Его не звали, но он приперся / They never called, yet he is here: Глава 23

Chapter 23

Camrad_RIP 12.01.22 в 15:02

A strange situation was bothering me. Don't think I was looking for trouble, but the mystery I was discovering smell so good as dead. I was willing to assume that it was some kind of creature that had managed to come back and take revenge on poor Dajua by killing himself. The nightmare of Sigismund's dreams, for example, could have done that if it had tried hard enough if it had stayed alive after the fight with me and the boy. But it was still just a creature - not very intelligent, extremely dangerous, and extremely difficult to resist, but a creature. A monster that kills people and dies at the hands of people.

Camrad_RIP 12.01.22 в 15:12

This time was a little different. Whoever was behind the death of the man I had saved was not alone. Those men who had entered the building quietly before the murder knew what they were doing. They prepared to the highest standard, they did everything quietly, and they even managed to make it look like a suicide. And I have this suspicion that not only did they pass it off, but they bought the guards who examined the body. I can't be entirely sure, but a couple of forensic articles claim that there must have been bruises and injuries after the "conversation" in which the painter was hammered into the wall. The city, of course, is criminal, and you can't examine all the bodies, so it's far from certain that these mysterious killers have a garter in the guard. It could be that the guards themselves were too lazy to investigate, just not to put suspicions in their protocols (or whatever they had?).

Camrad_RIP 12.01.22 в 15:26

But I prefer to assume the worst, which means that this mysterious group, or even organization, has its people, including the guards. And they also have some strange magic and can hide from clairvoyance in a way I don't know yet. The latter frightens me more than anything else because in itself clairvoyance is a very cool skill, elite and rare, available to only a few. And I have it also developed, which allows me to receive information in almost a constant flow. And these guys can completely hide their actions from me, leaving almost no trace.

Camrad_RIP 12.01.22 в 20:09

Oh, for fuck's sake! I only noticed something was wrong because the failing skill caused a surprise! And now I don't know what to do with this knowledge. On the one hand, it's not my business, and it's not going to do me any good. Well, I'll play detective, risking my skin against the unknown, and then what? I have a breakthrough in alchemy and dreamwork, which requires my constant attention, and so does my store.

Camrad_RIP 12.01.22 в 20:11

On the other hand, these guys are too dangerous, and I don't want to get in their way the moment they decide to do something nasty. Especially when you consider my lack of any information about their nature and plans for the city. Maybe it's really just some crime lords, but with my luck, I'll end up with a sect of maniacs who want to bring about the apocalypse, summon Cthulhu, incarnate Dark Gods, and create an association of stand-up fans.

Camrad_RIP 12.01.22 в 20:13

And you know, in that moment, it was like I felt something.

Camrad_RIP 12.01.22 в 20:14

It was as if a huge and prickly hedgehog had tried to pull my buns apart and be born backward, halfway through the sticky and unpleasant feeling of approaching f*cking fuck up. Never before had my intuition (my gut, not my clairvoyance) given me such vivid warnings, literally forcing me to move the situation from the "someday later" to the "we should check it out" folder.

Camrad_RIP 12.01.22 в 20:17

With a quiet sigh, I disperse the shiver that had come from the anticipation of danger, which was only getting in my way, and start planning my ruined day off. I may be an alarmist, but it's better to be safe than sorry. Well, I have this urge: to check and confirm at least one thing before I run out of town in terror. Too much has been invested in this town, in my lab, and my potions and reagents. It would be a shame to give it all up, not only because of the financial issue but also because I didn't want to lose the comfort I'd accumulated. I've always been a homebody because people who have things to do outside don't live on the internet with a 4chan registration. And any brute who wants to kick me out of my home rut, I'll perform a sex-change operation with my bare hands. Without fucking anesthesia!

Camrad_RIP 12.01.22 в 20:20

The very first point on my search list was the painting company that was painting the magistrate's building right now. In fact, it was because the redevelopment of the administrative quarter had begun that Dajua had come from his village to the Kraj - it was a job that paid a lot more than what he was getting at home. Still, no one wants to go to these fucks for the standard pay. They had to pay extra, because there were very few builders and other craftsmen among the locals, except for those who were directly involved in the processing of raw materials extracted from the forests and making all sorts of things out of those raw materials. The latter is a lot here, that's for sure.

Camrad_RIP 12.01.22 в 20:22

Alas, I did not find any diabolical conspiracy, except for the somewhat stolen material and the terrible profanity. A special construction dialect, where foul language is not swearing but talking. By the way, about the deceased was also remembered here, and unflatteringly - his breakdown and drinking spree, and then the "suicide" increased the load on the rest of the brigade noticeably. There is a reason to be upset, I can't argue with that.

