I woke up surprisingly well-rested. I went downstairs for breakfast – there were few people, it was early, just a couple laborers eating in silence like me. While eating, I mulled over my next steps: leave the city or stay. There was a strong argument for staying – they'd catch me very quickly if I ran. Before, they hadn't taken me seriously; but once I did real damage, they caught me within days. And they certainly had trackers. The only thing that made me stand out to ordinary soldiers and city guards was my short hair – I needed to fix that. A maid told me, for ten coppers, that the nearest alchemy shop was on the next street.
I left the tavern and headed there. The shop was, how to put it, unpresentable – its facade hadn't been renovated in ages, shuttered windows, an old door. But I didn't need a legendary dragon-killing potion – this would do. Inside, a young girl of about sixteen sat behind the counter.
"Hello, how can I help? We have the lowest prices in all of Djer, and quality second to none."
"Hello, girl – do you have potions for female beauty?" She showed me a narrow selection. Luckily, what I needed was there – hair-growth potions. I bought two, plus some disguise potions. I left the shop and returned to the tavern, paid for three more days, went to my room, and drank the potion. In three hours, my hair grew to shoulder length – hurray, I was a blonde again. I cut it to shoulder length with a sharp knife and sat meditating until lunch. After lunch, I studied runes – I needed to improve my magic. My mines had saved my life more than once; I needed to perfect them.
I lived in this rhythm for three days – short walks during the day, the rest in my room. On the fourth day, I decided to act. I still had mines made in Part's house. I strolled through the central districts. One day, I hired a coachman – there were painfully few in this city – and asked to be taken outside the city. I'd noticed that carriages were always checked at the gates. I closed the curtains and changed into a dark robe, covering my head with a homemade ski mask – all black, for effect. I stuffed a thick sheet of poor-quality iron into my spatial ring. When I entered the carriage, my face was hidden by a hood, so the coachman, even if he survived, wouldn't recognize me.
At the gate, four guards lazily approached. Two took the horses' bridles; two went to the coachman. I didn't know what they were saying, but I tossed a light mine under their feet. I pulled the thick iron sheet from my ring and hid behind it – the thin carriage partitions wouldn't protect me from the light. The metal heated in an instant; good thing I held it with a piece of wood, which immediately caught fire. From inside the carriage, I Shadow Leapt toward the guardhouse, tossed two charged light mines inside, and hid behind the wall. As before, the light worked silently.
I ran to the closed gate and threw five fire mines at it – these were loud, like fireworks. After the sixth mine, the gate broke. I knew that under siege conditions, they couldn't be broken so easily – they had artifacts generating a shield – but the on-duty mage who activated them had been left in my makeshift solarium. Through the broken gate, I ran out of the city – then, a hundred meters out, I activated anti-tracking and used three Shadow Leaps to return. I quickly left the scene; a company of clan soldiers was already running toward the gate. I made two more Shadow Leaps into an alley I'd scouted during my walks. There, I changed into a normal tunic and walked slowly back toward the tavern.
After this incident, there were far fewer clan soldiers patrolling the streets. I got to know a couple of tavern guests – merchants waiting for their cargo to be ready. Meanwhile, I picked my next target. I hadn't abandoned rune study, trying to improve. I needed remote or timed mines – what I had were more like grenades than mines. Runes of Time, Order, and Darkness created a complex weave that froze a spell. I struggled with it for five days – depending on the rune combination and mana charge, the freeze time varied. In between, I watched the clan's alchemical workshop.
For reconnaissance, I also used the oldest method from my home planet. One day, while walking, I very conveniently twisted my ankle. A brave Osm soldier, Lon, happened to be nearby – he helped me back to the tavern. Then, in my room, he pounded my pussy for a whole fifteen minutes. I was thrilled by this sex terrorism and hinted I wouldn't mind a walk around the city. The next day, he had the morning shift, so he came for me in the evening and took me for a walk in the park, telling me about his hard and heroic service. I was so moved I gave him a blowjob in a quiet corner of the park. Apparently, a gang of killers had been operating in the city, but thank the gods, they'd fled a few days ago – the clan had sent their best tracker after them, and he wouldn't return until he caught them.
Three days later, Lon came to the tavern dead drunk – he was grieving. I took him to my room. Something terrible had happened: a promotion to sergeant – but for another soldier, not him. I consoled him, insisting he should change his post so his superiors would notice him – not the clan house, but some important facility. And then my patience paid off. This idiot started telling me how hard it was to serve as a guard at the alchemical workshop – how they had drinking parties every evening, fresh meat every day, while the soldier on duty went hungry. From his words, I roughly understood the building's layout – behind the seven-meter walls, nothing was visible. I'd seen carts go in and out, but who went where, I didn't know.
