The Cat Tribe (4): Soft Violence
A nyan-nyan punch that could crumple a knight’s steel plate.
The instant it slammed into me, the entire camp froze in shock.
I was no exception.
Soft—
What kind of soft paw pad is this…?!
It was violence of the softest possible kind.
“Y-Young Master!! Are you all right?!”
“…I do not appear to be all right.”
My heart, especially, was in critical condition.
It’s not like I’m particularly a cat person…
I had only ever been a fan of ordinary street cats, yet that violently squishy softness was melting my heart like butter over a flame.
“Nyaaaaang… Feels good, nyang….”
“Yes, yes. You chose well.”
I took the soft hand Yumi offered and shamelessly satisfied every selfish urge I had.
Only afterward did I hear old Max’s long-suffering sigh as he finally caught up to the situation.
“Thank the heavens.”
When Yumi first held out her hand, the northerners around us had looked ready to leap. There was no way a frail young master could survive a nyan-nyan punch that sent trained knights flying.
I, however, had already realized that particular grip was harmless.
How?
You only have to read the tail language and the ears.
Before I entered the pit, her tail had been curled tight in a smug little “heh-heh-heh.” The moment I made my proposal it shot straight up like a spear aimed at the sky.
That’s the textbook sign for “extremely pleased.” Add ears pointed forward and you’re looking at a solid one hundred percent.
With the miraculous catnip negotiations concluded, I immediately lifted the restraint placed on Yumi and assigned her one of the temporary tents.
The northerners still could not quite drop their wariness, yet—
“Hieeek!”
—the party in question was busy melting under my touch with the most languid sounds imaginable.
Watching that, Max stuck out his tongue in pure disbelief.
“You are truly remarkable, Young Master.”
“Hm? In what sense?”
“Are you not afraid? You have never seen an active member of the Cat Tribe with your own eyes, so the old legends may feel distant—but you watched her display of power only moments ago.”
Ah.
Fair point. Right now Yumi was only purring at my side, yet minutes earlier she had casually dismantled the northern knights with world-shaking force.
One casual scrape of her claws and Logwell would become Log/Well.
Even so—
From my perspective, the same is true of all of you.
World-class personal combat power?
To modern sensibilities, this Cat Tribe girl and the northerners who could stroll in carrying a house-sized bear on their backs were roughly the same category of monster.
You people already raised my threat threshold to insanity, so don’t start now.
Anyone in this temporary camp could twist my neck like a faucet if they felt like it. That was basic competency here.
More importantly—
If she had actually wanted to walk the murder path, our soldiers and knights would already be corpses.
The sudden skirmish just now had been too fast for my eyes to follow, and the result had been our complete defeat. Elite soldiers and knights had swarmed her with killing intent, yet she had subdued them the way a child twists another child’s wrist—and she had not taken a single life.
She can leave paw-pad dents in solid plate armor and still chooses not to kill the man wearing it? That’s actually harder.
Killing is easy. Letting someone live is hard. As a former soldier I understood which choice carried the greater weight on a battlefield.
Putting all of that together, I decided conversation was possible. I looked at her calmly and asked,
“So then—what truly brought you here?”
“Nyaaaaah. Delicious smells, nyang. And Yumi likes warm things, nyang.”
“Warm things? Ah…”
Remembering she had first been discovered on top of a cauldron lid, another classic cat habit clicked into place.
These creatures absolutely adore heat.
Their ancestors lived in deserts, so the species loves spots hot enough to singe fur. Unlike dogs that prefer the cold, there’s a reason for the old saying about the quiet cat that climbs the hearth first.
Wait—so I was the one who lured her in the first place?
Cats are also notoriously curious. We had been making a racket, the food smelled good, and there were hot surfaces everywhere. Of course she came wandering over as if entranced.
Still, that alone did not explain everything. Judging by everyone’s reactions, members of the Cat Tribe were clearly extremely rare.
“So you came alone? No family or kin nearby?”
That was when it happened.
Until that moment Yumi had been happily trembling with pleasure. Suddenly her tail drooped limp.
“…There are, nyang. But everyone is sick, nyang.”
“Pardon?”
I had only meant a casual identity check and instead struck gold.
Not one or two people—an entire group was ill?
“The tribe has been sick for a long, long time, nyang. We tried to hold on, but everyone reached their limit. We lost our home and were driven out, nyang…”
She looked dejected, as though the memory itself hurt. Yet buried inside was information I could not ignore.
“When, roughly, did that begin?”
“When what, nyang?”
“The large-scale migration.”
“Uuuum…”
Yumi scrunched her entire face as if forcibly cranking a rusty brain into motion. After a long struggle she thrust both hands toward the sky.
“Before the moon filled up twice and fell again, nyang!”
The moment I heard that, understanding clicked.
