The forest is thinning out.

  It seems I’ve finally managed to escape that dreadful place. The entire time I was there, I didn’t encounter a single animal. Maybe my slender frame saved me from trouble with hungry, wild beasts.

  At the forest’s edge, I spotted a fence.

  It was made of enormous vertical logs, about three meters high, each sharpened to a point at the top. I saw no guards, no watch slits, nothing of the sort. And honestly—I doubt ordinary people could scale such a barrier without special equipment.

  I didn’t approach the wall directly. Instead, I moved parallel to it, ducking behind trees as best my bones allowed. Along the way, I still didn’t spot a single gate or watchtower. Don’t they fear an attack from the forest?

  Up ahead, a field opened up.

  All trees vanished—no bushes, no stones—just neat, uniform rows of crops stretching into the distance.

  The night was bright enough for me to make out a long, snakelike shadow trailing away from the settlement: a road, clearly connecting this place to other villages. That was both reassuring and worrying.

  By the way—how can I see if I have no eyes?

  I held my palm in front of one eye socket and saw only my hand. Then I stuck a finger into the socket—but I didn’t see the finger inside my skull, nor could I peer through the bones of my own finger. Instead, my vision just showed a black spot.

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  So it seems I’ve got some kind of magical “lens” in my eye sockets—replacing eyes.

  After finishing my little eye experiment—or rather, my eye socket experiment—I crept up to the last tree before the open field and took a careful look.

  Sure enough, the road led straight to the entrance, where a pair of gates stood. Two guards stood there, leaning on their spears. They didn’t inspire terror in the slightest—no shivers ran down my spine (which is fair, since I don’t have skin… or a spine that shivers). Just two ordinary blokes with long, pointy sticks. One even seemed half-asleep, slumped heavily against his weapon. Dawn was close.

  To my surprise, there were watchtowers after all.

  Two of them stood between my tree and the gate—but farther along, their number clearly increased. On each tower stood a single sentry, each holding something like a torch or brazier. They were armed with bows, and unlike the gate guards, they actually radiated a bit of menace. Clearly, these were trained men.

  This whole setup revealed something important:

  They weren’t worried about attacks from the forest—but they were afraid of something coming from their own fields.

  Who, though? It couldn’t just be regular bandits.

  Even my beloved, now-deceased Bald Necromancer—with his entire skeletal army—probably wouldn’t have breached those gates.

  So… what clever trick can I come up with to sneak into this village?