WMG / I'm a Behemoth, an S-Ranked Monster...

Tama is slightly delusional.

Imagine that you're Tama. You wake up in a tiny cat body, in the middle of a dungeon swarming with monsters. You vividly remember dying, on an honest-to-gods battlefield, maybe five minutes ago. You have nothing and no-one to rely on. And because you were a human, you can fully comprehend just how many monsters there are that want you dead/raped/eaten.

You are scared out of your mind.

So, without knowing it, you construct a Motivational Lie for yourself. Nothing big, just a coping mechanism to prevent you from freezing up in horror. A reason to try, even though all the odds are against you.

You imagine you are a behemoth kitten.

In reality, Tama is just what he seems like to the human characters- an elemental cat. But because we are readers, we assume that Tama has the right of it, even though Arnold's opinion makes just as much sense if not more. This explains why Tama has never heard of elemental cats, when much younger and less experienced characters have. He did know about them, he just blocked the fact out so it wouldn't interfere with his delusion. It also explains why nobody knows that elemental cats evolve into behemoths, although elemental cats are Bond Creatures that live alongside humans. The species are unrelated. Tama just keeps adapting things into his lie.

And if that isn't enough evidence, consider this: the setting is supposedly a litRPG, and yet RPG effects like status screens show up in only one place.

Inside Tama's head.

• Jossed: Chapter 94 of the novel has the elven sword saint, Alisha, show up, and when Aria's not around, tells him that she somehow knows he's actually a Behemoth, not an elemental cat, and elemental cats are indeed a separate species as is revealed in chapter 111.