He decided that beating little girls wasn’t morally just. The fact that the little girl in question could probably 1v1 him so he was a bit wary about antagonizing her played no part in that decision.

  “I mean, how did you– How did you even hide that?!” he whined. “You can’t just hide a fucking level, someone should’ve already sniffed that out!” And locked her up so she wouldn’t steal his exp, that part he didn’t add.

  “It’s not like it’s written over my head, you know,” she said sheepishly. “I was already stronger than almost everyone else, so it’s not that surprising that I still feel stronger? And you kinda need to focus to feel the nuances, and why would anyone try to do that with me?”

  “What do you mean why?! It’s exactly because–”

  “Dennis,” she said quietly, hunching her shoulders and adjusting her posture a bit. “Is there any reason to pay attention to my level?”

  The question stopped him in his tracks for some reason. Or was it the way Lily looked?

  “I mean,” he mumbled, trying to gather his thoughts. “Not really…”

  She was an innocent little girl. What was the point of looking into it? Of course her exp didn’t change, for that she would need to kill monsters, and there was no way such an innocent girl would do that.

  His eyes narrowed as he watched her.

  But she did kill them. She did level up. Why was it so hard to believe? No, he had no problems in believing that she did that, but it was almost impossible to believe that she could. She was too innocent. She would never do that, so there was no point in suspecting her in any wrongdoing. Yeah, he clearly remembered how enthusiastically she was shooting them before, but that was… Somehow different? And she was sneaking out of the fort to kill goblins right now, and that was so fucking strange to think about. Like a cute puppy holding a bloody knife, it just didn’t make sense, it was not what puppies did.

  He also clearly remembered never thinking about her like that. There was nothing innocent about having an assassin build. Every thought he remembered about her was either annoyance, or a mix between begrudging respect and amusement. Not puppy. The dissonance between everything he knew and what he saw was staggering. She was putting on a good act, playing the part of an innocent girl like that. That had to be it?

  A good act…

  She winced, and the spell broke.

  “Well, that just got too expensive,” she said with a small sigh. “But you got the idea?”

  “You’ve got to be shitting me…” he said. “How the fuck did Michael not kill you yet? That dude’s a control freak, and you’re what, a mindbender?”

  “The best actress in the world,” she said proudly.

  “But no, that wouldn’t make any sense…” he continued rambling. “I would remember thinking about you all the time like that, and I didn’t, I thought about you more or less the same thing I always did. And mana requirements? You can barely stay invisible for a few minutes, there’s no way you would be running whatever this thing was 24/7, it just doesn’t–”

  “It’s way cheaper than acting like I’m the wind,” she said. “And also much less trippy. I’m usually running a much weaker version of this at home, just enough so my mana regeneration could keep up with it. But it’s enough for people to not take a closer look, you know? As long as they don’t care, they won’t care.”

  Huh.

  Okay. The mana cost was variable and she could pull shit like that? He mentally upped her threat rating in his head from ‘Quite OP’ to ‘What the fuck’. This power was deep into villain territory. Not that evil powers made people villains, thinking like that was cringe, but he would have to pay attention to Lily a bit more in case she decided to do something that required some heroing from him. Was that racist? Powerist? Putting someone on the list to look out for purely for the potential threat was something evil governmental agencies did. A true hero wouldn’t care, he would look at the person, not the power. And it’s not like she did anything evil with that power.

  Besides casually mind controlling everyone in the fort, that is. But mind control on its own wasn’t inherently evil in small doses? Probably? What she did was more or less the same as dressing up to look more innocent. Just more effective and without the dressing up part. Isn’t it the same as saying that good makeup was evil? Or should he consider all mindcontrol-adjacent powers evil on principle? Nah, that was stupid. He could come up with several examples of heroes with mind control powers. No one ever said that Professor Xavier was evil.

  Okay, no, a lot of people did say that, but he disagreed, and therefore they were wrong. Professor X was one of the good guys, yes? So it wasn’t evil. Case closed, his argument was unbeatable.

