I opened my eyes slowly. The ceiling of my room in the Golden Griffin was drowning in the morning half-darkness. I stretched on the mattress. My joints popped with a dry crunch, releasing the accumulated tension. I yawned powerfully, scratching my neck. I felt completely regenerated.
I ran down the creaky stairs to the main room. The air smelled of smoke from the hearth, but the aroma of fresh bread was missing. Elena stood behind the counter. She wiped the clean wood with a cloth, and her face expressed deep irritation. She sighed with relief at the sight of me, but immediately tightened her lips.
"We have a logistical problem, Dave," she started firmly. "The artisans in the square cut us off from supplies. The butcher refused to sell, and the vegetable guy slammed the door in my face. They started boycotting us after the slaughter at Malcor's place and the execution of the officials. They want to starve us out."
I snorted shortly, leaning against the wooden pillar. "Primitive tools of weak people," I muttered with Brazen chill, brushing invisible dust from my sleeve. "If the market tries to impose silly blockades, we simply cut out the middlemen. The forest outside the city is full of free meat. Since they cut off our trough, we will take supplies straight from the source."
I wanted to add something else, but suddenly I felt it. Beneath my boots, deep under the oak floorboards, a vibration echoed. It was not a normal tremor caused by a passing cart on the street. It was a hollow thud. I closed my eyes for a fraction of a second, focusing my senses. I silenced the street noise. Deep in the tavern's foundations, something alien smoldered. A dark signature that dug into the building's structure like a hidden parasite. An anomaly.
I opened my eyes, and a predatory smile crept onto my face. "Some trash has nested under our cellar," I informed Elena calmly, as if speaking about a leaking roof. "I will handle it at night, when everyone goes to sleep. First, we must refill the pantry. Shnee!".
The white-haired elf emerged from the back room. She wore her leather armor, resting her hand on the rapier's pommel. She nodded to me, ready to leave.
We left the city through the side gates. The forest smelled of moisture and rotting leaves. We entered the thicket. I walked at a slow pace, keeping my hands in my pockets. Shnee followed right behind me. I observed her out of the corner of my eye. She was alert, but a rigid resistance hid in her posture. Her body still remembered the weight of the iron collar.
A hollow growl erupted from the tangled ferns. The thicket broke. A pack of mutated hounds fell onto the path. Five beasts the size of calves, with jaws full of needle-like teeth and skin covered in horn-like growths. Their eyes glowed with sickly hunger.
"Yours," I threw indifferently, stopping in place.
Shnee launched forward. She wanted to perform a fluid dodge, but brutal reality immediately verified her condition. Her muscles, ruined by years of hunger and lack of training, simply refused to be smooth. She tripped over a slippery root sticking out of the ground. She lost her balance.
The first hound jumped straight at her chest. Shnee desperately blocked the blow with her rapier. The steel grated. The beast's sheer mass knocked her to her knee into the dirty mud. The elf panted heavily. She caught shortness of breath after just five seconds of fighting. Her movements were clumsy, stripped of their former grace. Instead of pure fencing, she had to save herself with a raw survival instinct.
She fired frost mana from her open hand. Ice burst chaotically, freezing the hound's ankle joint. The beast lost its footing. Shnee used this gap. She drove the rapier straight into the monster's neck, twisting the blade with cruel effort. Blood squirted onto her face.
The other hounds rushed in a frenzy. The elf fought dirtily. She hit with the pommel, threw clods of frozen earth, cutting blindly, relying solely on survival. Finally, after a minute of chaotic fighting, the last beast fell dead into a puddle of blood.
Shnee slumped to her knees straight into the mud. She rested her hands on the ground, breathing with a loud wheeze. Her arms trembled from monstrous exhaustion. She was completely drained of strength.
I looked at her in absolute silence. I felt no pity. I felt a cold pragmatism. "Your body forgot how to fight, Shnee," I judged firmly, approaching her slowly. "You wore chains for too long. You are weak, and your movements are readable. If you fall into such a crowd on the deeper floors of the dungeon, they will tear you to shreds."
