Его не звали, но он приперся / They never called, yet he is here: Глава 21

Chapter 21

Camrad_RIP 27.12.21 в 17:40

Send a dream: 4/5

Camrad_RIP 27.12.21 в 17:47

Allows you to instantly immerse yourself in a dream, as well as clearly understand the boundaries of reality and dream; allows you to easily enter the dream of an intelligent being located near you if it is asleep; allows you to collect information from other people's dreams; allows you to know the nature and thoughts of sleeping beings; allows you to easily intercept control over another's the dream and detain the sleeper in the dream world, not allowing him to awaken; It allows artfully influencing the subconscious mind of a sleeper by inserting the necessary ideas and behavioral matrices; it allows creating shared dreams for several sleepers; it allows leaving anchors in others' dreams, which can be used to find the marked person, provided that he is asleep, even at considerable distances.

Camrad_RIP 27.12.21 в 17:54

I look at the sign that popped up, and I do not have the strength to rejoice in even another skill increase, because I am too tired with this dreamwalking. The only thing I can say about it is a very tired "finally," and it's flavored with a bitterness that I still have a long way to go and will have to develop my skills if I want to reach the top. Or at least just not to die, becoming another dry line of statistics in someone's Status.

Camrad_RIP 27.12.21 в 20:39

The three weeks since the final opening of my store have been mundane, quiet, boring, tedious, and exhausting. I was able to get the alchemy for sale fairly quickly, and the experiments didn't take much energy, but working with dreams was a hell of a job. It was complicated by the fact that I had no rest at all: alchemy and sometimes shadows during the day, and at night a continuous train of other people's dreams, carrying in them endless pieces of stories, troubles, aspirations, and other trifles of life, without which I had lived all this time and would have been happy to live as long again.

Camrad_RIP 27.12.21 в 20:41

Not to say that my sessions were useless, but they were too psychologically difficult. Everyone has their own nightmares and long-standing traumas, and when you look through them, you can't help but hate humanity and the world in general. Human or non-human, there was a lot of shit among the sleepers, and I, diving into their dreams, involuntarily got dirty in that shit. Sometimes I woke up and wanted to wash immediately, because the sensations were so disgusting.

Camrad_RIP 27.12.21 в 20:42

Alcoholics and domestic tyrants, sadists and moral monsters of all sorts and calibers, battered victims and people who had long ago become burned-out remains of their former selves, chronic depressions and permanently strengthened psychosis, obsessive states, and the dreams of people killed by them - all this had already been in them before I came along. An Augean stables, which I have no desire to clean up, and no possibility of refusing such a job, which no one wants but myself.
T.N.

Camrad_RIP 27.12.21 в 20:44

It was a painful, sometimes dangerous, and almost always difficult task. It would be a relatively easy task to wander around and have fun in a single person's dreams, but when you have dozens of such dreams in a night, it's not so fun anymore. It's not even about the drain on my reserve: with my characteristics and increased abilities, and a huge level advantage over the average townsfolk, I often didn't even spend a third of my reserve. It was fatigue, which I've mentioned before and will mention again. It is too exhausting to pass through so much information garbage. This is probably how doctors and ambulance workers feel, when other people's tragedies gradually cease to be sad, and other people's grief and tears cause only deaf irritation mixed with a desire to go away and not bother.

Camrad_RIP 27.12.21 в 20:46

Some I helped, some I brought to their senses, some I punished, some I made insane and suicidal, because they were so disgusting, and one I arranged for to fall down the stairs and wring his neck in the real world. But, for the most part, the problem was that I just took a long, tedious look at other people's lives for the sake of grinding up Dreams. However, I was always trying to add confidence to the insecure, take away fears and nightmares, just give them good dreams or something like that. A kind of payment for the use of their dreams for my development.

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 06:33

The fifteen-year-old girl a block and a half away from my house were particularly memorable. I could hardly reach from my bed to those places, which only stimulated in me the desire to develop a distance of secure covering with my ability. The girl could sing very well - really very well - except she wasn't allowed to sing. The angry stepfather, who liked to beat her mother, was the first to do so, and the girl herself was harassed with a very clear reason. All she could do was cry into her pillow and gradually die from her back-breaking toil.

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 06:35

So I had to awaken her mother's deep-seated self-respect, along with her concern for her children, to whom she paid little attention, blinded by self-pity. And I simply forced the stepfather to go out the window of the house upside down, and I accelerated his fall with a shadow so that I could kill the moral freak with a guarantee. When you jump out the window over and over again in your dreams, and then wake up in bed again, and then, again and again, you follow your reflexes in the real world as well. Anyway, after my nightmares, he still had only absorbent cotton in his head.