  The thing was, he didn’t particularly care what Lily did or what her power was besides the scope of ‘is it villain’, and in this case it just didn’t feel like that. Was there any point in trying to define what was and what wasn’t an ethical use of such power? He just listened to his heroic senses, and they didn’t tingle, and that was enough. Much easier than trying to define all of the edge cases and stuff. He wasn’t a lawyer, and he had no desire to get into those details. Just listening to his gut was enough. People in the fort would definitely complain if they knew, but did he care? Fuck no. It wasn’t evil enough to get his attention.

  Technically, he was also a victim of mind control. Again, who cared? Not him. Could it be that he was mind controlled to not care? Possible, but probably not? As long as the mind control didn’t bother him or could be defined as ‘villainous’ it was just another monochrome thing in the world of pointless things. It didn’t touch him. It didn’t matter. He didn’t care.

  There was very little he cared about. Dennis liked to think about himself as a person who understood his priorities.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  “Cool,” was all that he said.

  They continued their walk in silence for a few minutes before finally some poor lost goblin dragged itself out of whatever hiding hole it occupied. Dennis killed it without even looking at the thing. Lily just stood nearby, watching him curiously without a hint of fear in her. She was as used to it all as he was, it seemed.

  “I was right,” she said after he cleaned the dagger.

  “Hm?”

  “You honestly don’t care, do you?”

  “Stealing my exp was a dick move,” he grumbled. “But I can’t do anything about it, and now that you’re with me it won’t be a problem. Just don’t kill-steal.”

  “I’m talking about the mind control, Dennis.”

  “Nah, I don’t give a shit.”

  She chuckled. A few moments passed in silence.

  “I was so scared of telling anyone,” she said quietly. It didn’t look like she was talking to him, just speaking out loud. That suited him just fine. “And the longer I keep it a secret, the harder it is to tell, you know? Because to keep it secret I need to use the skill, and the more I use it the more trouble I’ll be in when someone finds out. And now I’m at a point where I think they’ll just kick me out if that happens. And you just can’t use the little girl act to get away with it if the act was the crime in the first place. No one would care that I’m a kid, because I weaponized it.”

  She paused for a second to take a deep breath, before she continued.

  “And someone will find out,” she said. “It will take just a little bit more suspicion than usual and the manacost will become too much to be sustainable, and just a little bit of bad luck could be enough for me to not be able to misdirect them with another stupid lie. Or someone will just connect the dots when I’m not nearby to influence them. There are so many ways it can all crash, and I’m terrified. Do you know how we gather around the fire in the evenings and tell stories sometimes? I think I saw you there once or twice. Did you know that people are making up horror stories about theoretical skills that could exist? One of the ones they came up with is almost like mine. I’m a horror story. I honestly have no idea how no one caught me yet. It’s so stupid.”

  Damn, there was a lot of bottled up tension in that girl. It was like a dam broke. Not that he minded listening to her that much, but from his perspective Lily just sounded silly, worrying about nonsense like that when she could just assassinate or terrify everyone who looked at her funny. If he were to guess what would happen when people found out about her, they would just assign her a handler and force her to cook fish sometimes. It wasn’t nearly as bad as she made it sound.

  “So I… I needed someone in my camp, you know?” she said. “And while you’re weird, people listen to you, even when you’re mean sometimes. And I thought ‘Hey, if Dennis will tell everyone that it’s okay, they’ll listen’. And you… Don’t be mad, okay? You’re crazy enough that I thought you might be one of the few who wouldn’t just burn me at the stake when they found out. You looked like you wouldn’t care. You really don’t care. So I took my shot and let you find me.”

  He raised an eyebrow at that.

  “What do you mean?” he asked. “I caught you.”

  “I don’t make noise,” she said. “I can pretend to be silent. I wanted you to catch me.”

  “You tried to run away though,” he pointed out. “With the wind thing.”

