10 Zavyyn discovers a plantation

I am by myself again. Moso was pretty cool; he taught me about making sausages and smoking meat. I was hoping he would stick with me longer, but he has a home and some sort of community, I guess. I got some food, in these lightweight faux ceramic containers. The tech level is weird. People are dressed in leather armor and carrying bows, but an outboard motor? Yeah, sure. These containers remind me of plastic storage containers. If I start seeing resealable plastic bags and cars, I will give up on these crafting windows.

Anyway, this swamp has turned more into a forest. It is all pine trees, and they're not especially tall. I think that means it's pretty young, since pine trees grow fast. So either there is some serious logging going on around here, or they had a wildfire in the last few years. This is actually a fairly pleasant hike, with the occasional small woodland critter fleeing before my might.

I have been walking for a couple hours now, and my legs are starting to feel it. Well, my cantrips can make matter, I wonder if I can make it vanish, too? I imagine the lactic acid my muscles have produced vanishing and see if I can start banishing it from my body.

Ah that feels better. I should probably still take a break, but it sure is nice to take the break and not be focused on how sore I am. I am definitely enjoying this magic business. I should see what other weird uses for cantrips are possible. Maybe I can make myself some equipment or something. Well, that's enough time considering what kind of simple equipment I can make, time to bounce on this clearing. See you, annoying blue jay! Bye, Mister Armadillo! I will forever remember you as a rock rat!

I wonder if I can practice making glucose and glycogen in my muscles as I walk, and extra oxygen. Ah I feel perkier, kind of squirmy. I should try to lower the amount of glucose, and also try to keep glycogen replenishing itself magically. Seriously, that crafting window is trash, I have cantrips available in arbitrarily large amounts. I am the god! Except for the part where I am an amnesiac troll with no friends.

Putting the depressing parts of my life aside, this method of dealing with walking is awesome. I should try running.

Oh my. I am the gazelle, the cheetah, the fleet-footed hare. I am- I am seeing stars. I just smashed my forehead into a tree branch when I tried jumping. Fuck that hurts. A ban is placed on jumping in forests until I am used to this. I need another break and to see what I can come up with for a pain reliever. I can remember the composition of a few mild ones, and some more serious ones, but since I don't feel like getting addicted to morphine, I will stay with something mild. And a glass of water to top it off.

Conjuring more complicated things is getting easier, as evidenced by how I made the glass and the water in it at pretty much the same time. I need to keep practicing this to make amazing and fabulous items of untold power, like razor mono-filament carbon tubes to use as the Slicing Whirlwind of Despair. Yup, that could be my name as a masked assassin! Except being an assassin probably means I would be forced into shitty positions by crime bosses. Maybe I should shelve that idea. How about I make a sword with the power of the atom bomb! I could do something neat with uranium, sheathe it in lead, and only use it on especially bad people. Of course, I might give myself cancer or radiation burns. Maybe I should just stick with drowning people? Or maybe I can just summon flaming chunks of radioactive isotopes to fall on enemies from far away? That still doesn't help me with close-range encounters, though. Tactical planning is difficult, and that pain killer kicked in, so I should probably keep moving.

My running speed is crazy fast. So fast, I just vaulted a deer. My muscles feel bigger, and I am feeling super hungry and oh hi, I am no longer in the forest. Ahead of me, as far as I can see, is a giant field of cotton. And a lot of people picking cotton. Wait, this world has motors, why isn't this labor mechanized?

Moso did mention to me that the Sidhe kept slaves. Maybe they think slaves are cheaper than machinery? Those bodyguards earlier just had bows. Maybe a crossbow is the limit of acceptable technology? I'd like to ask the people picking the cotton, but I can see people with whips watching over things. I don't want those guys to spot me, if I can avoid it. I should back up into the foliage and see if I can watch them for a while and get a feel for what's really going on. Just because I know there are slaves in the area doesn't necessarily mean those are slaves. Maybe they're gainfully employed, and those whips are for frightening off scary animals, like the vile rock rats I passed on the way here! Yeah, whips aren't doing anything to an armadillo. But still, I shouldn't rush to judgement. Oh, that lady is totally getting whipped, really hard. And I think she is pregnant. I inspect her; yup, she's a pregnant slave.