Camrad_RIP 12.01.22 в 20:28

I note the position and signature of those who spoke most about the deceased on the shadow sphere and then leave them alone. Then I find the place where they sleep and sift through their memories. For now, it is more important to check the magistrate and the buildings around it, now that I have the chance. The guards are plentiful, and so is the bright light, which reduces my disguise and prevents me from taking advantage of the shadows. It takes a lot of sweat to get close enough to penetrate a building.

Camrad_RIP 12.01.22 в 20:29

The administration itself interests me not only as possible accomplices of mysterious killers but also simply as a place. The protection here is not bad, but not for me and my abilities: one shadowy step right through the wall was enough to get inside. I wandered around the building, noting the individual, extremely protected rooms - the treasury, the vault, and the offices of the important people. All of these places I could break into without being seen, but it would take time, so I decided not to rush into them. But my idea of stealing the treasury and riding off into the sunset had just found its proper backbone and execution plan.

Camrad_RIP 12.01.22 в 20:30

Regularly activated my Gaze, trying to spot any traces. In this way, I gradually became familiar with the building's magical defense system, as well as its weaknesses. The core of all the charms that made up the central knot of the networks that braided the building looked like bright green threads as if breathing the freshness of spring and the smell of a thunderstorm. They were made to sense any life within their radius, to mark any movement and any misstep of possible intruders. While they did not appear much in the main part of the building, in the sheltered rooms and corridors even a mouse could not slip through.

Camrad_RIP 12.01.22 в 20:32

I wandered through the corridors, hiding from the guards, one of whom had a good sensory technique that sensed the vibrations of the floor. It was passive, like my shadows, and didn't require the cost of activation, which was a rare thing. His rare class of stone warrior and his twenty-ninth level required him to be a formidable opponent. And his uniform was officer's and pompous. The gentleman was about my age, maybe a little younger, and gave the impression of an over-aged rich man. He was a kind of a golden boy, imprisoned in a warm place, but, nevertheless, quite appropriate to this place and extremely dangerous. He evoked a peculiar mixture of respect and contempt, mixed with mild interest.

Camrad_RIP 12.01.22 в 20:34

By the way, I met a couple more elite fighters, one of whom was a level thirtieth bodyguard. He followed the ridiculously short man, who was the local mayor, step by step. The mayor himself was short, not ugly, but he lost all laughter when he looked at his very stern face and cold eyes, like bare feet in winter. Such an important hen!

Camrad_RIP 12.01.22 в 20:42

I was about to leave when I noticed traces of the black substance on the door handle leading to one of the closed and carefully shielded offices.

Camrad_RIP 12.01.22 в 20:43

It wasn't for nothing.

Camrad_RIP 12.01.22 в 20:54

I didn't go in there, just noting to myself the necessity. I'd do better at night when the concealment maintained by the shadows was at its maximum, and there would be few people who could interfere with me or get caught in the crossfire. Only the guards will walk, but if I don't mess up, they won't get in my way. And if I screw up, I'll still be able to escape.

Camrad_RIP 12.01.22 в 21:02

While the day was in full swing, I went back outside, deciding to wander through the ranks of construction workers some more. Maybe I'd find someone or something that would be interesting. I didn't, but I noticed one of Dajua's acquaintances nestled in a corner. I calculated the risks, then hid in some far corner and slipped into someone else's slumber, looking over the events of the past few months.

Camrad_RIP 12.01.22 в 21:03

And do you know what I found there?

Camrad_RIP 12.01.22 в 21:04

No-thing!

Camrad_RIP 12.01.22 в 21:04

No suspicious persons, no strange events, nothing at all. But I found out that the deceased often took various part-time jobs to make extra money. He did not know the exact addresses of all the employers, but he did know about a couple of moonlighting jobs, which gave me more addresses to check. I gave the drunkard a dream about the best drink he had ever had, and then I left the dream and went out into the real world.

Camrad_RIP 12.01.22 в 21:05

By evening I had gone around all the places I had learned about from sleeping memory. At the same time I had time to eat, and even bought pies (with apples!), having had a good time. Alas, I have found out nothing, except the address of a thief's brothel and the location of a smugglers' stash. The latter could be visited somehow because this smuggling was all sorts of herbs and parts of monster bodies, very useful for one humble alchemist.

Camrad_RIP 12.01.22 в 21:07

I left satisfied with my find and dissatisfied with my lack of leads.