  “Yeah,” she nodded sheepishly. “I chickened out. It wasn’t the first time.”

  “Lol.”

  “Do people really say that?”

  “I do. I totally caught you.”

  She smiled.

  “Yeah, you did.” She raised her head and looked him in the eyes. “Will you protect me when others will find out?”

  He thought about it for a second. There wasn’t much to think about.

  “Michael and John are running a joint totalitarian dictatorship,” he said. “And you are a little girl. It’s not really a question. As long as you’re not evil, I’ll save you. Just scream ‘help’ or something. I still think you’re overcomplicating this too much, just threaten them. Trust me, it’ll work out.”

  “I doubt it will work in the way you’re imagining it,” she said. “And you do realize that I’m not exactly the ‘innocent little girl’?”

  “You’re literally a kid,” he pointed out.

  “Yes,” she nodded. “But I’m not seven. There are kindergartners who act more mature than what I’m usually playing. I’m in middle school. Or… was, I guess.”

  “Tomato, potato,” he said. “All I hear is the whining of a child.”

  “I will stab you.”

  “On second thought, you are indeed very mature and clearly not the kid that you’re pretending to be,” he instantly changed his mind.

  “Yes,” she nodded. “I am.”

  “Maybe even drinking age,” he added.

  “I could be,” she said. “If I wanted to. It’s not like they ask for an ID nowadays.”

  “So what’s the plan, then? We come back to the fort, I vouch for you and beat everyone who complains, you don’t have to hide anymore and finally go on your merry way grinding with the main party?”

  Please say yes.

  “Fuck no,” she replied instantly. “Absolutely nothing good will happen when they find out. Didn’t you listen to me? Ugh, of course you didn’t. Yes, it’s only a matter of time before someone figures me out, but I’ve already burned, like, all the bridges. The moment the truth becomes known people will start thinking about every interaction they had with me, looking for the moments when I used the skill, and there’s a lot of them. It will be a cascade of realizations, and none of them will be good for me. It won’t get better if I come clean. There’s no reason for me to do that. I need your help for when they find out, not for making it happen faster.”

  “Well…” He tried to figure out a way to make her leave him alone and couldn’t come up with anything moral enough. “Shit. So I’m stuck with you?”

  “Yep. I thought we'd established that already?”

  “There’s always hope,” he said wisely.

  “I’m not that bad. Doesn’t your skill need a damsel in distress to work?”

  “Yees?” He drew out the sound as he considered the implication.

  “I could do that. I could look so helpless and easily attackable that monsters will rush here from miles away.”

  “It works at a distance?” he asked. “I thought it was, like, a perception thing.”

  “Dunno,” she shrugged. “Not a thing that I’ve tested, that’s for sure. Maybe if I push more mana into it? Looking weak is hilariously cheap, probably because I don’t even need the skill for that. So what’s gonna happen if I feed it half my mana in the span of a few seconds? I bet that if it works, we will be attacked by a small army. And if I just stay still after that, all you’ll need to do is protect me and you will have all the experience you could want. You can just catch arrows when they fly at me, right? So it’s not like I’ll be in any real danger. Except, well, all the danger. Worst case I’ll just vanish.”

  Okay, why didn’t he think about it like that? If it worked, Lily wouldn’t be just a useless tagalong, she would be like a… A portable victim. Even in case her skill didn’t work as a lure, the option of just throwing her at strong enemies to save her from them would improve his grinding speed tremendously, even with the exp sharing.

  He would finally be able to go and clear out that church, for example. Just throw her in the middle of that group, shout ‘Lily, I choose you!’, and superspeed all over them.

  This was a great idea.

  “I take back all of the bad things I thought about you,” he said.

  “Things like?”

  “Nothing. I’ve never had a single bad thought about you,” he continued as he unsheathed his dagger. “Please taunt all of the monsters a few miles around us, Lily-sama.”

  “Sure.”