My Werepanther System: Starting with Nine Lives
Chapter 48 GREEN-CATS

Chapter 48: 48 GREEN-CATS

"This... this is our home." Syphen declared as he stood before a lake in the jungle. The waters rippled and spun chaotically.

"This is a waterfall." Hassan said as he stood beside him. Even in human form, he towered over Syphen. His sand colored robes were stained with berry juices and vampire ash from the mornings battle.

"Waterfall.... simple name." Syphen mumbled to himself.

"These people need protection not death by water." Hassan said.

"Protection is behind the water." Syphen pointed at the waterfall.

"What?"

Syphen took off, running along the outer edge of the lake in a low lying feline blur.

The village natives hooted and inched closer to the lake to get a better view of Syphen.

He approached the waterfall from the side where pillars of stone and jungle trees erected from the earth rose up three hundred feet high. A hill of sorts flanked the lake, partially hidden by the roaring mist waves spawned by the waterfall.

Syphen climbed it and disappeared behind the waterfall. He stepped out briefly only to wave for everyone to follow.

Soon after they joined him in climbing the rocks backing the lake.

In time, the village natives, Syphen and Hassan stood at the entrance into a cave. The moisture heavy air from the clashing waterfall birthed plants, fungi and fruits that sparkled in the dark. Thin spreads of grass covered the rocky ground.

"It’s like an oasis..." Hassan commented.

"What is this word?" Syphen asked.

"Oasis. Like a beautiful sacred land." Hassan explained.

Syphen shook his head.

"It’s not?"

Syphen nodded, "It is not."

"Why?"

Syphen pointed into the dark tunnel at a far wall.

Hassan focused his senses until he could see into the dark. In the distance on the leftmost stone wall, a sigil was scribed in berry juices and blood.

"Goblin language....." Syphen snarled.

Hassan sniffed as he looked around, "The water’s making scents harder to track, but I don’t think there’s anyone else here."

"Maybe not here. But elsewhere." Syphen said.

"But you said here is home." Hassan was confused.

"We will make it home. Panther says." Syphen turned to Flora. She stood at the helm of her people. Her tanned skin was slicked with sweat from a day spent running and hiding. Her tribal gear was mixed with military armor painted and blended with the rest. Just like many others. He eyed her gun— remembering how loud the projectile weapons were.

In her people’s language, he said, "Have your warriors guard the ones who are not strong fighters. You come with me. We’re clearing this cave."

Flora nodded in understanding before turning to her people and issuing a series of commands.

The larger men and women suddenly were moving through the crowd to guard the exit while the children, older men, women and sick or injured took their seats on the grassy stone floors for the first time in hours.

Flora joined Hassan and Syphen as they faced the shadows. She clicked off the safety on her rifle and said, "Preparar..."

Hassan picked up a stone and crushed it between his hands into sanded grains. It mixed with the sanded essence that was always present around him and caught fire. Golden fire.

They ventured into the shadows with Anhurian light.

"So, a centuries old Lion-man, half-goblin werejaguar and victim of vampirism venture into a cave. This sounds like the start of something grand...." Hassan said.

Flora looked at him callously before looking down the sight of her rifle again.

Syphen mumbled to himself as he fearfully peered around boulders in their path and jumped at his own shadow.

"How did you kill a world-serpent?" Hassan asked as he watched the green skinned werejaguar frightfully clear the cave.

"Eyes are soft...." Syphen replied flatly. "Rex is not."

"Neither are you. So stop jumping at shadows!" Hassan said.

Syphen hissed quietly, "I don’t like shadows...."

"Shadows are where we are strongest. Both of you..." Hassan looked at Flora and Syphen, "Learn to love them. I’m learning that we are outnumbered in this world in ways I never thought possible. We have to use all advantages."

"Advantages make us stronger monsters...?" Syphen asked.

"Yes." Hassan replied.

"Olhar!" Flora yelled and aimed her weapon down the cave corridors.

Along the grassed grounds and beneath the stalactites dripping with mana infused liquids, a set of skeletal remains were leaned up against a wall.

They were big.

Arguably too big and thick to be that of a human.

"It’s just bones. Present in every cave." Hassan said.

"Not just bone." Flora replied.

It was then that Hassan and Syphen noticed the sigil’s on the skeletal remains.

"Goblins..." Syphen hissed. "Goblin letters goblin letters..." He repeated as his hackles rose and his fur flickered in and out of visibility.

