Striving for Perfection

To be honest, I'm already sick of waking up with exhaustion and a headache. Although it's mostly my fault, but not the point. I still feel the burn on the left side of my body, which, due to the lack of adrenaline, burns strongly but tolerably. Cool, I got enhanced regeneration, but it doesn't work on burns. Great.

I stand up leaning on my right hand and inspect my new possessions. Thick stone stalactites hang from the ceiling. In front of me are the treasures of the now dead owner in the form of gold, gold, a chest of gold, a golden crown, a golden sword, more gold, a sword? Interested, I approach the sword and notice that there are several similar ones here. I pull the sword out of the mountain of gold and start examining it. The blade is about fifteen inches, there is a guard, judging by the appearance of an all-gold sword, that is, most likely ceremonial. For the sake of experiment, I try to bend it and surprisingly it does bend a little. And then the realization comes to me. I'm fucking rich and I like it.

Even if it was steel, I wouldn't be able to use it for its intended purpose due to the specifics of the task, but what if I could use it as a transmitter for magic? This may be useful to me in the future, in addition to riches.

I take the sword in two hands and begin to conduct magic into it. At first everything goes well, but then the magic began to accumulate in the blade and dissipate in the air. I was already getting tired, so I finished conducting magic into the blade and decided to postpone the idea of a transmitter weapon for later.

It turns out that gold dispels magic and I can use it to protect myself. I'm going to have to dig around here well to find something that I can use as armor. Well, the sooner I start, the sooner I'll finish.

And so I started digging into the mountain of gold.

Now I'm standing on the street in my "armor" aka golden trinkets that are at least remotely similar to armor and looking at the corpse of the dragon I defeated earlier. I really hope that it is not too heavy, and I will be able to drag it before it starts to rot. Okay, I'll deal with it later, but now about the armor. The short sleeves of my armor consist of several bent and twisted swords. To be honest, if they break (and they will break), I'm not going to make new ones, I had enough effort spent on the first pair. On my head, the alpha's skull, which has already become my native, remains unchanged. I found one plate with a blue star mark and a second large one without a mark. By linking them together, I got something similar to a golden breastplate that is attached to the shoulders. The rest of the body has no armor in favor of greater mobility. No matter how absurd, I look in my improvised armor, they should show themselves well in battle against magical opponents. I hope.

I decide to move into the castle to collect my few belongings and a few books. Walking along a path that I didn't notice last time, I come to a dead end. And what should I do? Oh, I have an idea!

I take off my golden breastplate and walk to the edge of the mountain holding it in my hands. When I get to the edge, I put the bib down like a snowboard, squat, push off and start rolling down the mountain. My improvised snowboard is gaining more and more speed and starts scratching loudly on the rocks. A large boulder appears in front of me, blocking my path and onto which I am now sliding at great speed. Without having time to react, I and my bib fly into the air. Having regained my orientation in space, I took the bib in my hand and began to look for support. When I saw the root sticking out of the mountain, I released magical tentacles into it and hung onto it with one hand. Hanging on the root, I began to inspect the area in search of a way out of my predicament.

In the distance, I saw several golden figures moving to the top of the mountain from the direction of the city I was supposed to attack. Because of the distance, they could not be seen in more detail. Looking down, I saw only a huge distance to the ground. At an impressive distance from me, you could see a lot of trees and the castle to which I was heading.

Damn, I have nowhere to go and staying here is not an option and what should I do? If I let go of the root, it's an imminent death. The golden figures are most likely thieves. How else could they get so much gold to dress up in? They can steal my gold, which I cannot allow because it will be useful to me in the future. But if the dynamics of the wooden wolves continue, I will not be able to safely return to the castle and collect the necessary things. I need to think about a plan. . . Well, I have an idea that has at least a minimal chance of success.

I climbed up on a root and sat down on it. I took the breastplate with my magical tentacles and began to spin it in the air, constantly gaining speed. When he gained enough speed, I threw him into the rock, fixing him in it. I grabbed my breastplate with my hands and braced my feet against the rock. When all the preparations were finished, I got ready for what I was going to do. Quickly pulling the breastplate out of the rock, I turned over with the help of inertia and plunged it into the rock below and then turned over again to the initial position and finally descended about ten feet. I took a little break and began to repeat the process gradually getting into a rhythm and increasing the speed.

When I got to the ground, my back hurt like hell and my arms and legs were no longer felt at all. The bib was already crumpled and not wearable, but I fulfilled my goal. I went down the mountain in spite of everything and stayed alive.

