Chapter 203: I Thought You’d Never Ask

So I did what I was totally planning to do already—not because Bogumir told me to—and identified the little black dagger.

[Chernobog’s Parting Gift - Dagger]

If a blow with this dagger would kill its target, lock their soul into a soulstone.

+100 Dexterity

+100 Chaos

“Holy—!” I said, nearly dropping the thing.

I gently placed it back onto the table and glanced around. Everyone was staring at the dagger with their mouths open, and for good reason—the stats on this thing were absolutely ridiculous. I’d never seen or heard of anything like it, and from the looks of everyone, neither had they.

I hesitated. “So…”

Phisto jumped off the shelf and landed next to the dagger without making a sound. “Nice. I think you should use it. It’s better than Stabigail. You’ll get over the lack of glitter. People would kill to get their hands on that thing.” He grinned.

I blinked. “You can identify items?”

“So can you.”

“Yeah, but…”

“But what?”

“…but you’re a cat?”

He stared at me like I’d said something stupid. Then again, he often looked like that.

I narrowed my eyes at him. “And this has nothing to do with the Chaos enhancement on the dagger?”

“Typical of you to focus on that when it also gives an astronomical Dexterity boost.”

“Well, at least we know what happened to Bies,” Vitek laughed. “She—”

Everyone turned to him.

He frowned. “Too soon?”

“Ignore him,” Phisto purred. “Just try it on. See how it fits. You can always swap Stabigail back in if you don’t like it.”

That was the whole problem. I was certain I would like it. How could I not? My Dexterity was currently at 40. Equipping this instead of Stabigail would put me at 137, more than tripling it! What worried me was the Chaos it also provided. Of course there had to be a trade-off for such a monstrous Dexterity enhancement. I already had more Chaos than I was comfortable with, and this, well, this would quadruple it.

And then I hadn’t even mentioned the passive effect. What the hell was that all about? Now, [All is One] prevented me from using anything other than my revolvers offensively, but still. If anyone ever found out I had this dagger it would paint a gigantic target on my head. Wait. I already had a gigantic target on my head. So did it really matter if it got just a little bigger? Phisto wasn’t wrong about the Dexterity boost.

Phisto walked past me over the table, tail swishing. “Look, I promised your mother I would look after you, protect you, and I am bound by my word. If you’re worried about a bit of Chaos, don’t be—it’s mostly harmless. Look at me, I have invested more than a handful of points into it as well, and I’m doing just great. I just want you to be strong. No harm will come to you as long as I’m around. No harm will come to you as long as you do what I say.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Is that a threat?”

He chuckled. “Goodness, no. It is a promise. I want you to thrive, that is a promise as well. You don’t have to follow my advice, it would just make everything so much easier for you.”

“And for you?”

“And for me.” He grinned.

“Why?”

“It would…” he walked past me again, then sat down. “It would give me more tools to help you with. It would loosen my shackles, if you will.”

I grabbed his paw.

“Hey!” he said, pulling it back. “What are you doing?”

“I don’t see any shackles.”

“Some shackles can’t be seen by the naked eye. They are there, believe me.”

“Kasia,” I said. “Do you see anything strange about Phisto?”

She examined him for a moment, then shook her head. “Not really.”

“Vitek?”

Vitek answered without even sparing him a glance. “Couldn’t tell you.”

Strange that he wouldn’t even look at the cat. Perhaps it wasn’t so strange that Kasia couldn’t see anything. Her [Manopsis] likely wasn’t capable of detecting it, and wouldn’t without a significant upgrade. That is, if there even was anything, but going by Vitek’s very uncharacteristic reaction, there definitely was.

“Phisto?” I asked. “What exactly is a [Purrveyor of Chaos]?”

“Why, that’s me, of course.”

“Yeah, but what is it.”

“Why don’t you look it up in your System?”

“By the Goddess, you’re exhausting. You know damn well it doesn’t say anything for some reason. And for some inexplicable reason it did tell me your class when I used [Soul Index] on you. What the hell is going on here? What are you?”

He laid down on the table and stretched. “I’m just a cat. You said so yourself. [Purrveyor of Chaos] is the class I was given. Satisfied?”

I made a strangling motion at him. “But what does it do?!”

“What does any class do? What its user tells it to. No more, no less. Two men can have the same class yet use it in completely different ways. Imagination is your only limitation.”

“Aha!” I said, pointing at him. “But there is only one… person… or cat… with your class. Pieruś told me so. You are the only [Purrveyor of Chaos]. Don’t deny it.”

“And you are the only [Gunwitch]. Aren’t we a special bunch?”

Kasia shot me a worried look. “Hecate, is everything alright? What’s going on? Does Phisto know something?”

“Yeah. He knows something alright. He just isn’t telling.”

He cocked his head. “I have answered all your questions. Don’t be mean. Now I have a question for you: who is this Pieruś?”

I leaned back and studied him. “Pieruś is a cat I saved from a tree. A tree grown from that chaos seed I used to upgrade my skill. Owned by an old lady named Jagoda.”

“Never heard of him. Doesn’t sound like a name for a cat. In fact, it seems like a rather silly name. Did she name him after pierogi?”

“Yeah…”

“Did you bother asking him what his real name was?”

“I didn’t… I thought his name was Pieruś. That’s what the old lady said his name was.”

“Did he look like a Pieruś?”

“He looked like a cat. An orange one. I don’t know what a Pieruś looks like. If you mean did he look like a pierog, then obviously not.”

Phisto smiled. For all I knew Phisto was Pieruś and had transformed into him just to trick me into using a chaos seed to upgrade my skills. That would be a very convoluted way of doing things, but this was Phisto and he sure loved his chaos. Could he even transform into other cats? Maybe he could even transform into whatever he wanted. And when I tried to see what Pieruś’ class was, the System wouldn’t tell me, which was super suspicious in itself. There was fuckery going on here, and I didn’t like it one bit.

Wait. Why was he pushing so hard for this name? Was he himself hinting that he was Pieruś? Did he want me to know? Was he trying to tell me without telling me? Why did he have to be so annoying all the time?

“Are you… Pieruś?”

Phisto laughed, flicking his tail. “Now that would be something, wouldn’t it?”

“Yeah. It would. So, are you?”

He glanced down at himself. “Am I orange?”

“I don’t know,” I said, turning myself orange using [Disguise Self]. “Am I?”

“Now that’s a neat trick, Hecate. I like it.”

I obviously wasn’t going to get more answers out of him today. Maybe he would be more open if I equipped the dagger? I picked it up and checked it. The pure blackness of it was almost unsettling, though that of course was nothing to the massive increase in Chaos it offered.

Phisto stared at me expectantly, but didn’t say anything. Stabigail had saved my life more than once. The passive was very good. Unfortunately, with only +3 to Dexterity, the stats it offered were abysmal, especially compared to the other gear I had. With +100 to Dexterity instead I might not need to rely on its passive. Though due to the added Chaos it might be me who’d get startled by something unexpected. That wasn’t to say the same couldn’t happen to my opponents. It was just so damn unreliable, and honestly, still kind of vague what Chaos did exactly.

I set Chernobog’s Parting Gift back on the table. “Phisto? May I ask you a question?”

“You’ve been doing nothing but. Since when do you ask for permission? Are you going to hurt my feelings?”

“What? No. I don’t think so. I was just wondering what exactly Chaos does. No one really seems to know, and if anyone should know what it does, it must be you, considering your class and all.”

He glanced at the dagger, then back at me and grinned. “I thought you’d never ask.”