Chapter 165: Peeping Tom
Chapter 165: Peeping Tom
[‘Mind Shadow’ can be evolved! Choose: ‘Unbreakable Link’ or ‘Mental Projection’.]
What a hard choice, and for once, not because I didn’t understand what both options did. Second was clear enough and looked very useful for reconnaissance and such. The first one… It was harder. I liked the “unbreakable” part, but what would it even do?
Both had a lot of potential. It was possible I’d be able to use some of my abilities even though mental projection—or Pest. As for the unbreakable link—did it mean that once established, no distance would be an obstacle to it? Or that no magic could break it? Maybe not even death?
Still… I picked ‘Mental Projection’ in the end, because I preferred to know what I’m getting.
With that level up, I didn’t lose the ability to read thoughts of creatures around me—it only became sharper and increased in range with level—but I also gained the ability to, just as I though, push my mind out of my body. The process was distracting, but to my great joy, I found I could still act more or less normally with my body while doing it.
It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, though. My first disappointment was that my mental projection was not just intangible, it didn’t exist as a physical or any shape at all… which meant that it couldn’t see, hear, or scent anything. Touching things was even farther beyond from the scope of its abilities.
Blind sight was an unexpected, but great synergy with it, though. I didn’t know how exactly it worked—certainly by some magic—but I could use it even in mental projection, which made me not blind, but only deaf and scent-deaf in it.
Pest also couldn’t use magic through it. His explanation was that he inhabited my body and my head, not my mind. I could argue that he inhabited my character sheet… but in the end, only the System itself could judge how it worked, and the way it judged was clear enough.
Mental projection’s range also was limited… but it was a very generous limitation. I found myself able to reach to Tinaris and Blue Mountains and even a little beyond them before feeling the connection between me and the projection wavering.
It had superior speed, though, which that brief journey showed very well. In short, my mental projection moved with the speed of my thought—because I only had to think about place and it was there.
Besides blind sight, the projection, of course, could use my mind-reading. I was also reasonably sure that the effect of ‘Steel Soul’ spread to it… but it was hard to say, since I didn’t get into situations where it would activate.
After I finished my tests, I calculated I spent a couple of days in preparation and evolution. There was still no sight of any gods on my trail, and there was little for me left to do except for making more web traps and waiting.
I could do these two at the same time. I made traps for whoever comes, flies or teleports in my vicinity, and at the same time used mental projection to check on my girls and cultists and find out that I could read thoughts properly, after all.
They were doing well. Bishop was administrating the cult with a sense of purpose that radiated from him like an almost physical thing. He didn’t worry for me—like a true zealot, he believed I will be just fine.
Rosha and Risha seemed to make more and more money every day, and both were ecstatic about it for different reasons. Rosha—because she liked the stability it provided. Risha—because it made her sister happy, and gave her money to spend on things she liked (cooking ingredients and pretty dresses, mostly). Unlike Bishop, both worried about me a little (but Rosha, of course, even to herself, added that she didn’t want to lose on money she could get from me). It was… adorable.
I really was softening, wasn’t I?
The most interesting subjects of thought peeking were Yvenna and Gi. The mess in Yvenna’s head was even worse than the mess she showed to the outside world… She really was batshit crazy. But my image in her head was so flattering that I was ready to forgive her the craziness.
Besides, I didn’t mind it that much before, either.
Now Gi… I felt it was vital, now that I could, check out his loyalties or lacks of such. I suspected he wanted to stab me at the first opportunity, and didn’t mind that, either—but I’d like to know how and when to be ready.
What I saw surprised me. Despite the great effort he applied to the training, Gi held very little negativity towards me. The boy had a primitive outlook on the world, as expected of a caveman—strength ruled, this was it. What put him above most cavemen was that he believed that there was strength to be found in unity and community.
But he also believed that I had more strength than any communities, and if I was willing to share some of that with him, he’d have to shut up and take it. Even if he was angry with me for killing everyone he knew, and even if he hated his teacher’s guts for a tendency to teach him by beating him up in endless spars.
Well, it worked! Gi was showing a lot of progress already.
It was fun to watch my people while they didn’t even suspect I was present… not to mention, read their thoughts. But all fun ended sometimes. My ended, when out of the sudden, I felt a hostile presence a dozen meters away from the entrance to my den.
I could see her with my blind sight from there—Goddess of Wizards herself came to kill me. Alone—I was lucky. And she also teleported right into one of my webs—but that wasn’t luck.
There was just no place around that wasn’t filled with them.