Chapter 14

* * *

The first thing I did when I saw this town was to run screaming and giggling to the nearest brothel!

Did you buy it?

Really?

In fact, despite all your doubts, I am far from the idiot you might think I am. And I didn't just jump into an a priori environment that was aggressive toward me, so I sat down and thought about it. Yes, yes, I can think too, and not just with one ass, no matter what my boss and my neighbors say. Seriously, I had a few problems that had to be solved before I would risk going out to people.

And the very first point on the list, without which I should not even have approached the others, was to resolve the issue of Ygra, which was not going anywhere. Apparently, this particular section of the swamp - this one near the city - is not nearly as dangerous as the central regions. At least, nothing more dangerous than a big toad the size of a sheep hadn't come across for twenty-four hours. In an instant, as if a switch or a faucet had been turned, the swamp stopped releasing its magical power. Or rather, it stopped releasing it in such huge quantities, turning into an almost normal biome, albeit with some small-caliber predatory stuff still occurring. The ogre, by the way, was not very happy to wander in such places, but she did not dare to disobey a direct order to go in the direction I wanted.

To summarize, I can say with high probability that no one is waiting here for an epic monster of Ygra's level. This will allow her to remain unnoticed and unheard like a shadow... If she wants to do that shit herself. There's a purely physiological hitch: a swamp ogre in the prime of life needs to eat regularly. A lot, a lot of food, and only meat. No, they eat all sorts of roots and fruits, too, but meat is a must.

There isn't much prey in the area, and pretty soon the Ygra will take it. If she even goes fishing for snakes and frogs and birds, instead of going and wringing the neck of some straggler in the crowd. But suppose I persuade her to be stealthy, give her a chance to eat normally, and tell her not to eat people. What should I do with her next?

Even though Ygra herself is uncomfortable without the support of her native element, she still shines with childishly naive interest and admiration, like a resident of the village of Small Shithole who saw the capital for the first time. And somehow humanly it is a pity for me to get rid of her after the swamp dweller outlived its usefulness. The native tribe won't take her back - she's changed too much, too different, too wrong for their eyes and ears. If she is not killed by her former tribesmen, I will condemn her to eternal loneliness and wandering. She may be too dumb to fully feel it, but she can feel longing and sadness. What will it be like for her to live day after day, remembering the man who subjugated her, and hoping every morning that he will return?

As evil and vile as the power of my ring may be, it implants loyalty. And loyalty, all loyalty, is always worthy of reciprocal care. If I have to, I'll take it on my pretty battered conscience, but I don't want to. I only hope that I will be able to convey to her the need to return to her native element without direct orders or insults. And that I won't have to disappear into the shadows one night, because she won't find me outside the swamp.

After almost an hour of trying, I just gave up.

I couldn't kill her with my own hands, though I wanted to for her stupidity, and she refused to just walk away. I bet that she understood the basic message of my attempts to order her around, she just didn't want to listen to me. Maybe it was my own insecurity about my decision.

In the end, like any procrastinator, I decided that morning would be wiser than evening, and went to bed. Despite the proximity of the city, no one wanted to spend the night in the still dangerous swamp forest, so no one would interfere with my thoughts. I did not make a fire, though - the leftovers of previously cooked food and stored water were enough.

I closed my eyes and instantly fell asleep.

Since I can't get anything into this stupid head with words because its skull is too thick, I'll try to compel it from inside the solid bone that replaces its brain.

It was time to make up dreams.

The world of endless dreams greeted me with the familiar purple fog, which began to slowly form into something tangible. It was too slow for my accelerated consciousness, which was already ready to work. A full reserve allowed me to approach the problems of dreamwalking with more creativity and more freedom.

I listened to my senses and, not without difficulty, sensed the dream of the ogre next to me, and then began to gradually invest the reserve in the surrounding space as if pushing my way to someone else's dreams. To be honest, the sensations are not at all like those experienced when controlling shadows. The shadows feel like something extremely cold, hungry, and evil, literally sucking the life out of you for every attempt to control them.

The Matter of Dreams.

