Его не звали, но он приперся / They never called, yet he is here: Глава 21

Chapter 21

Camrad_RIP 11.08.22 в 06:27

Have you ever had that moment when you went to the vegetable garden to dig potatoes, but you dug up not your usual vegetable, but a damn enriched uranium? I felt similar at that moment, just the same! I can't say that the "potato" I received was useless, but how much this information complicated my already complicated thought.

Camrad_RIP 13.08.22 в 15:08

Frankly, I didn't count too much on my newfound ability to tear out bits of memory with essentialism working so well. I was going to try it, then cuss myself out for failure and use the Shadow Grip for its intended purpose. The mood was far from rosy - I had good reason to fear that once I went in that direction, I might not be able to go back. However, this particular situation did fit the description of "the most extreme case," for which I was saving my mythical perk. Eating souls is undoubtedly disgusting and scary (for me in the first place), but it was the only option I could think of.

Camrad_RIP 13.08.22 в 15:09

I was so surprised when I was able to use the alchemical method, which was undoubtedly more gentle on my mental health. The fact was that the battle with me and the creatures that had come from Dream had exhausted Ferer to the point that he could not counteract me in any way. I should have let him rest for at least an hour, or take some potion, but I wasn't going to do anything stupid like that.

Camrad_RIP 13.08.22 в 15:10

Let's get back to the potatoes and the radioactive ore I mentioned earlier. This is what I was hoping to get out of Ferer fucking Roche? The methodology for summoning Heroes, the methodology for summoning them, the coordinates and names of those who are involved in such activities, who are actively involved or at least simply aware of them. Somewhere in the back of my mind, there was even a hope that the old man would know a simple and reliable way to take and turn off Yoke without leaving home. So that all my problems would be solved the same day, or at least the next morning, and then I could gather the harem and start progression, as it should be for isekai.

Camrad_RIP 13.08.22 в 15:12

No, I closed the first section almost completely - I got the information about the methods of summoning, as well as the names of those involved and interested. I did not understand the purely technical part, because my magical specialty is different. I had grasped the concepts, but about repeating them myself... simple and even complex rituals and the summons of a Hero, it's a comparison of a calculator and a hadron collider, no less. Especially since the pieces of the ripped-out essence quickly disintegrated and I could not cram them all into the Vessel, though I tried sincerely. Later I would have to sort out what I had managed to hide in the Vessel, but now I had enough of what came with the understanding.

Camrad_RIP 13.08.22 в 15:16

The interesting thing was that Ferer knew, albeit in a very basic way, exactly how the Yoke worked. Even though most of his conclusions were guesses, supported only by circumstantial evidence, and even then, at best. And this information made me raise my eyes to the sky, hidden by the stone of the fortress, and ask the guys upstairs how much they had lost touch with reality. Because the task given to me by the celestial Admins had just moved from the category of hopeless missions to the category of "not even funny.

Camrad_RIP 13.08.22 в 15:20

I would have been indignant for much longer, at least until I had run every curse I knew several times in a row, for every goddamn administrator and every one of their relatives down to the farthest tribe. Except I was running out of time, and after I realized the depths of the ass I was about to discover, there was no time left at all. It had even gone into the negative, forcing me to get my ass in my hands and get out of the burial ground that was slowly turning into a graveyard.

Camrad_RIP 13.08.22 в 15:23

The graveyard was no joke, even though there was no smell of death energy. The Mist's attentive and expectant gaze squeezed harder and harder at the magic embedded in the stones of the formerly impregnable citadel. When Ferer and I first began the battle, it was simply a premonition of impending trouble, whereas now the sad end was evident visually. The walls, sparkling with multi-colored sparks of disintegrating magic, were almost completely extinguished. The walls and the ceiling were covered with condensation of some incomprehensible moisture, and the floor was covered by a dense blanket of milky white mist.

Camrad_RIP 13.08.22 в 15:24

The background of the fog was low and somewhat muted, but the sheer amount of it and the strange sensation of the white haze made me want to scour my surroundings with shadows, to wipe the crap off me as quickly as possible. At least I was used to shadow energy, but here I had no idea what I was dealing with.

