Mater slipped off of Selina’s grasp and escaped beneath her arms.
The cat landed on the ground and intended to run straight out but something caught its nose.
The smell of Chaos.
It wasn’t pure, primordial Chaos but a more tainted version. Mater approached the source of the smell.
Chaos reeked in the bag on the ground. It was Selina’s bag that she had just put down.
The cat hissed at the bag and reached its claw to it.
Selina quickly snatched the bag away. "Hey now. You can’t mess with my stuff."
The cat stared at Selina and growled loudly. Its head tilted to the side and those slit pupils still stayed fixed at her bag.
Selina squatted down and reached her hand out to pet him.
"Heh. Fine. You can pet me. But only because I need to know what is inside your bag." Mater said.
The cat meowed again. It was a softer meow than before but still held a lot of smugness and hostility.
"Shush. You don’t need to be afraid of me. I am a goth after all. Goth girl goes well with a black cat."
Selina’s lips curved up to reveal her perfect white teeth.
Her pale white skin seemed unnatural. Without proper clothing, she would not be too different from a ghost in the night. She wore a flimsy camisole with two thin strings on either shoulders, one of which slipped off to reveal her bare skin.
The most noticeable aspect of Selina was a tattoo on her upper chest area. It was a slightly curved tattoo spanning from left to right with a cross in the middle and unfamiliar symbols on either side.
People might have thought it was simply a questionable life choice but Mater could sense its actual purpose.
That tattoo was a protective ward to repel evil spirits. It actually had a lot of similarities to Sigils that witch hunters liked to use.
"Interesting... There are supernatural forces in this world. That tattoo is the clearest evidence."
In Selina’s vision, she only saw the cat meowing intensively while looking at her chest. She instinctively covered herself.
"Why do I feel like you are looking at me with dirty thoughts?"
Mater meowed at her. He also couldn’t understand her but he knew what she was referring to. His eyes jerked up in an arrogant way.
Selina kept staring at this particular cat. She swore that it understood her.
Mater jumped and clawed at her bag. He was determined to look at whatever was inside.
"Stop! Kitty!"
Selina tried to resist but it was futile. Her bag fell to the ground and a book dropped out. That book was covered in intense negative emotions and Chaos.
Mater approached the book and lifted it open. He couldn’t understand the content but based on the handwriting, he deduced that it was some kind of diary or personal document.
"Interesting. The letters are fused with Chaos and Fear. The owner experienced intense anxiety and terror for a long period of time. Whatever bothered them wasn’t some ordinary thing either. It was supernatural."
Selina closed the book and picked it up.
"You can’t look at this, kitty. It belongs to my client."
His golden eyes stared at her intensely. Selina sweated but held her ground.
"I can’t believe I am being antagonized by a cat. You need to leave now, kitty."
Selina put the book on the table and approached Mater. She tried to pick him up but he hissed at her. His claws extended from within the paw.
Mater made sure she knew that he was not happy with being touched.
"Oh, come on! You have to leave, kitty. I can’t feed you. I can barely feed myself."
Selina opened the door and tried to convince Mater to leave. She pointed at him and made all kinds of gestures. But he made himself very clear.
That cat was here to stay.
Selina sighed heavily. "I really can’t afford a pet, kitty."
Mater ignored her and climbed on top of the table. He once again flipped the book open to look at the content inside.
Selina was thinking of stopping him but she changed her mind when she saw that Mater was only looking at the book, not messing with it.
"Do you understand what it says, kitty?" Selina said.
Replying to her was a meow she couldn’t understand.
What he said was: "I will be staying at your house from now on."
In the end, Selina gave up. "Fine. You can stay. But I can’t guarantee to feed you with good cat food. You can only eat what I eat."
This time, Mater didn’t reply to her. He continued flipping the pages of the book.
Selina ignored him and went to the bathroom. She had been running around all day. She smelled like a sock and that annoyed her. A fresh clean shower was what she needed right now.
Selina went inside the bathroom and stripped. Her naked body stood under the cold streams of water of the shower.
When she looked to the side, she was startled because of the pair of golden eyes of Mater. It was looking at her and licked its mouth.
For some reasons, she felt extremely unsafe but she ignored it. After all, it was only a cat. It couldn’t do anything to her.
Selina continued to shower. Mater continued to meow a language she couldn’t understand.
"Yeah, baby. Keep going. I haven’t seen a body like this for ages."
Mater’s eyes lit up and he unapologetically watched her showering. In the end, he really couldn’t do anything. After all, he was only a cat.
"I will need to at least reach my third lock to be able to turn into a human. When that day comes, Hehehe...
You will be mine, sweet baby doll."
Mater talked to himself.
After showering his eyes with beauty, he approached Selina’s clothes on the floor. Her phone was on the ground, beeping with notifications.
"What a particular projection device. I can’t sense any Chaos or Aether inside it. It is obviously not made by those Alchemists.
I wonder..."
Mater placed his paw onto the screen of the phone. His magic flowed out and infiltrate its circuit board.
He was doing the very same thing that he used to check his blood vessels, flooding the piece of device with his magic to learn its content.
As a result, not only did he scan the phone, his mind was able to connect to the internet, a web of explosive information that everyone can access.
"What is this? Some kind of holy library, perhaps? It has all kinds of information. Maps, news, paintings, even unique projections of past events..."
What Mater referred to as projections were movies and TV shows. He thought it was real events being recorded but after a while, he understood that it was some kind of play. Similar to those dramas in a theater.
Then he found what he was looking for.
"Languages..."