Hiatus Gifting This Unfortunate Guy With Blessings

Quest completed: Feed the little cat.

Reward: Nothing. But it felt good.

The little kitten was happy and I was happy because I got a cat form. However, I was also confused about why my new "best buddies" - Kazuma and Dust suddenly rushed off. There was something weird about how they acted. Were they ashamed after hyping up that maid cafe and run off embarrassed?

With that affair concluded I decided to check out the new form while walking towards the guild. On one of the streets, I even happened to meet a couple of kids that though my cat form looked cool and tried catching me. I was kinda flattered but soon I changed my mind.

That situation made me realize why cats always ran from overly excited kids. The sight of a creature at least four times the size of oneself, excitedly swinging their limbs and rushing towards you is pretty daunting.

Well, besides these few incidents, traveling as a cat was pretty fun. The jumping power of my hind legs was no joke and I could scale over two-meter high walls pretty easily with the help of my claws.

I tried had to walk through the roofs most of the time because the streets were getting more and more crowded. When I tried sprinting as fast as I could through some pretty long roof and I ran a lot faster than I predicted.

Being fast was a good thing but being too fast on the roof meant going off of it. If I were a simple cat I would probably go crashing down on some poor lad's head but I just had to transform and change into an owl and fly off.

I wish it were so easy.

After I transformed into an owl I was so awkwardly angled that using my wings actually made me fall faster to the ground. Not wanting to hurt my favorite form and to minimize the damage I turned back into a cat.

Cats always land on their feet, right?

The answer was - no, but supposedly they land on a very soft fabric that protects the stall's contents from being rained on. That, unfortunately, causes the person underneath the fabric to yell out in anger.

After learning this life lesson I decided to stick to the rules of the roof movement and decrease my speed to the allowed 20 kilometers per hour. Or something like that. I had no speedometer with me to check.

After having traveled up and down some roofs for ten minutes I could finally spot the guild building. But before that, I sat down and took a little breather. I wasn't feeling that tired… but I felt like… lying down and enjoying the sun rays that were descending on my fur. Well, there was nothing wrong with that but after two minutes of lazying around, I felt the urge to lick myself clean as cats usually do.

It was a pretty normal thing for a cat to do and my instincts urged me to do it. But I refused to get my tongue anywhere near my… Just no! I am a human inside!

I resisted these weird urges and got onto the ground level before transforming into my Crimson Demon form. I walked inside the guild and headed towards the queue of people waiting to speak with a guild staff.

For the reason, I was here… I wanted to ask about some sort of monster encyclopedia or where can I find something like that. There was also a matter of my Crimson Demon form's job. Megumin mentioned that I needed to grind the stats first to get Archwizard class but was otherwise vague about actual numerical values I needed to reach. I wanted to know those to set some goals for myself.

Oh, and I also wanted to find if there are any magic teachers. Although I could just use more skill points to get the skills I wanted, it seemed stupid to learn them without any knowledge and waste the possible discount.

After that was done I would take a look at the guild's quests board and look if there aren't any jobs available that I could do by myself for some extra cash that I needed.

This day there were no peeping accidents going on in the line so I just patiently waited until it was my turn. Fortunately or unfortunately the woman behind the counter happened to be the same Luna-san that handled my first job-assignment process.

I already asked Chris if it would be bad if it came out that I can change races but she said it was perfectly okay for the guild to know about my power. Supposedly, my fellow Japanese reincarnators had sometimes much flashier powers than my [Imitate] and the guild accommodated them just fine. My ability to have multiple classes was amazing but nothing mind-bending.

Well, the Receptionist Luna-san seemed to disagree with that last statement.

"Hello, how can I help you? Ah, Satou-san... I didn't recognize you since you changed your style so much. It's very… unique… Hmmm, what's wrong with your job? Changing it to some lower-tiered one would- What do you mean to assign the first job? Haven't you been assigned Ranger's job already? Let me see the card- WHAT IS THIS?! You can change your race- HOW?!"

The look of utter surprise was plastered on Ms. Receptionist's face. Before I could even start calming her down because half of the guild started to look at the commotion she was causing she stood up from her seat, walked out of her booth, took my hand and brought me to some private room.

"What do you need from me, woman?" I asked, my Crimson Demon blood showing signs of flaring up to overdrive. Luna-san seemed to be used to dealing with these kinds of people and only showed slight discomfort seeing my eyes start blazing crimson.

"I just wanted to confirm something real quick." She said while smiling but quickly showed the contents of the hand she was holding behind her back. She splashed me with some water from weirdly shaped flacon.

"What the hell are you doing?!" My easily disturbed genes went red with anger so I transformed back into my human form before I said something stupid. It was as if the feelings I had just a millisecond before were fake. At this point, I started wondering if my Crimson Demon form had some sort of anger issues.

