Готовый перевод Его не звали, но он приперся / They never called, yet he is here: Глава 32

Chapter 32

For some reason, the first thing I chose was the point runaway, rather than a way to start the conversation gracefully. An accident, I guess. Fortunately, my will of steel and the experience of a man from the twenty-first century allowed me not to run off into the sunset, but to keep an indifferent face. For I am as undaunted and unwavering as the embodiment of tranquility and Buddha himself. And it was not panic paralysis on account of nervous overstrain at all! Do you understand? It was purely a manifestation of my awesome awesomeness. Anyone who thinks otherwise, I will personally feed to the Shadows.

After about five seconds of silent staring, I came to my senses enough to use the shadow sphere to plot a convenient route out of the camp, and one that wouldn't catch the eyes of the sentries who were watching. Whatever the conversation was, I wouldn't be talking near other people's ears. What could we possibly have to talk about?

"Okay," I answer, now that I've got myself under control. "Then we'll talk. Hold on to me tightly, and don't make a fuss."

It was with these words that I began my maneuver. I suppose the only reason she didn't scream was that she was surprised and lost her voice. My characteristics were enough to make me a decent amount of speed, though. I could have been faster, but I was afraid of hurting Tarija by landing and stopping too abruptly.

I accelerated, jumped, maneuvered, and then, a few seconds later, my person was outside the ring of cordons and out of reach of the lights of the many bonfires. The guards were easily dealt with. A little dust in the face of one, a second was distracted by a bird frightened away by a shadow, a third thought that something flashed on the edge of the field of vision, and as a result, no one even looked at our twosome. They just didn't turn their faces in our direction.

She was clearly not used to this kind of adventure, and she clung to me like a life preserver, so that if my stats had been lower, I would have been bruised. She didn't show any sign of panic beside her feverish grasp. Except that her breathing was a bit labored, just a little bit.

When I got a couple of hundred yards away from the farthest patrols, including the local rangers' campsites, I set Tarija on her feet and shook the little flask in my hands, which immediately glowed quite brightly. I even had to cover the clearing where we were staying with almost weightless shadow barriers, whose purpose was to conceal the source of the glow. Why bother working people, for they often have no sense of humor at all.

Tarija, who had recovered from the turmoil, was now looking thoughtfully and sublimely up at the sky, which was incredibly clear and cloudless today, and, given the absence of smog in the medieval world, even the smallest stars were visible. I didn't even have to hurry her - the sight was truly delightful.

As a child, I always dreamed that I could collect all those stars with my hands, like brightly colored glass. - She said with a kind of luminous sadness, keeping her head down from the sight that occupied her. - You know, the innkeeper's daughter in my street had a collection of colored glass. I'd always wanted one, they weren't expensive. The alchemists were always selling them - a handful for a few coppers. Even our family could afford such a purchase, but my father didn't care, and good wine was expensive, as was honey. He hadn't rolled over yet, choosing what he was going to get drunk on before he passed out. I prayed to the gods for a long time that they would give me the same glasses, that they would make my father stop beating my mother... I prayed for a lot of things. And then one day I waited for Lithia to leave her toys unattended and stole two whole handfuls for myself. That's when I realized that the gods and prayers didn't work the way I thought they would, and I begged for their forgiveness.

To be honest, I was expecting something different - claims or accusations of callousness, but certainly not this kind of peculiar confession. It wasn't even her decency or concern for her feelings that kept her quiet, it was her trivial interest. I still didn't understand why she had started this conversation in the first place. My clairvoyance was silent, and I didn't want to strain it on my own, because the backlash would be too heavy. And why talk at all, if you always use clairvoyance at every opportunity?

"You know, Tin, I'm not stupid. I know exactly what you didn't like about me. It's hard to talk to someone who led the way to your death." There was a little more emotion in her words, as well as strange anger that had no target. "If you'd just lifted my hem and treated me like a thing, it would have been easier, and after what you did to me, it would have been... ...more pleasant, I guess. I've been around a long time, and I know what they do to girls like me when they get caught in the act. Except you don't even treat me like a whore bought for perpetual hire, or some kind of slave. You just ignore me. You despise me for who I am. I don't know how exactly I understand it, I just feel like I've always been able to figure out what people think of me."

