AUTHOR'S NOTE

Sorry that I keep forgetting about all you guys. Usually, I wait until the Royal Road readers have caught the typos, then port over the (mostly) typo-free version here, but ever since I changed the posting schedule over there, the timeline's gotten a little wonky. I'll try to be a bit better about posting on time here in the future.

I also forgot to mention something, and that is that starting after chapter 125, I will be going on a 2 week planned hiatus from posting, but my Patreon will continue updating. The reason for this is that I'm trying to increase Patreon backlog because the price of the lowest tier will increase soon, and the reason that it will increase soon is that within the next week or two, I will be launching a second story, and both will be available under the same tier. If you sub now though, you will also have access to the new story, but for the current cheaper price. The current cheapest tier will be unpublished when Cat Girl Evolution launches, meaning that it will no longer be available to new subscribers, but old subs will still have access to it.

Here's the title and blurb and stuff for the new story, if you're interested.

Cat Girl Evolution

She’s a Cat. She’s a Girl. And she’s going to evolve.

Yona wasn’t always a cat, but she is now, and she’s living her best cat life. No silly “Quests” or “Systems” are going to get in her way!

…Until they do. Unfortunately, time waits for no man, and it certainly waits for no cat, and Yona finds that out the hard way. Now, stranded alone on an island surrounded by monsters, she needs to fight for her life to survive and return to the mainland!

…Or just pig out and nap and sometimes slap some fish people around. Either works. But there’s one thing she’s not going to do: swim. And that makes escaping the island a bit more of a challenge than it needs to be.

Meanwhile, the gods are brewing up… something. As gods tend to do.

What to expect:

* The MC is a cat, both in body and mind

* Gluttony powers done right

* The only romance is Yona X Fish (can’t get enough fish)

* A System that is sassy only in self defense

* Numbers go up (a lot)

* Somewhat unhinged MC

* Yes, she will get a humanoid form, but she won't completely abandon her cat form because she likes her cat form

And some differences betwen Cat and Bunny, since you guys have read Bunny:

* Elise is generally selfless, while Yona is more selfish

* Elise is relatively weak aside from her Charisma stuff. Yona is not.

* Elise got stuck in a politics arc and played by the rules to get through it. Should Yona end up in a politics arc, she will eat her way out of it.

* Elise is a relatively normal person, or at least she likes to think she is, and generally tries to act that way. Yona is not at all normal in any way, and never was, even when she was human.

* Bunny Girl Evolution has some occasionally comedic moments, but generally has a more serious tone. Cat Girl Evolution has a lighter, more comedic tone with occasional serious moments.

* This story is much more similar to Syl or Kumoko than Bunny Girl Evolution is

The RR/SH release date is within the next week, but I'll be doing daily (ish) chapters on Patreon for now until I reach my backlog target.

END AUTHOR'S NOTE

As Sam said, at a glance, the basement just seemed to be storage. It was filled with shelves, barrels, and crates, and was lit by a few dim magic stone lanterns. There was also a very poorly-hidden secret door on the opposite side. Poorly-hidden for someone with {Mana Sense}, at least. It was almost invisible to the eye, so the children who had yet to awaken the System wouldn’t notice it, but just about anyone else could.

Elise examined the door for defenses, and while there didn’t seem to be any kind of special locks or anything particularly dangerous, there was a small circuit that looked suspiciously like an alarm. She had been expecting as much, but that didn’t make it any less annoying. She had to choose whether to blow her cover and barge in to see what was going on, or to wait and hope she could sneak in when someone else opened the door.

Blowing her cover was a bit of a risky move, but based on the levels of everyone else around, she doubted there would be anyone down there that she couldn’t at least escape from. Ideally, she’d be able to just talk her way out of trouble, but if worse came to worst, she could always fly away. Still, sneaking in was a better option. She didn’t have any stealth Skills, but she figured that between {Suggest} and {Fey Bargaining}, she could work something out.

