“Hey there, boy,” the man greeted me, looking somewhat concerned.

I stared at the man and replied, “Hello there, good sir!” I replied cheerfully. There was way less hesitation in my voice than I expected. And so far, I felt nothing strange or out of the ordinary.

The man was clad in medieval garb, with leather armor covering his body but leaving his head fully exposed. His hair was a mundane brunette, cut messily and relatively short. Honestly, his shit was all sorts of fucked up. If my barber had ever done me that dirty, I’d have probably stabbed him with the closest pair of scissors.

The man’s eyes briefly flickered across my clothing and then back down the path I came from. “Say…” He scratched the back of his head. “Am bit surprised to see a city folk like you coming down our way. You aware of the danger warning?” he asked me.

My brain froze. I was presented with information I had no way to know, and I was worried that I would come across as incredibly sus if I were too oblivious. But before I could even start thinking of a calculated response, my mouth opened, “Don’t worry, good man,” I said, grinning wryly. “I’ve seen a little red, but there wasn’t much else in my way.”

“A little red?” the man asked, frowning. “A goblin?”

“Yeah,” I confirmed.

“You ran away?” he asked, shifting his posture. “I mean no insult, but you look like no runner, and those things can chase all day.”

“I may look a bit on the cleaner side,” I said. “But I can hold my own.”

The man’s eyebrows jumped. “You kiddin’? I live among soldiers and adventurers, and you don’t look the part; you a caster? Mage?”

I raised my arm. A few inches past my outstretched palm, a tiny ball of blue mana appeared. It grew, roiling and twisting into a rough ball shape, and before it got too big, I fired it. It flew straight for maybe 10 meters, but the uneven, poorly controlled shape made it spiral off course as its trajectory twisted, and it slammed into the ground.

The man gave me a look of approval and nodded. “That was a pretty big one. Nice! You’re talented, kid,” he cheered approvingly, then turned serious. “Still, maybe not the best idea to go down infested roads,” he criticized.

I noticed the man kept calling me “boy” and “kid.” I looked right about the same as I did when I was 20, and even though I had looked relatively young for my age back then, I was still slightly surprised.

“Nah, don’t worry,” I told the man, putting on a smug smile. “I’m no fool,” I said.

He looked me up and down again. While my clothes weren’t dirty, strictly speaking, they weren’t necessarily clean, either. I had rammed into a few trees with them still on, so they looked a bit damaged here and there, and the intense running had roughened my leather shoes up.

“So…” he started, glancing back up to my face. “What brings you to Parton?”

I shrugged. “Travel,” I claimed.

“Where?” he asked.

“Setting off on a journey,” I said.

The man scowled. “What about your parents?” he asked. “With your talent, I’d assume you’d be headed to an academy,” he proposed.

“Nah,” I said, spitting to the ground beside me. “I’m not about that life. Besides, my folks are gone, anyway. I have to take care of myself.”

The man winced in sympathy. “That’s rough, kid. But that doesn’t mean you should put yourself in danger like this.” He sighed, pinching his brows. “How long until you set off again?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, shrugging again. “Depends.”

“How about this?”—he crossed his arms—”I’ll teach you a thing or two about handling yourself. I can’t stop you from running off, but I don’t feel comfortable letting you go around like this.”

What a good guy, I thought, feeling disgusted by the offer.

“I appreciate that,” I forced myself to say. “I’ll probably stick around for a while, and I’m not planning on doing anything stupid soon. Maybe I’ll take you up on that once I’ve settled.”

The man looked hesitant for a long few seconds. “Hey… I should probably let you know that there have been some disappearances in the town in the past few weeks,” the man shared, looking distressed.

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“I get it,” I said. “Stay in at night, stay off the streets and all that?”

“Yes.” The man scratched his jaw. He looked at me for a long moment. “A boy your age has gone missing. Real treasure, that one,” he said. “If you see anything suspicious, report it to the guards.”

“Okay,” I agreed. “Anything else?”

The guard looked like he wanted to say something for a second, but then he caught himself. “No, that’s about it,” he decided. “Guess I’ll see you around. Need directions?”

“Sure,” I accepted the offer. “The man then detailed the locations of two taverns, a guard post, the shopping square, and the adventurer’s guild.

I knew it could just be how my [Otherworlder] title translated it, but the mention of an “adventurer’s guild” got me quite excited. If it was anything like the concept I was aware of, I wanted to join—after ensuring that it was safe, of course. Revealing myself as a devilich by accident would be quite dumb.