It is surprisingly sound thinking and, it seems, also something resembling the rudiments of an intuitive understanding of the interlocutor. Perhaps it was a passive feature of her pretending skills, but even so, it was something I could develop in the right direction. It's not just her boobs that serve me, is it?

The words themselves did not touch me in the least, nor did the attempt to pity her, or whatever she was going to do. My opinion of her was complete enough, simply because I had looked into the very depths of her essence, finding it very simple and primitive. She had great potential to be a strong person. Even now she was smarter and perhaps deeper than her dead partners, but no more than that. She had boxed herself in, bound herself in, chosen her path and goals, which were gray and primitive to the core. All that mattered was that she still occasionally looked up at the sky, reminiscing about her childhood.

"You know what, Tin?" Now her anger was quite addressed, though very sad and bitter, devoid of any intention to really hurt or offend. "It's not for you to judge me! You weren't the one who hid in your own house, hoping that a couple of kicks to your older sister would be enough to calm down today. You weren't the one who comforted her when he started molesting her! You weren't the one who had to drown the old freak in the ditch, where he'd fallen himself so you wouldn't be afraid to go to sleep! You weren't the one who survived in the Kraо, scrounging in dumpsters when they kicked me out of a job without paying me a penny! You weren't the one who had to pay for shelter, kneeling before another fat hog who smelled like a cesspool! Not you! Me! Me! Yes, maybe you, noble one, are disgusted by what I lived and did! I have stolen and killed and betrayed! Just to live! To live well, not as an m-mother! It's not for you to judge me!"

Part of it was still controlled hysteria, supported by her skill, but only part of it, and only the smallest part. She had undoubtedly stirred and inflamed herself to the proper limit, but that was all. The rest was done by memories and long-buried fears, which she was now deliberately bringing to the surface to throw them in my face. Do you sense any lies, my love? Then the truth is on you!

Her assumption about my "noble" origin was quite reasonable - the appearance of office plankton who had never worked a day in the field, the plasticity of my movements, and, most importantly, the high level and obscure abilities that ordinary people would not get. Even the occasional breakthrough in my speech not quite "aristocratic" turnovers did not serve in her eyes as a refutation of the theory.

The funny thing is that if I had been a simple bandit, like one of her colleagues I killed, she wouldn't have cared much. Yes, such a one would have treated her like a thing, but with the action of the ring, she would have loved him for that, too. It was almost physically painful for her to realize that I could treat her as a human being, which she hadn't received from anyone since she was a child, but preferred to look at her as nothing. And even though I tried not to show it, there was also a certain amount of contempt, driving the person in love with me to the point of evil despair.

The attempt to play "damsel in distress" on this side was quite obvious-one of her favorite tactics, which had helped her out quite a few times. She may have been entirely sincere now, but that didn't take away from the main point. Since she had failed the first time, when I hadn't even let her open her mouth when I knew she was going to lie, all she had to do was tell the truth. And she had the truth, and it was bitter and hurtful. In theory, after such a rebuke, the overly sensitive Aristo could really... No, not love her, but at least pity her and not push her away anymore. Surprisingly sensible and subtle move for a simple townswoman, but women, if you believe the Internet, in general, are good at such tricks, conducting them on the bare intuition. On the other hand, judging all girls by threads of unlucky guys from 4chan isn't the wisest decision, either.

Anyway, the last thing she expected from her not quite theatrical and definitely not staging was my quiet and sad laughter. Success and my comforting embrace, she expected. Failure and a couple of slaps showing her where she belonged - she expected that, too. But not that I would start laughing as she opened her soul to me.

"Tarija... You seem like a smart girl, but sometimes you're so stupid." I'm sad-sad, and also sincere, I stretched out in response to the incomprehensible look. "No, no, I listened to you, so please listen to me."

