The next thirty-six hours were the most productive and least peaceful of my new life. My cottage ceased to be a sanctuary and became a command center. The comforting scents of wood and bread were replaced by the sterile, mental odor of pure data. I didn't sleep. With [Physical Apex], I didn't need to. I planned.
Using [Ultimate Appraisal] like a satellite surveillance system, I tracked the four advanced scouting parties of the Demon Lord's army. I mapped their vectors, their pace, their composition. The War Troll had peeled off with one group, heading towards a mining outpost. The other three, each comprising five Orc Berserkers and a pair of Dark Elf scouts, were converging like the claws of a pincer on a single, obvious target: the richest, softest, most strategically insignificant prize in the region—Maplewood. They weren't coming to besiege. They were coming to raid, to slaughter, to burn, and to demoralize.
I could have met them in the forest. I could have become a one-man plague, picking them off with teleported boulders or illusory horrors. But that risked exposure. It created a narrative: Something in the woods is killing our scouts. It would make the main army cautious, suspicious. It might lead to investigations, to seers and diviners being employed. My anonymity was my primary weapon; I couldn't blunt it on a few grunts.
No, the solution had to be cleaner. More surgical. It had to look like an accident, or better yet, like nothing at all. My initial plan was elegant: use [Mirage Crafting] and [Instant Transmission] to subtly alter their course. Make a scout see a false landmark, teleport a fallen tree into their path, create the illusion of a large predator's territory. I would herd them away from Maplewood like a sheepdog of reality, making them believe they'd chosen to go elsewhere.
It was a good plan. It was a quiet plan. It was utterly obliterated by the unpredictable variable of orcish stupidity.
The largest of the three scouting parties, led by a hulking brute my appraisal named Garsh (Level 19, Skills: [Brutal Cleave], [Thick Skull], [Low Cunning]), decided to shortcut through a valley my illusions had made to look like a treacherous, rockfall-prone gorge. A normal creature would have turned back. Garsh, upon seeing a loose-looking boulder I had [Mirage Craft]ed into place, took it as a personal challenge. He headbutted it.
The boulder, being an illusion, didn't move. Garsh, being an orc, did. He staggered back, roaring in pain and confusion. This, to his squad, didn't look like a mysterious geographical deterrent. It looked like the boulder had insulted their boss. Enraged, they ignored the "dangerous" path entirely and decided to go through the "solid" rock wall next to it, which was, in fact, the entrance to a very real and very deep sinkhole I had been trying to steer them around.
I watched through my appraisal as six heavily armed orcs and two very annoyed dark elves vanished into the earth with a chorus of surprised bellows and fading curses. The sinkhole was eighty feet deep. They weren't dead—orcs are notoriously hard to kill—but they were effectively neutralized, stuck in a pit, howling for help that wouldn't come for days.
One problem solved, in the most buffoonish way possible. It wasn't subtle, but it could be explained away as orcish idiocy meeting bad luck. Satisfied, I turned my attention to the second party.
This was where the plan truly derailed. The second party, more cautious, avoided my illusory hazards. But their path, as they skirted the dangerous areas, took them directly into the territory of a creature my earlier, wide-area appraisal had missed: a Frenzied Gore-Beetle Matriarch (Level 28, Status: Protecting Eggs). It was a truck-sized insect with a drill-like horn and a temper worse than a hungover dragon.
The orcs stumbled right into her nesting ground. A chaotic, brutal battle ensued. It was not quick. The matriarch killed two orcs and one dark elf before the remaining scouts managed to wound it and flee, scattered and bleeding, deeper into the trackless woods, miles off course. They were no longer a coherent threat to Maplewood.
Again, not subtle. But explainable. Monsters attack scouts all the time. Tragedy of the profession.
Two claws of the pincer, blunted. But the third… the third was the problem. This party was led by a dark elf named Kyr'il (Level 17, Skills: [Stealth], [Pathfinding], [Paranoid Cunning]). While the orcs in his group were the usual brutes, Kyr'il was smart. Distrustful. He saw the first party vanish into a "random" sinkhole. He likely heard the distant sounds of the Gore-Beetle battle. To him, this didn't look like accidents or wildlife. It looked like a pattern. Like the forest itself was rejecting them.