I waved the man off as I walked past him and entered the town.

I couldn’t hold back a sigh. What the hell was that about? Pulling bullshit out of my ass had been so effortless that… I wasn’t sure how to feel about it. Was that just a quirk of my race? It had felt instinctual, almost like I was built to blend in. It made my skin crawl at the thought. But, still, it hadn’t been as bad as I expected.

There was no urge beckoning me to eat the man alive or whatever. Although it did seem that accepting kindness was against my nature, which kind of sucked. I had to force myself to even give a “maybe” to the man’s offer. Even that had felt like agreeing to drink a glass of piss.

I walked around the town, tracking down the locations the man had forwarded me to. The houses were quite a bit taller than I expected to see. Some buildings even went up to five stories tall, which was mighty impressive for wood and stone construction.

Pre-industrially, the tallest residential buildings on Earth had only 5 to 6 stories, and I didn’t remember any exceptions to this. And those were incredibly rare. Here, in what appeared to be a rather ordinary town, there were quite a few such buildings scattered around, and I even spotted one going up to 8 stories tall.

Mentally, I had to update my estimation of this town’s population density.

The streets were far more ordinary, with cobblestone paving, polished smooth by the feet of many-a passerby. It was done quite nicely, but it was nothing awe-inspiring.

The people who walked around were dressed in exactly what I expected to see. They wore medieval-looking garb, with leather, linen, and wool being the dominant materials, although they looked surprisingly nice. Again, the clothing was surprisingly well-crafted.

There were also a few peculiar individuals wearing what seemed to be leather at a glance, but it was scaled, almost like crocodile hide.

I had expected to see far more people openly carrying weapons, but… I didn’t see anything like that. Not even the guard had been armed. Thinking on it further, I didn’t know the exact requirements to get the [Rookie] class. I got it by killing a zombie wolf, but for all I knew, everyone in the world had it, and subsequently, the [Inventory] skill. Talk about concealed carry. Border control had to be a nightmare in this world.

I wondered whether there was a way to check someone’s inventory. If that was the case, I had to be careful with what I carried. Although even if I kept it entirely empty, the sheer size of it could be a dead giveaway that I was no ordinary guy.

Finally, I exhausted all the things I could distract myself with and had to face the elephant in the room.

I walked past a burly man, then squeezed between two individuals having a conversation. The streets were loud and crowded, with much yelling and an everpresent smell of sweat and other unpleasant body odors.

Yet, I felt entirely comfortable. I—a person who once had extreme social anxiety… was perfectly all right in this situation.

Yeah. No. That wasn’t right. The way I felt was wrong.

It was comfort, yes, but there was a hint of predatory intent lingering in the far recess of my mind, coupled with a hint of disgust bubbling in my gut, courtesy of the blessing that was warning me about my desire to do something bad.

Usually, I would cringe at myself and declare these “dark urges” nothing but a side effect of eight-grader syndrome, but… When that goddess undid my shapeshifting, I felt it. The true darkness within me had been laid bare, nude, unconcealed, and unrestrained.

The comfort I felt was sinister. It was a malefic friendship between ravenous urges and malicious intent, directed at a crowd of innocents like a human directs hunger at a buffet. And I had no choice but to live with it, knowing full well that indulging it even a little bit would spell my doom.

“This fucking sucks,” I said out loud.

“Watch it, you prick!” a man shouted as he rammed into me, pushing me aside to make way. He was bald, muscular, and tall, clearly in a terrible mood as he bowled people over like pins.

I froze as I stared at his parting back, my eyebrow raised as I felt something unusual. For a fraction of a moment, I felt something familiar. It was hostility directed at me. The same type of hostility that had been directed at me by that goblin. That man… he was evil. Not just bad, but on a core level, he was aligned with evil.

I think I found one of the kidnappers, guard, I joked in my mind, feeling a sinister glee at the man, knowing full well that he was up to no good.

I caught myself indulging these… wicked thoughts. God, that sucked so bad! That being said, I wondered whether I should do something about that man. My mouth drooled at the thought, and the blessing did not respond in the slightest. It was almost the opposite, actually. It inspired me, encouraging me to run after the man and tear him apart in the name of justice!

Unfortunately, doing so wasn’t a good idea. I had no way to do something about it without attracting too much attention.

So I turned around—and immediately felt a powerful burst of disgust bubble in my throat, enough that I would puke if I had eaten anything.

Don’t fucking tell me…

Was ignoring that man and letting him go considered a sin!?

So… wait… I had to do something about him!?

“Oh… shit.”