She found a good barrel that was big enough to hide her, close enough to the hidden door she could slip in when the time came, and out of the way enough that no one was likely to accidentally spot her if they came down to the basement for something ordinary, and sat behind it and waited.

I should have brought a book or something, she thought after half an hour.

She set the time limit for herself for an hour, but she had underestimated how boring hiding for an hour would be. She couldn’t spend that time circulating her mana either, because she would be easily sensed. Even as she was, anyone being vigilant would still notice her, but the people of the orphanage thus far had not been very vigilant, and once again, she had {Suggest}. It was becoming a bit of a crutch skill, but when she could make anyone dismiss oddities as figments of their imagination, why wouldn’t she?

The hour was almost up and she was debating whether to just give up early and bust her way in when she finally heard footsteps coming from below. She pushed herself from her seated position into a crouch, and waited for the door to open. A pair of men emerged, walking at a brisk pace, looking straight forward the whole time. They were in a hurry. That worked out well for Elise. She didn’t even need to catch the door to slip past them, and they were none the wiser.

She found herself facing a short staircase leading down to a second door. This door did not have an alarm on it, so after using {Mana Sense} to verify that there was no one else on the other side, she pushed it open and went further in. When she emerged from this door, she felt immediate discomfort at her surroundings. She was in an earthen tunnel with unnaturally round, smooth walls. It was much bigger than the wyrm tunnels from back in the forest, and the floor had been leveled to make it easier to walk on, but other than that, the resemblance was uncanny.

The tunnel extended to either side of her, but the mana formation in the wall only extended to the right, so she followed it to another door. Unlike the previous two doors, this one was thick and heavy and made of metal, had a heavy-duty lock built-in, and was covered in mana circuits, half of which she could only guess the functions of. One thing was clear though: she was not going to be getting in on her own.

She stared at the door for a few seconds, lamenting that she didn’t have any rogue skills. If Maia was there, they would be inside in no time at all. Unfortunately, without her, Elise saw no way to get in. Not without doing what she had done earlier and sneaking in while someone else entered or exited. Unfortunately, she doubted she could do that down here. There was nowhere to hide in the tunnel.

She didn’t think she could force her way in. Brute force was far from her specialty, and though she thought with {Nature Mana Manipulation}, she might be able to dig through with roots, she didn’t have the mana pool to do it all in one go, so it would take a long time for her to actually make it in. She would need to find someone with access and bargain her way in.

Before that though, this vault-like door wasn’t the only point of interest here. The tunnel itself was interesting. It stretched far in either direction, slowly curving out of her sight, but she could still see a few offshoots. Just from what she could see, she estimated the tunnel probably covered a fairly significant portion of this slum area of the city, and possibly extended further. The tunnels themselves weren’t interesting to look at it, but the fact that they existed at all raised a lot of questions.

How old were they? The vault door looked like it was a fairly new addition, carved out of the wall long after the tunnel was created, but the door itself didn’t look new. She was no expert on telling the age of metal, but it looked like it had at least a couple decades of grime and wear on it. So the tunnel was at least a few decades old, and probably much older. Unlike the wyrm tunnels under the forest, which were clearly freshly dug with occasional roots poking out and clumps of dirt falling off, these were packed hard and smooth, especially on the ground.

The age of the tunnels raised the question of how long this group running the orphanage had been using them. Did they create them? Or had they just found and repurposed them? If they did create them, exactly who had Elise just gotten involved with? She was sure Oberon didn’t care about a group digging tunnels under his city, and might even help them if he thought it would be funny, but there were other powerful people around, right? Just the tunnels she could see probably covered most of the slums. Surely, the digging of these tunnels would have bothered someone. Unless they had been here the whole time, which raised another question: how far did they go?