Screw this. It is time to experiment with magic on that whip-wielding douchebag. My cantrip description said I can create small flames, so I will start off by setting his hair on fire.

Well, he isn't whipping anybody now. I need to make sure I don't start laughing, but this is hilarious. Oh, he is shoving his head around in the soil and rubbing dirt on. Next up, I will set his underwear on fire. The slaves are trying to help, and the other guys with whips are just watching? Moso did say the Sidhe use mind magic. But if that's the case, why do they need the guys with whips? Are they just asshole sadists? Or maybe the whips are a tool for applying mind magic. I should check if I can inspect it from here.

Slaver's Whip: An instrument of torture to ensure slaves do not slow for even an instant.

The slaves are loyal, and the whip exists to make sure they are always going as fast as possible. This outrages me at a moral level such that I do not have adequate words to describe my feelings. I need to review my options here.

First, I can ignore this place, and go around. I have my map window, I have the atlas, Moso told me to head to a city to the north with a magic university, I can probably find that. I am against that though because there was a pregnant woman getting whipped in front of me. I cannot abide.

Second, I can charge in full moron, screaming and murdering. I am not a fan of that plan, as it has odds for me dying.

Third, I can try submitting myself as a slave, but Moso told me the Sidhe were likely to kill me. I look like a troll, and that is a monster so I should probably go for a more subtle approach. While being sneaky and breaking the system from within sounds appealing, I don't want to do things that might kill me.

There is a fourth option, turning into a guerrilla fighter and setting up murder traps. For some reason, this idea appeals to me. While it is still less safe than the first option, it allows me to address my moral outrage, and has relatively low odds for my death as compared to the second and third options.

Oh, those slaves are taking the guy with the whip away. Probably to get his burns tended to so he can continue to whip them. I feel like they are about to go on higher alert and start looking for people around who might be slinging spells, so I should find a better hiding spot and consider how I will wage war on these abusive assclowns.

I chase some small woodland critters out of a thorny bramble patch and make my plans while waiting for night to fall. I can hear people from the plantation searching around the woods, there's dogs barking, but I managed to use a large stick to finagle the thorns around to let me in, and then pull them back down. I don't think the dogs can follow me in. I've also let a skunk spray me, totally on purpose, has nothing to do with me chasing away woodland critters, all according to plan. The dogs and people seem to be avoiding the skunk stink, so things are going well. I've been working on trap ideas, and I am hitting some roadblocks. The slaves are aiding in the search. I didn't count on that; curse you evil mind magics!

Most of my ideas involve traps that indiscriminately maim and murder. I don't want to kill the slaves; I want to break the mental hold on them. I guess I can make myself a gas mask, and then start making gas traps that only incapacitate. Some of the slaves still might get hurt, but this seems like my best option. I am leery of using magic while they're looking for me though, so for now I should probably just take a nap. I found a clock UI window earlier, so I set an alarm for after sundown, and enjoy sweet, restful slumber, something I have not had in great quantity since appearing in this world. I should probably wait till the sounds of search fade away, though. Till then, I guess I can mess around with my windows some more.

I should see what I can do with this inventory window. Is my inventory just the literal manifestation of the expression to pull it out of one's ass? Can I set up something to automatically go to my inventory? How much of an item fits in an inventory slot? Time to mess around with the capabilities of my inventory.

I need to be in physical contact with something to put it in my inventory. But pulling things out, it seems I can pull them out and place them a short range away from me. It's hard to test the limits of this in these thorns, but this is good to know. My inventory has a ton of space, and one of my trap ideas was disgusting, but I may still need it, and the call of nature just came up while people are searching for me...

It worked. I never need to go to the bathroom again. This is kind of gross. I am going to need some time to ruminate on this and figure out how exactly this is advantageous to me. Obviously, I never need to use the toilet again. And the urine, I can use that to make fertilizer or gunpowder, maybe a cleaning solution or disinfectant. What am I going do with all the poop, though?

As I am considering the tactical applications of my poop (I've already come up with a couple of traps and other offensive ideas), I notice the sounds of search are fading. I need to come up with a plan for assaulting this place, and then get a decent nap in.