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 06:39

Then, however, I was forced by my own conscience, risen from the dead in the form of archilicus, to unseenly help the widow to wrest the inheritance from the greedy relatives of the deceased, while also making sure that the guards conducting the investigation were conscientious, who were alarmed by the too successful, as for a regularly beaten widow, death of the deceased. Too brutal even by local standards, where light beatings were considered almost a blessing and a care for one's soulmate. A couple of nightmares about a dead man coming to visit, begging to live in his house, and dragging him there, were enough to make the superstitious people, who were the unhelpful buyers, shit themselves in reality, forgetting the idea of taking over the house by kicking the mistress out of the house.

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 06:41

And the guards simply found nothing, although they tried to extort a bribe from the widow, or even force a confession out of her (mental pressure, no more). But to counteract the latter, the landlady herself was enough, as she began, figuratively speaking, to grow balls so that in the future she could carry herself and three children. They will have less money, but they will all be much happier.

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 06:42

And the little singer was allowed to sing every morning, which pleased her neighbors. Without sarcasm, she was happy - her voice is beautiful, and they all get up so early. Even myself was not lazy to sit in the front rows a couple of times, not to get out of stealth.

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 06:43

And there were dozens of such stories, which drained me of all my strength. Some of them were to help, some of them to tease, some of them to put an idea in their head, and some of them to enuresis. The most twisted I had to do with the last "patient", in fact, it was from this work and jumped up my skill. The trick was that no longer a young painter slowly and sadly went off the rails. He was forgetting faces, events, conversations, which threatened him with a rapid transformation into a "vegetable".

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 06:44

I had met lunatics before, but they were sick people, and their psychoses were the result of serious illness, as my knowledge of my past life had told me. But here I could see the influence of some incomprehensible stuff that literally filled his consciousness and his dreams. It was as if a black, viscous, and sticky sludge was present in every frame of his nightmares. Something was literally feeding on his memories, gradually replacing them with something else that was not entirely clear to me.

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 06:45

It wasn't like the occasional nightmare I've had (I've never seen anything as powerful as Sigismund's before), which I knew right away. Nor was it a Shadow, for I could recognize their presence with certainty. After a little deliberation, I dismissed the spirit or ghost option. There was a certain irregularity about the thing, but it was too different from anything I had seen so far. And I had seen a lot.

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 07:01

I managed to wipe the thing out of the man's memory and dreams, expending almost all of my reserve. It couldn't fight back normally, obviously not used to confronting me on my field, but it clung to its victim with all its metaphorical limbs. No wonder they gave me a new ability rank for defeating that thing. But they wouldn't give me a title, even though I'd killed the thing.

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 07:12

Or I didn't

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 07:12

The clairvoyance was strangely silent when I thought about it, which raised legitimate questions and mild paranoia, along with anger at myself for being so paranoid. Yes, too much expectation of trouble from all sides is not good either, especially when you risk missing the real attack behind the imagination.

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 07:14

It's time to get up because today I have to count my profits, pay my salesman, and get ready for a visit to a bored ogre. The last is especially important - I'll have to wait for the reserve to be restored before I move into the woods. If I come up empty, she can catch me, and then close to rape. And the rapist in this case would not be me, no matter how painful it would be to admit this fact to my inflated pride and even more inflated ego.

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 07:15

"Good morning to you, Master." The little rattlers greeted me with a resounding hello as soon as I appeared on the porch and let the old man and his assistants inside.

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 07:16

A master is a respectful reference to a skilled artisan of the highest order, which includes alchemists. The highest ranks here refer to the most prestigious professions, including semi-magical ones like potionsmiths and alchemists. Though the latter is still considered a craft, a sorcerer's craft, standing on the edge of full-fledged magic. That is not to say that the profession is less revered than true magic, but rather it is a recognition of its simultaneous presence in both planes.

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 14:41

After greeting the grandfather and his grandchildren, I began to prepare the shop for its opening, or rather, the goods in the shop. There are some things that only an alchemist can be trusted with, simply because of the danger of damaging the products or the inept person who takes on such a task. I allowed the old man to bring in his assistants rather quickly after I had ascertained that the old man himself had too much trouble to keep up any kind of active life.

