Chapter 10 (Patreon)

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"Look, Tin, you've been weird this morning." Taria interrupted my relaxation session of the name of one lazy shinobi in the most insolent way. "Something wrong? Or a kickback from last night's mixtures? I remembered that if you take too many drugs, you can get really bad jitters."

Yet there is something unique about Taria - the ability to present care in such a way that you want to savagely fuck her with an unpeeled log, and at least four times in a row.

"I've got all the crap out of my blood, or rather the remains of it, and I've cleaned up the aftermath, so you don't have to worry about my health," I answered melancholically. "And anyway, you interrupted my meditation."

"Is lying on the ground and staring up at the sky some kind of meditation?" Innocently, like a lamb, the number two troll in our company clarifies. "Can I meditate a bit, too?"

"First of all, not at the sky, but the clouds!" I immediately begin to nag, while rolling back a little to the side to make room for her on the cloak I had laid out. "And secondly, this meditation requires special training, which is given only in one remote village that stands in the deep woods."

"It sounds like the beginning of a scary story that kids tell each other when they're bored." You shouldn't have tried to suffocate me with your treasure, but okay, you can try. "But seriously, you look really pale, Tin. Why don't you take some of your own medicine to make you feel better?"

The concern for my health is heartwarming, but it is useless now - my pallor is not the result of an overdose of toxic clairvoyance enhancers. The reason is the new skills and perks of the shadow branch, which have re-soldered my body. It's not like a gothic vampire whiteness, and it's not aristocratic, either. I was more like a very pale man, suffering from a lack of sunshine and some long-standing disease. It really is better to take such a person to the doctor before he kicks off right here, ruining the holiday mood for everyone around him.

"That's not the point, so alchemy doesn't help me." I know I said something stupid, so I thought I'd explain. "And no, I'm not going to die, and I don't have any health problems either. I just spent a few points on my new class ability last night, and that's what caused the pallor. A side effect, you might say."

My words soothed her anxiety, and she went back to her treacherous attempts at seduction with a clear conscience, unashamed of any possible witnesses. I made sure, of course, that there were no witnesses, and I chose a good spot in the lawn where we could only be seen from a few rooms inside the manor, but even if there had been witnesses she would not have cared about them. Since the rooms were now empty, I was happy to let the impudent bandit lie down on me.

"Our two slackers went with the troopers to hunt a werewolf." Trying to keep up a conversation while she's literally sitting on top of me in a riding position, waiting for the slightest hint from me, is quite a comedy. "They say his footprints have been seen recently, just outside one of the villages. The one closest to the forest, where they make honey."

Bitch!

She feels my approval, and quite literally, because the approval is now pointing at her ass, but is still waiting for a reaction from me. Like, it's not she is so promiscuous, but I seduce her. And it is well aware that I see through her play, but she plays it so nicely! If it weren't for clairvoyance, I might have bought it, believing that all her movements were completely unconscious - her pretending skills were as good as ever.

"They won't find him, I'm sure they won't." I hugged the girl against my will, snuggling closer and closer to her. "Or they'll look for a long time, even into the night."

My actions are not commented on, but a contented light danced in the depths of her eyes. A triumphant glow, as if she had finally achieved what she had longed for. My inner captain probably even knows what it is.

"Why are you so sure of what you're saying, huh?" It seems to me that she is now not paying attention to her speech and my arguments, saying formulaic phrases just to avoid destroying the impression of innocent conversation that she so diligently maintains.

"Because that werewolf was eaten by an ogre with an unhealthy love of dog meat of all varieties." I suppress the urge to spread her right here, waiting for the moment when she can't take it first.

"Оh! So that means we've got a whole lot of time." Almost purring in my ear. "All the way through the night. Just enough time to try everything - all the things I wanted."

Well, what can I say?

I waited for it!

To be honest, I should have done it a long time ago, but I never got around to it - always some force majeure intervened. Or alchemical experiments, like the time I kicked her out the door after she'd come in almost naked. But now I don't mind her initiative at all! In fact, I'm all for it!

There should be some vanilla phrase about the honey taste of her soft and delicate lips, but I, first of all, am not very good at this romance of yours, because it is not taught on the chans, and, secondly, I had barely time to touch her lips with mine, when our idyll was destroyed by a loud chime of bells. It didn't even take clairvoyance to realize the simple truth: some shit had happened.

Again.

When I finally got a chance to fuck Taria!

Are we fucking cursed?

A step into the shadows made the girl squeak resentfully as my body disappeared from her grasp, only to reappear in a standing position. It took me a few seconds to straighten my clothes, which I don't know when crumpled and unbuttoned, and then I summed up calmly, even indifferently.

"I gonna kill someone, now."

