Nermal

Nermal
Age	34 after being brought to the modern era
Aliases	The emperor of the beasts
Specie	Megafelis
Height	2.89m
Weight	1'058 kg
Zalmi scale	224.3m
Their deal	Wants the modern world to leave him in peace, but they just won't no matter what

That muck of good feelings makes me sick. I can feel I'm getting hungrier by the second. -Nermal

Nermal is the very strongest megafelis the world has ever seen, and the main antagonist of the game.

Before being brought back to modern times by Joly Biggs' time powers, he first lived in prehistory, which he dominated and where he ate almost all the dinosaurs single-handedly, nowaday, people call him the emperor of the beasts, he unknowingly invented the concept of domestication by enslaving kobolds and he's also the very first animal to have walked on his hind legs in history.

He ate a flesh star, which brought SkullCat's consciousness to life in the form of a skull tattoo on his belly and gave him all the powers of the planet.

He's notorious for stealing Gatto's feelings and putting them into some of her loved ones for entertainment, but the group eventually confronted him to return home. He's also responsible for the deaths of Fineas, who he stomped to death and Joly Biggs, who he incinerated.

Distinctive traits

Innate bestiality

Nermal grew up in prehistoric times and started out as an easy prey for most dinosaurs, like other megafelis, but after he got SkullCat, as he hunted and grew in power, he got more and more like a feral beast, always overdoing it to an absurd point, beyond all the other superpredators in his ecosystem. Soon, he ended up devouring predators of his own species. Nermal is the first member of his species to get that powerful, to achieve so effortlessly what usually takes other megafelis years of labor.

Nermal is an unstoppable force of nature, impossible to tame or subdue by any law or modern social construct. He constantly considers he has the upper hand over everyone else, so much so that even people stronger than him usually end up forgetting it completely.

He's a natural master of intimidation. He instinctively finds the right body language and choice of words to force others into submission by playing on their instinctive fear of being eaten by a predator.

Sharp senses

Due to his feral nature, Nermal has developed incredibly sharp senses, in particular his unbelievable sense of taste. Nermal can distinguish foods separately, feel the flavor of something without even touching it, and the flavor he actually gets on his tongue is 5 millions times that of a normal man, he can see hundreds of meters, in the dark, and through matter by concentrating, hear the hand of a watch 30 meters away, and naturally has a sense of smell as good as that of a wolf.

Deep love of food

Nermal loves to eat above everything else, spending all his spare time devouring vast quantities of meat that his kobolds hunt and cook for him, and due to the astronomical energy demanded by his strength, he's constantly hungry. When someone he doesn't know wishes to speak to him, he asks his weight of meat for payment, and even with that, usually ends up eating his interlocutor in the end anyway.

When he met Gatto and she gave him his first taste of chocolate, it changed a lot of things for him, and that's when he decided to send his kobolds out into the modern world to bring him back new things, even if he remains extremely attached to the taste of meat.

Unfair cruelty to prey

Nermal had been prey all his youth and feared for his life many times, which motivated him to one day become a superpredator, so that he too could feel freedom. He enjoys psychologically torturing his prey before eating them, and loves the feeling of power it gives him because he feels like he won't have to suffer being a prey anymore and can spend the rest of his days enjoying the predatory position he's worked so hard to achieve.

He sometimes sees himself in the behavior of some of his prey, which disturbs him. He usually lashes out at them in particular.

Hatred of the modern world

Nermal spends a lot of time laying on a tree from which he can watch his kobolds when he's not eating or hunting.

Nermal doesn't understand the modern world in which he was brought, which constantly shows him predators and preys fully assuming their role in the food chain without being afraid of dying, whereas Nermal believes that terrorizing the prey and play cruelly with it is part of what makes a predator. Nermal believes that animals in the modern world are hypocrites, holding back their true nature and secretly longing to be cruel. He hates the fact that modern times doesn't allow him to live the way he's so used to, despite the fact he can still eat preys.

However, he does like some aspects of modernity, especially all the modern flavors he couldn't even imagine before tasting chocolate for the first time. He also likes the fact that his species has evolved into cats, which are frailer, softer and, above all, easier to swallow in one go than megafelixes.

He usually sends his kobolds to explore the area and bring him contemporary things, instead of getting down to it himself, out of laziness.

Laziness

The way Nermal behaves towards others shows that he's quite content ordering kobolds (and SkullCat) around, and since he became the strongest of his era, he only spent his time eating and sleeping and became too lazy to hunt by himself anymore. Which is a distinctive trait found in a large number of felines since then.

When he has nothing to do and gets bored, he looks for a tree branch strong enough to support his tremendous weight, and observe his kobolds activities.

Relationships

SkullCat

Nermal and SkullCat.