So, he did the smart, terrible thing. He abandoned the planned, subtle approach. He rallied his four remaining orcs and pushed forward with brutal speed, avoiding cover, moving in a straight, violent line towards the town's outskirts. His logic was cold and tactical: If something is trying to delay or divert us, our target must be more valuable than we thought. Seize the initiative. Strike fast, before the defense can coalesce.
My elegant herding plan was in ashes. Kyr'il's party was now a bolt fired from a crossbow, and Maplewood was the target. I had made them more dangerous.
I calculated. With their new, reckless pace, they would reach the town's undefended western tree line—not the guarded gates—in approximately twenty minutes. It was market day. The main force was at the northern palisade. The western approach was lightly patrolled.
I had twenty minutes to come up with a new plan. A plan that involved stopping five bloodthirsty orcs and a cunning dark elf scout, in the open, in broad daylight, without anyone seeing me do it.
I stood in my cottage, the map of the town and the approaching red dots glowing in my mind. I could teleport to their location and… do what? Fight them openly? That was the end of everything. Create an illusion of a royal army? Possible, but Kyr'il was paranoid; he might see through it, or worse, call the bluff.
Then, a simpler, more devastating idea formed. The town's defenses were a joke. But my defenses didn't have to be. What if I didn't stop the scouts out there? What if I let them reach the town… and then made the town itself reject them?
I needed to be on the ground. I needed to be at the focal point, to manage the variables. I knew exactly where that was.
I looked at the clock in my mind. Eighteen minutes.
I took a deep, steadying breath. It was time for my weekly bread.
---
The bell above the door of The Crusty Loaf chimed at 11:47 AM. The smell was, as always, a physical comfort. But today, it was undercut by a different tension. The shop wasn't bustling. Elara was alone, her movements slower, her smile for me strained at the edges.
"Your timing is good, Bob," she said, her voice softer than usual. She gestured to a basket on the counter, already packed. "I made this for you. Extra. In case… well."
In case the evacuation order came. In case she had to flee. In case this was the last loaf.
"Thank you, Elara," I said, my voice calm. I placed the coins on the counter. I didn't need the appraisal to feel her fear, to see the way her eyes kept darting to the door and the window that looked out onto the market square.
Outside, the market was in a strange, feverish state. The initial panic had settled into a grim, hurried normalcy. People were buying, selling, but the conversations were hushed, the laughter forced. Parents kept children close. Men wore knives more openly. The air thrummed with a low-grade dread.
I stood at the counter, not leaving. I was waiting. My appraisal was a silent radar in my mind, tracking the five red dots and one flickering purple dot (Kyr'il) as they breached the tree line, slipped past a distracted two-man patrol, and entered the maze of back alleys and storage yards on the town's west side.
They were moving fast, avoiding main thoroughfares. Their target wasn't the gate or the garrison. It was the heart. The market. The place of greatest crowds, greatest chaos, greatest symbolic impact. Kill, burn, vanish. A perfect terror raid.
Four minutes.
"Is everything alright, Bob?" Elara asked, noticing my unusual stillness.
"Just… listening to the market," I said vaguely.
Three minutes. They were two streets over, in the tanner's district. I could hear, through my enhanced senses, the distant, muffled grunt of an orc, quickly silenced by a sharp hiss from Kyr'il.
Two minutes. They were in the alley behind the cooper's workshop. One street away from the market square. I saw it all in my mind's eye. Garsh's surviving cousin, Brog (Level 18), hefting his notched axe. Kyr'il, a shadow with cruel, gleaming eyes, drawing two serrated daggers.
One minute. They paused at the mouth of the alley that opened directly into the southern edge of the market square. I could see the square through their eyes, a panorama of soft, unprepared targets. The bread seller. The fruit cart. The toy maker. The Crusty Loaf.