Camrad_RIP 12.01.22 в 21:07

So far I've only got a trace of the black crap in the magistrate's office, but I'll get there later. Then it's time to look at the situation with those guards who dealt with the dead painter's case. It's an ephemeral lead, too, but it's better than doing nothing at all and just waiting.

Camrad_RIP 12.01.22 в 21:21

I feel less and less like doing this challenge.

Camrad_RIP 12.01.22 в 21:22

It's a bit uncomfortable.

Camrad_RIP 12.01.22 в 21:23

Research of the local guardhouse yielded nothing. I mean, I found a lot of interesting things, but nothing about my case. The guards in general were surprisingly lazy assholes, unwilling to overexert themselves. The man who took the hanged man off the noose, of course, saw some irregularity and unnecessary trauma on the dead man's body. But he did not voice his conclusions in any way, for what for? To add unnecessary work to himself?

Camrad_RIP 12.01.22 в 21:24

The murdered man was no one at all, so there was no one to answer to the guards for his death. And there was also a suitable version - he had hanged himself! Especially since he had no intention of getting involved in a criminal showdown with the debtors without an order from above. And yes, he also thought that the man either owed a lot of money or had sassed someone.

Camrad_RIP 12.01.22 в 21:34

Actually, local thieves do not like to kill where they can be forced to work off the damage, or even put into debt slavery, often without the prefix "debt". But "do not like" does not mean "do not do". And it is usually not the debtor himself who is forced to work it off, but his relatives and friends, on whom the debt of the punished person was shifted, and with interest.

Camrad_RIP 13.01.22 в 15:24

Going back to the investigation, which didn't happen, no one paid the guards to turn aside - the guards handled the covering up of the tracks of the crime themselves. With their resources, so to speak. Looking at it this way, a lazy guard was far worse than a corrupt one. And he was corrupt too. A complete set of all the standard vices and shortcomings of a corrupt civil servant. Hey, up there! Did I ever leave Earth, or didn't I?

Camrad_RIP 13.01.22 в 15:25

I didn't want to go back to the magistrate's office. And I shouldn't have to, not that I care! But if there was any danger in this town, I wanted to get away from it with knowing what I had to get away from. So far, except for a bunch of suspicions and a few disturbing facts, I know nothing. I need more information, more understanding of the situation.

Camrad_RIP 13.01.22 в 15:39

That's why I crawl around the signal strings and straight into the jaws of trouble. The only thing that calmed my paranoia a little was the firm decision to run away as soon as my butt start heating. I might not be strong enough to fight a truly powerful enemy, but I could run away from trouble even with overwhelming superior firepower and physical strength.

Camrad_RIP 13.01.22 в 15:40

The night magistrate was far more frightening than it was during the day. The long empty corridors, lit only occasionally by a bored sentinel surveying the territory entrusted to him, seemed like the guts of some monster into whose jaws you had carelessly stepped. The silence was broken now and then by the rustles of the squeaking wind, the creaking of the floorboards, and the quiet rattle of the old walls. It seemed as if the place was alive, reasonable, and want to tell me something, something very important.

Camrad_RIP 13.01.22 в 15:41

So, as I shook off the imagination and suppressed the reflex urge to get more information about the building from the clairvoyance, I slowly crawled in the direction I needed to go. My assumption that the protection of this place would be stronger at night was not justified, for the protection remained the same. But there was more darkness and shadows, and fewer bystanders. So I got to my destination rather quickly, learning to slip carefully through the obstacles with shadow steps.

Camrad_RIP 13.01.22 в 15:48

The green lines of spells could certainly have disturbed me or at least detected me, but the spells were far from perfect, so I chose to take my chances. If the door was covered by alarms in a solid layer, as well as the window, then the walls were enchanted much weaker. And so the further action was ridiculously simple: one shadow step into the office next to the one I wanted, whose protection looks much more modest, and then another step, already through the wall, right into the right room. Don't forget to carefully dodge the alarms in the process.

Camrad_RIP 13.01.22 в 15:50

The good mood that had been provoked by the realization of my intelligence and coolness was immediately extinguished as soon as I entered the room itself. The first thing I noticed most obvious was that it was very dirty. I mean, in the real world everything was clean, tidy, and luxurious, but the Gaze showed literally layers of black as night traces and footprints, along with puddles of black sludge that seemed to smear even the ceiling. I was scared to get out of The Shadow, despite the lack of any serious alarms (the little things that didn't count). It was nasty to step into that shit, even if the clairvoyance was silent.