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 14:44

He didn't complain, but he was tired and therefore not efficient enough. It was easier to show kindness and let him look after the kids than to cut his bonus. The children were obedient, not mischievous, and in tune enough to help their beloved grandfather, not only to stay out of the way but also to seriously help in the business. At least, to run to and from the stockroom, and at the same time to come up to me if I had to pick up a new shipment of goods. They liked the latter the best because it gave them a glimpse of the mage's actual laboratory, which automatically made them the real stars among the local kids.

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 16:07

To my surprise, both the boy and the girl were toothy and tough enough not to be harassed by the local punk kids. There were the little bastards who amused themselves with bullying, of course, but they preferred not to get involved with this couple, who could run fast and throw stones at their abusers. And after their authority had been increased, all the more so.

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 16:22

Of course, I checked them all through the dreams, finding nothing dangerous for me. The only difference was that the old man had a steely temper and the same honesty. His father had come from a village in the middle of nowhere, where goblins were seen more often than other humans. He had taught the little boy a lesson in honesty, hard work, and respect for private property, as well as a peculiar pride and inability to fawn. It was a place that was not prone to over-adaptation. But in the big city this kind of character and upbringing was more of a hindrance than a real help, as I witnessed.

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 16:23

By the way, it was from dreams that I found out how Grandfather had such a good memory to memorize the list of goods literally on the first try. He had an unusual grade of the title Collector of Fairy Tales, which allowed him never to forget fairy tales, legends and folktales, but only if he heard them by ear. It also improved his memory, though not perfectly, but enough to pass my express test. If it were not for his inability to bend his back, he would have made an excellent bookkeeper or merchant. And if it weren't for his lisp and bad tongue, he'd make a great storyteller, too.

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 16:29

"Today you work, and tomorrow you can rest," I told everyone. "Maybe the day after tomorrow, too. I need to make preparations, and it will be good for you to have a rest."

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 16:36

I justified my visits to Ygra as the need to make new formulas (as if I hadn't made enough) and to buy raw materials, which was closer to the truth. The result was a five-day work week, just like on Earth. I spend my weekends with my green problem, and all the neighbors may think that I'm out somewhere drinking in secrecy.

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 16:36

"Thank you, Master Tin." The old man bowed. "Shayna, Valius, don't flicker."

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 16:39

The kids, hearing my words, were already arguing about their weekend plans, deciding where to go, who to visit, and who to punch in the face. The little bastards, but charismatic nonetheless. If only they had the proper levels and classes, there would be a perfect fighting team, that would understand each other not just by word of mouth, but without any words. I'd rather break my own arm, especially since I've made my fair share of healing concoctions, than train young fighters. Let them live a happy childhood, not get involved in adventures. The statistics in this world are such that ordinary people are far more likely to die of old age than the average adventurer. If they were children of noble blood, then the conversation would be very different, but it is what it is.

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 16:42

The day passed quietly and unnoticed, causing me to blatantly indulge in idleness. My reserve was just recovering, and if it had been full, I wouldn't have gone into the mission with a half-empty supply of energy. I was not going to have to grind alchemy, I was sick of the dreams that flashed before my eyes, and I just didn't want to touch the shadows.

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 16:44

So I just sat there, spitting at the ceiling, and reminiscing about the days that had passed. I was thinking that it would be a good idea to get some books somewhere, so I could spend my evenings doing something other than training. And the brothels were still unattended, which was frustrating - as if there were a conspiracy and a sophisticated curse. I even scanned myself a couple of times in all the available spectrums, but, alas, I found nothing.

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 16:46

In the time that passed, I discovered that it was not for nothing that I had been intimidated by the lack of profits and customers if I didn't want to go under someone's arm. I did not advertise, I did not lower the price, I did not bargain, and at times I openly trolled my customers, driving them to a frenzy. The ones who suffered the most were the same vendors, not the big ones, but the slightly above-average ones. They had outgrown the level of simple shopkeepers, but they had not yet called themselves rich, but their character was great! They had the arrogance, ambition, and conceit of the big leagues, and the manners of yesterday's lumpen, who try to behave with elegance. I have never been a lover of the upper class, but when I looked at them I understood why so many of the nobles were so wildly disgusted by the bourgeois who had come up from the lower classes and had acquired wealth. Honestly, if it weren't for laziness, I would have buried them somewhere! Probably in the same latrine where the souls of my uninvited visitors are buried, sacrificed to the sewers and the ubiquitous shit.