It was SkullCat's advice and magical powers that set Nermal apart from the other megafelis and allowed him to dominate prehistory, he virtually owes his entire way of life to him. Nevertheless, Nermal treats SkullCat simply as "a kobold more important than the others", and straight up call him "his pet" and is largely indifferent. Even through SkullCat is supposed to have a privilegied relationship, since he talks directly into Nermal's head, Nermal finds him annoying and clingy in some ways. To the point of looking for a way to separate him from his belly. And after that, SkullCat, who just wanted his master's love, considered that accepting a body was the biggest mistake he's ever made, especially since Nermal was infatuated with Gatto at the time, which made him dead jealous of her.

When SkullCat got his robotic body much later and Nermal started dismantling the modern world, they stopped seeing each other, and when they met again, their relationship changed completely, Nermal seeing SkullCat, who had by then been integrated into modern society, as nothing more than a nuisance. And that stopped when SkullCat finally defeated Nermal, at first, Nermal just couldn't accept that his servant SkullCat was stronger than he was, and so SkullCat played along, because as long as Nermal focused on him, he wasn't trying to destroy everything around him.

As the years passed, SkullCat, who had only been Nermal's servant, gradually tamed Nermal, crossing thresholds until he could finally call him his pet without his former master getting extremely angry right away.

Level of power

Strength - Nermal has a grip thousands of times greater than the pressure of the earth's core, his bite effortlessly penetrates the most solid materials in existence, he can leave the earth's orbit without using even a twentieth of his strength, lift hundreds of thousands of tons, blow up 90% of a mansion with a single punch, and withstand the blast of a modern nuclear bomb from 100 meters away.

Blows - Nermal's blows are so fast that his fists rise to several thousand degrees, the shock of the impact generates a white flash and hits everything in the surrounding area within tens of meters, shattering windows and killing people who get too close. He needs approximately 100 million calories to compensate for every blow, every effort he makes at maximum power without magic.

Endurance - He recovers in seconds from a level of fatigue that would kill a man, and heals in minutes from virtually any wound, as long as it doesn't require regrowing a limb. He has to be struck for hours by someone of his own level to start feeling the effects.

Speed - Nermal can run faster than the earth's orbital speed around the sun, a sniper's bullet fired at 2000km/h seems to move at only a few centimeters per second to him, he can pin a fly to the wall with a toothpick, and despite his large size, his feline physiology allows him to contort himself enough to give the impression he has no skeleton.

Main stories

• Age of dinosaurs - Nermal's rise to the top of the food chain in prehistoric times, and his encounter with SkullCat.
• Kitty Pride retold - The events of the quest for Gatto's feelings, but from Nermal's point of view, who is falling in love with her.
• Urban feline - Nermal's journey into the modern world and his innate inability to coexist with today's species, which culminates in the destruction of the Cat country elysium.
• Holding back - A story about what would have happened if Nermal hadn't accepted SkullCat's offer of Gatto's feelings quest, and did what he planned instead, domesticating Gatto and killing all her loved ones.
• Shadowcat - Nermal meets a talking shadow led by a cat who reminds him a lot of his kobolds.
• Memory mark - With SkullCat's help, Nermal discovers that very important memories have been stolen from him without him knowing, and realizes that he has become a priority target for many people since he destroyed the cat senate.
• The cult - Nermal goes to meet the cult that formed around him after the destruction of the cat senate, and in particular meets their leader, a saber-toothed tiger from a time close to his own.
• Paradox - Nermal crosses a town that has heard of him and is looking to get rid of him for safety, but Nermal is their only chance to get rid of a danger that threatens them.

Quotes

In many ways, Nermal can see that carnivores live side by side with herbivores in the same town.

SkullCat: So... what do you think of the modern world?

Nermal: That muck of good feelings makes me sick. I can feel I'm getting hungrier by the second.

Nermal: We are animals. Influence, money and status only matter if you play along. Don't push your underlings too far if you can't stand being reminded that you're a meat bag through and through.

Trivia

• Nermal's name is a reference to the Garfield character.
• Nermal's personality and design are partly based on Kaoru Hanayama from Grappler Baki, and Zodd the immortal, from Berserk.
• Mia's nickname for Nermal, “Unholy cat”, is a reference to the main antagonist in the rpg maker games Todd the grim reaper.

Galleries

Illustrations

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  SkullCat sleeps on Nermal.

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  Nermal scratches himself.

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  Nermal lying in a tree.

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Sprites

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  Nermal lying on a tree.

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  Nermal appears in a room.

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  Nermal holds Gatto by the collar.

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  Nermal without SkullCat tattoo.

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  Nermal holds Mai.

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  Nermal prepares to launch Mai into the ceiling.