Taria undoubtedly had a lot to say, too, including how to kill the bastards who had ruined my life, but I wasn't listening to her, so I moved on to the hastily assembled and armored kin of Losius. I could tell by the way the sphere was indifferently noting the frantic gathering of the whole squad, that something dangerous had happened, and not just an accidental false alarm.

"What happened, where exactly, and who should I kill for ruining my rest?" I asked, bending backward to get away from the sweeping blow of the steel-clad fist, which was aimed straight at my temple.

Someone clearly has bad nerves, but excellent hand-to-hand combat skills. I was not offended, for I did indeed appear suddenly, which could not have a positive effect on the attitude of the knight, who was on edge, to my person.

"I don't know, but I suspect the worst." Holan, realizing it was me and not some spy, immediately goes into business mode, starting to explain party politics to me. "Smoke has been spotted over Swallow. It's that village near the hills. Of course, there are all kinds of things living up there in the hills, but even my father never saw any serious raids, at most a dozen bastards come out to rob. But since the signal smoke had gone, something must have happened there that the regular garrison and the village men simply could not cope with. And most of the brigade, as bad luck, is now near the Forest, catching werewolf. We'll have to get ourselves, and even the horses, if we want to catch the village in one piece, not burned."

"I see, I see." I nod, thinking over the information. "What lives in the hills? Losius had only told me about the ogres, but I don't think one of them would have caused such a panic."

"Even one would have raised - too healthy and vital, but I am wary of hill dweller." My version is not that it is discarded, but not accepted as real. "Anticipating your question, I answer. Three hundred years ago, the people of this land had to put up quite a fight against several tribes of Orcs and Goblins who came in their hordes to raid. They were driven back into the wilderness, but some of them took refuge in the hills and summoned all manner of nastiness, even at the cost of their lives. That's why they were not touched, preferring to set up barriers and wait."

At the same time as the lecture, Holan walked briskly toward the stables, where he was already being led by a massive and clearly pedigree stallion. The infernal beast was eager to fight, but all I cared about was the information the baron was giving me.

"Since then, as I said, nearly three hundred years have passed. The remnants of that tribe have degenerated into quite primitive savages, only occasionally disturbing the boundaries of those unlucky enough to have an inheritance adjoining the hills. There were big raids, too, but they were rare, and for the last seventy years there have been none at all. No one was expecting them from there, and all the outposts had long since emptied. Apparently, they decided to remind themselves."

A bunch of questions that just don't have time to get answered is stuck in my throat.

So that's it?

For seventy years you've been cozying up in your cozy bubble, and as soon as Kostya wanted to fuck, you immediately decided to launch a punitive operation against my sex life?

Someone is going to die today, and I have a vague idea who.

"I would be grateful to you..." Here he was clearly trying to find some kind of address that wouldn't insult me or call me a title I don't have. "Tin, if you will take part in the defense of my house."

Well, yes. I'm sort of his son's mate, but the keyword here is "son," not the Landlord himself. So he might try to harness me with the order, but that would be very impolite of him. It would be worse if I told him to go away (in a polite way) because I have a right to do so, for he cannot give me orders. On the other hand, I am, after all, a guest in his house and, in theory, must observe the rules of politeness. But, at the same time, I have been exposed as a "lurker", that is, a priori a killer devoid of honor, to whom the rules of good manners and gratitude seem to be an empty sound. And yet he knows the strength of our team and quite assumes that my power can be decisive.

I can play the idiot all I want, pretending to be a third-level plowman, but this old warrior believes his son's words far more than he believes my clownishness and the scanning skills of an eternally drunk interrogator. Which meant that he couldn't ignore the opportunity to put me to work to repel a plausible raid.

"Ok," I'll respond by trolling the man with my ostentatious simplicity. "I'm in."

"Then Lart will give you his horse now..."

I do not wait until they try to put me on another vile animal, ignore the indignant look of Lart (this guy, apparently, the youngest and most low-level, so his presence was sacrificed) and interrupt the gratitude of the baron with his impudent words.

"No, no, I'd rather walk." And before he thinks it's me jumping off the case, I ask. "Which way is the village, and how far is it?"

He was obviously surprised and a little perturbed, but he answered, even if he didn't understand how I was going to get there. But the answer was given only because of his son's reputation and word, for who else would have had his head bashed in for such an attitude.

"About ten kilometers." Thank goodness for the common language that I was able to understand the distance correctly, for the unit of measure was called a different one, previously unknown to me. "It's that way, where the smoke rises."

When I looked closely, I did notice some very clear smoke columns, which was not a difficult task even without taking my perception into account. Still, the sphere had taught me not to look around, and that wasn't good. I was too used to always knowing what was going on near me, so I didn't try to look beyond the horizon.

"Well, I'm off then, you guys catch up."

Without waiting for another indignant retort, I use the shadow teleport, quickly overcoming a mile and a half of the road to get some air and immediately go to the next one.

