Chapter 7: Shelter 1

  Do you know what I hate most about this world?

  False safety.

  When you see a roof over your head, when the walls don’t move, when you can sit down without something trying to rip your spinal cord out…

  your body starts to relax.

  And that’s the exact moment you die.

  That’s why I don’t trust caves.

  Not even this one.

  An old, damp, deep cavern…

  But I knew it. I’d slept here for weeks, years ago.

  It had never betrayed me.

  Until now.

  The blue storm had passed by, leaving behind corpses, radioactive mud, and silence.

  The little girl I rescued was still breathing. A miracle.

  Though she kept trembling—fear and exhaustion were devouring her.

  The cold was a problem.

  “Easy… it’s over,” I whispered to her.

  A lie.

  I wanted to do something for her, but all I had was this shelter.

  I didn’t like using my powers on children. It usually didn’t end well.

  So I kept it to the bare minimum.

  The entrance was sealed with compacted stone. I didn’t leave any openings to watch through—I didn’t need them. No sounds. No creatures.

  I sat down after an intense run.

  I pressed my back to the wall and started looking for something useful inside my spatial pendant.

  It was only a few brief seconds.

  That was all it needed.

  A subtle tremor.

  A vibration under my boots.

  It wasn’t wind. Or an echo. It was… something crawling.

  I opened my eyes.

  There wasn’t silence anymore. Just a faint buzzing. And something—something viscous.

  Then I saw it.

  From the depths of the cave, a rippling silhouette emerged, sliding along the rock like it owned it.

  Slow. Confident.

  Too big.

  An unmistakable concept trailing in its wake.

  One hundred and twenty legs, a serrated jaw like sickles, and multiple eyes glowing with a reddish light.

  A damn Rank 7 Scolopendra Rex.

  “Seriously… right now?” I muttered.

  With one arm I kept the little one against my body. With the other, I slid my sword out of its sheath.

  I used my ability to amplify her calm and sense of safety. This was going to get messy.

  There was no way to escape… not without turning my back on it.

  So I stayed there, standing in front of the damn centipede, thinking what I think every time this world throws a new cruel joke at me:

  “Perfect. Another shitty day.”

  …

  Except… it wasn’t a centipede. It was an imitator.

  While I cursed my existence for not detecting a threat that big earlier, I realized my opponent’s concepts felt… strange. Fake would be a better word.

  That brought a bit of calm to my situation.

  It could still be a tough opponent—especially because I had to protect the girl—

  but this was better than facing one of the strongest existences out there.

  “At least it wasn’t a real one.” That gave me some comfort.

  I wanted a little time to analyze my situation. Obviously, I didn’t get it.

  Without a moment’s hesitation, the imitator attacked.

  It came straight at me with its jaws. It could’ve been simple, but it had power.

  At an insane speed it had already covered half the distance. I didn’t have time.

  So the first thing I did was buy it.

  I increased the space between us a hundredfold. At the same time, I sped up my thinking.

  That bought me a few moments I wasn’t going to waste.

  With a plan already taking shape, I stepped aside as I circled the imitator.

  “Sensitive to light, hard exoskeleton, venomous, superior in power and strength, similar speed, and it has terrain advantage.”

  Listing my opponent’s traits was when it slammed into the wall.

  A massive hole appeared in it.

  The impostor had to be about a meter and a half in diameter, but it carved a hole more than four meters wide and several hundred meters long.

  As it turned around to continue its attack, it made an irritating click with its jaws.

  The mountain began to collapse.

  “Great! That’ll definitely improve the fight.”

  I thought idly, ready to execute my plan.

  I didn’t like resorting to plans like the one I’d come up with. But the fight couldn’t continue.

  Even though the exchange was brief, and I did everything I could, a few light bruises had formed on the girl’s fragile body.

  I had to end this fast.

  Without giving it the luxury of another assault, I launched my counterattack.

  From my pendant I pulled out a reaper bomb. I had a few I’d stolen on one of my travels.

  I threw it at the impostor, making sure to amplify the light to the maximum—while shielding the girl.

  Thrashing, the impostor was causing havoc. Rock flew everywhere.

  And the ceiling still hadn’t fallen—too slow.

  With the first part done, I moved to the second.

  Sheathing my sword for the moment, I lunged at the impostor while pulling a mace from my pendant.

  It was a single piece of extremely heavy metal I’d forged at some point in my life.

  Holding it with one arm, I smashed the heavy mace onto the impostor’s head, amplifying the vibrations of the impact for greater internal damage. I got the brief moment I was looking for.

