I'm Just a Cat! (P.S. My Stand is a Menace)

Chapter 365: Chapter 10: Not a Monster (Bonus Chapter for 200 Power Stones)

Tall, slender, fresh-faced, and handsome—that was Amai Mask’s appearance. Beneath that exterior, he truly did possess overwhelming strength and a hard, decisive way of doing things.

Yimi lay motionless on the vanity, her thoughts getting a little tangled.

Fubuki had taught Yimi a rule for identifying monsters: if it did not look human and went around doing bad things, it was a monster. But this man looked human, and he was not ugly either.

"A cat?"

Veins bulged on Amai Mask’s head in a way no human’s should.

First there had been the third-rate makeup artists, and now a cat had wandered casually into his dressing room. He was starting to wonder whether the organizers simply did not respect him or were deliberately trying to humiliate him.

Perhaps drawn by Yimi’s unusual markings, Amai Mask came closer anyway and even took out a little notebook.

"As a living creature, you may have some aesthetic appeal. But as a cat, you’re hideously ugly. I’ll give you a nine out of a hundred."

"Meow?" Yimi took a moment to process that.

"You’re, Amai Mask!" Then she immediately slapped a label on him!

"So you can talk." A dangerous shadow seemed to cover Amai Mask’s face, and a vicious glint flashed in his eyes.

His speed was absolutely not limited to what his A-Class rating suggested. In an instant, he sliced straight through the vanity Yimi was lying on and the wall behind it as well.

"You took that?"

Amai Mask looked doubtfully at Yimi, who had made no attempt to dodge. His palm had unmistakably connected, yet the murderous look still visible in the cat’s eyes made one fact perfectly clear: he had dealt damage with a base value of zero.

At the same time, a streak of white light flashed toward some distant direction. Far away, a monster that had been preparing to join the Monster Association after hearing rumors died in perfect peace.

"The type who can use subordinates as sacrificial substitutes? So you really are a monster. What normal cat would have markings that ugly?"

His expression had become outright vicious, the corner of his mouth lifting amid the veins spreading across his face. "Excellent. This is the first time in my life I’ve met a monster as stupid as you. Before I kill you, I’ll kill every one of your sacrificial substitutes too."

"Meow?"

After pinning labels on other people for so long, this was the first time Yimi had ever had one pinned on her—and by a monster calling her a monster!

The raw impact of psychokinesis slammed directly into Amai Mask’s face. Instead of the kind of injury a normal living creature should suffer, cracks spread across him like porcelain struck from every direction.

The blow carried him through three walls before he finally stopped. Fortunately, because this entire area had been reserved, Amai Mask was the only person using the nearby rooms to rest in peace and quiet.

Yimi licked her paw.

As expected, she still could not control this world’s Adaptive Power very skillfully. Aside from Haki, it was probably the hardest power she had to use right now... Well, maybe not. She still had not figured out the Adaptive Power from the previous world either.

Mana Burst was too destructive, and there were too many people here. She might as well use Haki directly.

"Did I underestimate you? Your luck is terrible, though. It’ll probably take thirty... no, twenty seconds before someone gets here and realizes what’s happening. That’s more than enough time."

Amai Mask lowered the hand covering his face. He did not repair the features Yimi had shattered. Instead, beneath the skin he revealed a hideous, twisted face that unmistakably belonged to a monster.

How much of that face had once been his original appearance, even he could no longer remember clearly.

The power he could use while maintaining a human appearance was limited. Only in this form could he unleash his full strength. There was no misunderstanding involved either. As A-Class Rank 1 and the Hero Association’s foremost public image ambassador, this was what he truly looked like.

Monster Amai Mask, threat level Dragon.

He could not even remember when he had become like this.

He had probably already been active as a hero before the Hero Association even established the S-Class ranking. Born extraordinarily ugly, he chose to wear a mask and never reveal his real face. Instead, that behavior only made him more popular, as everyone grew curious about what he looked like beneath the mask.

What would everyone think if they saw how ugly he really was?

Under that pressure, he kept growing stronger and climbing higher while carrying out his hero work without allowing himself the slightest lapse. Then one day, his mask was finally shattered. It was the price of victory.

But what awaited him was not the crowd’s disgust. It was gasps and praise.

Under the psychological pressure that accumulated day after day, even he did not know when he had become a monster. Behind the shattered mask, he put on another mask called "handsome."