"One step closer to perfection." I said when I came down from the mountain and fell to the ground to recuperate.

My body still hurts, but I got up and started moving towards the castle. I decided that the bib was too damaged to use and left it on the ground. During my movement to the castle, I began to think what I would do with the thieves.

It will be difficult to climb the mountain, both for them and for me, they will be exhausted when they climb to the top, this gives me an advantage. Most likely, they have weapons, so attacking in the open would be too risky. I need to find a place where I can hide and make surprise attacks. The cave is quite suitable. If they get to the top before me, I will have to intentionally use black fire, I don't see any other options to win without incurring serious losses.

When I approach the castle and see a free entrance to the bridge, I start running towards it, wanting to leave the forest as soon as possible. I quickly ran into the library of the castle, picked up my coat and collected the books that I considered necessary, namely "Pony Biology", "Advanced Rune Device" and "Rune Typology". I didn't take the book about souls because of its size and weight.

After leaving the castle and crossing the bridge, I take my almost broken knife out of my coat pocket, cut down lianas, tie them into ropes and tie books to myself to free my hands. When I made sure that everything was well secured, I started moving towards the mountain in order to have time to prepare for the attack of thieves. On the way to the mountain, I saw a bush with berries and had a snack with them.

Approaching the mountain and finding a part suitable for climbing, I began to climb. Just like last time, I tried to grab rocks and protruding roots whenever possible to simplify and accelerate the ascent. My speed was reduced due to fatigue from the descent from the mountain.

Having climbed to the top, I wasted no time running into the cave in search of a suitable shelter. Not having time to find shelter, I hear someone calling me.

"Stop, monster!" A man's voice shouted from behind.

I slowly turned around and saw another mistake of nature on this planet. It is a miniature horse with white fur, horn and dressed in golden armor similar to the ones I found earlier in the cave. There were six more behind him, three on each side, pointing their spears at me, but they had little wings instead of horns.

How did a significant reduction in size and an increase in intelligence win the evolutionary race in general? After all, they still have hooves, that is, their body does not help to reveal the benefits of intelligence, and how do they make this armor at all? The only assumption that I can put forward is a series of accidents that led to the death of the last developed species and now the locals use what is left of the antecedents, but because of their characteristics they cannot develop further. Pathetic creatures. In any case, I should say something.

"Firstly, -" I said, raising my index finger up, "-it is very indecent to come to someone without an invitation and call him a monster, and secondly, -"I continued, raising my middle finger up, "-why should I listen to such a mistake of nature as you?" I finished with a question to my interlocutor, looking at him with contempt.

"The princess ordered us to search this mountain, find and catch a bipedal creature with the head of an alpha Timberwolf, it looks like I'm looking right at him at this moment."

"Well, I recommend that you and your friends take some gold-" I pointed to the nearest pile of gold"-and just get the fuck out of here and tell your princess that you haven't found anyone. Everyone wins! " I said solemnly raising my hands in the air

"The order of the princess is not discussed, you either go with us peacefully or we will force you," he said while his friends began to close a ring around me.

"Well," I said, disappointed, starting to prepare for the use of black fire.

I focused on feeling the magic inside me and started pulling the warm part of it out of myself. While she was stretching, I felt a huge temperature around me. The fire started to flare up in different parts of my body, bringing me great pain. My body started to move by itself and get up on all fours, and I could only slightly change the direction. My mouth began to rearrange and expand, which brought me hellish pain.

Upon completion of my transformation, I could feel the fear coming from those around me. My body quickly rushed forward to the stallion with whom I was talking and tore off his head releasing a fountain of blood. Gathering all my willpower, I was able to take control of my body and jumped onto a stalactite to view the battlefield from a different angle. The horses had already lost their formation at this stage and were just standing at a random distance from each other as if asking to be finished off quickly, which is strange considering that they serve some kind of princess. Maybe they're just part of a militia or something, but then why send unprepared forces to find the alien? It seems their civilization is even more pathetic than I thought.

I started to feel like my body was starting to move on its own again and pushing off from the stalactite to head towards the militia. I quickly grab two of them by the heads and collide with each other, thus crushing them and splattering my face with blood mixed with pieces of brains. Two of them lunged at me with their spears, but I reacted quickly, snatched the weapon from one and plunged it into the neck of the other and sent the one from whom I took the spear flying with a strong kick. The remaining two have already dropped their weapons and are running out of the cave for their lives, but I throw a spear at the one who ran away further, impaling him on him like a pig on a skewer. My body began to move independently on all fours again and quickly grabbed the latter by the neck trying to strangle him. While my body was strangling the latter, a fierce struggle was going on in my mind.