The increased reserve and the Shadow add-on made my energy manipulation so easy that even such intensive use of the voracious ability was very gentle on my energy. After about three minutes, a quarter of my reserve, and a touch of nausea - frequent teleporting still displeased me, unlike the seemingly natural steps - I stared at my enemy.

The target is found.

It's time to write prescriptions for kicks.

The village had already fallen, which is not surprising, given the number of the enemy. Initially, there were just under two hundred of them, but some of them still managed to overwhelm the local defenders. They were still on the defensive, even if they had to move away from the walls and fight back inside their perimeter. A thin line of vigilantes and peasants nearly shitting in terror still held their ground near the few largest buildings, like the smithy, the barns, or the headman's house, but not for long.

Still, this was not the Frontier, where every boy and most of the girls knew how to hold a weapon, and a year in which the number of attacks on a village by all kinds of greenlings was not in the double digits was already considered a priori excellent. The locals fought desperately, for they had their family and friends behind them, but they did not have the kind of training and habit that could be seen in frontier villagers.

The creatures that confronted them had come to kill and pillage, not to die, so the outcome was a foregone conclusion. Though the appearance of the attackers was undoubtedly memorable. Once, it was indeed orcs and goblins who had managed to hide their asses deep in the hills that they were too lazy to dig them out of, but that was a long time ago. If the usual orcs were monsters reminiscent of the orcs from the famous Dungeons and Dragons, then these guys looked like the creatures shown in The Lord of the Rings.

Short, twisted silhouettes and bones, with faces that looked more like animal faces, they bore every possible seal of abomination. It was as if these guys had been fucking their sisters and mothers for generations while sitting on a radioactive source. Given the nature of the rituals performed by their ancestors, that may have been the case. In any case, the bottom line is the same: if simple orcs were sapient monsters that even had classes available to them, they were barely thinking monsters that were repulsive by their mere appearance.

The System didn't even call them orcs, preferring the funny phrase "Hillbillyes," rather than conveying its attitude toward the degenerates themselves.

And there were plenty of them, and their levels weren't low at all, though I can't think where they got them - no one below an eighth, and the average level was around a twelfth. That's despite the fact that the locals were barely a fifth, and that was at the expense of the guardians who lived nearby.

I take my word back - there was not even a fight, because I would not call this comedy a fight. The people spotted the attackers, gave the signal, and then the attackers broke through the defenses and started cleaning them up. If I had come at least two or three minutes later, they would have been crushed - the creatures were stronger and better armed and did not break through, demonstrating if not intelligence, then their finely honed instincts. They weren't killing them now, either, because they didn't want to push through, taking any casualties at all.

It seems to me that this raid will not be stopped by a simple looted village. They will slaughter the vigilantes rushing in, even if with considerable loss. Especially if they manage to take them by surprise with their numbers and training, not giving people a second thought. After that, the valley could be considered doomed, if it were not for Losius and the veteran retainers who followed him. But even they, at most, would be able to organize a retreat for the civilians.

It was just in time for me to come by.

Two of my enhancement potions (one for dexterity, the other for all stats at once) fell into my stomach, spreading a pleasant chill through my veins, and I was already attacking the enemy in the most critical areas. Shadow had to be used as carefully as possible, so I only allowed myself to use the steps that had no outward manifestation, and the simple blows of the faithful daggers, in front of the villagers.

I appeared behind a tall, boar-like freak who reeked of never-washed flesh, and then opened his back like a tin can, splashing his neighbors with blood. The big mustachioed guard, almost finished off, looks me over with a wild stare, and I'm already thrusting a dagger under the chin of Mr. Stinky's comrade.

A sharp twist forces the cudgel-wielding freak to fall forward before the dagger slices his throat down to his spine. The second dagger ends in the temple of another attacker, almost finishing off some peasant, armed-which I'm serious now-with a heavy bucket from the well.

I intercept the hand with the dagger clenched in it and aim it at the neck of the one holding it, simultaneously kicking the agonizing body away, thereby organizing the pile of bodies. A quick and wide step, normal rather than shadow, while ducking under the blow of the bone spear, and I strike a folded boat arm into the spearman's gut, instantly killing the lout, tearing his lungs to shreds. He was still gurgling blood from his mouth, and I pulled him toward me and shielded himself with his body from the volley of archers who had come to the feast. They were exactly what the attackers had been waiting for, taking their time to massacre the humans. Why, when the archers and throwers would come and make hedgehogs out of 'umies

The body still twitched from the arrows, and I threw a second dagger at the shaman standing in the distance. He was too old and infirm to see me at once (and the fight didn't last two seconds), so he just started his attack. The flickering light in his palm, a summoned inferior spirit of aggression, went out the instant the steel was thrust into it. The shaman's defense could have withstood a normal dagger, but I'd filled mine with shadow, and there were no witnesses anyway.