I'll start by digging around here... Here we go. I found a pebble. Pebble, you are now my only hope! At least for this experiment. My cantrip can affect a change in matter by setting things on fire. That's a change in kinetic energy, or something close to, probably? I'm not sure how it's setting things on fire yet, but I know it is, so if I can change a physical property like that, I can try affecting another property. I want to see if we can make the pebble have a new gravitational constant. Since I am holding the pebble in my hand as it rests on my thigh, I do not want to make it heavier, so I will start off with making it lighter. That way, if I make it too strong, it will fly up instead of hurting me. Safety first!

I feel like a jackass pretending to be some space wizard. But the weight of the pebble is slowly decreasing. I lift my hand, then lower it again, and the pebble floats above my palm. Okay, I think I have a feel for this. I stop applying magic, and the pebble continues to float there.

That's interesting. I am incredibly excited. My breathing is rough. This a huge deal. I can just pin everybody down and kill whoever really needs killing. Wait, hold on. I can make my body lighter and heavier as I need. I can be light when I run, hell, maybe I can learn to fly. I can just make myself weightless and push myself around with air. Maybe I should make myself a wingsuit?

I really need to sleep. Tonight will be fun.

***

It itches. So bad. What happened? As I begin tearing at my tattered robe, trying to figure out what is going, I realize my legs are covered in tiny red ants. They're hard to see in the gloom, and all I can think to do in response is create water, lots of water. And I want it to be light, it needs to stay floating, attached to my legs. It still burns, but not as bad. I'm wearing pants made out of water. I could already make people drown, but this has various non-lethal applications. Yeah, distracting myself from the pain by thinking about other things is working, even if what I am thinking about is being influenced by the pain.

What can I do to make this raid easier on myself? Well, first I will ambush them while hidden. But eventually they will figure out where I am. Moso said they have divination magic, after all. What do I do when they are directly attacking me? It's night, this place is rural, it is darker than a black hole's bedtime. How about if I make an incredibly bright light behind me, so I am a blinding silhouette. Even if they have torches or flashlights, shining them on me won't matter much since I'll have a blinding light behind me. That may also help with people trying to attack me from the rear, but I should probably try to keep trees to my back anyway.

I can also make myself weigh less to try and lessen the amount of noise I make sneaking around. That should help with getting into position for an ambush. What I really need is some way to distinguish the slaves from the slavers though. Some of the slaves were green, some of them were dark brown, some were jet black and some were dark blue. There were also a few slaves who looked especially strange, like little scaly dog and rat hybrids. The slavers were pinkish elves, so I assume they are all Sidhe, but maybe some of them were swamp elves. I probably should have inspected the guys I killed before, but it all happened so fast, and then Moso ditched me, that I was mostly operating on auto-pilotautopilot.

Inspecting everyone before I decide whether to kill them sounds nice in theory, but if combat happenshappens, I am unsure I will have the leisure for such niceties. I may be forced to defend myself in manners that have nothing to do with being nice.

Ethics are hard. Ignoring friendly casualties would be a lot easier, but something inside me screams out against that kind of thinking.

But what if there are slaves who aren't under mind control and collaborate? This operation is going to be difficult in execution, and difficult afterwards. Maybe I can find a slave I trust to let me know who the collaborator are.

Anyway, to review my mission objectives here: First, I am neutralizing everyone I see via gravity magics. Second, I am killing the slavers. No options there, I have no other methods of neutralizing them long-term; based on how the Sidhe act, I feel morally justified in killing them. Third, I will lead the slaves away from here to find them a new home along the way to this magic university.

So that's those are my objectives. What are my specific tactics? Use gravity magic from ambush. Anybody I can easily identify as a slaver I will kill by closing their carotids. I want these deaths to be fast and quiet, drowning and gases are both more likely to attract notice via the person making noise. When detected, I will backlight myself with a blinding light while applying gravity magic on everybody and focusing whatever attacks I deem necessary on priority targets.

My heart is racing. I am going to do this. I am going to murder people, and as many as possible will be in cold blood, with no choice for them to retaliate.