One important detail: not every material can hold mana. What I did on wooden squares wasn't magic, it was pornography – 60% of the mana was lost, and I couldn't infuse much. Real masters used specially enchanted materials like iron, and gemstones held magic best of all. Why am I saying this? From the late Part's house, I'd taken not just gold but jewelry – prying five rubies out of a hairpin was easy. What was hard was engraving runes on them. I had to search the city for jewelers' tools. Only one shop, after I swore I wouldn't enter the business in this city, sold me a small hammer, a set of tiny chisels, and a dozen semi-precious stones to practice on. Technically, what required years of training came easily to me with a system-user's Perception and Arousability – I quickly learned to make even strokes on the stones. On the eighth stone, I set a Light rune and made a lantern. Once confident, I engraved five mines on rubies, linking them with a timer rune chain.
The next morning, I left the tavern and headed toward the alchemical workshop. My target was the food cart that the gentlemen bought from a nearby clan restaurant. The cart followed its route, covered with a tarp. Passing a house where the cart fell into shadow, I created an Earth Trap under the horse's hoof – the horse stepped into a golf-ball-sized hole and injured its leg. The driver jumped off and ran to the horse. In stealth, I approached the tarp – under it were kegs of cold kvass and boxes of food, but a separate jug of wine stood aside. I charged the rubies with mana, set the timer for an hour, and got out of there.
I spent the whole day at the tavern, chatting cheerfully with my merchant neighbors. Inside, I burned with impatience. In the evening, my brave soldier didn't come – nor the next day. On the third day, he popped in, refused a drink, just said he was swamped with guard duty – the clan was searching for someone and couldn't find them; all soldiers were being interrogated, everyone under suspicion.
Now I had to be quieter than water. Over those carefree days, I'd passed Part's house several times – no one had touched it. The city could only sell it after a year with no heirs. That same day, I broke in and went down to my favorite basement. Though the source was gone, the basement was still full of dark ki emanations. I decided to finally study the body-hardening method from old Don Juan.
First, the manual warned me what potions I'd need to avoid dying. Second, it taught a ki circulation method to be done alongside breathing exercises. I learned it in eight days. While performing the exercise, ki would exit my meridians at certain points and torment the body; simultaneously, the same ki, circulated at the right tempo, promoted adaptation – so if you broke a bone, the ki made it stronger. But of course, you had to start with muscles. The first stage was muscle hardening.
I didn't overthink complex exercises – I just built a gravity platform. This time, I did it right: fully charged, it should increase gravity twelvefold. I sat on it, deactivated, and began the breathing exercise, gradually circulating ki as instructed. After three hours, I had about 500 ki units on the system scale. Then I lay on the platform and charged the runes.
It hurt. No – it HURT beyond belief. Muscles tore, internal organs were surely damaged; I even got a few cracks in my bones. When the platform ran out of mana, I passed out immediately. When I came to, everything hurt – though theoretically, the Masochism perk's regeneration should have activated. Without it, I'd be dead. My lungs hurt most; breathing was hard. With difficulty, I put my hand on my chest and cast Medium Heal. Half a day later, the pain eased.
I checked the logs:
Willpower +4
Masochism +3
Eternal Pain Method – Stage 1: 13%
It was brutal. I cast Heal another dozen times over my body – it helped. I ate some meat. I took out the blacksmithing book and started reading carefully – the first five pages took several hours. The more detail I understood, the higher my skill level would be.
And so began my boring days in the dark basement. I finished the first stage in a month. Interestingly, the second stage – internal organ hardening – started at 26% immediately, since I'd already been hardening them on the gravity platform. Lately, it hadn't been enough – I upgraded it with a couple emeralds, calculating it would increase gravity about twentyfold.
Have you ever vomited pieces of your internal organs? After 20G of gravity, I was vomiting blood and organ bits; one eye seemed to burst. It took me about a month to recover. The hardening percentage jumped by 40%, but I was terrified – just thinking about it made me tremble; the sheer feeling of collapsing on the floor was horrifying. I spent three days psyching myself up, then lay on that cursed platform again. Honestly, it was easier this time – I recovered in two days – but the benefit was less, only 20%. But for the willpower alone, I got 20 Willpower points. I finished the second stage in a month.
The third stage was bone hardening, and I put it off – first, I literally lacked enough ki in my body; second, I was morally exhausted. Three months of constant pain – it wouldn't take long to go insane. Under normal circumstances, I would have; three months alone in a dark basement isn't something a person can endure. But Willpower and Intelligence made me much tougher in that regard.
I started using Ki Blade to drain my core to zero, then meditated to replenish over days – this increased core volume, but harmoniously, with a strong foundation. I spent another three months in the same rhythm. I finished blacksmithing in 42 days, gaining "Smithing" at level 7. Over three months, I learned to form not just a sword from ki, but even scissors – I could change shape in any proportion.
It was time to go hunting – first, my supplies were running out; second, there was no point hiding anymore.