It felt a little like trying to swim through a viscous, murky stream of something. Only it constantly felt as if you were trying to lean on the bare air, holding on to it. I had to make an enormous effort just to avoid falling into the middle of nowhere. Intuitively, I know that I haven't gone deep enough yet and that the result of my failure will be a headache at most. But the further away I get from my dreams, the harder the consequences of my mistakes will be.

A systemic understanding, nothing more. It's also pretty incomplete, but even that is enough to make me careful and reluctant to risk my brains for the sake of who knows what. I stop being greedy and add more energy, reinforcing the path I'm creating and getting closer to my sweet-sleeping goal.

Another investment of reserve, literally materializing my will for this place, and the seemingly insurmountable wall of will, protecting Ygra's dreams from my interference, gives way and lets me into her subconscious. I feel, who has lost all materiality and has become light, like a gust of wind, undermined and dragged to the very depths of the ogre-formed dream realm.

Feeling myself without a body is somewhat strange and even unsettling. It is only the clear awareness that I can use my powers at any moment and create any body for myself, a little calming. My own, or the body of a little loli assassin with a three-meter ax. The same intuitive understanding of what is going on, sewn into my subcortex by systemic ability. The fact that there's only one point in the skill I'm developing certainly limits my options, especially when I'm in other people's dreams, but I can do some things even with just one point.

I should start acting now because my energy is gradually melting away, even though I'm not doing anything. Apparently, they charge for watching, too, even if it's at a gentle rate. Despite my desire to finish as soon as possible, I still decide to look at Ygra's dreams first, to at least understand how exactly I can put into her head the understanding of the need not to follow me around.

Sighing with lungs that do not exist at this moment, I looked at the landscape around me...

Ygra's dreams, despite her primitive nature, were incredibly colorful. It seemed that every blade of grass, every leaf, every rustle, and splash was drawn with incredible clarity and a kind of meaningfulness. For her, all these little things, which I myself would not even pay attention to, seemed like an open book, which she read with unprecedented skill.

And then there was the hunt. Inaudible, invisible, intangible, it blew in the wind, merging with the swamp around it. Not a single cry was heard, not a single blow. Only the crunch of vertebrae and the faint sound of prey being thrown on her back. A true hunter does not fight, nor clash, nor roar. A hunter simply kills. Quickly, quietly and painlessly.

The swamp ogres were alien to questions of morality, they did not pray to any gods or ask for their good, they did not think about the concept of good and evil - they simply hunted. They never tormented their prey, for the hunter needs only food; they were never angry and furious when they failed - it's silly to be angry at the prey.

The swamp ogres were truly the children of nature, incapable of hatred, something many of the locals would have learned from. Their lives were lived in a series of endless nightly battles in which not a single battle cry was heard. They killed a future dinner and died from the claws and fangs of a stronger foe with equal indifference.

You can't call them animals, because they did have a consciousness, albeit an extremely weak one.

The main reason for Ygra's stupidity is that she has never had a chance to think or have a conversation about anything. The very structure of her brain doesn't allow her to properly perceive any type of social interaction. Swamp ogres are chronic loners, even going in pairs rarely. Their tribes are the real gatherings of complete introverts. Their only social interactions were when they sang their songs without words and danced around the generations-old campfire...

She dreamed of hunting one prey after another.

She dreamed of many different creatures that she killed and ate or those from which she had to run away to avoid being eaten by someone else.

She dreamed of long nights and the pursuit of the quick and cunning prey, who did not want to make a fatal mistake, fighting for life to the last, not even seeing the one who was following her trail.

She dreamed of colossal storms and thunderstorms as dozens of branching lightning bolts struck the treetops, literally scorching the retinas of her rapidly regenerating damaged eyes.

She also dreamt about me, and in such scenarios that if I had a body right now, I would have blushed. The thirtieth in one skill she had been gifted with made it possible for her to fantasize about subjects she would not otherwise have had the brains for. Even so, however, these scenarios were not very varied, boiling down to rather banal, but very passionate, classic poses.

Luckily, her sticking in my sleep did not affect me, so I avert my eyes... not even my eyes, but rather my perception of the scene of my face being sandwiched between two watermelons, combined with riding on an unresisting body, and get down to why I was here in the first place. Just a thought flashed through my head that my hip joints couldn't take the strain.

