Chapter 74: Stone by Stone
Night settled like a damp cloak over the village. The last hammer fell silent, and fires flickered low in their hearths. Most men found sleep easily in Bogwater. Levi didn't.
He waited. Quiet, still, patient. Like a mouse.
When the last torch near the wall guttered out and the muttered laughter from the unfinished tavern faded to snores, Levi moved. No sound. Just breath and footstep on cold soil. His eyes shifted to the trenches—those long paths dug during the day, meant for proper paving when time and coin allowed.
He approached the wall's curve where no one worked after dark. No guards either—not yet. That would change in time.
Levi crouched low, back to the stone, and whispered under his breath. A shimmer—barely a flicker in the air.
Cheat Engine: Materials
Stone Slabs (Mossy) +1
A block the size of a small table appeared, rough and green-stained, edges uneven like something weathered by decades of rain. He set it down in the trench. Not with perfect placement—not leveled, not lined—but that was the point.
Just enough to look like work in progress.
He moved a few steps. Another whisper.
Stone Slabs (Mossy) +1
Again, the weight appeared in his hands, just light enough to carry, just real enough to count. He laid it in the streetbed, pressed it into the dirt. It wobbled slightly but held. From a distance, it looked like labor interrupted—half-done work, the kind you'd expect when supplies ran thin or night came too fast.
Levi continued like that for over an hour. Never more than a few slabs. Never enough to draw attention. Every stone placed along the dug paths that would someday be streets. Nothing uniform. No perfection. Just hints of progress.
"I'll do this every night for a month," he whispered to himself. "One by one. No one notices half-finished things. No one questions a job that looks abandoned."
It was the same tactic he used in games: cheat just enough. Never too much at once. Not enough to crash the system. Just enough to tip the balance.
As he stood at the edge of the next trench, staring at the moonlit curve of earth and rising stone, he let out a soft breath.
"Even ghosts wouldn't notice," he muttered.
Then he placed the next slab.
And vanished back into the shadows.
One Month Later
Stone had crept through the village like ivy in spring—quiet, unnoticed, inevitable.
The streets were still far from finished. But every trench had something in it now. Every dirt path had the suggestion of order. Stonework that hadn't been ordered, hadn't been paid for, yet no one questioned.
Workers pointed it out, shrugging. "I didn't think we would work this fast," they said.
"Didn't we put that one down already?"
Even Ulrich mentioned it once over morning bread. "Strange," he said, scratching his beard. "Stones are settin' themselves, it feels like."
Levi just nodded. "Did i make u overwork?"
And no one asked more.