Elise started walking down the tunnel past the vault door, moving slowly and paying close attention to her ears and her {Mana Sense}. She got a hundred feet down the tunnel before she heard something, so she tiptoed to the nearest offshoot tunnel to hide. The sounds got a bit louder for a few seconds, and she could tell they were voices, but after a few more seconds, they faded again and disappeared. She couldn’t make out any words, but it sounded like a man and a woman talking. The voices came from further in the direction she was heading, but since they had increased and faded, she assumed they were moving perpendicular to her, so there wasn’t much risk of running into them.

With the potential danger gone, she took the opportunity to examine the “offshoot” tunnel and found that it was just as large as the main one that she was in, and extended just as far. She didn’t explore any further down it though, because she was worried about getting lost in what was turning out to be a veritable labyrinth.

Knowing that there were other people down in the tunnels with her, Elise took extra care to be silent as she began moving again. The tunnel curved further as she followed it, and she passed two more offshoots before she saw something ahead that made her freeze. The tunnel seemed to end in a T intersection, but waiting at the intersection was a pair of guards, leaning against the walls on either side of the tunnel. Neither of them were looking in her direction, so she took a few careful steps back until she was out of their line of sight, then turned down another offshoot to hide as she thought about her next moves.

She hadn’t gotten a good look at them since they were so far away and the tunnel was so dimly lit, but she was fairly certain they were wearing the same clothes as the two men who had come up to the basement of the orphanage. It was probably a pair of guards coming back up after their shift down here. And with how expansive the tunnels were, there were no doubt more.

That at least answered a few of her questions. These tunnels clearly expanded beyond where this organization had influence, so it was most likely not them who had created them. That lined up with her own theories. She would probably have to ask Oberon for more information on the tunnels themselves, but she felt a bit relieved that she hadn’t accidentally gotten herself involved with some kind of secret criminal organization that spanned across all of Everspring. Or if she had, they were at least segregated, so she was only with this one part that didn’t have very high-level people.

It also gave her one potential way to get into the vault. If these guards were all spread out and only in pairs, she felt like she could fairly easily outmaneuver them. From what she had seen, she doubted they would attack a child on sight, and as long as she could get them talking, she could trick them into helping her. That was, of course, assuming they actually had access to that vault though. If not, that plan would be shot, but it was something to try.

She re-emerged from the offshoot tunnel and walked back toward where she had seen the guards. They were now talking about something, and she could hear their voices echoing down the tunnel. Both were men, which meant that the woman’s voice she had heard earlier must have been someone passing by that they were turning away.

Neither of them were paying much attention to Elise’s direction, so they didn’t notice her until she was only a few dozen feet away. When they did, they both stopped their conversation, and just watched her approach. She had reverted her clothing to its former tattered state, and done the same to her hair, so she looked homeless instead of recently homed, hopefully making her also look more harmless.

“Um, excuse me, misters,” said Elise in her best childlike voice.

“Kid, how did you get there?” asked one of the guards.

“I got lost.”

“You got lost?”

“Well, I was looking for food, and, um, I found a hole, so I went down it, and then I walked around for a while.”

“Were there any other men dressed like us where you walked around?”

Elise shook her head.

“A new entrance?” asked one guard.

“That, or John and Phillip were slacking off again.”

Neither seemed to think Elise was anything but an ordinary lost child, so their guards were low.

“Can you help me?” she asked, using {Charm} and {Fey Bargaining}.

“Of course,” said one of the guards with a smile. “Are you still hungry? Here.”

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small bag. Elise took it and found some beef jerky inside.

“Careful when you chew,” he said. “It’s a bit tough.”

“Okay!” said Elise, grabbing a piece.

She was beginning to think that this organization wasn’t sinister at all. Maybe it really was just an orphanage in the slums. Either that, or she had just so happened to encounter the only nice people in the organization.

“Alright, kid, here’s the deal,” said the guard who hadn’t given her beef jerky. “We’re on shift for another hour. After that, we can take you somewhere nice. They’ve got lots of food there. Better food than beef jerky too. And you’ll be able to take a bath and get some clean clothes.”

“Really?” asked Elise, her mouth still full of jerky.

“Yup,” said the other guard. “Can you sit quietly until then?”