A step and I appeared behind the back of the archers rushing to the place of battle, immediately twisting the neck of the most marginal one. The men ahead of me didn't notice their loss, so I was able to repeat the joke three more times. Yeah, a broken neck wasn't funny to them, but it was to me. That's a killer joke!

I plucked a shitty bone dagger from its sheath, immediately thrusting it into the ear of its owner, then his neighbor, and then the next opponent in front. Barely half the archers remained, but they spotted me too, trying to surround me and slaughter me like a pig. My dagger pierces through the thick skull of another freak, and then the fragile and unreliable blade breaks. Only three of the archers I'd attacked were left, though, and after I'd knocked two of them head-on, there was only one left.

Looking at that face, I don't even think about using the Ring. It's a good thing because I'd be impotent if I thought about it. Instead, I grabbed her by her filthy tresses, where long bony needles had been woven into them as if they had been torn from some porcupine in a fight. The archer's neck cracked faintly, and I ripped the needles out, along with the braids and part of her scalp, and jumped aside.

The brute who emerged from the dash, dressed in old and much repaired enchanted armor, literally splatters her corpse all over himself. A few pieces of the brain go straight into the visor, forcing him to hesitate, and I step through Shadow and out of step on his shoulders. Three of the five needles break impotently against the armor, but two of them find a loophole, digging into the flesh. The first only scratches the bone, but the second enters his eye at the very edge, killing him on the spot. The opponent - level twenty-three, okay - is still on his feet, but he's already dead.

I do not linger on my perch longer than the fraction of a second necessary to strike and step once more, crossing to the other end of the village, where the second group of people is pinned down.

The first thing I did was to break the neck of the spearman standing in the distance, snatching the weapon from his hands and immediately piercing two of the freaks with it. Nearly a hundred strength is a pretty good number.

I let go of the shaft, for there is no time to pull it out, and I snatch two bone knives of lousy quality from the corpse's sheath. The different handles, the wrong balance, and the blunt blade are annoying, but there's no time to look for other weapons.

Time, time, time...

Maybe just forget the whole thing and simply kill all the opponents through the shadow sphere? Or continue the way I started from the beginning? I have so many unnecessary questions!

Stepping out of the shadow step in the middle of the human formation almost ended with a dagger in the liver from a warrior, but this blow was even good - one of the bone crafts could not withstand the attempted block, which I covered a very young red-haired guy, who had no time to reflect the blow of the stone ax hammer. I wouldn't have repelled it, but the perk leaf in the wind allowed me to extinguish the inertia of the blow and redirect it into my second strike. The next brat's head was splattered, but the second dagger had died as well.

I move my body slightly to the side and grab a strip of steel with my free hand, immediately throwing it at another opponent who's almost finished with his opponent. The thick-haired peasant pierces the dead body with the steel in his temple with his pitchfork. Without waiting for gratitude, I snatch the heavy ax, the blow of which I blocked with the dagger, from the hands of the surprised monster, breaking its throat and trachea at the same time.

Step. An ax blow to the back of the head.

Step. A nice swing sweeps another high-ranking (even twenty) foe off its feet, depriving me of my scattered ax at the same time. An arrow plucked out of the air, its tip glowing foul blue, stabs into the indignant snarl of the fallen man, interrupting both his scream and his life.

Step. The open palm strikes straight into scoliosis and rickets distorted crooked sternum of another amateur jogger with a bare torso (or is it just that his clothes do not fit?), breaking surprisingly fragile ribs, thus killing him on the spot.

Step. As I stab the freak in the neck with his knife, shadows spring to life throughout the village, saving the lives of those who choose to hide in a remote corner and are found, and, accordingly, cutting off the lives of those who do find them. Nine dead bodies and nine very surprised rescued: I hid the shadows from their view so diligently that they did not even notice how their killers were killed.

Step and I push some type out of the way of the howling ghostly creature in the form of a boar's face, transferring its attention to myself. Somehow I don't immediately realize that I need to kill the creature, but my hands are empty. A barely perceptible desire, turns into intent, and the pale palm of the isekai becomes blacker than night, and his fingers turn into long claws, suggesting another sleepwalker who likes to bring bad dreams to good and not-so-good kids.

The hand feels incredibly alien as if I'd both laid it out and shoved it in ice water, but at the same time, I can control it with surprising accuracy, as naturally as I can distinguish between top and bottom. The claws grow even longer, resembling real daggers, and a single blow to the ghostly flesh literally slices the spirit into ribbons. A stream of power pours into me, as if I were in ghostly form, with the difference that I am not.

So that's what you are, Form of Shadow...

The step takes me to a nineteenth-level shaman and a couple of his lower-level counterparts, then I take a few more hits, piercing their defenses with my morphed hand into some unknowable fucking shit. The magical barriers feel very strange as if I had just pulled my hand out of cold water and suddenly stuck it in hot water, but they break through without any difficulty at all.