Luna-san seeing my form change treated me to another round of water splash. Seeing me stand still for a few seconds seemed to somehow reassure her. This time I looked at her with a confusing gaze and asked:

"What was this all about?"

Ms. Receptionist, on the other hand, decided to not answer my question immediately and went past me to the door. Behind it, I saw two very strong-looking guys waiting with their weapons drawn.

"False alarm gentlemen, he's all good." Ms. Luna spoke loudly to the two and they seemed to relax immediately. One even tipped his hat towards me and the second guy waved his hand while returning to the restaurant area. She seemed to alarm these guys for a backup when she led me to this room.

"I am extremely sorry about this Satou-san. Although Doppelgangers are believed to not be able to use adventurer's card there was a slim chance of you being some sort of special case."

"And that water cleared me of all suspicions?" I asked while pointing at the flask in her hand.

"Yes, this is concentrated holy water. Doppelgangers are demon-like creatures so it's very effective against them."

"Mhm, okay. Now that that is cleared, will you check the jobs available to me?" I said while transforming back into my Crimson Demon form to change the contents of the card. I controlled myself to not let out curses that almost spilled out of my Crimson Demon mouth.

"Y-yes, of course." Seeing my mannerism change in the beat of a heart seemed to stun people for a little bit. Adding a hint of the embarrassment of falsely accusing me of being a demon caused her to have a tinge of rose color on her cheeks.

As we were coming back from the private room to the counter where was the device that could show and assign available classes I could see various adventurers looking suspiciously in our direction and talking silently among themselves.

"Who is this guy-" "Look at that mask-!" "What was Luna-san doing with-" "No way, is Luna-san a squirter-?!"

...

Someone's mind was quite rotten around here. The lady in question started to send the angriest expression towards the people whispering with each other and they seemed to freeze in place.

I seriously thought at that time that even my own face wouldn't be enough to produce such an instantaneous effect with those battle-hardened adventurers! My Crimson Demon form urged me to try it out myself because it seemed cool!

...

What? Did I really just get the small urge to show my face publicly?

My mindset seemed to change drastically when I was in that form. It was probably a good thing?

I have curbed that rising urge to scare my fellow adventurers inside of me and calmly followed the furiously stomping Luna-san.

When she came back to her seat Ms. Receptionist adapted her usual trained smile and proceeded to analyze my guild card with the device. When the machine stopped working Luna-san looked at it and happily said to me:

"Congratulations! You can take the highest tiered job again! You can become an Archwizard right now!"

I was stunned for a few seconds. Megumin sounded pretty certain about me not having enough stats yet for the best class. Maybe she was just mistaken? Or was there another reason?

Anyways, with no reason to hesitate, I asked her to assign the Archwizard job for me. The machine worked its magic and soon I could hear Ms. Receptionist exclaim in a happy tone again.

"Ooooh. And there's already some Basic Magic Spells, a few Intermediate ones and …. Explosion Magic available?"

Luna-san's voice had a hint of worry at the end of her sentence.

"Having those skills available is something good?" I asked wondering what caused her jovial tone.

"Beginner Magic Spells would be available to all mage classes since the beginning but the number of skill points needed for it is one of the lowest I ever saw on any rookie mage card. Having some Intermediate Magic available means you have a pretty good understanding of how the magic works already. But Explosion- Ah! Isn't your teammate the 'girl with a screw- I mean Megumin-san?"

Did I know how elemental magic works? How? Besides Megumin's lectures, I didn't discuss this topic with anyone else. I didn't think about it too much and took back my adventurer card and I immediately saw Explosion Magic on it being worth… 54 points.

The Explosion Magic was beyond pricy!

There were also options like Beginner Magic Boost for 5 points and Beginner Chant Shortening for 5 points. I asked the lady about those and she confirmed their effects and said the Intermediate and Advanced versions of these two would appear after I took the basic skill.

Well, for now, I wanted to consult someone knowledgeable about my options so I asked Luna-san if she knew someone like that. Since Axel was a town for rookies there weren't many Archwizards walking around, obviously.

Luna-san knew of one Crimson Demon besides Megumin and one shopkeeper that had the job and knew Advanced Magic. She didn't know how to contact the Crimson Demon Archwizard so I only got an address of the shop of the latter candidate.

Haven't I heard that address before from a certain brown-haired good samaritan?

With this matter completed, I asked about the second matter I was interested in - if and where I can find some guide to monster species. Luna-san seemed more than happy to provide me with a handbook full of descriptions about monsters.

"This item was so unpopular lately that we even stopped asking if someone wants one! It's so rare to see an adventurer thinking responsibly! It's common sense to know what to look out for!"

…

I started having doubts about my fellow adventurers' life choices.