I gestured broadly around the clearing, the darkness of the forest itself, and the sky above our heads as if enveloping them in a huge imaginary circle. I also knocked her out of the hysteria that was starting to set in again.

"You see, Tarija, my dear..." I pause for a moment to formulate my thought better. "Alurej is one big mixture of a dump and a slaughterhouse, where every creature in human or monster form sees in those around them only valuable experience. It's hard to be a good person under those conditions, very hard, almost impossible. But, you know, some people and, I suppose, non-humans are up to the task. You know, not being animals."

I was beginning to be carried on the wings of inspiration again, and my titles, set up to find the weak points of other people's character, only added gasoline to the fire brewing in my butt. Not yet anger, but rather simple indignation that pierces even my thick-skinned troll skin and pokes me in the buttocks with an awl.

"I, you know, have a right to despise you, not because I'm noble and honest and you're vile and mean, but because I've seen some shit too. A lot, a lot of shit." I'm sure my smile now turned out to be utterly maniacal. "And I sincerely doubt that a drunken domestic tyrant is comparable in the degree of guaranteed trouble to a trio of hungry goblins. And I certainly find it hard to accept your position, after I've seen more of the legendary creatures than a few lifetimes ahead of me."

My throat literally spiraled with a growl, and a grin tore at my face as I put myself into my words. I'm surprised to realize that I'm actually saying what I believe myself to be true.

"I am direct proof that it is possible to survive even in the biggest vat of filth, which is over my head. I hate to call myself a good person just so I don't have to lie to myself, but, you see, Tarija, at least I was trying." I went from snarling to a real hiss, angry and amused at the same time. "I tried to act not only based on profit but also simply based on banal humanity. Doing all sorts of illogical nonsense, just because I can do a good deed without losing anything. You didn't even try. You just reveled in your hatred, self-pity, and desire for a better life. It's understandable, it's right even, in terms of pure logic."

I force myself under control, not letting myself snap and push too hard, knowing intuitively that now she is one step away from breaking. How much would she need to break? She's too weak, too primitive... pathetic.

"I despise you because I see you as someone I could have been. All I had to do was follow logic, turn away at the right moment, do nothing stupid, mind my own business, and take what I could take. The only difference is that with my powers I would have caused far more trouble than you could have done. It's a shame, I agree, but it's revelation night, isn't it?"

She is almost crushed by my words, and her tears no longer require any pretense at all. My words reach her not only because she is subject to the ring, but also because of their truthfulness. Somehow, this comparison of the two of us has awakened in her the deeply buried remnants of that childlike belief in the best, that she could become strong-strong and all the troubles in her life would cease.

I look at the woman seated directly on the cold ground, who has nothing and probably never had anything, and then I hold out my hand, offering to get up.

Here's my hand, Tarija." Trying not to shrug off the pathos, I continue my speech. "I'm not promising you a rich and prosperous life, nor am I promising you the mountain of gold and the fulfillment of fantasies you dream of. All I can offer you is the possibility of a lot of trouble and ignominious doom. All I can give you is the ability not to deceive yourself by pretending that you never had any other choice. All that I have, all that I have left to myself, I will give to you, too - the opportunity to choose for yourself."

For a moment, I thought I had finally broken her. Or that my words had passed her by, never breaking through the wall of nurtured cynicism. But a second later, the dainty hand was still in my hand, allowing me to lift its owner to her feet.

I removed the silence from the hall that had been imposed for the duration of the conversation. I removed the shadow walls that concealed the light and crushed the glowing flask with the shadow so that the compound reacted with the air and stopped glowing.

We walked back in silence, while the pretty girl walking behind me tried to fix her tear-stained face. Somehow this victory, a small one that no one wanted, that didn't change anything important, made me feel much better than the titles and levels I'd gotten for the orcs I'd slaughtered.

For some reason, this victory seemed much more important to me.

The sneaking back into the camp was as mundane as ever, and our absence was not noticed even by the coachman, who was rather tipsy and nervous from the anxiety of the day. No one else cared enough about us to pay any attention to our absence. Especially since we hadn't been gone long at all.