Or could.

I heroically put that last thought aside, not wanting to give myself any reason for temptation. I was a few kilometers away from the human city, where I planned to have a good time. If I had a body, I would have sworn at the situation, and then I would have a spat.

Creating a dream required me to exert tremendous effort. I was the only one who wanted to change the dream, but the high-pitched ogre was only enjoying the debauchery that was going on. I had to put in an obscene amount of effort, considering her higher level.

The high concentration was of particular help, which made it possible to create even very complex images, and not only visual, but also auditory, tactile, and olfactory. Only each image consumed energy, even one that was perfectly known to the sleeper. And it would take every possible effort for me to bring something to the dream that Ygra herself had never encountered.

Without my increased concentration, I wouldn't have risked this kind of thing at all - it would have been a waste of energy. But now I had at least enough power to try, so I set about making a fun educational film, with pictures.

Almost half of my reserve is poured into the dreams, turning into ready-made material, clay, from which I can create something that other sculptors would never dream of (pun intended!). All that remains is to create a believable and, most importantly, understandable wrapper for the main message.

In fact, I was just showing my goofball the consequences of her actions if she didn't listen to me. It all seemed very simple, but in fact, it was a hell of a job, after which you could easily go to design and film directors. You can get in without a competition, just show your skills.

Now, for example, Ygra can see how she followed me into town, and the guards at the gate couldn't help but notice the huge monster. Even taking into account her stealth skills, which have weakened since leaving the swamp. Here we are, attacked, surrounded, and killed by teleporting Heroes in shining armor. I made the latter only in my imagination, but they turned out to be rather pathetic and dangerous.

Naturally, this is nonsense. If we happen to get caught, we'll just walk away without too much trouble. I doubt they would send even one Hero to save this city from total destruction. Well, maybe they'd send one, but I'm not so sure.

What matters to me is not the truthfulness and realism of the situation, but the message that should reach even the interstitial ganglion of the dumb like a cork ogre. The spectator silently tries to save me, silently makes her way to the enemy units surrounding the puppet that plays my role, and even tears several apart (this is her dream, after all, and her confidence in victory allows her to win). But it's too late, I'm already dead and there's no saving me. Despite all her speed, I artificially slow down her spurt, making her run in place as if bogged down in some nastiness - a typical situation in all kinds of nightmares. And she watches me get "killed".

Swamp ogres aren't good at feeling emotion, but she's feeling it right now - rage, resentment, a hint of despair. It's a cocktail that's hardly pleasant. I feel like fucking Freddy Krueger, but I can't help it - if words don't get it, they'll get it through the ass. That's what my grandfather used to say.

Without waiting for Ygra to tear up all my dolls, I disperse the dream and immediately begin to create a new one, even more unpleasant and hard to perceive.

Ygra hunts humans passing by the city, silently wringing their necks. Men and women, small groups and singles - for a monster of her level and rank, it doesn't really matter. But now the death toll had peaked and the same Heroes were coming for her (another delusion, but not for her to check for truthfulness).

She attacks them, but can not win (then the energy consumption went up sharply), then I appear, save her, but I die. All the same emotions again, but much brighter, and I'm slowly starting to prepare for a new dream.

Obviously, knowing me and my character, I wouldn't have gone to save this fool, even if I had had time, but there was no other way to turn the situation around so that once again my doll would be finished off.

Change of scene.

So I go to town and don't come back for a long time: a week, two weeks, three weeks, and then Ygra can't stand it and tries to sneak into town herself to find me. She succeeds in infiltrating and finding me, but we are spotted and everything repeats all over again. Fighting, combat, being surrounded by a huge crowd of guards (most of them have the same face because I can't support too many different models), and then I die again.

More despair, anger, and pain.

My inner sadist rubs his hands together in a Jewish way, but gets a blow from my half-dead conscience and falls off a cliff straight to my cockroaches. I reject the silly images in my head, a consequence of overwork, and then create another scenario.

Spoiler: T.N. Cockroaches (such a fun word) in Russian is a synonym of quirk and weirdness.