As if activated by the proximity of living energies, the goblin sigils began to glow and enflame with a dark fiery pulse on the bones.

A finger moved on one. An entire leg moved on the other.

Immediately, the handful of flaming sand in Hassan’s hand was shaped into a spear. He threw it between the skeletal remains. The spear exploded into fiery sand waves that ashed the bones immediately.

"Not to worry, everyone. The Anhurians know the remains of war well." Hassan dusted off his hands.

"To worry. To worry. To worry." Syphen growled in reply as Hassan’s fiery sand split up more of the shadows ahead, revealing a near endless pile of bones.

Some were human while others were that of snakes, hogs, bats, kobolds, and drakes.

The sigils on top of them all began to glow with a cruel gleam.

Hassan’s fiery sand coalesced in his hands as he prepared to ash the bone pile slowly reanimating.

Syphen’s ears twitched beside him. Not long after and he was flipping over the werelion to intercept the falling reanimated skeleton from above.

The two hit the ground in a snarling and clattering mess that echoed through the cave. Syphen slashed at the skeletons skull from where he was pinned on the ground, carving up the bone and sigils written there causing small explosions of mana reactions.

The skeleton pressed on anyway, punching at Syphen’s face.

Syphen leaned to the side, barely dodging the skeletal fist as it shattered the grassy stone floor beside him.

From there, Syphen wrapped his arm around the skeletons limb and ripped it out of the socket as he pushed the skeleton off with his powerful feline legs.

By that point, the pile of skeletons was up and moving. Hybridizing like a bunch of undead interchangeable pieces. Even the skeleton Syphen just fought off was swallowed by the bubbling mass of bones and given a new limb.

From the beneath boulders behind them, skeletons pushed there way above ground.

From the stalactites others fell. Some shattered from the weight while others hit the ground running.

Syphen hissed.

"Not oasis."

Hassan flexed his claws, "But we can make it one. We have to."

A pin was put in their conversation as Flora began firing her rifle, shattering the heads of the skeletons in a flurry of bullets that lit up the dark in stroblit madness.

Syphen activated as his goblinoid magic and turned invisible. He didn’t yet know how to read fully but the skill name in his Aspect-Wielder System was called, [Greed-Vanish].

His fur tickled as it flickered and spun in response to his essence flow. From there, he vanished. Just as a skeleton was about to fall on him with a jagged spine, barrel ribcage and crocodilian snout.

Quickly, he jumped out of the way, knowing Hassan would handle the heavyweight bone-beast.

He ran, weaving through Flora’s bullet-storm like a ghost.

Madly, he charged the skeletal horde head on. They moved like an evershifting obstacle course of jagged white edges and foul smelling sigils that sent him back to his time as a child in chains.

The memories pushed him onward with a savage purpose.

His feline reflexes carried him through the swarm in a blur. He flipped and crawled between the legs of giants. He slid under arms swinging bladed limbs and side stepped jaws spitting ashen fire that looked like ink shadows.

And with every opening, he attacked, kicking out a leg joint. Or grabbing a skeleton by the arm and pulling them into the walk path of another, causing an undead domino effect of fallen reanimated corpses.

It slowed the horde. Allowing Flora to continue to mag dump the fleshless monsters while Hassan took down the giant ones coming from the other side.

It wasn’t enough.

Syphen continued his unseen charge until he made it to the center of the flanking mass of skeletons that ran at least one hundred feet long.

From there, he made a last second decision and climbed the back of a skeleton so massive it couldn’t stand upright or move its limbs in the cave hallway.

As he climbed, he kicked out its ribs, destroying its base and ability to bare weight until it crumbled.

Before it could fully, he jumped off of its shoulders and gripped the stalactites.

From there, he began swinging like an ape and fighting off any Skeletons crawling through the crawks.

A head would peek through and he’d come in and punch it so hard his knuckles bled.

Or he’d flip upward and drive his knee through the spine of a crawling kobold skeleton.

[+100 EXP]

[+70 EXP]

[+200 EXP]

Syphen swung and climbed his way back to the entrance area of the cave where a dozen skeletons charged the native survivors.

A few had already engaged the ones fit to fight in an unfair battle of flesh and bone. Literally.

With no hesitation, he joined. Unseen and unheard, favoring the shadows, just as Hassan said.