I knew it.
So you were the culprits.
Conversation with Yumi of the Cat Tribe was never easy, yet patience eventually produced certainty.
The recent upheaval in Jangbaek Mountain’s ecosystem is because of them.
For reasons unknown the Cat Tribe had suffered a long-standing illness. After wasting away they finally lost their homeland and moved to new territory.
In other words, they had relocated from the harsh depths of Jangbaek Mountain to slightly less harsh ground. As a result the monsters living in the mid-slopes had been driven en masse toward the foothills—or straight out of the mountain entirely.
Northerners had simply been caught in the collateral damage of that internal crisis.
Of course, it isn’t purely their fault either.
The Cat Tribe were displaced people who had already lost their home. Complaining “we suffered because of you” would have been a thoroughly human piece of hypocrisy.
It wasn’t even their crime.
“Then why were you wandering this area alone?”
“Looking for medicine, nyang.”
“Medicine?”
“Medicine that will make the village people better, nyang!”
Ah.
So this Cat Tribe girl was the village hero who had been roaming the snowy mountains alone in search of a cure for her people!
…But then why had that hero been sitting on our hearth?
Minor details could wait.
“What is the household count of your village?”
“What’s that, nyang?”
“The population.”
“Uuum…!”
Yumi frowned hard. She raised both hands, then both feet as well, yet still could not finish the count and looked thoroughly distressed.
Roughly more than twenty, I decided, and spoke again.
“With numbers like that, is there any real need to keep living in such a bleak place?”
“Nyang?”
Yumi tilted her head, unable to parse the question for a moment.
Beside her, however, Max reacted violently.
“Y-Young Master, what are you saying?!”
“Is something the matter?”
“If I heard correctly, you intend to accept those Cat Tribe people into the Northern Grand Duchy?!”
“Yes. You heard correctly.”
“Why in the world would you make such a proposal? Without the Grand Duke’s permission—no, without even the First Young Master’s permission! The two of them will—”
“Hm. I rather doubt those two would object much to my decision.”
“…That is true.”
Even before I possessed this body, the bulk of the Grand Ducal House’s administrative work had already been delegated to Logwell Wintershield.
Partly because Logwell was the rare civil-administrator genius born into a martial family, and partly because both the Grand Duke and Darius were simply too busy to care about such things.
The real issue is that the Cat Tribe are rather looked down upon by northerners…
But from where I stood, the North was in no position to be picky.
The resource the North lacked most of all was manpower—population.
When you get down to it, why did the superpower of my old world rise to hegemony in the first place?
Sure, people called it an overpowered starter map overflowing with endless resources, but the sheer population filling that vast territory could never be ignored either.
No need to look across any ocean.
Just look at the roaring bear nation overhead and the continental giant endlessly exhaling ambition from the left—and the little country squeezed between them.
Barely a century ago they were getting cleaned out by the archipelago; now they’ve overgrown and are the ones toying with it instead.
Seeing that made my own homeland’s geographic luck feel downright tragic. Stuck between monsters that grew stronger just by breathing, blessed with both massive territory and massive populations.
What am I, Krillin stuck between Vegeta and Goku?
Now that I was the second young master of the North, I refused to let this land follow the same path.
At the very least I would raise it to the level of Great Demon King Piccolo.
“The North is a harsh land. I do not know how things were in the past, but to survive now everyone must stand together. I see no reason the other races should be any different.”
So let’s do this together.
“What do you say, Miss Yumi? If life is difficult, come down from Jangbaek Mountain and join the Northern lands. You would of course need to provide taxes or equivalent compensation, but we will spare no support or cooperation so that the Cat Tribe can settle properly. We will also work with you to solve the hardships your people are facing.”
I held out my hand. Yumi’s ears twitched rapidly.
“W-Wait a moment, nyang! Things are moving too fast, nyang!”
Only then did the Cat Tribe girl grasp my meaning and show genuine panic.
She had thought she was negotiating a personal scouting contract; instead the entire tribe had just received an M&A offer.
The sudden expansion of terms was more than enough to rattle anyone.
But contracts are meant to be closed when the other party is off-balance.
“Compliance with the four major insurances. Strict observance of a nine-to-six work contract. The day after on-call duty is an automatic off day. Ten days of annual leave per person, with one additional day granted each year of service. Support for family ceremonies, plus one personal hearth per individual. Weekly catnip allotment, with performance bonuses paid in additional catnip…”
“Hieeeeek!”
Closing the deal on a single Cat Tribe girl who had not yet tasted capitalism was not difficult at all.
By the time the Cat Tribe girl regained her senses—
“There, there. Just stamp your seal here… no, your pawprint as chieftain will do.”
“Hieeeeek!”
Squish!
—a clear paw-pad print already marked the contract.