Change of scene.

Ygra waits for me quietly near the town in the woods, avoiding humans and killing only in the most extreme cases. She hunts a small number of prey near the edge of the marshes, occasionally venturing deeper if she needs to catch something bigger.

And I come to her on my own.

Sometimes every week, sometimes a couple of days in a row, sometimes almost a month, and sometimes I stay with her for a day or two. We hunt quietly, I roast her meat, which she devours, and everything is fine. No one comes after us and no one attacks us.

So I change these few scenarios, scrolling through the results time after time, adding new details, changing plots, and other twists. The only difference is that the ending is always the same, no matter what. Either a quiet wait, delicious food, and a peculiar interaction with me, or an attempt at disobedience and my death.

I silently pat myself on the head for attacking and killing my person. I was originally going to show bad scenarios for Ygra and not for myself, but watching her dreams convinced me otherwise. She doesn't care about herself, like all bog ogres - she has no fear of death in principle. But the fear of my death, she already has certain piety, even if it's embedded by the ring. This can already be pressed, can already be used as a tool of influence.

And it really worked!

On the third repetition, she no longer tried to follow me into town or hunt for people who happened to be near her. And that helped her because as soon as she gave up the message of the dream and wished to go back to wait for me, it came down to the last option: everything is fine, just wait for me to show up.

By the time I woke up, almost a week of subjective time had passed, resulting in a wild pain in my aching head and almost total magical exhaustion. At least my nose wasn't bleeding, or I wouldn't have been surprised. Despite the emptiness in my chest, my general well-being was improving quickly, and even the headache was slowly becoming a simple migraine that I could work with.

My labors in the dream yielded even better results than I had originally hoped. The first thing was that Ygra, who had escaped the captivity of dreams, rushed over to me and began to check that I was alive and healthy. She barely sniffed and licked me while she examined me. It's unpleasant enough to be yanked around like a rag doll, and that, with the pheromones working, is fucked up. Add to that the almost empty reserve and the slight fatigue from the night's work.

It wasn't easy to restrain my body's impulses, especially after a few touches to my skin, which sent wild heat and shameful weakness through my body at the same time. I had to force myself not to pounce on the nearest tits. I managed, and a couple of simple antidotes I took immediately afterward helped a little. They could not block the effects of pheromones completely, but at least they managed to weaken them, and then I managed to do it myself (hussars, keep your mouth shut!).

This time the "conversation" with my ward went much easier because she already understood what I wanted from her, and why I had to go alone. And she managed to understand how to behave in my absence, too. It was only a couple of hours of my torment, and all the issues were resolved.

Realizing that I'm going away for quite a long time - though I'll have to come back anyway - decide to spend the day in her company. At the very least, I need to restore my reserve before jumping into the jaws of lions and crocodiles. So by a willed decision, I began to arrange a feast of a full belly.

The Ygra was sent out to fetch the prey and brought back some rather tasty beast that resembled a wild boar, only with duck flippers instead of hooves and a small horn in the center of its forehead. I hope it wasn't the unicorn from Harry Potter, whose meat would curse me with some kind of contagion. In any case, it was a good sirloin, and so were the hams. It would be something to roast, and I was drooling.

Ahem.

Not that sense, you fucking perverts!

We went deeper into the swamp for a picnic and found another dry clearing. There were even traces of a fire, left by someone before us, along with a small hearth made of stones laid out in a circle. I had the good sense to assume that I could smell any traveler or hunter beforehand, so I decided not to change our disposition because of some old footprints.

The dumbass was still reaching for the half-cooked food, and I couldn't use the shadows - the reserve was just beginning to regenerate. I had to get my hands on a sturdy stick, and then let the ogre experience the origin of the word "stimulus". I'm no legionary of ancient Rome, but I'm as good a puncher as any. The offended faces and pleading eyes came as a complete package.

However, after everything was cooked, the cleansing skill used, and my hands washed with the rest of the water from the flask, I must have been forgiven, for Ygra was savoring the resulting dish with a truly buzzed expression on her face. And I liked the resulting dish. The system, however, never gave me any cooking skills, but she was just pissed off, nothing more.