Elise nodded happily while she continued to eat her beef jerky. The two guards were silent, both watching her. She wasn’t that hungry since it hadn’t been that long since she had stew at the orphanage, but she had to put on a show, so she devoured every piece of beef jerky in the bag, then started licking her fingers.

“So, what’s your name, kid?” asked one guard.

“Ella!” she said.

No point in wasting another fake name when “Ella” was about to vanish. In fact, this might actually fulfill her urban legend requirement if she kept going around as a homeless girl named Ella and tricking people.

“Nice to meet you, Ella. Do you have parents?”

Elise lowered her head as though in sadness and shook her head.

“Ah, that’s okay,” said the other guard. “I don’t have parents either, and look at me now. Well, I guess working in a place like this is-”

“Oi!” said the first guard before turning back to Elise. “Do you have a home then?”

Elise shook her head again.

“Well, you’re in luck then! We can’t do anything about the parents, but you’re about to have something just as good!”

The two guards continued to talk about the orphanage to Elise while she did her best to act like a starry-eyed kid who had just lucked into the best thing ever. That conversation died out after a few minutes though, and Elise used the lull to start steering it in the direction she wanted.

“What is this place?” she asked.

“These are the Everspring tunnels,” said the second guard. “They run under the entire city and they’re old as-”

“Oi!”

“As… something really old. Anyway, they’re a really dangerous place, and there are a lot of bad people down here. You got lucky you ran into us instead, but you should never come into the tunnels without a trustworthy adult. Do you understand?”

“Uh huh,” said Elise with a nod. “What are you doing down here then?”

“We’re making sure none of the bad people get past us,” he replied. “This is our- this is a safe place, so we’re making sure it stays safe.”

“Is there anyone else down here?”

“In the tunnels? Loads. In this part of the tunnel? Only a few more guards like us. We make sure no one can get in this area to keep it safe.”

“Why?”

“Well… This is our territory. We want it to be safe.”

“But if there’s no one else down here, why does it need to be safe?”

“Well…”

The guard glanced at his partner silently asking for help, but the other guard just shrugged.

“We can’t tell you that,” he said after a few seconds of deliberation.

“Oh…” said Elise, looking deliberately crestfallen.

“Maybe when you’re older,” said the first guard.

“Maybe,” agreed the second.

“Okay…”

The conversation died again after that, which was fine with Elise. It was actually what she was hoping for. She had now tried the easy route, and now it was time for the “brute force” method of signing deals, and while she had a plan in mind, she needed the conversation to die out before she could enact it.

Both guards looked a little uncomfortable, but neither said anything for five minutes, at which point Elise figured it was a good time to start.

“I want to go to that orphanage place,” she said, a little poutily.

It wasn’t completely consistent with her character, but it didn’t need to be. One eye-opening lesson that Oberon had given her on using {Fey Bargaining} related to breaking character to make deals.

“Humanoids will subconsciously pick out inconsistencies almost instantly,” he had explained. “Breaking character for a long-term identity, even for a second, could start a butterfly effect that makes your whole disguise crumble. However, while they notice immediately, they will also almost always maintain the status quo until they are absolutely certain that something is different. If you have established a status quo, and you’re ready to ditch your identity, you can break character a bit and ask for something strange, and until they are certain that you are not who you say you are, they will play along.”

This would be her first time putting it into practice, but even before she opened her mouth, she was almost certain it would work.

“Well, we still have some time left before our shift ends,” said the first guard. “But we’ll take you as soon we’re off.”

“Promise?” she asked, but didn’t yet activate {Fey Bargaining}.

“Of course!”

“You’ll take me where I want to go?”

This time, she activated the skill. The guard frowned in suspicion, and Elise’s breath caught in her throat, worried she had gone a bit too far, but a split second later, he nodded.

“Yes.”

Elise let her scared child act drop as she felt the icy feeling wash over her heart, and looked up at the guard with a smile.

“I want to go through that big metal door back there!”