29 - Fresh morning coffee

Ataz squeezed his small body, passing the small boards attached to the wall. When he put his two paws in place, he felt a strange comfort. Even though that place was dark and dusty, it did not cause him fear or discomfort.

Ataz then walked around the dark room, realizing that there was nothing there, just an old table almost broken in the center. At first, he thought that hole was a passage for water or oxygen so that whoever was in the room below would not die from suffocation, but it didn't make sense that the place was so big to have nothing.

There were several mice and insects hidden around the place.

Ataz walked to the center of the room, climbing on the table he had found, which, even though he was not so rigid, still held the small weight of the animal.

That place was very quiet. He couldn't even hear what Ana's friends were saying on the other side, even though they were still relatively close to the cat. He decided then that this would be a good place to test some of the power of what he was capable of and what he still remembered.

Even though he knew about the new realm of black magic, Ataz knew very few spells of necromancy, so he still needed to train what he knew, such as the control of some elements.

Magic enabled wizards to be elemental, not necessarily just mastering fire or water, but whatever they wanted. Even commandeering other people's minds was possible, but for that, they had to train for years and face the worst nightmares to achieve complete domination of the elements, but during Ataz's previous life, even though there were quite a few wizards, none were greedy enough to want to become the strongest, so they ended up settling with the few spells they learned in childhood.

Ataz was not like that. He always wanted to be someone bigger, someone to be remembered, and that made him train from a very young age until he managed to master most of the elements, but now, as so many years had passed, he wondered if there could be some kind of new element that he had not yet understood. This gave him a little insecurity because he was not aware of that power, but it did not make him afraid.

With a million thoughts running through his mind, the cat wanted to focus his concentration on other things. Knowing more about how far his magic could go, however, he could not totally wipe out the mana he had. Even killing those poor rats and miserable insects scattered around the room, it would not be enough; he would have to find something bigger.

He realized that the percentage of mana he had sucked from the body of the man from the amusement park was around 7% of his now total reserves. Ataz couldn't really suck out the man's soul because he was already practically dead. Even though it appeared to be a small amount, it was already able to help the cat to get rid of some dangerous ones that it might encounter.

Small spells, such as moving small things over short distances, spent almost 0.1% of his mana. Before that it hadn't made any difference to the cat, but with so little mana he was currently storing, he wouldn't dare move any object to help him with his comfort. He couldn't risk spending his little mana and losing the chance to use a good spell.

Ataz then decided that with each spell spent in that room, he would use it to kill one of the small animals in that room. This would make him practice magic and not lose as much mana.

Ataz kept his posture straight in the chair, showing all the great grandeur he held in him, and began to focus on his own body. The cat's first test would be whether he would already be able to control some kind of element.

He then closed his eyes, uttering the word 'illuminabant' in his mind. Ataz started to feel his body heat up. That familiar feeling of mana ran through his veins: his heart pounding, his pupil dilating. The cat then opened its eyes and looked quickly at a small insect in the corner of the room. It was one of the smallest and was almost imperceptible due to its size.

The insect, in the blink of an eye, went up in flames. It ran from side to side, in extreme pain that its body burned while it was alive. The insect, at that moment, looked more like a small spark from a fire than an insect itself, however, it did not last even three seconds, and the insect had already disappeared in the dust of that place and the small energy of the animal floating towards the cat that was still seated.

Ataz never took his eyes off the little insect. He felt no satisfaction in seeing the insect on fire or suffering from pain. That little one was so insignificant that it gave him no pleasure, however, the cat felt a small crumb of happiness in his mind from having managed to remember one of his most used spells in the past.

"I'm going to conquer everything I did once again. It's only a matter of time before I can be one of the strongest..." he thought, concentrating once again all his energy on some small stones lying on the ground. The cat's idea now was to understand if he could master the little knowledge he had in levitation, but even though it was little, he had been incredibly good at what he knew.

He lowered his head, closing his eyes, and without realizing it, was slightly turning to the right, as if he were being pulled to the sides where there were more of the small stones. Whispering, the cat started saying 'sursum' over and over.

Ataz began to feel his own bones slightly trembling, his body's blood running faster, but the sensation of mana was a little different. He felt it around his body, as if it were hugging him affectionately, and that ended up causing strange feelings in the animal.

A very low noise from the stones moving minimally was possible to be heard by the cat's ears, however, he was so focused that he barely heard them.

Those sensations vaguely brought back strange memories of the cat's past life. He heard a sweet little boy laugh. The cat could not identify whose little voice it was. He could see the color of the sky in his memories. It was very clear, in a light blue blending gently with an orange tone of the morning. He remembered the smell of fresh coffee early in the morning, which just made him so passionate, which was funny, because Ataz hated coffee even with a lot of sugar.

Lightly, he felt his chest being entwined by that strange sensation, causing him to totally lose track of what he really should concentrate on.

"CAAAAT? WHERE ARE YOU??", Ana shouted from the other side of the wall.

Ataz got scared and came back to reality. At the same time, he looked towards the girl's voice and then the stones that he tried to concentrate the magic on fell to the ground from a height much higher than he wished. That scared him for a moment. The cat had not been focused enough for the stones to be lifted that way. He wasn't even looking at the rocks and yet they had evidently been floating.

"CAT?!" Ana shouted again, worried.

Without thinking much, the cat got down from the table and walked to the exit of the hole, without making a lot of noise so that they didn't realize where he had gone. Carefully, he squeezed his body out of the hole again and ducked into one of the boxes next to the stairs.

"He must be around here, Ana. Stay calm!" Nate said walking towards the boxes.

He rested both hands on the edge of the box and looked inside, "Here he is sleeping, how cute!"

Ana ran towards the box and saw the cat sleeping on its back, as if it had been there for a long time. She sighed in relief and wiggled the tip of the cat's paws so that he woke up. "Come on, boy. It's almost 1am. I can't believe you slept for so many hours," she said, going to pick up her backpack by the wall.

Ataz stretched in confusion, wondering how he had spent so many hours if the sensation he had had was only a few minutes. He got out of the box and walked towards Ana, who already had the backpack open pointed at him. The cat went into the bag and Ana closed him in the backpack, leaving only a piece open so that he could breathe.

"See you, boys. Next week we'll end the session," Ana said as she put her backpack in her bag.

"Okay, I'll take you to the door," Thomas said, taking a key from the table. They left the room and walked to the exit.

Ana stopped to say goodbye to Thomas, giving him a hug. Ataz, who was in the backpack, heard in the background Pietro commenting to Alex: "Man, but I looked at the boxes. He wasn't in there!" while Alex laughed at the other boy.

"Stop being an idiot. What do you think, that the animal happened to be invisible?" Alex replied with a laugh.

"That wouldn't be a bad idea," Ataz thought, lying on his back in the girl's backpack.

------- Read the author's notes here! nhaa :3 ↓↓↓

Hello,

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