It was only in the evening that I decided to check the results of my night's work.

Both because I wanted to keep the surprise alive longer, and because of the pile of things that came upon me suddenly as a stealth trooper. First I had to recover from the pheromones of the big girl who was worried about my health, then I had to warm up, then I had to cook and cut up the prey, and only now did I have time. I don't mean "five-minute break," but a normal amount of time to spend on myself and my status.

Spoiler: T.N. What stealth trooper really is. The Stealth trooper is extremely dangerous foreign invisible special forces, where selected homosexuals, distinguished by super agility and dexterity, serve. I had two upgrades to my class abilities, and they were all in the dreamwalking. I'm not really unhappy about that, because it's a lot easier for me to evaluate my prospects. I still don't know how to use a dreamwalker's abilities in a fight, but the potential for use is really enormous. Create a dream: 2/5 Allows you to control the dream you are in, with limited influence on the course of time, allows you to directly control the situations that occur in the dream and its plot; with high expenditure and concentration allows you to create scenarios for individual dreams; with maximum tension allows you to understand which scenes will cause the maximum response from the sleeper. Send a dream: 2/5

It allows you to instantly put yourself into a dream, as well as more clearly realize the boundaries of reality and dream; with a little effort you can enter the dream of an intelligent being near you if he himself is asleep; allows you to collect information from others' dreams; with enough force you can intercept control over another's dream and even limited detention in the dream world, not allowing the sleeper to wake up.

Not bad, right?

A perfect tool for industrial espionage and eliciting secrets, and also quite suitable for training or even brainwashing. Especially when you consider the function of time control in dreams. With powers like that, it's easy to make someone go insane - not for nothing did I think of the association with Freddy. The paths opened up very shitty with such use of my class.

I'll bet you anything that if someone kills himself after a dream I put on or catches a heart attack during a nightmare, I'll get some experience. And no more than in the case of a trivial murder.

Rather, it is even more guaranteed than in the case of murder.

The next morning, Ygra walked me all the way to the edge of the swamp. I'm sure she would have gladly followed me, but my "video lesson" did her good. So she confined herself to a wistful expression on her face, a look in my back, and another attempt to seduce me with her boobs bobbing in my face. I was sure that she noticed how I was looking at them, and she came up with the idea of shaking them in front of my eyes.

And they say ogres are stupid!

Bullshit, they're just not motivated enough!

I was thinking about how she would do the same trick on some noble knight, making his brains dangle in his skull, and it made me chuckle. I can't help but wonder how dangerous that ability is, even in battle. The Art of Swamp Destruction, the Breaking Titty Punch!

Fuck, I need to slow down a bit, or I'll fall out of concealment due to laughter, and now I'm in an open field, where the guards on the walls might notice a lonely, laughing figure. Do I need it?

I've been hanging around the gate for two hours now, but I don't dare go through it. But it's not because I don't have the money to get in, rather the opposite. I have already collected as many as six silver coins. On a separate note, there was no theft! Just high perception and the shadow sphere allowed me to easily identify thieves in the crowd, and then easily steal from them. And there were enough victims for expropriation of expropriated goods. Judging by the number of people in front of the gate, there was some kind of carnival or something like that in the town today, so the crowd was very impressive. It was the perfect place for pickpockets of all kinds.

I'd also like to point out that these guys looked extremely respectable, not at all like scum and other trash. The highest-ranked one, a full-fledged class of Pickpocket and level eleven looked like a red-cheeked, harmless brat with an amazingly naive face. The camouflage is pretty good, I'll tell you that!

However, neither class nor level saved him from losing the ill-gotten gains - I may not have been a professional thief, but I was superior in characteristics. Even the pickpocketing skill was given to me and immediately promoted to the third rank. Personally, I wanted to get it up to fifth and only then move on to breaking into town.

Oh yes, there was also a funny story. A woman with a child was standing in the gateway, too. Apparently, the child was sick, and she was on her way to the local healers, taking a large sum of money: almost twenty silver coins (a dozen coppers were missing). The lady herself was obviously not frightened: she did not hide her purse and did not hold it with her hands, so she had been robbed, and I saw it all.