Tarija crouched silently by my side and fell asleep without saying a word.

I waited and prayed for another attack by orcs and goblins. I waited for the occasional monster or some other opportunity to pretend to be dead, but it never came. Yes, I could take my herb bag and go into the woods and say "easy, I've done this a hundred times," but I would probably be remembered very well... as a nominee for the Goodness of Maosork, the local version of the Darwin Award. Seriously, the god of the Fools, the Deceived, and the Insane do patronize the souls of those who have managed to kill themselves in a particularly stupid way. Well, unless they killed themselves on purpose.

I was told about Goodness by Tarija, who, even though she was almost uneducated, knew the local folklore quite well. It's not surprising, considering that there's not much else for ordinary people to entertain themselves, and there's not much to do here.

I'd already resigned myself to the fact that there wouldn't be another batch of orcs, but I kept grumbling. The nail in the coffin of my hopes was the sudden activation of the clairvoyance a few days after the massacre I had caused. The visions were filled with battles and blood, spilled exclusively by green-skinned men. The spirits of a multitude of shamans literally cloaked the night sky, the screams of hordes clashing with one another, the blood flooding the forest floor - all merged into an inexpressible cacophony, a continuous kaleidoscope of death and destruction. Apparently, my provocation had worked too well, and there was real rancor among the greens.

Now if only the city forces would cooperate and strike a decisive blow, which would solve the problem of savages for the next few years! But Kraj had also suffered greatly, and the mayor and other noblemen had wisely decided to stay away from the warring Orcs for fear they would band together against a common foe. Let them fight each other off while the humans wait in the defense, protected by still strong and impregnable walls. There's a better chance of survival.

If the leaders of the Krai were a little more ambitious and reckless, they would not care about the losses - the king would send new settlers here as well as provide new army units, especially if they claimed a successful punitive campaign to begin erecting new outposts deep in the wilderness.

On the other hand, the new forces sent to replace them may not be friendly to the local government at all. They will send a new advisor to "help the glorious mayor in everything," and after a couple of years, they will appoint an assistant as the new mayor. This is not the first time this has happened in the same region. The current appointee got his job that way and ruined his predecessor's life, so he will have no illusions.

The main conclusion from this is very simple and happy for all the locals, but sad for me - the orcs don't give a shit about us all right now.

Communicating with Tarya was a creaky process. It wasn't even that she was withdrawn, that wouldn't be true. No, it was the difference in mentality and the norms by which we thought. With Hans and Losij, especially the latter, we were, if not on the same wavelength, then somewhere close, but with Tarija, it was more complicated. She simply did not know what to talk to me about, and I, you know, was not very good at making small talk with beautiful women either.

To be honest, the situation was ridiculously reminiscent of some kind of love story or cheap drama that they made a shitty TV series out of. Two morally handicapped people are trying to build communication, and neither of them has any idea how to do it. If there were a third observer near us, he would have laughed his ass off watching us struggle. He would have laughed at first, and then I would have killed him, the bastard.

Fortunately or unfortunately, there were no observers around, or I don't even know.

There were all kinds of conversations, but mostly we just... retold stories to each other. The girl knew enough interesting stories from a purely regional point of view (from all other points of view - boring to death), and most importantly, she was well oriented in the surrounding society. I knew a lot of very interesting stories, fables, anecdotes, and other jokes, but I was a lousy storyteller, but I had an opportunity to practice.

Now, before each camp, we were able to talk a little, but just a little. Tarija was in no hurry to make advances toward me - though she didn't miss an opportunity to squeeze in, and I pretended to believe it. As it was, life went on, no matter how boring it seemed to me.

The woods were getting a bit safer, so now there were even heroes who went there for mushrooms and berries. They went in groups, supported by a couple of guards, but they were already going. The guards themselves were lured by a share of the bounty, to which many readily agreed. There were no casualties, but one man was seriously mauled by some mutated hare, nearly spilling the hapless picker's guts. I even had to get a few potions out of the chests to avoid sepsis.