Camrad_RIP 13.01.22 в 15:52

In the end, I came to a compromise solution by simply wrapping a shadow around my legs. Whatever the stuff was, the aggressive energy of the shadow would have to prevent it from coming at me. I made the outer shell of my "Boots" from the usual solidified shadow (just a barrier that took a bizarre shape), but inside it, I accumulated a huge amount of charge, corroding, and cold-rotting power. What if it's contagious and I'm walking on it?

Camrad_RIP 13.01.22 в 16:11

When I got out of the Shadow, I made a mask of shadows, too, for the smell was there. It was almost inaudible, more like subliminal and carefully concealed behind the expensive perfume, but it was there. A faint note of something reminiscent of a moldy cellar of potatoes and the sweet smell of decomposed flesh. If I hadn't had my perception, if I hadn't been expecting something like that, I might have missed it. I gave in to my paranoia and poured myself a standard, but high-quality broad-spectrum antidote, just in case.

Camrad_RIP 13.01.22 в 16:25

I wrap my entire body in a thin layer of shadow, and create gloves using the same technique as the boots. I still have to rummage through the owner's desk, which doesn't make me feel good. I feel like a plague doctor, crawling straight into an infected tomb. It is the silence of the clairvoyance and the sense of danger that is most annoying, for I am too used to their constant help.

Camrad_RIP 13.01.22 в 16:27

The desk and the filing cabinets were covered in layers of crap that were not just lying there quietly, but woven together in a structure, unlike any other spell I had ever seen. It was like oil bubbles in a boiling cauldron, stacked in an incomprehensible and mind-numbing pattern. It's quite a sight, especially when the clairvoyance is silent.

Camrad_RIP 13.01.22 в 16:29

My intuition, on the other hand, reacted to these spells, even if barely perceptible, as if breaking through the muffler, weakening considerably in the process. The black blotches covered only a few drawers. One in a filing cabinet, one in a desk, and another secret one, also in a desk, but with no outward manifestation of being there. The shadow sphere found the hiding place easily, but it was never able to examine the enemy's magic. And I did not doubt that it was the enemy - it was all too alien, too evil, too ugly. It couldn't be friendly to humans, or anyone for that matter.

Camrad_RIP 13.01.22 в 16:30

Okey.

Camrad_RIP 13.01.22 в 15:31

It's time to play the great thief and burglar.

Camrad_RIP 13.01.22 в 15:31

How do you pick a lock that is invisible and inaudible to you, and its construction is not at all clear? And if you do not want to touch the lock, what then? The answer was surprisingly simple, in fact. In fact, all the locals, I noticed, liked to lock the windows and doors, but forgot about the walls. Of course, they are thick and strong, and you can't get through them or break them quietly!

Camrad_RIP 13.01.22 в 15:32

I think, no I'm sure, that those with abilities similar to mine have probably thanked the local rich people for their attitude toward security more than once. Even though I couldn't feel the spells made of the black stuff properly, I had no trouble using the back door. The shadow sphere sensed something, or, pardon my language, it sensed too much of nothing. In the area where such peculiar magic was at work, there was an emptiness. Barely noticeable, almost undetectable, but it was there. In theory, even without Gaze, I could figure out the location of the traps, albeit with great difficulty, using only a detailed probing of my surroundings with the sphere.

Camrad_RIP 13.01.22 в 15:36

The main thing was that now I could judge with some certainty the degree of closeness of the hiding places. It was the closet that I opened first. The biggest area and the most room to maneuver. I'd never tried this before, but I managed to move into The Shadow, reach inside the closet (three layers of protection, just in case), and then just as carefully open the door on the other side, molding a levitating key from the shadows. It was outside that all the keyholes were caulked with invisible crap, but on the other side, everything was normal.

Camrad_RIP 13.01.22 в 16:33

I could have used the shadow even without sticking my hands in the danger zone, but I didn't risk doing such obvious manipulations directly on the surface of the cabinet. So I just used the newfound trick I'd picked up after the Bigfoot fight - to create a shadow attack while I was still stepping. When I came back to reality, I had already managed to leave a shadow structure hanging in the air right in the middle of the protected cell. And then all I had to do was manipulate it without touching the signal threads.

Camrad_RIP 13.01.22 в 16:34

To be honest, this was hardly the first time I'd ever created an object so delicate and precise from shadows. The costs, by the way, are quite bearable, as for a miniature drone on a magic base. Unfortunately, I have to fully control the movement of the shadows down to the millimeter, and the subtlety of the effect has limits.

Camrad_RIP 13.01.22 в 16:37