I went quietly to the thief's rear, emptied his pockets, and then added half of the thief's own money to the woman's, taking the rest for himself. And then I tossed the purse back and even tied up the cut string with the shadow tentacles. At this point, the group working here noticed that someone was making money on them. Apparently, the lucky thief noticed a large sum missing at once.

A flash of clairvoyance told me that these fellows try to steal small things, but often, for all those with rich purses might have given the guards a hand to find the impudence. And the guards would simply demand the morons from the heads of the thieves' gangs by offering a part of what they paid. And if they were caught stealing a large sum of money, it could be bad. They risk losing a limb. Or be hanged.

And the villager was not local and certainly not noble: a perfect victim, and with money too! A feast in the street of the boy who had snatched her purse, a real feast.

The thieves gathered together in what seemed to be a mere conversation of casual travelers, began a heated discussion of what was going on. The eldest of them, the one with the class, promised all sorts of punishment to the one who had arranged it all. While this rot was discussing one of the main questions, like " who is to blame ", the pincher's gaze was once more fixed on the woman's purse.

The purse that appeared again.

Cursing, but clearly not intending to miss such booty, the shithead quickly and stealthily walked over to the still careless mother and, using some class trick, emptied the wallet without even opening it. After which he slipped the loot into his pocket and went back. Well, what about me, I'm all right!

I took the money out again, and then I took the rest of what he had stolen, and then I quietly untied the purse and put it all back in its place. I even added to it, even if it was just a little bit.

The face of the red-cheeked man who had returned to his comrades was priceless, and when he saw the purse hanging there and obviously full, it was priceless even more! First, he blushed, then he turned pale, and then he turned as green like a chameleon. He looked around for a few minutes and then approached another man who was not pickpocketing at all, but just standing in the shade. A brief conversation, which I had already planned to overhear through the shadows, ended with the also pale man taking a handful of silver out of his pocket, which was immediately packed into another purse.

And then he, all pale and nervous, approached the peasant woman who was about to pass through the gate and, stepping a little aside, spoke softly. I was not too lazy to listen to the shadows, and caught what was said by the pickpocketer, who was obviously struggling to contain his fright:

"Excuse me, honored one. Perhaps Dashagh messes with us." Then he put the wallet in the reflexively opened palm of the bewildered woman and quickly went away. The lady herself did not even have time to say anything, just looked at the bundle bewildered, apparently, not understanding what is there. And she was pretty freaked out by the sudden greeting of an unfamiliar man.

I, by the way, was also freaking out. Right now I'm watching a brigade of pickpockets quickly winding up their fishing rods, and they have slipped through a side passage away from the gate, suspiciously and unnoticed by the guards and the rest of the queue. But they remembered to slip another bag of coins to some mustachioed sergeant.

I can't stand it anymore and sit in the shade, so as not to fall out of hiding, and then I completely succumb to hearing, trying to listen through the sphere of shadows to the pickpockets who had gone under the protection of the walls. The latter had already managed to get into some uninhabited shack, where they were discussing something of their own.

"Are you sure she's not mad at us?" Ah? Ah?" In the voice of a retard, the tallest of the group asks.

"Shut up, Snout." The man in charge shouts it off. "I gave her the amend and show my back to her. If she wanted to, she asked me. If I'm still alive, she didn't hold it against me."

"Why not talk? We don't know what she was thinking, do we?" The one on the far left, if you count from me, is clearly trying to hide his fear

*Boom!*

"Do you think I'm an idiot, you son of a bitch? They know my face at the gate! And she's there alone, hidden, and with a child! What, so I could put her under the guard? And then they bend me over and fuck me around?"

*Boom!*

"I got it, I got it, Cheek. Don't be mad."

"That's right, motherfuckers." He mouthed angrily. "You're all my... Bitey!"

"Y-yeah?" The kid who had robbed the mother the first time was now nearly dying of fright. Tremors in his legs, tremors in his hands, and a stuttering, a little more, and his guts would loosen up.

"What are you afraid of, eh, Bitey? Just pinched a bitch with a little brat, and then, when the money was gone, you came to me, but you didn't tell me who you pinched before. And I, a fool, went and pinched her again. It happens, doesn't it?"