I didn't immediately notice that the other limb had undergone a similar metamorphosis, turning me from old Freddy into some kind of Edward the Hands from Ass, I mean, Edward Scissorhands. I was already being attacked by the chief shaman of the tribe, who had spotted me with the eyes of a spirit flying over the battlefield as a faithful raven.

I materialize a shadow in my mouth, and then with a spit of my shadow blade, I knock the bird down, immediately activating the Aegis and wrapping myself in my usual shadow armor. I'm not around for witnesses anyway, except for the bloody victims of incest, and no one's going to ask them. There's black smoke all around, reeking of the purest malice. Not like the Shadows, for their malice is different, but different... like pure insanity mixed with excruciating agony. Despite the powerful sensory shock, it didn't do much damage - the black smoke, the Darkness, was easily deflected by the Shadow's power.

I used the sphere to attack again, killing another dozen degenerates who had managed to find the hidden humans, and then I made a couple of my opponents stumble, causing an almost comical fall in their ranks. The nearly toppled humans perked up and began poking and prodding furiously at the resulting pile, eliciting screams, threats, and shouts. Against my will, I let out a chuckle as the unlubricated door hinges squeaked, simultaneously waving my transformed limbs around, trying to find the entity hiding in the Darkness that surrounded me, the one summoned by the shaman to support his attack.

On the sixth swing, the creature was caught, and I could physically feel the invisible threads that supported the blackness in the real world tearing away. I let out another chuckle, sending it through the shadows and into the ears of the recoil-stricken shaman. His anger and fear infused me with new powers, even though I hadn't had time to use the old ones.

I'm going to get to know you better, you old faggot!

The exit from the step ended with the entrance to the next, to avoid a real spit of ink-black energy, still reeking of pain and madness, which didn't stop me from tearing out the throat of one of the old shaman's disciples with my claws. The stream of power that flowed into me was a gift for speed and agility.

I emerged from the Shadow directly in front of a rather large group of nearly fifty opponents, in the center of which stood a shaman covered in all sorts of trinkets. He looked ugly, even compared to the rest of the creatures, like a lump of wrinkles and rotten warts, but the power that was surging through him - agony, pain, madness - did not make him seem insignificant. Thirty-sixth level, after all... It was no longer a pitiful insect, but at least a pitiful rodent.

I remember about the problem of protecting people, which is why I came here, again knocking out through the sphere the laggards and loners who are out of sight of the witnesses while organizing several more accidents with mutual falls on each other in the line of those attacking the people. Again the screams, the pain, and the desperate hope of those who were doomed a second ago.

The notes in the air are more intoxicating than the strongest wine, and I'm filled with angry and active merriment, and I want to do the trickiest things to someone. For example, to the same shaman, who seemed to notice the death of his kin through another spirit, which made him look at me with such hatred that I couldn't resist another laugh that echoed through the shadows, getting under the skin of the freaks.

With a mad roar, the bastard attacked me with a stream of black smoke from the staff, and his disciples began to summon their contracted spirits, helping to corral me under the main caliber. But the victim doesn't want to stay in the role he's been assigned, and he wants to swap places with his captors.

One or two blasts of massive shadow energy would be enough to reliably reduce the crowd to zero, but I don't want that kind of triviality. My claws reach out to feel the warmth of their hearts, to drink every drop of life from them, leaving only empty, desiccated shells.

The Aegis erupted around me again in a barely perceptible haze, blurring my figure, blurring it so badly that I was lost on the flat ground under dozens of attentive and furious stares. A mere show of will was enough to make the shadows of the most enormous and protected fighters, the shaman's bodyguards, come completely under my control, even if it took away a good portion of my reserves.

One.

Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Six.

Seven.

Every single spare life is safely nestled in the back of my mind, ready to take its intended death, and I, instead of another evasion, step directly into the center of the enemy's formation. At the very last moment, my ghostly body dives into the ground to bypass the barrier of pure Darkness and a multitude of hungry spirits set up by the shamans.

A dive through the trenched ground and I found myself right in the middle of the enemy formation, immediately beginning to swing my claws, which were now filled with absolute darkness, so much so that a too sharp blow could cut through the fabric of reality. This blackness isn't like the one the old freak uses, it's different, cold, empty, and thirsty - but it doesn't make it any less dangerous.

The claws strike, and each strike takes someone's life, whether it's a degenerate or a summoned spirit. Their most powerful skills cannot be used in a crowd, and the remnants of their own raised barrier prevent them from retreating and regrouping to fight back properly. Hit, die, hit, die - this process is so fascinating that I don't even try to apply shadow control. No whips, ribbons, canvases, or blades, just my claws, and speed, just the power pouring into me, arriving faster than it's spent. I don't even try to fend off the blows, letting anyone who can hit my flailing figure take them.