She raised her gaze to me. There was no rebellion in her diamond eyes, only a painful acceptance of the truth. "I know," she whispered, wiping blood from her cheek. "Brutal work awaits us," I continued, turning toward the forest. "I will break your current limits and build you anew. But first, we must hunt dinner. Get up."
We moved deeper. My predator sense quickly caught the right signature. The smell of musk led us to the edge of a small clearing.
A Grey Fang fed in the center. A mutated boar. It was a gigantic mountain of meat and hard bristles. It weighed well over a ton. Its tusks could easily pierce a steel plate. The boar spotted us instantly. It dug its hoof into the dirt, snorting loudly, ready for a destructive charge.
Shnee instinctively reached for her rapier, but I raised my hand. "Save your breath," I muttered, stepping forward.
I had no intention of throwing boulders at it or engaging in a wrestling match. The meat of this beast was valuable. Smashing its torso would destroy our provisions. Pure logic suggested a fast solution based on simple anatomy. The eye is a direct hole leading straight to the brain coils. Perfect target.
I extended my arm, pointing my index finger exactly at the monster's small eye. I unblocked a fraction of my weaves. Dense mana swirled on my fingertip. I compressed it with ruthless force. The air immediately smelled of sharp ozone.
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"Sapphire Lightning," I said calmly.
A thin arc of current shot from my finger with a deafening crack. The beam crossed the distance in a fraction of a second. It hit the charging boar's eye with surgical precision. The current found the path of least resistance. It broke through the eyeball directly to the brain. The powerful voltage cooked the beast's nervous system in a millisecond.
The huge beast stiffened in mid-step. Momentum pulled it forward, but there was no longer any life in its guts. The boar crashed onto its snout with a massive thud, digging the earth and stopping two meters from me. Thin smoke rose from its burned eye socket. The rest of the body remained untouched. The neck, sides, and tenderloins were in perfect condition. Pure perfection.
"Pack him up. We are going back," I ordered Shnee, flicking a spark from my finger.
When we crossed the threshold of the Golden Griffin, I immediately sensed that something was wrong. The atmosphere in the main hall was heavy. In the corner, huddled against a carved pillar, sat our eleven-year-old Ria. The girl with demonic horns sobbed with a quiet whimper. Her small tail trembled nervously, wrapped around a chair leg. Elena crouched beside her, stroking her back, but her face was tense with helpless anger.
I frowned. I approached slowly, and the Brazen chill completely evaporated from my posture. "What happened?" I asked, and my voice became low and dangerously calm.
Ria raised her tear-stained face. Her cheeks were dirty with tears mixed with dust. "I went... I only went for bread to the baker, just as Elena asked," she sobbed. "I had silver. But he... he threw me out onto the street. He threw a stale roll at me. He started yelling that he wouldn't feed demonic pawns. Everyone in line looked and laughed. He said we are a plague."
I felt the temperature in my veins drop drastically. A cold, murderous thought flooded my mind. Someone had just broken the basic rule of my structure. He struck a weak link to demonstrate his primitive power.
I crouched before Ria. I reached out and stroked her dark hair with the unusual tenderness of an older brother, bypassing the small horns. "Take a deep breath, little one," I said in a soft, soothing tone that sharply contrasted with my internal anger. "You have no reason to cry. You did your job. The fact that this man is trash devoid of a survival instinct is no longer your problem. No one from this city has the right to hurt you. This is just cleaning. I will handle it."
I stood up. My gaze was empty. "I am going to the city," I threw to Elena, turning on my heel.
The streets of Oakhaven still hummed with noise, but I walked through the crowd like an invisible ram. People instinctively stepped out of my way, sensing the heavy, dominating aura that I purposely stopped suppressing. The bakery was just two blocks away.
I pushed the doors with a kick. The hinges groaned. The interior smelled of fresh flour and warm wood. The line of customers froze instantly. Conversations stopped. Everyone turned their gaze to my silhouette in the black coat. The fat baker with red cheeks stood behind a massive counter. He paled at the sight of me. His hands dropped along his apron. He knew my face from rumors. He knew who he had hurt.
