Elemental Cats

The fire cat calmed down after inspecting everything in its vicinity. It seemed to have designated Toz's lap as a safe place as it tentatively moved to crawl up on it. Toz had slowly sat down while the cat examined Nil, hoping for a similar situation. The cat kept a watchful eye out for Toz's reactions as it climbed. Toz, not wanting to show his eagerness and scare the cat away acted nonchalantly and aside from a sidelong glance didn't do anything else, in regard to the cat's movements. The cat closed its eyes on Toz's lap, letting the other three relax a bit.

Toz looked slightly confused as he stared at the cat in his lap. Although Nil and Lucy's elemental attributes were easily identifiable based on their physical body, the cat in his lap surpassed that. Instead of a body with a certain element affecting its outer characteristics, it was more like the element had become the body entirely. Like a condensed and organized clump of flames. The gathered flame was under such great control that Toz hardly felt any heat from it at all. There wasn't any real weight either, only a slight pressure, like a warm blanket lying on his legs.

Toz decided to hold off on petting it as he thought about what kind of strange spirit beast the cat in his lap was. An extraordinary birthing process and a body made of flames. The birthing process might be related to the potential millennia spent underground absorbing heat and mana from streams of magma. But at the same time, what kind of spirit beast requires those conditions to be hatched? It didn't exactly explain the cat's body either.

Spirit beasts used their physical body to interact with the physical world but they still possessed the ability to turn immaterial in special circumstances, like entering special spaces and hidden realms that don't allow physical bodies. They also immaterialize themselves when mating with other spirit beasts, hence why different kinds of spirit beasts can produce babies together.

Spirit beasts when born in the wilderness or to mortal animals also tend to be more individualistic and self-reliant than their animal and wild beast counterparts. Wild beasts that evolve to spirit beasts when ascending also tend to discard any family or group they previously belonged to. There is just a certain gap between their existences, as if they are different kinds of animals. Considering how spirit beasts mate it might be natural to separate. Spirit beasts also develop their magic more rapidly, while wild beasts tend to develop in a physical manner mostly.

Their physical body is their contact with the world and the vessel containing their mana and soul for extended periods of time. Even dematerializing for a short moment may lead to damage to the soul or losing a lot of mana, hence spirit beasts are always in a physical form.

However, the fiery cat disregarded all such notions. Although it had used its soul and mana to condense a shape to hold itself within, it wasn't physical in the same way other spirit beasts were.

Unable to hold back his curiosity Toz reached out with his left hand to touch the cat. The fur, which looked like small tongues of flame softly waving in the wind, felt like small strips of material hot air. The fur's soft, fluffy feeling deepened until his hands reached the actual "body". At that, the cat's ear twitched slightly but it showed no other reactions and let Toz continue petting it.

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Toz touched the body and contrary to his expectations it was unexpectedly solid. Even though it looked like a swirling mass of flames, his finger that had begun brushing the scalp couldn't move further into the fire. The fire had gathered together and created a surface layer of moving flames that didn't extend a millimeter outside the designed body. Likewise, nothing else could penetrate that layer, and enter inside the body. The physical sensation of coming into contact with the cat's actual body felt slightly similar to what the egg had felt like when Toz was holding it.

Toz still had no idea what kind of spirit beast it was, even after touching it. However when he looked closer at the cat's body, and no longer defined it as a body, but instead a soul's representation made of elemental mana a children's bedtime story popped into his head.

The story itself was of a great Hero defeating an evil chimera. What the story was about wasn't important, but during the hero's journey, he encountered different things, one of those being a creature made completely out of mana. It had sentience, a soul, and could be considered alive, different from a ghost. Since no one knew the reality of spirits it was only a short encounter in the story with not much information revealed about spirits. However, the description of a being of purely mana, without a flesh and blood physical body, fits the description of the cat to a tee.

There were a few other rumors about spirits. Such as them being immortal, born at the beginning of time, incredibly strong, and due to their strange lives, willful to an incredible degree. Although the interactions between humans and spirits were few and far in between, humans had recorded history stretching several thousand years back.

To the supposed endless lifespan of a spirit that might not be a lot, but humans did their best to preserve most things for future generations. As such instances of spirits contacting humans had been recorded, but with the flow of time such records had been wrangled and weren't exactly believable. However all records agreed on one thing, spirits are truly strong beings.

Naturally, humans, spirit beasts, and wild beasts could also become strong, but there would also be innumerable weak ones in comparison to the few strong ones.

Something like a hero being on equal standing to a spirit, as the one in the bedtime story isn't something that happens every day.

Thinking of the rumored spirit's incredible strength and immortality, Toz looked at the cat in his lap. The cat sure didn't look transcendentally strong. But since spirits existed, maybe other beings made of purely mana also existed.

Regardless of the cat being a spirit, spirit beast, or something else, it was a cat first and foremost. With that being the case Toz could try and bond with it, using his inclination, and not just on the emotional level he had with the egg.

His inclination, just like any human's was the gateway between himself and the world of mana. Toz had a beast type inclination, meaning he uses beasts as a medium to mana. Even with an infinite amount of possible ways an inclination can take shape it wasn't exactly a rare inclination, except for its specialization in cats. It was a rather specific inclination, although compared to some others it still wasn't anything special.

Beast type inclinations themselves are one of the more common types, and among those that end up with that kind, there are other humans limited to a single type of beast.

It is the same with weapon, elemental and mundane type inclinations, among others. However, the mystic and unique type inclinations are some of the types where individual inclinations are almost always extraordinary, complex, or nothing like any other inclination.

Inclinations decide how humans come into contact, acquire, use and interact with mana. During the long history of humans, innumerable attempts at figuring out how they work, why only humans have them, and anything related to them, have been made, with varied, and mostly limited, success.

A few general guidelines regarding inclinations had been established thanks to all the research, however.

They are inherited to a certain degree, but not always, and not necessarily from the immediate parents.

Two inclinations are never the exact same, even if the same or similar symbols appear.

A symbol randomly appearing on the body shows what a person's inclination is, even if the symbol's meaning is unknown, the owner will come to understand the meaning eventually as they grow.

The symbol appears before the baby is one year old. This has led to unsuccessful experiments relating to how the baby's circumstances affect the development of the inclination.

Toz hadn't inherited the inclination from either of his parents, nor from anyone in his lineage as far as he knew, and it was easily determined by the obvious cat's paw symbol that appeared on his right hand shortly after birth.

According to some research, how fast the inclination appeared was an indication of how well it suited the human it had appeared on. Considering it had shown itself with almost record-breaking speeds on Toz, he and his family suspected at least it suited him greatly. These suspicions were confirmed the moment his crib had been surrounded by cats a few days after he was brought home, and how the area he lived in noticed a significant rise in stray cats.

Since his neighbors knew it was probably because of him they didn't chase the cats away and instead guided them to Toz since it might be beneficial to his future development. Although it took a few years, it was thanks to his cat-friendly neighborhood that Toz and Nil eventually met for the first time.

With Toz's inclination and natural affinity with cat-like creatures, he didn't think the cat of fire in his cat would refuse a bond with him, even if magical creatures like wild beasts, spirit beasts, and potentially spirits, showed stronger resistance to his cat-nip-like attraction.