I was paid, by the way, and I realized why no one had approached me at all the whole way - the people around me simply did not know that I was an alchemist, so they went with their chafed feet and upset stomach to the few healers and herbalists who were part of the caravan. Fortunately, I knew this by clairvoyance, not after the fact, so I shrugged it off by saying that I specifically took a set of medicines with me on the road just in case. And they could not check my level and class, unlike all the sentinels, interrogators, and holders of other detective classes.

After getting a few silver coins for the potion (the standard market price), I go back to my wagon and Tarija's warming pot. It turns out that you can cook your food, but you can either gather wood in the woods yourself or buy it from the people who gathered it. The gal decided to help me at least by cooking food a little tastier than the broth from the common cauldrons. Before, she just didn't think to offer, and then she was already afraid to do it, lest she looks like a fool. What was on her mind? The hell knows!

I tested it.

Really tastier than the staff cooks' cooking, although they are justified by the number of cauldrons and the amount of food being cooked. I wasn't too lazy to say thank you, and then I just shook my head watching the very authentic embarrassment played by a born actress.

But they tried to rob me at night - it wasn't a good idea to shine a rather rare potion in front of the public. It was not only the frightened civilians who fled from the Kraj but all sorts of scum who had become dangerous to be there. This one had a level ten and felt like it had been recently taken, and a class of thief, which automatically made him a bad man in my eyes.

So the man just crunched his neck quietly, and then was carried outside the camp and thrown into The Shadow.

Amen.

The next morning the disappearance was noticed and a real circus began with the search for the missing person. Most of all several "cronies" of this figure, for some reason, suspecting me, but never daring to say the reasons for their suspicions. Arguments in the form of "I bet" were not accepted by the head of the caravan security. In answer to the mute question in the eyes of this superior, I did nothing but silently step aside from the carts with my belongings and offered to search them.

He realized at once that there was nothing to look for and, spitting on everything, admitted that the missing man had gone into the woods and had perished there. He ignored all the epithets about me and broke the jaw of the most talkative one for the epithets about his personality. He's a tough guy, though, just like diarrhea after laxative!

But there are no more complaints.

During the trip, I began to work actively with dreams, trying to get the Dream to fifty, using everyone around me as training aids. It might be inhumane, but I was confident in my abilities, and I wasn't going to do anything risky, just practice the skills I already had. All for another perk, all for grinding!

It removed the nightmares and long-standing phobias of more than a dozen townspeople and erased the freshly formed psychic traumas of even more victims who saw with their own eyes the consequences of the war with the cult. Cured many mercenaries, guards, and adventurers of post-traumatic syndrome. Gave almost everyone a good night's sleep and a good mood, allowing them to greet the new day with a smile.

Quite quickly this active training bore fruit, but the key point was to work with the dreams of Ygra, still following us in the distance, who I was able to train into the idea that Tarija was a member of our pack, not a meat briquette with legs. It was difficult, but by repeating carefully choreographed dreams regularly, I managed to get this concept across to the primitive mind of the ogre.

I didn't touch the townswoman, by the way, though I could have easily reassigned her identity as I wished. But I wanted to let her break the monsters in her head solely by her strength, which was so silly. Since I had given her a chance to become something more than a victim of an overly successful experiment that my greed would not let me get rid of, I would play the game to the end.

Going back to the reward for the fifty stats in Dreams: it was pretty expected - two epic skills to choose from, both very interesting and useful for my self-development, but you can only choose one. I'm almost used to this kind of bullying of my hamster and toad. And I don't care if I don't have a hamster or a toad! It's still bullying!
T.N.

The Dreams has reached 50 points! Choose a perk!

- Dreamweaving (epic);

- Deprivation of Sleep (epic);

The first perk allowed me to work more cleverly with dreams, weaving together far more complex and fragmented dream scenarios. In fact, it was a trivial enhancement of my two dreamwalking skills by a certain percentage. The main power of the gift was another, for it allowed me to weave the dreams of different people into one massive dream with disdainful ease. Quite an interesting perspective opens up, especially if you need to arrange a meeting abruptly without extra ears or eyes. However, these prospects are very vague and completely unclear.