"Chee..."

*Boom!*

*Boom!*

*Bdysch!*

"You! You fucking cocksucker, you son of a bitch! You're trying to get me killed!" Now there's a whole ocean of rage coming out of the ringleader." Do you realize, you stupid son of a bitch, who we were just about to take down for money! Two times, three times, you fucking asshole! Twice! You don't get your hands chopped off for that, you get your guts ripped out, bitch!"

The blows were delivered to the whimpering thief without interruption and without any regard for injury. The unlucky bastard was literally kicked to death under the indifferent and frightened stares of his comrades.

"Do you have any idea, you dumb cocksucker, how pickpocketing and quick theft have to evolve in order to pinch us all off like fucking chickens? Do you understand? Understand? N-na! Do you get it? Do you get it now? What level? А? А? I can't hear you, bitch! Do you know what they do to those who mess with retired? Do you know what they could do to all of us? BITCH, I'M ASKING, DO YOU KNOW OR NOT?"

Despite the yelling and screaming, no one rushed to help the man who was being beaten, or rather, beaten to death. On the contrary, everyone tried to get away as quickly as possible. Slums, what do you want.

"In short, that's it." The chief exhaled calmly, spitting on the corpse that was literally smeared over the shack. "This one got no kin or girl? Pity, we could have demand some of his debt. Well. Well... I'll talk to the foreman. We'll pay what he says. We'll divide the guilt equally between us all. And we don't talk about today. We don't talk at all. We've never seen that mother and neither has the child. Never at all. That's it for today, let's fuck off."

And after that, the thieves quickly and well-organized disappeared into the slums, gradually climbing deeper into the city, out of my sphere of perception. And I shook quietly in agony beside the city wall, trying hard to hold back the gleeful laughter that burst forth. Now that's what I call the ass in a sling! Such a brick factory!

Somehow there was no regret about the death of one of the thieves. Even without clairvoyance I already know how such a situation would have ended for the mother and her child. At the very least, the child would have died. No, I didn't feel sorry for him, not one bit!

And in general, the situation is funny!

Really funny!

What else could those mutts think when they were put down like that? Just now there was someone cooler than they were. And then there was this woman, with her purse back in its place, which can't help but arouse certain suspicions. That's when they all got the "understanding" of what was going on! How they began to run, how quickly they remembered to decide everything according to the rules and pay the amend!

Man, I feel really good as a human being right now.

The inner troll is fed, the sense of beauty is in place, and justice is served. Even a newly activated clairvoyance claimed that this lady would return to the village with a healthy child. And it added to my consciousness the scene of her husband's recent funeral and, for some reason, the sale of turnips to an out-of-town merchant.

Shaking my head, I return my thoughts to the method of entry into the city. I'd better not steal anything else at the gate, and I'd already made enough money, even if it wasn't much. I'm not sure I have enough for a brothel, but I should at least change my clothes to something more presentable before I break into one.

I officially announce the start of Operation Double Penetration.

In fact, on such a merry market day I had a good chance of getting right through the gate without bothering. The guards were so tired now that they would easily let an elephant caravan through, let alone a lone traveler. And my gut didn't seem to have any trouble checking in at the gate. Alas, I had already caught my inner drive, and I wanted to cosplay the bald man.

So stealth, and hardcore stealth!

One could pass through the gate by trivially lurking behind some merchants, or one could crawl through on one's own. In the Gaze, one could easily discern the signal spells covering the gate. To be honest, they looked more like one solid hole, like the world's most worn socks, than an actual watch net.

But I decided not to "risk it" and go through the wall. Because the spells there didn't just look like one elaborate asshole of an anime lover's asshole in the prison, they were. It was easier to list the places where these signal spells remained than those where they no longer existed. Get in as you wish. How do they even live with such carelessness? There's a relic swamp two kilometers away! If the Ygra tribe comes here to play around, they'll tear this place down without too much trouble.

Although it's more likely that people will scatter. Levels are levels, but the number of attackers also means something. They can't keep up with all the fleeing ones, and they won't. With the nature of the swamp ogres, they'll plunder the loot and leave the rest alone.

