The day passed meaninglessly. I probably should have done something. Perhaps there was a way to get rid of that lumpy bastard, but I had neither the right connections nor an understanding of how this system worked. In general, I ate and played computer games. I didn’t even meditate or train. The only thing distracting me was conversations on a forum that I accessed from my new phone.

— Did you know that monsters transfer from island to island at night?

— You just discovered America. It’s logical—if they stayed in one place, they’d starve. I think they move to caves where similar creatures live and find their food sources.

— Listen, guys, since you’re so nice, maybe you could tell me what's in the fog? Is it land, right? Are there islands there? Surely one of you has flown there.

— Don’t enter the fog. It’ll eat you.

— Have the thirsty tried to condense moisture?

— Listen, great idea! You can set up large surfaces (metal, plastic, or glass, that's up to you) that will cool down at night and condense moisture from the night air. The collected water will flow into storage tanks for use. You could gather it in huge tanks and get rich selling it! Or you could set up dew traps! Place nets to catch tiny droplets of dew or fog. The condensate will flow down sloped surfaces into those collection containers. What method will you choose?

— Are you kidding me? I think there’s a way to manage without huge containers, using some special fabric and flying through the fog to collect moisture.

— Don’t enter the fog. It’ll eat you.

Anyway, I fell asleep in a bad mood.

But in the world of islands, I gathered my thoughts. Here, no one was looking for me, and it was good.

Another island pleased me with this information:

“There is no danger here except for a lonely Rock Dog, who is living out its last days in solitude and hunger. But there is an artifact that you will surely appreciate.”

— I wonder what awaits me, — I mumbled.

I carefully moved my base closer to the island and examined it attentively, but I didn’t see anything except for a pile of rocks in the middle of the island and a thin gray dog that was running in circles, trying to hide from me behind a mound of stones. Either they had already tried to shoot the monster this way, or the dog was smart and loved life.

I couldn’t see from above where the promised bonus was hidden. It looked like I would have to dig through the rocks.

I docked. For a minute, I chased the tail-tucked dog, trying to catch it, but the dog, despite its age, hunger, and loneliness, bolted like a young one. I tried to stab it with my knife, but the blade, glinting in the sun, missed, rang against the stones, and disappeared over the edge of the island.

I hesitated to climb the rocks and throw knives from above. In our world, a broken leg means a health holiday, plaster cast decorations, and a month and a half of bed-resting series. Here, appendicitis, a broken leg, or a good case of diarrhea could easily finish me off.

Assessing the dog's will to live, I spat on it and contemplated the best way to dismantle the rocks.

While I was working with the stones, the dog escaped to my base. On one hand, this greatly simplified my capture points—now I just needed to give a command through the display. On the other hand, it presented a new problem—my island was bigger, it already had a laboratory and a cultivation hall built on it, so playing hide and seek with the dog could take longer.

I examined the pile of stones, but found no trace of the artifact. The pile was about three meters high. There were enough boulders the size of half of me, but most of the rubble was made up of sand and smaller stones. I could feel that the artifact was likely hiding somewhere in the middle of the pile.

Unfortunately, I didn't have a shovel. The prospect of digging through the mountain with my hands instead of calmly flying around the islands made me think hard. A minute later, I detached the islands from the display, rose five meters (the approximate height from "the floor" of my base to the lowest point of my island was about four meters), and headed straight for the rocks.

At that moment, I didn’t think about what would happen if the antigravity mechanism of the dog’s island interfered with the operation of my mechanism—I just flew. And I was lucky—nothing happened, and I discovered that islands could fly directly above other islands.

There was a crunching sound and the sound of stones falling apart. The base's strength dropped by ten points, causing me to hiss (but that was expected), but the result was rather pleasing—I had cleared a rocky mound from the lower edge of the island and uncovered something that resembled a white coffin.

The dog didn’t show itself, although I kept glancing around and listening.

I approached the coffin, threw a pebble at the white lid (just in case), poked the stone with my spear (in case I unearthed a mimic), and then pried the lid open with the spear.

Inside lay a stone sphere, which I also poked a couple of times with my spear, just to be sure.

After that, I picked up the sphere, carried it back to my island, and looked at it through the telescope.

"Protection Sphere. Description: Mental Strike."

Well then...

I placed the sphere on the ground, entered the defense tab, and confirmed the absorption of the artifact.

The sphere disappeared from the tab, and an alert appeared on the display:

“Base Defense: +1

Mental Strike: Your enemies will be attacked with a psychic impulse. Set the strength of the strike and the trigger for activation.

Configure defense?”

I pressed confirmation.

