Over the next few minutes, numerous names were introduced to me. However, if I were to be honest, most of those names were assigned to a face and promptly relegated to a part of my mind where I stored information I didn’t care about. While there were things I cared less about, whether somebody was called Wynter with a Y, Summer or even Spring ranked fairly low on the list of things I was interested in. If a person didn’t have the power or potential to become more than a person we passed by in a random village, I simply wasn’t interested. Here, the only one I could see myself caring about in the slightest, beyond my interest in the general survival of humanity, as the world would be fairly boring if there were no humans or other sapients around, was Sylvia.
And even that was only in part due to her ability to wield Ice Magic; another part came from the somewhat amusing similarity in naming between Silva and her. That second reasoning was strengthened even more when Luna decided to introduce Silva to Sylvia; the looks the pair exchanged were infinitely amusing, as if neither of them knew what to do with this person who almost had the same name.
Just as I was watching the pair, I felt the veil of privacy, layered around my person like my clothes, be attacked again, another attempt to strip it off and allow some random person to Observe as much about me as they could comprehend. But compared to earlier, when I had been completely focused on building the dyke to keep the river from flooding this area, I was now fairly idle, my mind not occupied in the slightest, so instead of allowing the stripping to occur, I could intervene and smack the probing back to its originator. I even managed to attach a mild curse to it, nothing serious, just enough to give the person trying to violate my privacy a nasty headache, but it would tell me who had tried.
When one of the women who had been trying to help groaned in pain moments later, a tell-tale flare of Darkness Magic coursing around her head, I knew the culprit. Pulling the names I had already relegated to irrelevancy back to the forefront of my mind, I could name her as Dana, just another face in the crowd. Not particularly good-looking, though that was likely due to the soaking rain, the brutal work she had been doing and the general state of the world. Nobody looked their best, not unless they had some serious Charisma with a few traits to amplify the effect it had on one’s looks, but this woman didn’t have those. Just another fairly average, fair blonde without any truly outstanding features.
“Care to share why you believe you are entitled to know intimate details about me?” I snarled, the anger about the earlier violation returning in full. “Or should I just banish the protections I set up here? Luna and I would have no troubles escaping the water, though I doubt you could say the same, to say nothing of the crops and your houses.”
“What’s going on?” came from more than one of the others, alongside similar questions and confused exclamations.
“Earlier, when I was working, somebody violated the privacy of my person by using the Observe ability on me, an incredibly uncomfortable experience as you might know,” I explained before letting some additional power flow into the curse I had placed on Dana, making her moan in pain, “As I was thoroughly occupied, I was unable to prevent the ability from succeeding, though the discomfort was almost enough to interrupt the delicate juggling act I had to perform in order to keep expanding the protections around us. You can guess what would have happened in that scenario, though I doubt anyone truly wants to consider that,” I paused again, sending yet another flare of power into the curse.
“Just now, I sensed the same violation, only this time, I had the mental capacity to do something about it, which is why Ms Dana is currently suffering a fairly severe headache and will continue to suffer from it until I feel satisfied with her explanations and excuses,” I finished my explanation while continuing to glare at the woman who had now dropped to the ground, writhing in the mud from the pain.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“Stop it,” one of the guys demanded, his voice tinged with a curious mix of anger, embarrassment and fear. Sadly, I was uninterested in his demands and simply glared at him, daring him to do more than bark around.
“I’m sorry I used Observe on you. Normally, I can keep people from noticing. She just did it 'cause I told her your level, and she didn’t believe me,” he admitted, his eyes flickering from me to the woman writhing on the ground, now whimpering softly.
“Curious,” I briefly wondered how he could conceal the usage of Observe, as the only way I knew of was to use Darkness Magic, though if that was his usual way, it would explain why it had no effect whatsoever on me.
“Given that you apparently have no concept of privacy, the punishment should fit the crime. For one, you will suffer just as your little friend does,” I declared, casting the curse just as I pushed the entirety of my power outwards, my magic manifesting in a halo of power around me, intimidating his fellow villagers to accept the punishment I set.
When both offenders were writing in the mud, clinging to one another in an attempt to anchor themselves in an ocean of pain, I added the second part of the punishment, the fitting one. Namely, I decided to experiment a little and opened up my senses as much as possible, adding each of my unusual sensory abilities to the mix before trying to channel Observe through those abilities, just as I would usually channel it through the concealment aspect of my Darkness Magic. I wanted to know all there was to know about them, to have every aspect of who they were laid bare before me.
To my excitement, it worked exactly as I had hoped, and two blue notifications popped up before me, which were far more detailed than they would normally be. While I didn’t get their exact attributes, I managed to learn that Dana’s strongest attribute was her Dexterity and her weakest Intelligence. In contrast, the strongest for Enzo, the guy, was Courage and the weakest, to my amusement, Intuition. Furthermore, I was able to learn that Dana was level seventeen to Enzo’s level twenty-three, making me briefly wonder just how safe this area actually was. These levels were either incredibly pathetic, or this place was blessed with very few enemies. Finally, I managed to find some truly interesting details hidden in a tab called Relationships.
There, I found a somewhat superficial description of their relationships, as the tab suggested, but the gold was that Dana’s tab described her relationship with Enzo as a committed one, but Enzo’s tab, on the other hand, only labelled her as a friend with benefits. A label she shared with multiple two women.
Additionally, there were their titles, or rather, a title amongst the two of them. As it turned out, the system knew quite a bit about people and had saddled Enzo with the Lotharia title, which apparently helped him conceal his activities with the fairer sex. When digging a little deeper, I came across his magical affinities, namely a moderate affinity for Darkness Magic, though one with a curious modifier. Instead of a generally moderate affinity, his affinity to everything under the domain of Subterfuge and Concealment was high, almost as high as that of Maggy had been at a guess; his affinity for the other aspects of Darkness was just a little above average, giving him an overall moderate affinity.
Grinning to myself, I made the two notifications visible to everyone, allowing them to see just what they were. I had a feeling the fallout would be a lot worse for Enzo than for Dana. The worst one could say about Dana was that she was a little gullible, but Enzo? Well, I doubted many would continue to trust him. I knew I wouldn’t, but then, I doubted I would have trusted him in the first place.
At the same time as I made these things visible, I ended the curse on the pair, allowing their minds to clear so they could see everything my Observe had uncovered about them. I especially wanted Dana to see what was going on with Enzo, giving both of them an additional punishment, though it might even turn into a boon for Dana in the long run, allowing her to see Enzo's deception.
“Now that this has been dealt with, I will resume my earlier activities and finish the protections around this place,” I announced, leaving the two blue windows open for everyone to see, “Sylvia, if you are interested in learning, you can accompany me, and I will give you a small lesson as I’m working.”
With those words, I turned away, taking note of Enzo's glare as I turned my back. I would have to keep an eye on that one, just in case his grudge managed to override his common sense.