  With the impostor currently paralyzed, it was time for the last step. The one I didn’t like.

  When I said my ability can amplify anything, I meant it. As long as I can withstand the strain it puts on me… I can amplify almost anything.

  Even my own ability.

  “I won’t last long. I have to finish it now!”

  Using the ability to amplify itself, I could feel the pressure—and it was almost unbearable.

  It wasn’t physical. It was something more… spiritual?

  Truth is, I had no idea where that pressure came from, but it was there.

  It felt like my soul was a muscle being filled with boiling lava, swelling to the point of bursting.

  Without wasting more time, I used my newly amplified ability to increase a concept.

  Just one: the sword that cuts everything.

  The mountain came down. The impostor came down too. And as the sword turned to dust, I was falling apart inside. I dropped to my knees, exhausted.

  “Ughhh… ugh…”

  I was completely drained. More than that: it felt like my whole body was boiling.

  And worse—agonizing pain ran through me from head to toe. Blood seeped from my mouth, my ears, my nose… and every damn pore.

  But I didn’t have time to relax. There was still a mountain about to fall on me.

  Abusing my ability a little more, I increased the density of the air to hold up the descending rocks.

  “Ugh… ahh…”

  The pain only intensified with every stone I stopped.

  Even when they stopped falling, I had no choice but to stabilize them so I could catch my breath.

  On my knees in a pool of my own blood, I thought:

  “When was the last time I was this tired?”

  My eyelids felt heavy.

  “Should I sleep?”

  Involuntary tremors shook my body.

  “A little bit won’t hurt… right?”

  The pain grew distant.

  “I’ll just close my eyes for a moment…”

  “Waahh!”

  A loud cry snapped me out of it.

  It was the baby.

  Still cradled in my arms, she was weakly tapping at me while she cried nonstop.

  “Ahh… guess today just wasn’t my day.”

  Thinking back on everything I’d been through, it definitely wasn’t.

  But there was no time to complain—or to be tired.

  Sitting awkwardly against one of the walls of my little cave, I pulled out a cloth to wipe the baby’s bloodstains away.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  The pain came back resentfully. I still felt extremely exhausted, and I’d probably lost about fifty liters of blood.

  I suppressed all that. It wasn’t the first time I’d used that ability, and it probably wouldn’t be the last… unfortunately.

  As I cleaned her, I kept shamelessly using my ability just to calm her down.

  It still sent jolts of pain through me to use it for small things like this, but I could handle it.

  While cleaning her, I couldn’t help noticing a few traits that gave her away as an übermensch. Which made sense—what else could she be?

  She was a tiny girl with black-reddish little horns on her head and bat wings on her back.

  There was also a bump at the base of her spine, which I had no doubt would become a tail in the future.

  Those features left me a bit perplexed, but I dismissed it quickly. They weren’t even close to the weirdest things I’d seen so far.

  What really caught my attention during the cleaning was the fear she was feeling.

  That shouldn’t have been strange, given the circumstances. But the concept of her fear was different from the instinctive kind I’d expect from a baby.

  It was rational.

  That meant this creature—this baby less than a year old—was aware of what was happening around her.

  As strange as it sounds, it was the first time I’d run into an anomaly like this.

  I have to say, mind-related abilities were very rare…

  Especially the ones that enhanced the brain itself.

  Even though I’d run into a few who had that kind of ability, I still found them hard to spot at a glance.

  But after a thorough check, I could say with certainty that this child had one.

  “Heh… so you could understand me the whole time? Aren’t you the smartest little thing?”

  I tried to crack a joke to lighten the discovery.

  It didn’t go the way I expected.

  A deathly silence settled between us.

  She’d stopped crying a moment ago, but now she was deadly quiet.

  “Well… shit.”

  Not only that—her fear only grew.

  She stared at me with wide eyes, on the verge of hyperventilating.

  “Easy, easy… hey, I’m not going to hurt you. I promise.”

  I tried to use my ability to calm her down a little, but it wasn’t working very well.

  And I didn’t want to force it more than necessary.

  “Yeah… today is definitely not my day.”

  Losing the teleporter, surviving that Acolyte ambush, a Rank 7 bear attack, a damn blue storm, the deadly cold of this tundra, a Rank 7 imitator, a mountain collapse, and my internal organs shutting down… and it wasn’t even noon yet!

  But convincing a scared baby that I wasn’t a threat took me three hours.

  “See? I told you I wasn’t going to hurt you…”

  I repeated the same line who knows how many times.