I suppose that the full perk-granted abilities will be revealed later, when the first rank is closed and at least the initial stages of the second-rank abilities are taken. In principle, what I already have will be enough to choose this thing.

Useful?

Useful.

Well, let's take it!

But the second option was far more dangerous, especially if used in combat, and I didn't want to take it. Sleep deprivation allowed me to stop sleeping. Completely and permanently. I would not be able to sleep, only to fall into dreams, where I would continue my activity. At least now I would not be affected by soporific skills of a magical nature below the mythical rank. And I will be able to put those who can fall asleep to sleep much easier, and their dreams will be much easier to bend to my will.

My common sense won out after all. I had no idea exactly how I would feel after a month in this regime. I too often used sleep for mental relaxation, and without it, I would not feel well. No entertainment in the world I had created was a substitute for its absence. Both I and clairvoyance understood this - the Deprivation of Sleep can only be chosen if I decide to change my nature. Seriously change my nature, which I do not want to do.

Ok, I'll be honest.

I would have taken that step, but there was a question of the effectiveness of each perk. After all, dream weaving was designed to be as stealthy and unobtrusive as possible, with a wide range of effects. Deprivation, on the other hand, was exactly a limited combat skill, with which I could even kill in the dream, as if in reality. Or, at the very least, do it much more easily than I could now. I might be exaggerating, but not by much.

The rest is simple - I have enough fighting power without deprivation, while the ability to create dreams is the basis of my, let's call it style, which I use during games with dreams and other people's consciousness, and consists precisely in creating complex scenarios and working with the subconscious. The method is crude and not completely reliable, but it is much more discreet than simple subjugation through dreams. And I will not change this style.

Call it intuition or stupidity, but I just feel that Deprivation of Sleep is a "dead-end of evolution" within my class. I can't become an Overlord if I can't go to sleep myself.
T.N.

The choice is made, we can go back to training.

Certain people, I did not heal from mental trauma but rather bestowed it in an assortment. Those thieves who tried to steal my bag of potions, for example, received a delightful behavioral bomb. Every time they try to steal something, their hands are bound to shake, a lockpick will fall out, they'll trip on the spot, that sort of thing. Anything to make a fuss, anything to fail. And their subconscious will want to fail, so failure will always be the most critical for each particular situation.

Needless to say, their careers didn't work out. They were caught literally the very next day when one of them sneezed badly while rummaging through someone else's wagon. They were beaten badly, kicked out of the caravan, and left lying on the road. There are fewer beasts in the area than near Kraj, but they're as common as wolves, so I don't doubt they won't make it to the nearest village with their injuries.

They were planning to talk to me after we arrived in Ostmark, and they were planning to take advantage of my companion, whose appearance attracted too much attention. I did not feel the least pity for them.

Another mercenary got himself a carefully crafted and maximally, for years, a powered nightmare in which he would be killed, tortured, stabbed, and eaten alive by a little dead girl twelve winters old. The same one he killed during the mess in town. Killed, of course, not right away. Even the frostbitten board dweller as I am was against such hard lolicon. Scenario variation was maximized with the Dreamweave, providing more than five dozen scenarios for his death - all my imagination and reserve could manage.

And these scenarios will not come in a row and with different frequencies. So that one could go several nights in a row, another would come once every two weeks, and the third even once a month. And so several in one single night! I bet the scum would slit his own throat or go to the noose before the nightmare had used up half its energy. He's actually a very brave and strong-willed man, but a life like that would kill anybody.

Although he has the option of drinking, for every night he misses, he will be rewarded three times over. That's a good reason to drink without stopping at all, isn't it?

Another headache was the boy who had been completely wrong. The son of a wealthy spice merchant, he was not one of the world's elite but came close to it. The good spices here are sold by weight in silver and the first-class ones in gold! He was, as a man, not so bad, I have to admit. A really normal guy, adequate and polite, at least in appearance.

