V2Ch30-Seek and Destroy

“What were you doing?” Hester asked once he had returned to his body.

Impressive that she noticed so quickly that I was back. He hadn’t opened his eyes or even moved since returning.

“I was rigging things in our favor,” James said, choosing to be mysterious. “How could you tell so quickly that I was back inside my body?”

“Oh, that’s easy,” she replied modestly. “Anyone could tell, especially if they were living on your body like I am. When you’re using that power and you return, it’s just like the difference between when you’re asleep and when you’re awake. There’s a change in your breathing, and you’re a lot more tense when you’re awake.”

“Hm. Thanks for the tip, there, Hester.” He could actually foresee a possible circumstance where this would be relevant information. If he were to be taken prisoner and subsequently choose to use his powers while in captivity, for instance.

He rose.

“What are we doing now?” she asked.

“Now we’re going to find the cultists,” he replied. “I think the group is fine for now, so the best thing I can do for them is get rid of the cultists who are forcing them into the marsh.”

“You’re going to go and fight them all alone?” She sounded nervous.

“I am,” he acknowledged, “but I’m going to find ways of getting them alone and dealing with them one by one. Or turning them on themselves. I don’t want to give them another fair fight.”

I already got a level in Politician from what I did to them in the dream world. What if I infiltrate them in person?

He took the Shapechanger’s Cloak from his bag and put it on. It covered him from head to toe.

Invisibility.

And he began stalking toward the Rostov camp. He knew more or less where the cultists were, thanks to the Dreamwalk. He was slightly less clear on where the Rodriguezes were, but he had an idea of their location. If he could find the flickering flames of a person’s dreams, he’d be able to find them in the real world, too, he was now fairly certain.

It only took around fifteen minutes of brisk walking through the dense trees for James to find the camp. Fortunately, they had a roaring bonfire going at all hours, even though they’d moved camps. Perhaps it was a religious thing, but it made them very easy to spot.

He didn’t need the cloak’s invisibility to conceal his approach. There was a commotion ongoing. Seven people were fighting one man. As they wrestled him into the firelight, James recognized Moishe Rose from his previous encounter with the cult.

What’s he doing out here? He should be either with the other prisoners, or with the Rodriguezes, if he escaped, right?

For now, James just stood there and watched. Then one of the seven—a man named Kassim, James recalled—ordered another man to return to guard duty. James Identified the man.

“Come on, I want to beat the crap out of this bastard, too!” Tracy Rove objected.

“None of that,” Kassim replied sharply. “We already know we can get surprise attacked at night.” He gestured at Moishe. “This is the proof! Once we’ve secured Moishe, we’ll rejoin you on patrol, but for now, someone has to make sure there’s no one else out there.”

“Uh huh,” Rove said, giving an exaggerated eye roll. But he walked away in the direction of the tree line.

Sorry, Moishe, I’ll come back to get you out of this soon, James thought. Would that technically be the third rescue or the second? Since they were recaptured after the first time he broke them out of prison, James was inclined to think this would be the third time he’d helped Moishe escape the cult. Not that it mattered.

I like the spirit this guy shows.

For now, though, James silently followed Rove. He wanted to wait until Rove got far enough out of range that no one would be able to hear him scream.

And the guard obliged. He moved through the trees, and he kept walking, seemingly aimless, further from the camp. If James didn’t know better, he’d have suspected some sort of trap. But he was certain enough, from his previous experience fighting the Alpha Coyote, that the Invisibility Skill the Shapechanger’s Cloak carried wouldn’t be easily observed. Tracy Rove didn’t seem like the sort of special person who would coincidentally have an ability that would let him see through James’s cloak.

Sure enough, eventually, James followed Rove far enough from the camp that he felt confident no one would hear them.

He waited until Rove paused for a moment. And Rove inadvertently accommodated him a second time.

He looked around, as if expecting one of the others to show up and chastise him at any moment. Then he took a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, followed by a lighter.