  Time crawled, like it always does when I’m hurt, bleeding, and surrounded by stone.

  When I could finally move without pain making me vomit, I still had the baby in my arms—calmer now, though she wouldn’t look me in the eyes anymore.

  With her eyes closed, the baby finally fell asleep.

  I don’t know if it was exhaustion, fear, or because she’d already accepted she was at the mercy of my mood.

  I put together an improvised bed out of a few items from my pendant and gently laid her down so she could rest.

  Then I stood up, swaying. I still felt awful, but I was improving.

  “Time to get something out of this mess.”

  I walked to the rock collapse. The mountain had vomited tons of debris, but it was nothing I couldn’t move with a bit of directed amplification.

  I didn’t want to use my ability again, but… well. Need beats self-preservation. Always.

  Moving the rocks to make a safe passage wasn’t pleasant.

  Even though I was used to ignoring pain, my body was another story.

  Every now and then, slight tremors ran through me. They weren’t exactly physical. Like I said, it felt more like “conceptual” damage than anything else.

  But it still manifested physically.

  After a few minutes of digging, I found it.

  The imitator’s body lay there, split in two, just like I remembered.

  Imitators were usually rare. They were extremely weak creatures that infested other living beings to survive.

  Most of the time, they were harmless parasites.

  Even though they could transform into any creature they devoured, this one must’ve gotten lucky and found a Rank 6 Scolopendra Rex right after it died.

  I didn’t believe for a second it could’ve eaten one while it was still alive.

  That’s why it looked so weak compared to a real scolopendra.

  It probably wasn’t even at fifty percent.

  The corpse it left behind, on the other hand, was pure profit.

  Scales, legs, blood, eyes, venom, heart… even its guts. They might not compare to an original, but everything on this carcass had value.

  “Thanks for donating to a good cause, ‘insect.’”

  I stuffed it all into my dimensional pendant without thinking too much. There’d be time to sell it in the city.

  I walked back with legs like jelly. The baby was still asleep.

  But we had to find a new shelter.

  I was doing everything I could to keep her okay, but everything that happened today had pushed her body to the limit.

  I could see lacerations, internal injuries, malnutrition… and she was getting sick.

  Worst of all, I didn’t have supplies for situations like this.

  It’s been a long time since I traveled with company, and I don’t have this kind of problem.

  I needed to find a city soon.

  I thought about all the cities near this mountain, in the kingdom of Azup. Named after its king. Yes—one of those kingdoms that changes its name when the king changes.

  Of all the cities in the kingdom near my location, one came to mind.

  Litnee.

  I didn’t like that place. Honestly, I didn’t like anything about this kingdom.

  It was one of the many tyrannies infesting this damn planet.

  All the nobles were petty dictators pretending to serve the bigger tyrant in the capital.

  But it wasn’t just this kingdom. There were barely any peaceful places left in the world.

  The powerful did whatever they wanted to everyone and everything around them.

  It was disgusting.

  The city we were heading to fit the most common model: loud, dirty, full of fanatics, criminals, and people who’d do anything for a coin.

  But it had what we needed.

  And more importantly: there was no one in that city who could beat me.

  Without saying a word, I picked the little one up, making sure not to wake her, and started opening an exit.

  I still felt pretty bad, but I’d been worse.

  —The city is three hundred and sixty kilometers away…

  It would’ve been an easy trip if I were in perfect condition.

  As things stand… I’ll get there by night.

  Once I was out of the rockslide, I headed toward Litnee.

  I ran at a comfortable pace—not too fast, but enough to arrive in under four hours.

  For now, I preferred to focus on recovering, protecting the girl, and, above all, avoiding being discovered.

  The last thing I wanted was an ambush in my current state. I wasn’t fit to fight at a hundred percent… well, not if I wanted to recover anytime soon.

  As I got closer to the city, the frozen tundra began to fade. Even though the unbearable cold was still there, it was just a little less severe.

  The nearly dead trees were replaced by those damn mushrooms.

  Worst of all, I’d have to change my outfit—especially the gas scarf. It was too easy to recognize.

  And even if I put on another mask, I’d still be fairly exposed to the deadly spores from those mushrooms.

  Did I mention I hate them?

  I hated being a human in a world that wanted us dead.

  “Ah… when am I going to reach a damn dome?”

  I found myself drifting in thought on the way to the city.

  The rest of the journey was… quiet.

  Too quiet, if you ask me.

  But I guess the concealment did its job. No one detected us.