My hand tightened on the basket's handle. This was the line. Not drawn on a map, but in the flour-dusted air of this shop.
Kyr'il gave a silent signal.
The orcs burst from the alley with a roar that tore the morning in half.
It was a sound from a nightmare—a guttural, wrathful bellow that slaughtered all other sound. The gentle murmur of the market was erased. For a heart-stopping second, there was only the roar, and the thunder of heavy boots on cobblestones.
Then, the screaming started.
Through the bakery window, I saw it. The market square dissolved into a Bosch painting of panic. A cart of apples was overturned, red fruit scattering like blood droplets. People ran in all directions, a mindless stampede. And in the center of it, moving with terrible, deliberate speed, were the orcs.
They didn't stop to loot. They killed. Brog's axe swept out and a man running with a child in his arms simply… came apart. Another orc smashed his club into the bread seller's stall, splintering wood and bone. The dark elf, Kyr'il, was a blur, his daggers flickering out to open throats with clinical precision. They were a machine of slaughter, carving a path of red ruin straight towards the center of the square.
Towards the well.
Towards the bakery.
Elara gasped, her hand flying to her mouth, her face white as the flour on her apron. "Gods above…"
Time didn't slow down. It crystallized. Every detail was hyper-sharp. The spray of blood in the sunlight. The terror in a woman's eyes as she tripped. The hungry grin on Brog's tusked face as he saw the bakery, a tidy, flammable-looking building full of hiding places.
This was it. The moment the background script said I should die. But I wasn't the background character anymore. I was the editor.
Kyr'il's eyes, sharp as a hawk's, scanned the square. They locked onto the bakery window. Onto me and Elara, two clear, stationary targets. He pointed a dagger.
Brog roared, hefted his axe, and charged. Not at the door.
At the wall.
He was going to smash right through it.
In that crystallized moment, a thousand plans flashed through my mind. Teleport Elara out. Create an illusory wall. Freeze time and move her. But each had a flaw, a risk of exposure. I needed something… deniable. Something that looked like chance, like miracle, like the world itself fighting back.
As Brog's massive, muscle-corded form filled the window, his axe drawing back for a blow that would reduce the front of the shop to kindling, I made my choice.
I didn't move from my spot at the counter. I didn't raise a hand.
I simply thought.
[Absolute Stealth] wrapped around me, but not to hide. To isolate. To define the space around my body as a separate, controlled domain.
[Physical Apex] focused not on my muscles, but on my kinetic perception. The world slowed further, until Brog's charge was a statue of fury, his axe a suspended crescent of dull iron.
I had maybe half a second of real time. Enough.
I used [Instant Transmission], but not on myself. On the air. Specifically, on a cubic foot of air directly in front of Brog's leading knee. I swapped it with a cubic foot of solid granite from a quarry fifty miles away.
There was no flash. No sound. Just a sudden, impossible resistance where none should be.
Brog's knee, moving with the force of a battering ram, met unyielding stone.
The sound was a sickening, wet CRUNCH, audible even over the chaos. His leg buckled backwards at an impossible angle. His forward momentum didn't stop. His body continued, his torso twisting, his head snapping forward. His face, frozen in a roar, met the same, now-empty air which I had just filled with the iron-shod pommel of his own axe, teleported from his grip to a position six inches in front of his forehead.
THWOCK.
A second, duller sound. Like a mallet hitting a rotten melon.
Brog's charge dissolved into a tumbling, boneless heap. He slid to a stop at the very threshold of the bakery, his leg bent the wrong way, his eyes rolled back in his head, unconscious or dead.
From the perspective of the square, it was inexplicable. One second, a monster was charging. The next, his leg shattered on nothing, and he seemed to trip and brain himself with his own weapon in a spectacularly clumsy accident. A gasp, shocked and confused, rippled through the fleeing crowd who saw it.