Yes. Though he had already become a monster, he continued acting as a hero, hunting down his own kind in the name of justice all the way to the present.

"Let’s use twenty seconds as the baseline. You’d better pray your sacrificial substitutes can keep you alive that long!" In his monster form, even his voice had lost its former pleasant quality.

A grotesque giant hand slapped toward Yimi. Meeting it was an especially tiny cat paw, wrapped in Armament Haki and Conqueror’s Haki Coating as Yimi struck Amai Mask head-on.

"BOOM!"

Pure energy amplification collided with pure physical strength, producing a sound no clash of flesh and blood should have made. The two sides actually deadlocked for a moment, while the shockwave completely demolished the reserved dressing-room area around them.

This world’s level of power was higher than Yimi had imagined.

"Meow."

Fighting here would cause too much destruction. There were lots of people outside, and Zenko was out there too. She needed to lure the monster away.

Haki was still a poor match for Yimi. Armament Haki was built on the foundation of a powerful body, after all.

Three seconds had already passed, and the monster and cat, vastly different in size, were still locked against each other.

This tiny little cat was threat level Dragon?

Feeling Conqueror’s Haki trying to destroy him from the inside, Amai Mask’s heart sank. He knew that before anyone dared come over to investigate, there was probably no chance of killing her even once more.

No. If this cat was really that strong, why had she needed a sacrificial substitute earlier?

"Aah!"

A scream rang out nearby, interrupting Amai Mask’s thoughts and making both sides pull back their strength at once.

Yimi reacted faster. She immediately turned her back on Amai Mask, switched to the SAO Adaptive Power, and sprinted toward the sound.

That speed—this cat had still been holding back?

The scream naturally belonged to Zenko, who had followed after Yimi. Yimi recognized her scent instantly.

Yimi swatted away all the falling rubble, then looked back and saw the monsterized Amai Mask holding up a collapsing pillar. Beneath it was the manager he had only just driven out.

"M-monster! Help! Aaaah!"

"Get out of here, or I’ll eat you!"

Besides the people nearby, a few fearless busybodies were trying to come closer. No one had yet realized that this monster was Amai Mask himself.

Amai Mask gave the little cat beside Zenko a long, deep look.

That cat had just protected the brat, hadn’t she?

He struggled internally for a moment.

He would never believe a monster could possess goodwill, just as he could feel his own humanity steadily slipping away.

And this cat-shaped monster had seen his true face. But if they kept fighting here, more innocent people would only get dragged into it.

He forced his huge—or rather, bloated—body through the rear wall and fled.

"The monster ran away!"

He would find a chance to turn back into the hero Amai Mask...

"Meow?"

Fubuki had said that something ugly, inhuman-looking, and bad was a monster.

But this person had not done anything bad.

Yimi shook herself, clearing the dust from her fur, then ran off in another direction. Compared with a monster, a little cat with unusual fur was clearly less likely to draw attention.

She could not keep changing between cat and human in front of humans who made a fuss over everything.

"Yimi, where are you?!" Zenko finally remembered why she had come running over and covered her face as she quietly started to sob.

"I’m, here." Back in human form, Yimi walked in from the direction she had just run toward.

"..."

Zenko stopped crying and reached out to rap Yimi hard on the head. "What did you go off and do?"

At the same time, her own head hurt too.

"Went to fight, a monster." Yimi rubbed her head.

"Liar."

"I’m not, lying."

* * *

Amai Mask was the hottest star in human society, so naturally the concert venue was enormous. Destroying one dressing-room section did not interfere with the event in the slightest.

As a fortunate twist to his misfortune, Amai Mask happened to run into a monster that was on its way to disrupt his concert after he escaped outside.

After beating it so badly its own mother would not have recognized it, he threw the corpse out in public and announced that this was the monster that had appeared inside the concert venue. The explanation reassured everyone and earned him plenty of good publicity at the same time.

"That’s Amai Mask. Isn’t he handsome?" Zenko asked, nudging Yimi from her seat.

"Mm."

Yimi wore a pouty little face, clearly unimpressed.

Compared with this, the ugly face he had worn while fighting her had actually looked more pleasing.

The kitty had been interrupted before she could defeat him, but since he sang very well, she would let him off for now. She had memorized his face anyway.