  No ambush, no monster, not even a surprise storm.

  A miracle.

  Four hours later, the first structures of Litnee appeared on the horizon.

  Ugly, chaotic, and carrying that smell of death and hot metal that defined it so well.

  “Home sweet home…” I muttered, dripping with sarcasm.

  Time to go in.

  Walking toward the gate, I checked the city’s condition. I didn’t want surprises.

  But it was exactly what I expected.

  Two Rank 5 guards watched the entrance: one asleep, the other about to be.

  Counting them, there were barely two dozen Rank 5s in the entire city.

  And a single Rank 6—obviously the leader.

  The rest… hundreds of thousands of lower ranks.

  Up close, the city was even worse.

  The concepts of fear, hunger, death, decay, malice, corruption…

  Every negative thing you could imagine soaked into every corner.

  And the cold only made it worse.

  A strange feeling ran through me as I watched the scene.

  One of the guards cracked an eye open when I got close.

  The other kept snoring.

  “Reason for entry?” he asked, not moving from his busted chair.

  “Shelter. Food. Medicine,” I answered, blunt as ever.

  His gaze dropped to the sleeping creature in my arms. He frowned.

  “Your daughter?”

  “…No.”

  “Is she yours?”

  “Not that either.”

  He studied me more closely.

  I stayed silent.

  “And you’re not going to explain anything?”

  “Should I?”

  The guard snorted. He was too tired to deal with this.

  “Look… they don’t pay me enough to ask you what I should be asking. But if you do something weird, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  “I’ll add it to my list.”

  With a vague gesture, he pointed at the gate.

  “Go in. But don’t make me regret it.”

  “Wouldn’t be the worst thing that happened to you today,” I said, crossing the entrance without looking back—leaving a few coins behind.

  The city smelled the way it looked.

  Garbage, corpses, ruined houses, and soulless übermensch were visible the moment you stepped in.

  Two concepts practically drowned out the rest:

  Malice and Resignation.

  That last one was especially abundant.

  As I headed toward somewhere I could sense “friendlier” concepts—probably some kind of trade center—I felt a lot of fierce eyes on me.

  Their owners, who thought they were hidden, were probably looking for a chance to kill me… or rob me. Maybe both.

  I went deeper into the inner streets—the ones merchants avoid, where the smells get thicker.

  The girl was still asleep, tucked under my coat. My presence drew stares. I knew it.

  Too many.

  And some of them… too low.

  “Sir, do you have food?”

  The voice came from a boy. Couldn’t have been older than eight. Skinny, filthy, with the eyes of someone who’d already learned how to survive. He had a few unnatural traits, but that was common among übermensch.

  Three more appeared, crawling out from the rubble like roaches. One pretended to limp. Another hid something behind his back.

  Concepts: Poverty. Hunger. Feigned pain. Lies.

  And beneath all that… hostile intent.

  “I’m hungry,” another repeated, eyes wide. “And cold…”

  They surrounded me. The acting was good. If I didn’t have this ability, even I might’ve bought the story.

  “I understand,” I murmured, never stopping my pace. “But I’m not the easy target you’re looking for.”

  One of them tried to slip a hand into my coat.

  Bad move.

  I grabbed his wrist without breaking stride. The crack was soft, clean. Nothing permanent—but enough to make him remember not to try it again.

  He screamed. The others ran without looking back.

  “Learn to lie better… or pick dumber prey.”

  I kept walking, weaving past vendors, prostitutes, fake beggars.

  All of them were some blend of interest, greed, hostility, resentment… desperation.

  I limited myself to reading concepts. Better not to look at their faces.

  As long as they didn’t attack, I had no reason to kill them—or… save them.

  I found a medicine stall. Bad condition. Suspiciously cheap.

  Lies. Poison. Desperation.

  I walked past.

  Then another, selling food. Cheap meat.

  Lies. Human meat.

  I sped up.

  “Seriously, is there nothing good?”

  Even though it was night, most shops were closed. I couldn’t believe there wasn’t a single one that met even the minimum standard.

  So far, I’d only found a sword to replace the one I’d lost. Honestly, that was the easiest thing to find.

  I still had plenty of backups, but it didn’t hurt to have more.

  They tried to scam me with the sword too. Still, I found one that was good quality.

  But finding food or medicine… that was proving difficult.

  Even clothing was scarce.

  Now I had two options: wait until morning and try my luck again, or rob one of the few mansions—preferably the one in the center of this dumpster.

  I was debating those options in my head. I didn’t like the first. And the second… was getting more tempting by the minute.

