The cat stared at him with Bright eyes and she began to purr. "I think we're going to have quite the adventure together. It's been a while since I've had one of those." If cats could smile, Zane was sure she would have a large grin on her face.
"Do you have a name? I can't just keep thinking of you as cat or Kitty."
"I've had many names throughout my life. Whenever I am summoned by a new master, they give me a new name. What would you name me?"
Zane studied her for a long moment, even walking around her to do a full examination. "You are a beautiful black panther. It reminds me of some stories my dad used to tell me. He had this favorite book character that I'm having trouble remembering the name of it was like diz or driz, something with a d and a z. All I remember is that this character had a black panther he could summon. I think that panther's name was Trin or Gin or… What was it?... Was it Wen… Gwen… That's it, yes! Guenhwyvar was the name of the panther. I like the idea of having a connection to my dad. I will call you Gwen."
"That is a fine name."
Zane nodded. "Now that that's out of the way, I'm going to look at my loot."
"There are many things I need to tell you…"
Zane held up his finger. "Loot first, then explanations."
Gwen stared at him for a moment and then nodded.
He turned back to where the Ratman Champion had fallen and found the items that were left behind when it dissipated. On the floor were three items. A skill stone and a set of bracers. He picked up the skill stone and stored it in his inventory. He was a little disappointed that he didn't get anything more than bracers, but he picked them up. "Identify."
[Gzi'om's Promised Gift]
Zane paused as he looked at the name of the item. The description didn't have any other information, but he could feel that it was a heavily enchanted piece of equipment. Maybe his identify needed to be upgraded more to get more information? Of course, what had Gzi'om promised him. He thought back what had happened before he came to this world. The last few days had been such a blur of fighting figuring out things in this world. He twisted the bracers in his hands, looking at the design. The top was a normal looking bracer, with some strange designs on the top. The bottom would sit on the full length of his forearm and there was a mechanism near the top, one that looked like it twisted.
"It can't be." Zane whispered. He excitedly put them on, a huge grin on his face and his eyes wide. Once he had them secure, he thrust his hands forward, bending his wrists up. The mechanism on the bracer turned and a long blade shot out from each bracer. "YES!!!" he retracted the blades back in and then brought them back out again and back in. He did this several times, doing a little dance, activating his parkour as he bounced around the room.
Gwen leaned back, surprised by the sudden outburst. "What is going on? Why are you so happy?"
"Look at these! Look at these! He said that he would give them to me and now I have them."
"What do you have? And who gave them to you?"
Zane dropped down right in front of her, thrusting his two arms to either side of her head. She jumped a little as the blades popped out and then retracted.
"Wrist blades. Gzi'om kept his promise and gave me wrist blades." Zane told her.
Gwen studied the bracers for a moment. "Is that some kind of assassin weapon?"
Zane nodded. "From my favorite video game."
"Is that really practical? We're not really going to be assassinating people. As you saw here, the fighting's a little more straightforward. The task we have isn't really going to require assassinations."
Zane shrugged the shoulders. "I don't care. I wanted wrist blades and so he gave me wrist blades. I can get other weapons from here and these are only for my enjoyment. And who knows? There may be a time that we have to do an assassination and I'll have these ready to go. If nothing else, they're a backup weapon."
"Well, there's that at least. Are you sure they're not going to break the first time you do anything with them? Seems like strength would be an issue with a design like that."
"Gzi'om said he would fix the drawbacks of the design. I figure he reinforced it with mana or some other thing with magic. I guess we'll find out when I get a chance to use them."
"Do they do anything else? Do they have any other enchantments on them?"
Zane shrugged. "All it said when I used my identify skill on them was Gzi'om's promised gift. It didn't give me any other information. So, either I need to upgrade my identify skill or there's another way to get that information."
"I guess we'll figure that out as we go along. I would suggest you get that skill stone that dropped out and crush it. I'm pretty sure it will lead to some significant changes in your system."
Zane pulled the skill stone out of his inventory. "It's a skill stone. Why would it make significant changes to my system? Every other one has only upgraded my skills. I haven't even gotten a new skill from one."
Gwen rolled her eyes. "This one will be different, believe me. Feel the mana in it. It's a lot more then you think it is."
Zane looked at her skeptically and then back to the stone. It looked the same as all of the others that he had picked up. He closed his used identify and found that it was skill stone. He then focused on the mana inside it. "Woah..." The amount of magic stored in this stone was massive. He realized that the other stones he had looted were like drops in a bucket compared to this one. He was excited about this. This would probably unlock all those traits. He took a deep breath and crushed the stone.