Still invisible, James leapt out from behind a bush at the moment Rove’s lighter ignited. Rove froze, then looked up at the sound of movement. James grabbed him by the neck. Before Rove could cry out, James smashed him into a tree.

Smoking kills, he thought, smirking.

Rove’s head left a visible dent in the bark, but he was unconscious in a single blow.

“Wow! That’s amazing,” Hester whispered.

James twisted Rove’s neck until it snapped and then used Pillage.

“Thanks, Hester,” he said quietly, not quite short of breath.

“I didn’t know how strong you were compared to other humans. So what are you going to do now?”

James opened his bag to store the bundles of Rove’s flesh, but he grabbed Rove’s armor and armaments before they could get sucked in.

“Now I’m going to be Tracy Rove,” James said.

He put Rove’s gear on over the Shapechanger’s Cloak, and he used its other ability. Shapechange.

James took his smartphone out from his magic satchel, just to use its screen as a black mirror. Yep, confirmed, I’m minus three points on the ten point attractiveness scale. I now look just like Tracy Rove.

James used False Reality to change his name and Status to match what he imagined Tracy Rove’s would show. The deceased had been a Medium Warrior at level 9, and James used imagination for the areas of the Status that he had no way of guessing.

And he began his patrol. He walked around in a circle around the camp, as he imagined Rove would have done, until Kassim came to rejoin him. There were another two people with Kassim. Identify established that their names were Carl Ronson and Catherine Ross.

Officer Ross’s wife, James thought. I remember you from his dream.

“Glad to see you did your job, Tracy,” Kassim said coldly. “We’re being relieved for the evening. Or more precisely, sent to do something else.”

False Reality!

“What’s that?” James asked, disguising his voice to match Tracy’s.

“You know perfectly well what our other task is,” Kassim said. “We’re going to go and relieve the warriors and priest holding down the border with the Dead Marsh. The people in there are either going to die or come running our direction sometime. We’re not going to miss it.” He spoke the words with no trace of enthusiasm.

“Feels like I’ve been up all night,” James said. Tracy Rove had seemed like a whiner to him, so it seemed in-character to complain.

In fact, James was very excited to be shown where more of Rostov’s security personnel were stationed.

“You’ll stay awake and fulfill your duty, or the Prophet will hear about it!” Kassim replied sharply.

James simply nodded and fell in step with the others.

They walked for half an hour, before James noticed the forest soil begin softening. It was clearly about to give way to the Dead Marsh, and the group stopped. For the first time, James felt slightly nervous about his disguise. Had they noticed him somehow? Were they about to give him to the denizens of the marsh?

Kassim raised a hand and waved.

“Hey there!” he called loudly.

James turned his head and saw another man. He was dressed in the pure white garb of the priests. He had heavy bags under his eyes. As he stepped closer, James saw he had a pendant of the sun on a necklace.

“Oh, thank goodness!” pronounced the priest. “I thought we were never going to get any sleep tonight.”

“And here we are to make your wish come true,” Kassim said, smiling.

James performed some quick mental calculations. Mind of the Predator indicated a 90% chance of him successfully killing all four of the people around him if he started a fight right now.

But he wasn’t sure if he wanted to kill Officer Ross’s wife. He still had hopes for Ross, and killing her seemed like a poor way of realizing them.

And this doesn’t account for the possibility that reinforcements show up, or one of them manages to run and get a message off to the main camp somehow. They can’t know I’m here.

James decided to wait. He had an idea of how he might increase his chances of success.

Sure enough, after chatting for a few minutes, the priest walked off.

“Alright,” Kassim said once the man was out of sight. “The guard you’re relieving will be down that way—”

As he pointed, James sprang into action. He hit Catherine Ross with a single open-handed slap, and she went down like a sack of bricks.

Carl Ronson’s eyes widened. “What are you do—”

James grabbed him by the neck before he could move, and in a second fluid motion, he tore the front of the man’s throat out.

“Urk!” Carl’s neck erupted with blood, and he fell to his knees.