But Kyr'il saw more. His dark elf eyes, attuned to magic and trickery, didn't see an accident. He saw the impossibility. He saw his strongest warrior fall to an invisible, instantaneous force. His head snapped towards the bakery window, towards me. Our eyes met through the glass.
He didn't see Bob the background character. He saw a void. A calm, empty space where the chaos of the world did not reach. And in that void, he saw his own death.
He hissed an order to the remaining three orcs, pointing at the bakery. "The human! Kill it!"
The orcs, enraged by Brog's fall, turned as one. They raised their weapons and charged.
This time, I didn't have half a second. I had a heartbeat.
I thought of the concept of leverage. Of structural integrity.
As the first orc brought his club down towards the window, I teleported the six supporting nails from the main timber above the bakery door. The beam, suddenly unsupported on one end, groaned and sagged. A slate from the roof, loosened by the vibration, slipped. It didn't fall. I guided it with a whisper of telekinetic force from [Physical Apex], altering its trajectory.
The slate, a sharp-edged wedge of stone, spun through the air and struck the charging orc precisely in the temple. He dropped like a sack of stones.
The second orc tripped over the body of the first. As he fell, I teleported the loose cobblestone he would have landed on with a smooth, worn stone from a riverbed. His head hit the smooth stone at the wrong angle. A sharp crack. He didn't get up.
The third orc skidded to a halt, confusion and superstitious fear finally overwhelming his bloodlust. He looked from his fallen comrades, to Brog, to the sagging, creaking bakery front, and then to Kyr'il.
The dark elf was already backing away, his face a mask of primal fear. He'd seen enough. The building itself was fighting them. The very stones were enemies. He turned to flee, melting back towards the alley.
He didn't make it.
He took three steps and his foot landed not on cobblestone, but on a perfectly round, slick marble I had [Mirage Craft]ed into existence an instant before. It was an illusion with physical texture, a petty, brutal joke.
His leg shot out from under him. As he fell, I teleported the empty air just above the back of his head, swapping it with the solid oak of the cooper's door across the square.
THUD.
Kyr'il collapsed, motionless, in the filth of the alley mouth.
Silence.
A terrible, ringing silence descended on the market square, broken only by the moans of the wounded and the soft creak of the bakery's compromised beam. Five orcs and a dark elf lay scattered in a rough semi-circle around The Crusty Loaf, like monstrous offerings laid at its step. One with a shattered knee and a concussion. One with a crushed temple. One with a broken neck. Two unconscious from head trauma. All defeated. Not by a hero. Not by an army.
By a series of impossible, absurd, and utterly devastating accidents.
I let out a breath I didn't realize I was holding. The [Absolute Stealth] around me dissipated. I was just Bob again, standing pale and wide-eyed behind a bakery counter, a basket of bread in his hand.
Elara was clutching the counter, her knuckles white, staring at the carnage beyond her window. She looked from the fallen monsters to me, her eyes wide with a confusion so deep it bordered on awe.
"Bob… what… what just happened?"
I looked at her, then at the scene outside. I allowed a convincing tremor to enter my voice. "I… I think the roof gave way. And they… they tripped. They must have tripped."
It was the weakest lie imaginable. But it was the only one I had.
Outside, the townsfolk were slowly emerging from hiding, staring in disbelief at the fallen scouts. Captain Miles and a squad of guards arrived at a run, weapons drawn, only to stop and stare at the bizarre tableau.
I saw Lily push through the crowd, her eyes sweeping the scene. She saw the sagging beam, the fallen slate, the oddly placed stones. She saw the perfectly circular marble rolling away from Kyr'il's hand. Her gaze followed the logic of the "accidents," a trail of coincidences that led, inexorably, right to the doorstep of The Crusty Loaf.
Her eyes lifted and met mine through the window.
In that moment, I knew the line in the flour had been crossed. Not just by the orcs.
But by me.
The Ghost of the Treasury had just fought his first battle. And he'd won, without anyone seeing him draw a weapon.
But as I looked into Lily's knowing, horrified, and fiercely intelligent eyes, I realized something else.
Someone had seen the ghost.