  “On top of that, the blue gas is unbearable.”

  With those thoughts swirling, I saw her.

  It wasn’t her face, or her posture, or even her tattered clothes.

  It was the conceptual удар.

  Compassion. Protection. Exhaustion. Shame. Genuine fear. Hopelessness.

  It was… pure.

  Broken, but pure.

  A young woman, not older than me. Two children at her side. One slept on a frayed blanket. The other clung to her like she was the only thing left in the world.

  Her eyes met mine. She didn’t ask for anything. She didn’t say a word.

  But I felt the question.

  Not from her lips.

  From her soul.

  I don’t know why, but I stopped.

  We met in a tacit silence.

  I didn’t say anything, because I was about to regret it.

  She… couldn’t say anything.

  “Ah… me, playing the hero. What a joke.”

  With that, I walked over to the woman and the kids.

  She didn’t speak—she just stared at me. But she held her children tighter.

  The one who was awake looked at me with curiosity… and fear.

  Standing in front of her, my eyes sharpened.

  “Don’t make me regret this.”

  Without hesitating, I tore off a piece of my concept.

  The pain wasn’t as intense as with the imitator, but it sure as hell wasn’t a joke.

  Faster than she could react, I inserted it into her “Talent.”

  “I hope I never see you again.”

  And with that, I left. Not before slipping a generous amount of capital into her pocket.

  I called that a permanent increase.

  I wasn’t sure if anyone else could do something like that, or if it was just me.

  One day it occurred to me: why not increase something permanently?

  After many failed attempts… and almost dying, I achieved what you just saw.

  A way to increase something forever.

  I permanently increased her talent.

  Obviously, it had a cost. Nothing was free.

  First, tearing that piece out hurt like hell.

  I also couldn’t take much at once, and the increase was usually random.

  Second… well, there wasn’t a second.

  I just didn’t like doing it.

  Besides, it took me a few hours to recover.

  Maybe it wasn’t a good idea in my current state.

  But what’s done is done.

  Ignoring the woman’s questioning stare, I continued my search, on the edge of making my decision.

  “Sometimes the world gives you an excuse not to be a monster.”

  That was mine for today.

  I guess.

  I kept walking through broken alleyways and closed markets.

  Nothing useful.

  Just trash, poverty, and more rotten concepts floating in the air.

  I started to believe Litnee had nothing to offer me… not even a good excuse to steal.

  Almost half an hour passed in more useless searching.

  The city looked asleep, but really it was just waiting for someone to let their guard down.

  The few stalls still open were traps with lights.

  Lies. Greed. Desperation.

  I wasn’t going to sink that low.

  I was seriously considering robbing one or two mansions at this point, when I heard a scream.

  Short. Sharp.

  And then another, closer.

  I stopped.

  The sound came from one of the main avenues.

  “Another drunk brawl?” I muttered.

  But no.

  The weight of the footsteps, the thunder of raw force…

  It was two Rank 5 guards.

  And they were going all out.

  A block—hundreds of meters ahead of me—exploded.

  The two fighters, relatively powerful, crashed their weapons together without a shred of concern.

  A spear and a sword.

  The blows were vicious, wrecking everything for hundreds of meters around and killing any unlucky soul nearby.

  “Is this a betrayal? Why isn’t the Rank 6 doing anything?”

  I was sure I knew what was happening.

  In fact, I could see him watching the “show” alongside other guards. Was he laughing?

  “You bastard! That piece was mine!”

  “Didn’t see your name on it.”

  “I called dibs on the last one! That pizza was mine!”

  I stopped.

  They were ruining innocent lives over… a slice of pizza?

  That cruelty…

  Not even animals are like that.

  “Yeah, a lot of the residents were trash, but not all of them.” That woman crossed my mind.

  A small tug on my coat pulled my attention. It was the girl.

  She’d woken up. She looked scared, begging us to leave with her eyes.

  “Easy. This will end fast.”

  I patted her head. I made sure to cover her eyes.

  I didn’t want her to see what came next.

  Coldly, I looked at the two Rank 5s.

  I raised the temperature of their blood to one hundred thousand degrees Celsius.

  They vaporized instantly.

  Their final expressions: a mix of horror and pain.

  But they weren’t the only ones to suffer.

  I almost dropped to my knees.

  A sharp pain tore through my so-called soul again.

  I should stop doing things like this… especially in my current state.

  But unfortunately, I couldn’t.

  All I had left to think was:

  “I hate this world.”