I picked a better spot and activated both the Gaze and the shadow steps at the same time.

The familiar cold weight of the other world lay on my shoulders, clinging to my reserve like a real leech. I didn't give myself time to admire the view, trying to step straight through the wall to get to the other side of the Shadow. It is desirable to go back to reality while remaining invisible.

In words, it was simple but in reality... The hard stone of the walls was as real here as it was in the normal plane of reality. And though I knew I could get through that barrier, I couldn't figure out exactly how to do it. It's like a forgotten word hanging on the tip of your tongue: you're about to remember, but it never comes to mind. The sensation is almost excruciating, and when combined with the ever-increasing strain on my reserve, it's not even almost at all.

Breathe in and out.

I reach for the Shadow, like a thirsty man in the desert, literally merging with it. I convince myself and the Shadow that this wall will let my body through. Because it will be by my will, by my right. And The Shadow accepts my claim, eating away a quarter of my reserve at once, but accepts it, allowing me to step through the thick stone wall as if through thick jelly.

Every step through the material takes a piece of my reserve, but I pass through it. And I'm free, already behind the wall. I'm not completely material, but I'm still in a strange state, as a three-dimensional humanoid shadow.

I move much faster than I do with my legs, even with my dexterity. I reminded myself of a Shadow myself now, just able to become a human. And why become a human when you can stay here forever? This place feels more and more familiar to me.

With great difficulty, I emerge from the strange state, and then in an instant, I find myself inside one of the empty shacks, reappearing in reality. There's barely a third of the reserve left, there's a strange void in my head, some message dinging in the logs, and I'm clearly aware that at this moment I've walked the very edge. A little more and I would have... not dead, no, but I would have become something completely different and unlike myself. That's quite not so good a prospect if you think about it.

This situation also convinced me that if I continued to sneeze on safety, I would end up sneezing back. You can't get carried away with experiments like that. I could have climbed over the wall in stealth, without even using the shadows. It wasn't even that I'd gotten myself into too much trouble, because... I would have gotten them anyway when I'd decided to train.

Mda.

In both cases, the same shit.

Somehow my Shadowlord class gets more and more troublesome with each new development. At this rate, I might not live to see the maximum development of this marvel. Reassuring, though.

I turned my gaze to the logs, not at all surprised by the upgraded teleportation ability. After such a large-scale shitstorm that passed within a few centimeters of my skin, it makes sense.

Steps of the shadows: 4/7 Allows the user to step into the shadow and go directly to the shadow plane at will, with the possibility to stay there for a certain time, depending on the user's reserve and actions; allows to choose a shadow for back passage right in the process of applying the skill; the movement distance is limited by the user's reserve, and the effort and concentration are quite significant; in combat, it is difficult to use this skill, but possible, especially for ambush and surprise attack; the user's body is able to pass through uncharmed obstacles while in the other plane; allows the body to partially merge with the Shadow, developing great speed of movement.

Cool, what else can I say? If only that "merging with Shadow" hadn't turned my brain inside out, it would have been great! Now that I'm ready for the fuck-up that's going on, it'll be a lot easier for me. But it was the first time I had risked more than just my life. I don't even want to imagine the consequences of that kind of fuck-up. Just, fuck it!

I also realized that this is the risk of developing class abilities on your own, instead of using upgrade points. In order to achieve something in this way, you have to take a risk, to push yourself over the limit.

And the higher you get, the riskier it is to develop without the help of the System. It's a handicap for cunning locals who want to bend over everyone. And for the locals only, because my Hero title had saved me once again. The most disturbing thing was that the effect was barely noticeable while I was in the Shadows. And there was no guarantee that, as my class abilities increased, the rollback would not begin to outweigh my wand of survival.

Though I'll think about that later.

Now it's time to get out of this pig shed and find some nice clothes, some decent food, and finally a goddamn brothel! At this rate, I'm already in danger of becoming an ogrephile. No offense to

Ygra, but I prefer girls who are shorter.

With a quiet rustle, I slip out of the room and go in search of adventure.

* * *