He is not to blame for anything, we must spare him! Shut up, he has challenged our perfection and must be destroyed! No, no, shut up everyone! The voices in my head want to destroy the clarity of my mind, but I have to keep following the basics of my philosophy. The search for truth by any possible method is the main sign of perfection. He may be one of the ways to find out the truth.

I was able to take control of my body and hit the latter, so that he lost consciousness. My magic stabilized and I fell to the ground shaking in pain while my mouth returned to normal again. I can feel every hole burned into my body and the hellish pain coming from each of them. The noise in the ears and unbearable pain throughout the body does not allow even the most elementary thought to form.

After what seemed like an eternity, I was able to start thinking about something other than pain, and after a couple of minutes I was able to stagger to my feet. Getting to my feet, I noticed that those parts of my arms that were covered with improvised armor did not hurt so much, from which I concluded that gold could help me use dark fire better. When I got to my feet, I untied the ropes on which the books were and used them to tie up the militia member I had captured. I sat down in a corner of the cave and started reading books to distract myself from the pain.

A few hours later

The books have been read and my misunderstanding of how these ponies were able to survive and evolve has only increased along with the understanding that I urgently need to know the power of my soul. I made this conclusion from the following information.

1. There are three types of ponies: Unicorns whose horns are so sensitive that a simple blow to it can disable it. Pegasi whose wings are connected to the rest of the body by extremely thin bones that are miraculously held together. Earth ponies are in fact no different from their counterparts from Earth except for intelligence. But the question remains how horses whose bodies are imprisoned for long journeys were able to evolve and not be enslaved? Well, at least I have a personal motivation to fulfill the mission of Chrysalis in the form of oppression of an underdeveloped species. All the underdeveloped must work, work and work again.

2. In addition to the three main elements of the rune, there are many additional ones, two of which I was very interested in, namely: "mark" and "indication of the mark". As the name suggests, they interact with each other. The mark is a circle between the central and outer one, which causes the rune to simply attach to the enemy, rather than deal damage. An indication of the mark, as the name implies, causes the projectile fired by the rune to chase the mark until it overtakes it. Yes, these ponies were able to make a homing shot, apparently some of them deserve humane treatment, despite their evolutionary backwardness.

3. Runes are divided into three large groups: Simple ones made of three parts. Medium ones made of four or more parts. Complex runes consisting not only of many circles, but also requiring special movements during creation. The problem is that so much magic needs to be put into these special movements in order to make, quote, "Temporarily rebuild the magical structure of the world and create a window into reality in which there is no resistance to natural magic." It doesn't take a genius to understand that this is incredibly difficult if not impossible, so I decided to postpone the idea of raising the level of runes for later.I don't want to die of magical exhaustion.

I'm sitting in the corner of the cave and looking at the militia man I tied up earlier. Thanks to the free time, I was able to carry the corpses of his companions out of the cave and threw them off the cliff. The militia man slowly wakes up and as soon as he sees me he starts to tremble and stutter.

"You're finally awake, can you tell me your name?" I said trying to play friendly.

"P-Please don't kill me," he replied, still stuttering.

"I won't kill you if you're useful," I said, walking up to him, "but if you don't cooperate with me, you're in trouble." I said threatening him.

"My name is Loyal Fighter," he said, keeping the fear in his voice.

"And now, Loyal tell me how many militia in Ponyville?"

"The militia?" He said with his head bowed, "Do you mean the Solar Guard?" He asked with bewilderment in his voice.

God, these ponies are pathetic. If they have an unorganized crowd called the guard, then they have already been helped to survive not just by luck, but by some kind of patronage of God or something like that.

"Yes, yes guard how many guards are there in the city now?" I asked, continuing to act friendly.

"Fourteen ponies are the rest. . . " He didn't finish because the memories of the massacre hit him and made him cry.

I don't think I'll get any more information from him. I need to finish him off.

I started creating a simple palm-sized arrow and shot it at him. A hole was made in his head and only small pieces of meat remained on his face. I put his corpse on my shoulders, went out of the cave and threw it off the mountain like the previous ones. It was already evening and I looked at the village I was supposed to attack. After looking at Ponyville, I had only one thought in my head.

I'll show these ponies what perfection is.