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 16:51

Should I say that all their attempts to convince me to sell to them (and only to them!) my products for next to nothing, did not find my understanding. And if only they had offered a partnership or a percentage of subsequent sales, but no! Only their gratitude and, "Well, you understand that I can put in a good word for you with the one". When mentioning the mysterious "the one," it was necessary to look as mysterious and important as possible to ensure that the stupid peasant would understand.

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 16:55

In response to a polite, but frankly sneering dismissal, all manners evaporated, and I was almost directly told that I would have problems with the guards, the magistrate, thieves' gangs, all the city guilds together, and God the Emperor himself and all his primarchs personally. I can't help but laugh, reminding them that I've only got one house that'll burn down accidentally, and they've got loads of warehouses full of stuff. And extinguishing alchemical mixtures is very difficult. I hinted, of course, subtly and indirectly, which is why half of them did not understand such hints at all. But when they did get it! The skill of provocation grew by leaps and bounds, threatening to reach the master's level at any time, if not "right away".

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 17:13

As this seemingly useless skill grew, I really began to feel almost physically exactly what words would be beating out my interlocutor, and how to gradually build up his anger and indignation, and how not to overdo it. The synergy with clairvoyance and the Soul of a Mocker was not a joke. It made me feel like a true aristocrat and a master of intrigue... until I looked in the mirror.

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 17:22

I was not much afraid of the execution of the threats, because these guys were still f*ckers, but they were cowardly faggots, so they would only go to a real confrontation if they were absolutely sure of their impunity. Which I, thanks to the trolling, have completely and permanently ruined for them. We hit self-esteem, quickly and cheaply.

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 17:23

I suppose it would have been a lot more complicated if the serious guys had taken me on, but they didn't need me. The big players limited themselves to the very first envoys, and then they waited. Anyway, the big orders go either through the guild or through them, which means that I'll either go broke selling simple compositions at retail or still come to them to bow. I had a good sense of business ethics and practical capitalism under magical feudalism.

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 17:29

I have learned a great deal from the dreams of local businessmen, including some very insider or even compromising information on various subjects. It would have to go somewhere else, for I have no idea what I would do if I knew that the biggest grain merchant in all the Kraj, Lucio Samiani, fat and lumpy, calls little girls every Friday... to sing him lullabies and whip him on the ass with a whipping vine. What the fuck is going on in people's heads? And yet his quirk was still relatively harmless and not dangerous to other people's lives.

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 17:31

Make me unseen it!

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 17:31

Planting of behavioral bombs, along with brainwashing the entire city, was, in principle, possible, but too long, cumbersome, and, let's face it, a little immoral, even from my point of view. I don't know what it was that stopped me the most, but I think it was the tedium and complexity of the task at hand.

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 18:22

However, I made a dozen sleeping agents, just in case. Who knows, it might come in handy. Most of these agents, alas, were unneeded bastards, but one has to start somewhere. And a couple of important people, including that grocery tycoon, I did get. With the latter, I was lucky enough to reach the dreams of the residents of rich neighborhoods. I lost almost all of my reserve at the time.

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 18:23

I was much more interested in the adventurers' guild - the latter was very interesting and even more influential in the region than the magistrate with the burgomaster at their head. Serious guys, but their quarters were too far away, so it was impossible to get from my bed right to their dreams. In the end, I figured that all in good time, and there would be a chance to get to them, too. Sooner or later, they would.

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 18:27

Using the Ring, as well as brainwashing random women to create a harem, was heroically rejected by me for two simple reasons. First, there was no time, and second, it was dangerous. And now I'm not talking about training with dreamwalking, I'm talking about using the Ring. No kidding, that really wouldn't have been the smartest thing for me to do.

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 18:29

If training with Dreams simply caused internal aversion in the style of "am I so worthless that I can't do it myself?", then the Ring... Let's be clear- Ygra, while causing a lot of problems, remained a monstrously dangerous fighting unit. But even so, her gifted abilities blow my mind. Do I need another babe that can fuck my brain like that?

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 18:37

No way!

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 18:37

Maybe she would be adequate, I don't argue, but I don't want to take any unnecessary risks in any case. If I had a level 40 knightees trying to kill me, I'd think twice about it. But to risk subjugating a low-level girl just for the sake of fucking... Well, I'm not desperate enough to be that stupid.

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 18:39

Although there were some very good-looking townswomen among those who passed over here and there, I won't deny that.

Camrad_RIP 28.12.21 в 18:40