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

Chapter 367: Chapter 12: Am I Actually Weak? (Bonus Chapter for 400 Power Stones)

Of all the worlds so far, Auntie was the best for kneading.

"..."

Fubuki looked down at the little cat sitting in her lap and pressing her paws against her chest. She began to wonder whether the girl had accepted being carried off without crying or fussing because her sister was simply too flat.

"You behaved very well at school today. Your homeroom teacher actually didn’t call me."

Fubuki pulled two bills from her wallet and stuffed them into Yimi’s hands. "Here’s your reward. Spending money."

"Spending money." Yimi stopped kneading, took the bills, and examined them.

The spending money she had received in previous worlds had all looked different. Humans were all humans, so why did every world use different money?

"You can buy whatever you want with it."

"Mwoo." Yimi leaned her head over for Fubuki to pet.

She was acting spoiled!

Fubuki felt as if the exhaustion of the whole day had been cleansed away.

And so Yimi bought something called the Hero Directory. It contained the current roster of heroes and their publicly available information and was fairly popular with children.

A lot of heroes hid their faces. Some even put on cartoon mascot suits outright to become more popular.

But Blast, S-Class Rank 1, was still represented by an "unlocked character" placeholder. Apart from his title, even most people inside the Association knew almost nothing about him.

C-Class Rank 1 Licensed Rider had recently gotten his driver’s license and started using a motorcycle. Someone had even personally witnessed him run over a monster with a large truck in an open area.

Yimi did not need to look at this rank. By now, she had some idea of how hero rankings worked.

Things became stranger once she reached S-Class. King was only Rank 7, yet his description called him the "Strongest Man on Earth."

Yimi stared at the face in the picture: a rugged-looking blond man with three scars over his left eye, his hair swept straight back, and an expression that seemed to say, "Talk to me and I’ll kill you." He had the sort of aura where, if he appeared as a movie villain, the audience would be afraid he might beat the protagonist to death.

This was Yimi’s next target.

While Fubuki was out working again, Yimi crawled under the bed and pulled out the box where Fubuki kept newspapers. Since Fubuki needed to keep track of movement among B-Class heroes, she still subscribed whenever there was news, and she had taught Yimi how to read them.

The newest issue said King’s last appearance had been in City Z, where he had casually killed seven threat level Demon monsters. Afterward, only his clothes were dirty; he did not have so much as a tiny scratch.

City Z had the worst public safety of all the cities. Monsters appeared there often, and there were not that many high-ranking heroes around.

Bang’s dojo, belonging to S-Class Rank 3, was located there, but the old man was already so elderly that no matter how healthy he was, nobody could expect him to patrol every day for no reason.

* * *

Empty. That was Yimi’s first impression of City Z after flying there.

There were still plenty of people in the city center, but once she moved away from it there were huge stretches of empty buildings. Then again, poor public safety and cheap rent were probably among City Z’s defining features.

Yimi took out the Hero Handbook to see whether any other strong heroes besides King might be around. In reality, very few entries directly listed where a hero could be found, though S-Class Rank 12 Watchdog Man was apparently always in City Q.

"Meow?"

Yimi narrowed her eyes.

That dog was always holding a human head in its mouth! What an evil canine. After she found King, she would go beat it up.

So far, every monster Yimi encountered had followed the same pattern: appear, then get eliminated by a hero. She had no expectation of finding the strongest person among the monsters.

"I see. So the standard for an S-Class hero is being able to handle a threat level Demon monster alone? Doesn’t feel like I’d lose at all."

A somewhat familiar voice sounded nearby. Yimi had not interacted with him much, and his tone felt different now, so she could not remember that he was the man who had shown a little skill before.

She turned around and saw a guy with two pointed tufts on top of his head bending over to peek at her directory.

Yimi snapped the book shut so he could not read it.

"You’re stingy, brat. Especially for someone dressed head to toe in designer brands."

"Are you a hero too?" Yimi opened the directory again and flipped through it.

Garou made a disgusted face. "Who’d be one of those things? Why are you starting from C-Class? Looking down on me?"

"Then do you know, where King lives?"

"You’re right at that age where conversation doesn’t work, huh? I’d like to know where he lives too. S-Class heroes all hide their addresses, don’t they?"

Annoyed, Garou put a hand on Yimi’s head and pressed down. "This part of City Z is famous for monster activity. If you don’t want that pretty face of yours turned into monster food, get out of here. As payment for warning you, I’ll borrow this."

He snatched away the directory Yimi had just bought with her spending money.

He felt absolutely no shame about stealing from a little girl. A "monster" had no use for shame, after all.

"Give it back!"

Yimi stomped angrily behind him.

Garou had no intention of paying attention to her. But his martial artist’s instincts made him sense an extremely subtle change in the surrounding air.

Naturally, he saw nothing when he turned around, yet he faintly sensed the airflow twisting into a fist the size of a sandbag and shooting toward his face.

There was no way to dodge at this distance!

He hurriedly swung both arms up to block. A punch whose raw stats were no weaker than S-Class Rank 14 Tank-top Master’s sent him flying.

Remembering that Garou had kindly warned her a moment ago, Yimi still held back. She only used Reality Overwrite to produce the effect of "not injured, but knocked unconscious."

"You..."

With the last of his awareness, Garou caught sight of the girl who looked no older than a first grader bending down to pick up her directory and patting the dust off it.

* * *

"Hey. Hey? You all right?"

Awakened by the cold wind and that voice, Garou’s eyes snapped open.

What happened?

Judging by the darkening sky, he had been unconscious for several hours.

Was that little girl Child Emperor?

No. He remembered Child Emperor. He was definitely a little boy.

"You okay? Don’t sleep on the steps outside someone else’s place." The bald guy who had woken him pointed beside him, telling Garou to move out of the way.

Only then did Garou notice that his location had changed too.

Had she deliberately dragged him somewhere safe where monsters would not attack him?

"Oh, right. I’m a hero."

The bald guy talking to him seemed to suddenly remember that fact and put a hand on Garou’s shoulder. "Feeling sick? Want me to take you to a hospital?"

"A hero?" Garou glanced sideways at him.

A face he could draw in twenty seconds. What piece of trash had crawled out of nowhere?

"Then I’ll use you as my declaration of war!"

All the irritation from earlier instantly found an outlet. He chopped a hand down onto the man’s shiny bald head.

"I’ll clobber you."

Then the bald guy casually punched him about thirty meters away.

Lying inside a long-abandoned shop as his consciousness faded once again, Garou watched the bald guy walk upstairs without a care. Thinking about this together with getting knocked unconscious by a little girl earlier, a thought he had never had before suddenly occurred to him.

Could I actually be weak?