Only the blows go not to me, but to those whose shadows I bend to my will. Some of them died in the desperate area attacks of the shamans, but a few still had to become an unwilling shield between me and their kin.

A flash of flame, and the burned figure howls like a wolf, letting the spear out of his hands and trying to put out the nonexistent fire.

A blow with an ax, after which the striker himself silently fell to pieces, still not understanding when death came to him.

The curse, turning blood into dry sand, slides off my body and passes over to the warrior standing next to the cursing one, making him wheeze and cough up white sand until his life is gone.

Strike.

Strike.

Strike.

In the end, there are two of us left - the exhausted shaman, no longer even powerful enough to hate and fear, and the still active and cheerful me, eager to continue the banquet. I see doom and defiance in the eyes of my enemy - he will not give me the pleasure of fear, he will not beg for mercy, but it is not interesting.

I walked toward him with flailing steps, moving too wrongly, too unpredictably, for his eyes to calculate my steps. A smile blossomed even wider on my face, which I never covered with my mask, and seemed to go far beyond my mouth. The world had long ago, at the very beginning of the battle, faded into the monochrome perception of Gaze, only it no longer gave me any discomfort, as if it was Gaze that had become my true vision, and the color palette of reality was completely unnecessary and useless.

The old man yanked off his amulet, which morphed into a ghostly fang, shooting straight for my chest. The stolen shadows ran out, but I didn't need them - the transformation flips from my arms to my torso, making it flexible and malleable, like a... Shadow. The trick I'd picked up from the Kraj's cultists was really useful - I twisted an anatomically impossible way to get the old man's last hello through myself, and then clawed my way into his shoulder.

I felt his heart beating.

I felt his time coming to an end.

His essence, musty and rotten, was full of strength and power, accumulated by him over long, very long years. This old man had been in the days when the retreating horde of orcs and goblins had only just entered the cursed hills. He saw the ritual that took the lives and souls of his mentor and comrades. He saw how the years had changed him and his descendants, how they had turned more and more into dumb beasts, mutants, and freaks. Their very existence was agony and pain, but they continued to live for some reason, as if out of habit.

He succeeded in leading this tribe into battle simply because there was no point in staying in these hills any longer. Even though the ancestral curses and barriers still served as a reliable defense against invasion, which could not be broken without powerful magical classes, the inhabitants themselves were increasingly degenerate. A dozen more years, and instead of half-intelligent bastards, they would have become animals, without the slightest rudiment of intelligence.

To change the situation, he needed prisoners and sacrifices. Men whose blood would stain the altars, slightly lessening the impact on the descendants of those who had created those altars. Women whose wombs would give life to a new generation of his people, healthier, not yet distorted by innumerable mutations and vices. To weaken the curses, to dilute the blood that had fermented from regular incest, to raise the levels on the slain men who had already managed to forget the fear of his tribe. That was what he desired, for that he brought out his entire elite in battle, betting everything he had on a single foray.

This was the day the story of Asterium House would have to end. Not because of any particular revenge, it was just that this valley, where the family of my acquaintances was settled, was the easiest place to get to through the secret trails. That's the way it always works - somebody's story ends, somebody else's continues, and somebody else's has just begun. The dice of fate are inexorable, as is the outcome of their cast - the tribe's fate was sealed, for they will never recover from today's blow and loss. Their fate is in a slow decline over the next few decades. They wouldn't even be able to stage another raid, simply dumbed down to the point that they wouldn't be able to leave the ritual-encapsulated territory.

Such an inglorious end.

And how sweet the despair of this brat, who dared to stand against me, as if he really thought himself, chewed up and spit out by the Darkness, a rival to the possessor of the three mythical classes. The Shadows know no mercy, always taking their own, and the Darkness never seeks vengeance for its adherents, remaining completely indifferent to their pleas. The Darkness does not care whose agony it enjoys, its servants or their enemies - the suffering is one for all.

My claws are so close to the heart of this wretched brat. All I have to do is wish, and his whole essence will be mine. It may be abominable, it may be rotten, but it is also nourishing. But rottenness and abomination mean nothing to the Shadow; in its cold embrace, everything will disintegrate, leaving only sweet power, a piece of devoured might.

Just...

...an impossibly pale and as if becoming monochromatic figure, stretching its black arms straight to the heart of the desperately whining creature that had once been an orc...

...to stretch out...

...a face with completely black eyes, on which Chelsea's smile spreads more and more, opening into a huge inhuman mouth full of sharp, needle-like teeth...

... a hand.

By what miracle I had contained myself and managed to tear the black claws out of the wound and finish the bastard off by accidentally striking his heart and lungs, I don't even know. Let's just say I was very, very lucky not to flush my humanity down the toilet with hooting and whooping. For a few seconds, I stared blankly at the cold, stinking corpse.