“You! You can’t be Tracy. You must be—”

Meteor Strike!

James cut off Kassim’s last words with a flaming punch to the throat. The man clutched his neck, then collapsed to the ground, dead.

Then James raced after the priest who’d left.

“What’s happening?” The man asked, wide-eyed, when he saw James covered with blood.

“The enemy!” James said. “They’re attacking, we need healing!” He clutched his stomach and bent his posture as if he’d suffered some painful, debilitating wound.

“Where are you hurt?” asked the priest, leaning toward James, his hands glowing golden.

“Right here!”

James struck out and knocked the priest unconscious with a single slap. Then he stomped his head into the ground. He didn’t stop, even when he felt the other man’s blood soaking into his socks. Not until he heard the ping.

Another fatality.

And then James returned to the border area to relieve the other guards.

Once the other three were dead, James carried Catherine Ross up into the branches of a tree and secured here there. He created a Silk Golem to hold her in place until he decided what to do with her. James took greater care with this monster, giving it more Mana than he usually poured into his creations. He also shaped it with a mouth, tongue, and vocal cords. In case I need to talk to her. Hopefully this is close enough to biologically correct, and maybe the System will adjust for whatever mistakes I made.

The slaughter yielded only a single new level for Predator in Human Skin. But then, it had been all too easy. All he had to do was be patient and careful, though there had been some tension in his mind about whether he could do all of this without them alerting anyone back at the camp.

Now it was done, though. Finally, he could relax a bit and figure out what to do next.

He sat down cross-legged on the border with the Dead Marsh, and he closed his eyes.

“Are, uh, are you okay after all that?” Hester quickly interrupted his train of thought.

“After killing those guys, you mean?”

James felt, rather than saw, that Hester was bobbing her head in a spider approximation of a nod on the back of his ear.

“I’m just peachy,” James said. “They deserved it, and they got just what was coming to ‘em.” He pointed up the nearby tree with his thumb. “She deserves it, too, but I’m still not decided on what the best thing to do with her is. On the one hand, she definitely participated in Rostov’s evil cult. She’s one of his bloody priests.” James spat contemptuously on the ground. “But on the other hand, she motivates Jeff Ross. And I can’t help but think the Officer could still be useful to me.”

“Useful how?” Hester asked skeptically. “You mean you think he’ll turn on the cult for her? Or do you mean useful outside of Orientation?”

“Why not both?” James asked. He resisted the urge to shrug, a gesture Hester couldn’t properly see from her vantage point.

“I kind of got the impression you were going to wipe the whole cult out,” she said thoughtfully. “Not that it’s necessarily the best or only approach. But how would you know you could trust a guy like that?”

“I don’t know if I can trust the people I’ve surrounded myself with already,” James replied. He pictured Cliff, Sierra, and Chava as he spoke. “In Officer Ross’s case, I had the distinct impression that he really didn’t want to be with them. Infiltrating his dream, I would say I confirmed that. He was willing to be ruthless to keep himself and his wife alive. To make sure they got back to their kids.” He grinned mirthlessly. “I won’t say I condone it, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t understand it. I know this is hard to believe, Hester, but I’m not such a nice guy myself.”

The spider went silent at that. Then: “Right. I see.”

I hope she’s not feeling too much regret, he thought. Devote your life to following around a possible, maybe probable, bad guy, and you have to wonder what it’s all for.

“Is there anything I can do to help?” Hester broke into his thought process.

“With my plan to persuade Ross?” James asked, not bothering to disguise his surprise.

“Exactly!” Hester said brightly.

“Mm.” A thought had occurred to him. The sun wasn’t out quite yet. Maybe he could Dreamwalk once more. “For now, please watch my body. Wake me immediately if someone shows up or if Catherine starts trying to get loose from that golem.”

“Roger that, sir!”

James smiled. Hester was starting to feel like a friend. And if she could apply herself to her goal of becoming a part of his legend with the same energy that he intended to apply to creating that legend, they would get along famously for the rest of her life.

Dreamwalk.