I walked toward the counter with a slow step. My boots hit the boards with a steady clatter. No one in line dared to flinch. Deadly silence fell. I stood right in front of the baker. He breathed shallowly, and cold sweat broke out on his forehead.
I did not raise my voice. I did not draw a weapon. I placed my right, open hand flat on his thick, oak counter. I used pure physical destruction. I let a raw pulse of force into the wood. The push bypassed the laws of elasticity.
Crack..
The sound resembled breaking the spine of a huge beast. The massive, oak counter exploded. The thick wood collapsed in a fraction of a second, turning into a rain of sharp splinters that scattered on the floor. The structure folded inward.
The baker squeaked, retreating in panic and tripping over bags of flour. He fell on his ass.
I pulled a bright silver coin from my pocket and threw it onto what was left of his workstation. The silver clinked against a splintered board. I grabbed the three largest loaves of bread lying on the shelf.
I looked down at the trembling craftsman. My gaze was washed of pity. "The market operates according to simple rules," I hissed coldly. "I pay with silver, you issue the goods. But if I hear again that you made that little girl cry, I will return here. And I swear that I will rip your crooked spine straight through your throat, and then burn this shack to the foundations. Understood?".
The man nodded in spasmodic terror. Customers by the walls stared at the floor, shivering. No one dared to speak.
I turned around and left the bakery with a calm step, taking the bread to the base. I educated the market.
Late night fell over Oakhaven like a dark shroud. In the Golden Griffin, all candles were extinguished. Only Shnee and I stood in the gloom at the bottom of the wooden stairs. The stench of mold hit our faces. I stopped before the stone wall. The vibrations came from here.
"Step back," I threw to the elf.
I extended my hand. Instead of playing with pickaxes, I simply crushed the space with telekinesis. The stone cracked with a hiss. The wall crumbled into gravel. The air inside the chamber was stifling. A biological mass pulsed in the center. It resembled a rotting heart. The beast trembled.
Suddenly, a voice echoed in my mind. "You are eons late... Creator!" the anomaly roared.
I frowned. My pure logic quickly cataloged this information. It was pathetic babble. I ignored the words. The anomaly struck with a psychic wave. The attack targeted the nervous system directly. Shnee bent in half. She fell to her knee. The alien will forced its way into her mind.
I yawned. I took this pressure with ease. Pure logic suggested a simple rule. A weaker will always breaks under the weight of a stronger one. "Bad technique," I murmured.
I opened the valves of my aura. I released a wave of murderous Blood Lust. The anomaly's psychic attack shattered under the pressure of my dominance. Shnee breathed loudly. She looked at me with fanatical devotion. "Lend me this," I said.
She handed me her rapier. I released Sapphire Slime from the pores of my arm. The blue mercury coated the blade. It hardened in a fraction of a second. Five vines shot from the beast's body. I took a fluid step to the side. I made a precise swing with the sapphire blade. The compressed slime went through the wood like butter.
The monster roared. It intended to crush me with its mass. I used brutal physics. I focused energy in my right leg. I struck the floor with my heel. The granite cracked with a roar. A gap opened under the anomaly's legs. The monster fell into the hole. The beast tumbled. It smashed its armor against a pillar. I approached the lump.
"Enough of this bullshit," I growled.
I drove the rapier into the body. I reached the nervous coils. I twisted my wrist ninety degrees. I turned the monster's insides into mush. The anomaly stiffened. Only a green core remained. I dismissed the Sapphire Slime. I threw the weapon back to Shnee.
I sat on the floor. I grabbed the core with telekinesis. Pure logic suggested material optimization. I stripped the crystal of its coating. I released streams of Sapphire Slime from my hands. I drove them into the walls. I connected the crystal to the tavern's foundations.
I constructed an autonomous circuit. The walls trembled. The base gained a dormant kinetic barrier. An intruder will bounce off the front doors. We were secured. I stood up from the ground. I brushed the dust off my pants.
"We are going upstairs," I threw to Shnee. "Breakfast is probably cold. I am in the mood for scrambled eggs."