He only lashed out at his maids, and he lashed out hard. No, he did not torture them, though at times he whipped them with whips, preferring to torment both of them morally. The mother and daughter he had brought out of the debt hole were very pretty females. Black as tar hair, fine figures, and a lot of experience in "working off" debts. I'm sure if he had been persistent enough, he would have been guaranteed a triple. But the guy was a total sadist and a moral one at that.

The fact that both had not yet gone for the noose could only be explained by the fact that the guy, busy as he was and whose father was preparing him to accept the business, had simply no time to amuse himself with his victims. The funny thing is that he honestly saw nothing wrong with his actions - he was buying their lives, not starting to tyrannize ordinary townswomen! Their lives belong to him, whatever he wants, that's what he does! In all other areas of social interaction, the guy was at his most kind and peaceful. Not kidding, but in all seriousness! By the standards of this world, this 16-year-old brat was really a very progressive and humane manager and businessman. In addition, he had an undeniable charisma, enough to make people be drawn to him and adopt his methods.

A moral dilemma, though.

There seems to be no reason to kill or cripple the goat, just because he has found a perfectly legal and moral (from his point of view, but this is a question of the law, not just the guy) way to blow off steam, but I do not want to leave it to chance, either. The mother-daughter couple doesn't deserve this, and they won't last long either. He subconsciously wants to reach the peak of his pleasure by driving them to suicide, even though he doesn't realize it. This is the first time I've seen a situation like this, to be honest! From my experience of climbing on other people's heads, if a person turns out to be a fan of torturing someone for his pleasure, then he is also an asshole. And here I don't even know what to do.

To rewire the brains of his maids so that they start to enjoy the f*cking happening to them? So that would be an attack on the victim, which is kind of a bad thing.

Put a block on the genius of commerce and marketing for the pleasure of anguish? He'll go cuckoo after that, I can guarantee it. And it would be kind of inconvenient to kill him, too.

In general, I needed to be creative and a bit troll-like. The only thing I could say in my defense was that I had gotten pretty fucked up with this company, and I wanted to interrupt the dream and just sleep. Did he enjoy torturing two beautiful girls? Well, he would continue to enjoy it, only in a slightly different way, though in the same company.

But the guy won't complain, I guarantee you that.

I woke up this morning with a reserve close to empty, a slight headache, and such fatigue and exhaustion as if I hadn't slept all that time. Three system messages pleased me, though. The first was a notification about the maximum development of the ability to send dreams, which I immediately unfolded and began to read, not being distracted by Tarija, who was wiggling under my side, just as she was sweetly snoozing.

Send a dream: 5/5

It allows you to instantly put yourself into a dream, as well as clearly understand the boundaries of reality and dream; allows you to easily enter the dream of an intelligent being next to you, if it itself is asleep; allows you to masterfully collect information from other people's dreams; allows you to know the nature and thoughts of dreaming beings; allows you to easily seize control over another's dreams and keep the dreamer in the dream world without letting him awaken; allows you to skillfully influence the subconscious of a dreamer by putting the necessary ideas and behavioral matrices into his mind; Allows you to create shared dreams for several sleepers; allows you to forcefully leave anchors in other people's dreams, which can be used to find the marked person if he or she is asleep, even at great distances; allows you to create complex structures and independent long-lasting scenarios in dreams; allows you to kill a sleeper right in his or her sleep; increases the characteristic of Dream by +5; increases the characteristic of Concentration by +5.

Finally closed! The final improvement, allowing me to kill in the dream, is useful, of course, but the real treasure was the complex, programmable long-acting dreams. What I'd done to the infanticide mercenary with the expense of reserve, a lot of effort, and the recently acquired Dreamweave, I could now do again in an hour's work and with a minimum of expense.

By the way, I'm sure that if I had chosen Deprivation of Sleep, there would have been no "effort" required to kill a sleeper, and they probably would have added something useful to it, but I didn't care. I made my choice and I don't regret it anymore! In fact, I'd better expand the next message.

