVIP membership card to all of her businesses and she even asked his sister to come back to fish with her regularly.

'Can't believe she just said 'you have enough money' when I asked where mine was. Trust a Divine merchant to be able to sniff out my net worth, eh?' Lone grumbled internally.

He was currently sitting in one of the many living rooms of Master Mezro'nan's magic tower just going over the whole outing in his mind, which included his recent skill gains.

Congratulations! The host's passive skill [Fishing Mastery] has levelled up! It is now Beginner Level 5.

Congratulations! The host's passive skill [Fishing Mastery] has levelled up! It is now Beginner Level 6.

Congratulations! The host's passive skill [Fishing Mastery] has levelled up! It is now Beginner Level 7.

Congratulations! The host's passive skill [Fishing Mastery] has levelled up! It is now Beginner Level 8.

Congratulations! The host's passive skill [Fishing Mastery] has levelled up! It is now Beginner Level 9.

Congratulations! The host's passive skill [Fishing Mastery] has levelled up! It is now Beginner Level 10.

Congratulations! The host's passive skill [Fishing Mastery] has levelled up! It is now Intermediate Level 1.

Passive Skill: Fishing Mastery

A must-have skill for anglers of all walks of life.

Makes fish 15% [+10%] more likely to find your fishing hook more appealing.

Cost:N/AMastery:Intermediate Level 1

And it kept levelling and levelling well past intermediate rank. Lone was honestly in awe. This wasn't a broken and flawed skill like crude magic was which he could rank up several times in a few days. No, this was an ordinary mastery skill yet despite that and despite it having only been about five and half hours of fishing, the skill had improved well beyond what he thought possible.

The skill had only stopped levelling once it had reached advanced-level-ten, just shy of expert rank. But what had left Lone so impressed wasn't just the levels, no, it was mainly the extra additional effect the skill had picked up four hours into their training session.

Passive Skill: Fishing Mastery

A must-have skill for anglers of all walks of life.

Makes fish 60% [+30%] more likely to find your fishing hook more appealing.

[New!] Passively reinforces the strength of both the rod the host uses and its line by 50%.

[New!] Once a month the host may cast their line into a Spatial Fracture and try their luck at fishing up items and creatures both lost and forgotten. Currently available.

Cost:N/AMastery:Advanced Level 10

Lone sighed. The first additional effect was the normal one everyone who got this skill to advanced rank earned, but that extra insane-sounding one was taught to him specifically by Divine Tethered.

'It was insane. She just... ripped the fabric of space with her claw and a golden statue of some sort of lotus flower or something appeared out of thin air. How does someone learn about an additional effect like that and then teach it to someone? And why did she transform to her cat form and use her claw to fish instead of a rod? Cool factor, maybe? Haze even said she felt like she could almost understand the process even if she didn't get the additional effect herself,' he thought.

Lone didn't understand a lick of what had happened. It was only when Divine Tethered had said a few vague words and used the skill a second time to fish out a see-through space squid or something to that effect that he earned the additional effect. Granted, his ability to learn was unmatched, but Divine Tethered clearly had barely, if any peers, in the art of teaching.

"I didn't even know additional effects could be taught. I thought they all had to be learned..." He sighed again. This experience had really widened his perspective on a lot of things.

At that moment, Breena entered the room a bit awkwardly and she was holding something behind her with both of her hands. "U-Um, Master Lone? A-Are you busy?"

He gathered himself and shook his head. "I've got a dinner date in, like, a half hour, but other than that? nope. Free as can be."

"Ah, um, great. I, uh, I have a couple of letters for you," Breena said meekly. "F-From when you were, you know, um, away..."

Lone raised an eyebrow. 'Why's she so nervous?'

"One... em, one of them is from the new q-queen of Milindo," she said.

"Ah," Lone replied. "What the fuck could she want from me, of all people?"