Chapter 29: Ruined State

The town line faded behind us as we took the narrow dirt track leading into the pine woods. Walking on two legs was still a completely weird sensation for me. My new six-foot frame felt light, but my brain kept trying to calculate my movements like a piece of spaghetti instead of a bipedal human. Every ten paces, my heel would catch on a root, making me wobble sideways before my new thigh muscles snapped me back into balance.

"You walk like a newborn deer, Barry," Suzy said, dropping a small bundle of dry firewood onto the grass.

We had stopped for the night in a small clearing under a big willow tree, far away from the main highway. The sun was completely down now.

I sat down on a flat log, rubbing my bare ankles. The stolen guard uniform I was wearing was incredibly scratchy, smelled like stale sweat, and the trousers were about three inches too short, exposing my shins to the damp forest air. It was a complete wardrobe disaster.

"Hey, manager," I said, looking across the small fire she had just started. "This outfit is a total compliance violation. It feels like sandpaper, and it’s cutting off my circulation. Do you have any spare inventory in that bag of yours?"

Suzy looked up from the fire, the orange light dancing across her hair. Her eyes locked onto my short trousers and the tight fabric straining against my muscular chest, and her face instantly turned a bright red. She quickly looked down at the dirt, coughing to hide her intense shyness.

"I... I only have my personal traveling spares, Barry," she stammered, her voice low as she rummaged through her leather pack. "They are going to be a bit... snug on a six-foot frame."

She tossed a neatly folded pile of dark fabric across the sparks.

I picked it up and went behind a large bush to change. Two minutes later, I stepped back into the firelight, and Suzy took one look at me and completely lost her composure, burying her face in her hands as her shoulders shook with silent laughter.

The outfit was a pair of her flexible, form-fitting black silk rogue trousers and a deep v-neck dark shirt. Because my body was lean and muscular, the silk fabric clung to my thighs and chest like a second skin, completely outlining every single muscle block. The v-neck went down so low it exposed the dark snake-scale markings running across my collarbone. I looked less like a merchant and more like a high-end male model who had gotten lost .

"Stop laughing, Suzy," I grumbled, trying to pull the shirt down, which only made it tighter. "The fabric is soft, but I feel highly exposed. If a breeze comes through here, my system is going to freeze."

"It... it suits you," Suzy wheezed out through her fingers, her face still burning a deep red as she tried to pretend she wasn’t looking at my chest. She reached into her bag and tossed a small piece of dried salt meat to change the subject. "Here. Eat. We need to move early tomorrow."

The next morning..., the easy part of the road ended. The dirt track joined up with the main northern trade route, and right across the path sat a large wooden checkpoint fence. Six royal soldiers wearing bright silver plates and carrying long spears stood in front of the gate. Above the fence, a small blue magic lens was floating in the air, scanning for rogue signatures.

"Halt," the lead guard barked as we approached. "Show your travel permits."

The blue magic lens slowly turned toward my face, beginning to hum with a faint yellow warning light. My Ascendant energy bar was simply too high to hide from a government scanner while standing on two legs.

’Barry,’ Suzy whispered through our mental link, her face staying perfectly calm as she reached into her vest. ’The scanner is tripping. You’re too hot.’

[BARRY: Changing forms. Keep your collar open.]

Without a single sound, my entire body completely dissolved. Before the guards could even blink, I shrunk down to a completely invisible ribbon of matte-black scales. I shot right up Suzy’s shoes, glided past her waist, and coiled myself neatly around the base of her neck under her hair.

The magic lens above the gate instantly turned back to a peaceful blue color.

"Everything looks correct, Director Suzy," the guard said, handing back her paper. "Move along."

Suzy nodded, stepping through the gate and walking down the road until the checkpoint was completely out of sight behind the trees. Once we were safe, I didn’t turn back into a human. The space under her hair was warm, and it was much easier to travel this way.

By noon, the trees cleared out, and we reached the outer farming villages that sat right on the edge of the Prince’s private territory.

The moment we walked down the main street of the first village, my snake tongue flicked out in pure disgust. The place didn’t look like a normal town. It looked like a total disaster zone. The houses were half-burnt, the fences were broken, and dozens of thin, hollow-eyed people were sitting in the ground, wrapped in dirty rags. Children with ribs showing were begging for scraps of bread by the puddles.

’Hey, Suzy,’ I thought, sending my words straight into her head as I looked at a ruined bakery. ’What happened to this place? It looks like a branch that just went completely bankrupt.’

"What? You don’t know that?" Suzy’s sighed her shoulders went tight beneath my coils. Her mental voice sounded sad. "One year ago, the great world gates opened, Barry. The demons and the other wild dark races launched a massive attack against our entire world. The sky turned black for three months."

’And the royal army didn’t stop them?’ I asked.

’ When the monsters reached the walls of this city, Prince Raymond and his elite guard locked themselves inside the inner palace,’ Suzy said mentally, her thoughts dripping with pure, cold anger. ’They didn’t move a single soldier to protect the outer towns. They left these farmers and shopkeepers to die just to save their own skin. And even now, after the danger is gone, they aren’t helping them rebuild. They just increased the trade taxes by forty percent to pay for the Prince’s lifestyle.’

I looked down at an old man trying to scrape clean water out of a broken barrel. In my old human life, I thought corporate greed was bad when my boss cut our holiday bonuses. But this was completely different. The local government was literally letting their own customer base starve to death while they lived like kings.

’How did the monsters get pushed back if the Prince didn’t fight? Imean where they go now’ I asked.

"It was all thanks to the other four Kings," Suzy explained, her eyes tracking a group of royal tax collectors who were currently kicking a farmer out of his own barn down the street. "They brought their own personal armies and fought the demon bosses at the front lines until the time ended and the gates closed automatically, forcing the dark races back into their own world. But the damage here was already done."

I looked back at the tax collectors, my eyes flashing with a dangerous light right under Suzy’s hair. The Prince was a complete parasite who was bleeding his own kingdom dry.

’ Suzy, scratch the original budget plan. We aren’t just skimming ten percent of his stock anymore.’

"What are you planning, Barry?" she asked, her pulse quickening against my scales.

’We’re going to liquidate his entire forest estate. Every single coin, every single potion, and every single core. If he likes taxes so much, it’s time for him to pay his overdue fines ’.