Create a dream: 4/5

Allows you to control the dream you are in, influencing the course of time; allows you to directly control the situations and plot of the dream; allows you to create complex, intricate, and variable scenarios for individual and group dreams; allows you to understand what scenes will cause the maximum response from the sleeper; allows you to create complex scenarios for multiple dreams that haunt the victim for a long time; allows excellent control over dream matter and confrontation for control over other people's dreams, even with the active opposition of other entities; allows you to strike at dream-dwelling entities if they approach your dreams.

Well, the quality has improved, I can create entire airy palaces in individual dreams, and in general, the ability has increased, but not more than that. The best thing is the ability to kill and fully fight nightmares, so now I feel much more relaxed and sleep better. I was still worried about those guys, especially after my encounter with the creature from little Sigismund's dreams. And they worry me now, for the parallels with the Shadows, the deeper into the Dreams, the thicker the scarecrows, yes.

However, the most important and most useless notification was a message from... my Ring. I admittedly didn't expect it, and when I opened it and read it, I laughed, but softly, so as not to wake Tarija up.

Congratulations! You did something to awaken the dormant spell in the Ring of the Perverse Mentalist, causing the artifact to send you this message. You do not gain any new titles, abilities, or performance boosts. Still, know that the ring's owner would get a chuckle from your actions! Good luck!

All right, I'll laugh, too. I've never met a more useless reward in my whole new life. And in the old one, I preferred not to accept a simple "thank you" or even "thank you very much" as a gift.

But if the mentalist who created this ring was perverted, then I'm not at all surprised that he approved of my actions! I had done a good job, after all.

What exactly have I done?

I shifted the sadist's perception of pleasure to the opposite side. I couldn't simply take the full part of his personality out of his head without driving him insane. Either I didn't have the skill, or I was in the wrong class, but I couldn't. But to turn a moral sadist into a moral masochist, who was addicted to humiliating beauties... why not?

I had to pull up my memory and pull out all the hentai and porn archives that were stored there, and then combine the dreams of all three of them and give them a month-long (time is stretched out!) marathon of perversions without registration or texting. There was a sadist and two women driven to the limit, and now there is a lover of hard (but moderate, so as not to injure the future financial tycoon) domination, with a lot of fetishes, which are completely shared by his two mistresses.

If I gave the guy from Ostmark his overly bitchy boss as a gift out of male solidarity. I gave these two little ones their boss, even if I twisted them. However, I doubt if they would have minded that turn of events.

Still, I would have been an excellent cupid, one might say, a masterpiece!

* * *

https://drive.google.com/file/d/110sDWvmfte9wjt7uztJUvPpoAcpT_Ap1/view?usp=sharing - The son of a merchant. Successful, intelligent, charming and generally a very good man with one little flaw. But the flaw has already been corrected.

The dices are moderate. The hero successfully threw a remoralization of Tarija, and in general, she became a little more convex in this chapter, not only in the ass and chest area but also as a character.

Another additional crit got a provocation from MC, which not only did not subside with the death of the participants but also reached the tribes, who sent their warriors to fight through the mouth of the witnessed spirits, which caused the assault of Kraj was canceled. But it had to be!

Somehow.

I laughed particularly at the actions of the MC about the sadist. The guy himself is generally a unique character that I create with the temperature, so not surprising. He's all good with morals, but there was a maximum (crit) craving for other people's misery. So he threw off steam as best he could, knowing intuitively that this is no way to behave with "normal people" and not slaves. But he didn't take slaves, because they were already broken - it wasn't interesting to play with them.

But he tried to be good and kind in everything else. Like Kirei of Feith, only closer to the good than the bad.

Anyway, when out of all the options (most of them were different ways to kill him or free the girls) what fell out, I laughed and added a message from the Ring.

No NC scene, although there could have been two: Taria/MC and the Two Mistresses / Their Ex-Torturer. It didn't work out.

Good for everyone.

Внимание! Этот перевод, возможно, ещё не готов.
Его статус: идёт перевод

Переведено на Нотабеноиде
http://notabenoid.org/book/80370/522776

Переводчики: Camrad_RIP