Below was a list of actions for mental attacks. I could set the strength of the attack and the trigger for activation. I set the attack strength to medium (a notification popped up that this would be enough for three attacks, then a day to recharge), and the trigger to crossing the borders of my island. The borders were defined as the edges of the base, three meters above the level of the stone, and four meters below. Now I would know that no one would approach me from below with malicious intent. Too bad I couldn't lower the lower boundary a couple more meters and just fry the monsters' brains instead of stressing and fighting them.

The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.

As soon as I finished, another alert appeared:

“There is a hostile creature on the island. Level of hostility—red. Attack with a mental impulse?”

I left the message unanswered. Taking a piece of meat from the stock, I set out in search of the dog. Who knows, I might tame my own nightmare, gray and skinny—it could become my second line of defense.

I found the dog behind the laboratory. The dog was lying against the wall, but when it saw me, it immediately jumped up and tucked its tail. But it didn’t rush to run away, eagerly watching the piece of meat in my hand.

— Want some? Here!

The red chunk hit the floor with a juicy slap. The dog darted in my direction, but noticing that I wasn't chasing it, froze. It didn’t approach.

— I won't bother you, — I said, returning to the display. Unfortunately, the message had not changed.

“There is a hostile creature on the island. Level of hostility—red. Attack with a mental impulse?”

And below, another message popped up, an explanation for the clueless:

“There are two levels of attachment for creatures that are not your pets:

- Green. The creature considers you a pack member.

- Yellow. The creature neither considers you a friend nor an enemy.

There are also two levels of aggression:

Red. If the creature is convinced it can kill you, it will certainly attack.

Black. The creature will attack you as soon as it sees you, regardless of the strength difference.”

— What a mess, — I mumbled. — Is there nothing neutral? Or is it “feed it—become friends”?

I decided to give the dog another chance. I could now attack it at any time with a mental strike or “manual” snakes.

The forum didn’t provide any acceptable advice regarding pets.

— I know about the black level—at night all nightmares turn into nightmares, — replied Caramelkin. — And they all have a black level. I almost tamed a dog once, so I know what I’m talking about.

— How did you tame it?

The user typed for a couple of minutes and then sent me a long post.

— I happened to end up in a cave with a one-and-a-half-meter wolf. I was wounded, and the wolf was the last one left, so I jumped into a cage made of bars and locked myself inside. The wolf guarded me, tried to open the cage, gnawed at the bars until it got smacked, and nearly whined with desire to get to the meat. But I noticed that it licked the bars that had my blood on them. Honestly, I wasn’t in the best shape at that time—my arm was torn, and a tourniquet made from my own T-shirt wasn’t holding back the blood very well. In short, I didn’t know what I was doing, but I got the idea to feed the monster with my blood. I don’t remember why I decided to do that—either to entice the wolf or to feed it (with blood, a one-and-a-half-meter beast, ha). But it worked—I wasn’t harmed by the wolf.

— Wait, where did the village come from? And why didn’t the villagers mind that you locked yourself in the cage? — another user butted in.

— So to tame a nightmare, you need to feed it blood? — I asked for clarification.

— Did you disturb the intelligent beings in the village? Bastards! How could the ground even bear you?!

— Well, that's how it works, — Caramelkin replied. We both ignored the hysteria.

I pondered and asked myself:

— What would happen if I fed the blood of one nightmare to others?

I duplicated the question on the forum, but no one answered.

I went behind the laboratory to check on the dog again and found that the monster looked much better. The gray fur hadn’t disappeared, but its sides had widened as if it had been fattened for a week. The look the dog gave me was hungry and very thoughtful. The monster lazily stood up and growled at me, baring its yellowish fangs. It seemed like the nightmare had found a place to live, gotten stronger, and wasn’t planning to vacate.

I returned to the display and seeing the message about the red level of aggression again, I finally pressed the "attack" button.

The dog didn’t even whimper. I found the dog where I left it. Only now the dog's body lay on its side, tongue sticking out. As if asleep.

For some reason, I remembered a cruel and disgusting video circulating on the internet about how dogs are indeed put to sleep at veterinary clinics. Euthanasia is performed using a drug that stops the heart or breathing. They say for the pet's relaxation, the veterinarian first puts the sick animal under anesthesia, and death comes in sleep, quickly and painlessly. I don’t know how true that is, and I wouldn’t claim that all clinics, veterinarians, and medications are the same, but the image of an animal convulsing and defecating itself still lingers in my mind.

If the nightmare had died, it would have gone straight to the stockpile. But I still leaned over the dog, cautiously touched the ribs under which its heart was calmly beating.

— If you were smaller, I would consider leaving you. But you’ll just eat me up. And I don’t like the moments with constant transformation into a nightmare and resetting your friendliness.

In general, people are now ready to sell themselves for water or meat. Against this background, feeding a dog would be unfair to other people. And although I don’t seem to need food, I’m still far from being a meat magnate.

And I abruptly lowered my spear.