Then I began to realize exactly what I was doing and what I was thinking, which made me barely manage to keep from puking. And that was solely at the expense of the title of Hero. Then my vision returned to normal, and the monochrome grayness disappeared not instantly, as it does when I turn off my vision, but gradually as if reluctantly giving way to colors and shades. Just as slowly the transformation receded, first returning flesh and blood to the torso, then to the shoulders, and then to the arms and hands. The last to disappear was the black claws, scattered in a barely perceptible haze, like a mirage.

I could regain my human form instantly, I knew that but I had to remember what that form was, and my mind kept picturing me as black and clawed, as if I had always been that way. In an instant, it was over, and I realized that I was a perfectly normal (as normal as I could ever be) human.

There was only one thought pounding in my head, a surprisingly familiar one, which is not the first time I decided to voice to the world, in order to reduce the level of stress in my body a little.

"What the fuck!"

The realization that I'd come here to avenge the sex that had gone wrong, I mean, to nobly save people from terrible monsters, which was a good thing to do if I wanted to save anyone, brought me out of my bout of self-consciousness. My insanity binge lasted less than a minute, and the whole battle with the invading gang took barely three minutes, so there was still someone to save.

That's what I did.

Stepping through the Shadow was kind of eerie, but this time it was as usual. I mean, there was no marbles roll out, just the "nice" and "soothing" atmosphere that always accompanies travel through this amazing realm. The enemy remnants were neither high level, nor dangerous, nor even numerous - just meat for dagger.

Killing them felt like cleaning a latrine - it was filthy, stinky, and dirty work, but someone had to do it. I didn't need much help from the shadow techniques - just a few attacks through the sphere when fleeing enemies ran into hiding women, children, or just cowards.

For everything else, the occasional use of shadows, a leaf in the wind, and daggers regularly replaced due to breakage were enough for me. I didn't pick mine up - without the shadow infusion, they're no stronger than ordinary steel, which means they'd be too easy to break, too. The daggers were dear to me as a memory, so I was in no hurry to spoil them - I would pick them up later.

There were no particular casualties among the villagers, though I genuinely didn't understand how I did it. Of the slightly more than four hundred inhabitants of the place (more than half of them were either women, children, or old noncombatants), only a couple of dozen died. Twice as many were wounded to varying degrees of severity, and the rest, as they say in such cases, were shit pants frightened, some of them quite literally.

I didn't manage to kill all the attackers (though I could), so about half a dozen or so of the weakest and wimpiest had fled into the hills, and I doubt they'd ever come back here. I looked at the few shocked and still reeling peasants standing across from me, gazing at the piles of corpses that separated our positions.

Finally, one of the men was able to interrupt the astonishment and ask a legitimate question:

"Man, who are you?"

"I am?" Surprised, I ask. "I am a good fairy!"

Judging by the grunting laughter of the youngest of the defenders, the redhead I pulled out from under my opponent's blow, either my comment was incredibly funny, or people were having a breakdown after the fight.

"You don't look like it." Still, there is a man with an answer.

Well, you can't lose such a chance to directly quote the famous phrase!

"You see, how little you all know about the good fairies!"

The cavalry arrived really quickly - not even half an hour passed, but they were chasing the horses for nothing, for there was no one left to kill or beat. They found only men swearing and cursing, dragging the stinking corpses of the scum into a heap outside the settlement, and pulling the defenders who had fallen in battle out from under the corpses.

In the distance, women who had lost their fathers and brothers today were weeping, and the wounded were moaning with all the help they could get, but they still lacked it. All in all, a very ordinary picture of a battle that had just ended. Thanks to the admins, I've seen a lot of shit like that, so I know what to compare it to.

The stares and swearing of the squad, assessing the number and appearance of the corpses, were a balm to my ego, as well as a distraction from the not-very-happy thoughts about my gradual rolling marbles. To be honest, I didn't even open my Status, preferring to take it easy first, before I dealt with the resulting benefits if there were any.

Holan looked at the battle scene, and then all he could do was to say quietly (but I heard him!) things that should not be said by a noble and respected baron, especially in the presence of his subjects.

"Plowman, huh?" He clarified as if it were a matter of course. "Level three?"

"Of course I am!" I answer cheerfully, though I am not amused myself. "I come here to see how they grow rutabagas. And here they walk and walk in the fields, the devils! So I said to them, why do you do that, you bastards? And they just laugh and point their fingers. So I took a shovel and started waving it about and trying to keep them from crowding together! And then like a bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang! Vai, what a horror, all-around one dead body and silence! Only their chief stands but the vein in his forehead beats! And he's going to kick me! It's almost like when I poured my father's moonshine into the well!"

By the end of my tirade, even the previously shocked and traumatized peasants, not to mention the baron's retinue, were laughing. It wasn't that I was such a great humorist, it was just that the situation was surreal. And the Soul of the Mocker helped me by choosing the right words, gestures, and intonations.

Holan couldn't take it, though, so he dropped his head in his palm and climbed off his horse, taking charge of rescuing the wounded and pulling up the corpses. The retainers wouldn't have minded thanking me - many of them had friends, relatives, or acquaintances - but I'd already gone into stealth, and then jumped with quick teleports toward the manor. There I threw off my perfectly clean clothes (Shadow cleaning was better than laundry detergent, after all!), went to bed, and read the status messages I'd received, hoping there would be a "press to win" button.

Form of Shadow: 2/9

Allows you to give your body some of the properties of a Shadow while in the material world; allows limited manipulation of your body shape while in Shadow form; allows you to completely ignore any physical damage if it is inflicted on a body part that has taken Shadow form.

It wasn't sudden at all, but I would have been more surprised if it hadn't come up. I must be one hell of an unlucky man, or I couldn't explain how I almost killed myself as a person the first time I used my new skill. In my mind, I knew that before I used such an ambiguous skill in the heat of battle, it would be a good idea to try it out on cats. But I didn't even have time for that!

Goddamn bastards!

Not only was sex ruined, but they almost cooked my brains right in my skull. I had the feeling that if I decided to poke a woman, there would be a legendary monster who had come straight for my soul. Or the pretty girl herself would turn out to be that legendary monster, cleverly disguised as a beautiful girl. I wanted to get rid of the last thought, preferably along with the brain that had thought it, but, alas, beating my head against the wall was useless - it would only break the wall.

All right, what's in there besides the Shadow Form?

The Price of Humanity: If you dive too sharply and deeply into your own power, scooping up more of it than you can digest, you will undoubtedly run into trouble. The essence of other realms is too alien for a human being, and once you get acquainted with it, you will simply cease to be one. Nevertheless, you were not only stupid and devoid of self-preservation instincts, but also very lucky! The sharp enhancement of one of your classes, multiplied by entering combat without preparation, and then using your new ability in combat should have guaranteed to change your essence. And yet you're still you. You don't get any boosts or performance bonuses, but the effects of other realms on your mind will be reduced from now on. Bonus: greatly reduced danger of your mind being affected by your own abilities.

Okay, I admit, I was dumb.

That is, I was not supposed to use the new skills right after I threw in eight class points into the Shadowlord class, rising to a new rank and still pumping the Shadow characteristic to a mythic perk. Now, this seems like the logical, proper, and legitimate result of my stupidity, but... System, honey, why the fuck isn't this little detail written anywhere?

I spent the next few hours silently, but in an extremely varied way, swearing at the System, the Admins, the Shadow, the Jews, the orcs, the mutants, the monsters, the Alurei powers, Alurei himself, and anyone else I could think of. The main thing is not to admit even to yourself that you are guilty of your faults!

That's the basic truth, folks!

At least a second time in such a way jumping in trouble will be much more difficult.

I hope.

A lot.

A few hours later, the door to my room was opened by an extremely agitated Losius, whose whole appearance screamed "haven't slept in two days, slightly inadequate".

"Tin, I found Whitewater." That's all he said. "And it seems that I even realized exactly where the caravan of the dead prince was going before they wrapped him up."

All the sleepiness and melancholy was taken away not even by hand, but by a hurricane gust of wind!

"Talk," I demand.

"No, it isn't!" Taria's indignant voice came from behind Losius. "Everyone's downstairs celebrating, and you're down here. Come downstairs and drink with us!"

I almost burst with indignation when I heard such impudence on the part of this bitch! Was it that they were keeping vital information from me so that I could go and have a drink with them?

Truly, my company has made real human beings out of them after all!

"Also, you, with your obsession with erasing traces of our presence, had the best use this feast to correct the memory of all those who thought too much of you." Taria reminds me even more snidely, under an absent-minded nod from Losius.

Oh yes.

And here I was thinking: what have I forgotten?

* * *

Authors note:

Ha.
Ha.
Ha.

I'm not even going to say anything about Kostya's private life, but you have to admit, it's just fucked up.

Also, welcome the critical failure of self-control - minus 40 due to the sharp increase in the influence of The Shadow (8! eight points!), and then 21.

Then there were three attempts to regain consciousness, all failures, with more and more deterioration. I got it out on the last four, but I wasted 60 bonus points.

On the positive side, the Price of Humanity was finally taken, which I had hoped to give him early on when failure wasn't threatening to end the story instantly.

The second crit roll on the incident - natural 100, and 48

As a result, those who have been up there for years got out of the Hills. But they could have really taken out the Losius family if they had struck two days later (when MC and Co. would have gone on their quest for adventure).

Well, and if they didn't ruin sex for Kostik.

13 pages.

The interlude is next.