Camrad_RIP 13.08.22 в 15:25

The clairvoyance was clearly "tired," ceasing to flood my head with a waterfall of facts, reducing it to a small stream of unstructured data. However, I had no complaints about the skill, because it worked at one hundred and forty-six percent, allowing me not only to survive the battle but also to win without any fatal losses. Fatigue and a few scratches were minor things that I could survive if I got out of the bind.

Camrad_RIP 13.08.22 в 15:26

It would be hard to get out, but I wouldn't call it impossible. I poured into myself a few more of the flasks of battle-useful but unhealthy potions, swearing to myself that I would take the whole detox complex once the danger was over. The still-working hunch was enough to know how the rest of my companions were doing. Losius, Hans, Ygra, Taria - they were alive, capable, and in danger, not going to die anytime soon. No matter how their battle was going, at least they hadn't lost with a bang.

Camrad_RIP 13.08.22 в 16:21

But my new unwilling ally was much worse. First of all, we had been in contact with her for less than six hours, so I was not able to get my "inner eye and third eye" on her properly, picking up only the most basic and unspecific things. Secondly, she was inside the Stone, just like myself, which was why my clairvoyance continued to malfunction. Even with the death of the Watchers and the fall of the closed fields, the remnants of the stationary barriers still clogged my perception, simultaneously preventing me from looking "through myself". As the pieces of the Mist appeared inside the rooms, the barriers broke down permanently, but the Mist itself also jammed clairvoyance even better than the protection working at full capacity. All I could understand was that Hestia was still fighting, that she was still alive, and that she didn't have long to live.

Camrad_RIP 13.08.22 в 16:31

That's it.

Camrad_RIP 13.08.22 в 16:32

I didn't know any other details, didn't know its location, didn't know the numbers of the enemy or any other operational data. All I could squeeze out of my tired mind was an approximate direction down and to the left, but that was all. It was all the more useless when I considered the fact that I could not penetrate the walls of special stone even in shadowy form. I had to go to her for help, though.

Camrad_RIP 13.08.22 в 18:39

Don't think I'm any better than I am, gentlemen. If she had died before I was finished with Ferrer, I would have been a little upset, at most, but I certainly would not have torn the hair on my head. She was an enemy of mine whom I had subdued and overpowered, quite deliberately and with an understanding of the consequences. Just because I couldn't bring myself to be indifferent to her didn't mean that I didn't understand the situation. If the ring effect were removed from her, she wouldn't hesitate to stab me in the back, and she would be genuinely happy to do so. From her point of view, it would be a justifiable and fair decision, to put it impartially.

Camrad_RIP 13.08.22 в 18:40

My problem is that her subjugation has not gone away, and so she is fighting somewhere down there, with my name on her lips, trying to obey my last order. That order was not original, of course, but I figured that few people would want to resist an order to "survive," so a few extra points of morality would not harm.

Camrad_RIP 13.08.22 в 18:41

I quickly bend down and pick up the blade of the dead brether's bright little piece of Sky, shining brightly from the floor. I wouldn't have found the sword or its decapitated owner in the fog, but the glow of the blade's energy literally scatters the fog to shreds. I would use it myself, but the glow hurts me just as much. I wrestled the blade into its sheath, which was also an insulating container, then wrapped it in the fancy cloak I had taken off the Brether and fastened it to my back. I would be a kind of Geralt, especially since I wouldn't pull the pick from behind my back at the risk of cutting off my ear, because it was more dangerous for me than for the enemy.

Camrad_RIP 13.08.22 в 18:47

That's it now - time to hit the road. Take your ass in your hands, Kostik, and go work as a rescuer of beautiful ladies while you still have strength.

Camrad_RIP 13.08.22 в 18:48

I had to walk through the corridors with the slow and imposing rhythm of a staid British gentleman, looking down on the world around him. Not because of a desire to show off, and not even because of fatigue and an empty reserve. But only and solely for the sake of not getting lost in the stone corridors of the dead fortress.

Camrad_RIP 13.08.22 в 18:51

The Mist didn't just fill the rooms, no! It did something to space and metrics that made it impossible for me to get my bearings in the corridors, which seemed to have been explored (even through other people's dreams). I! With my sphere of shadows, my perception overpumped, and a detailed map of most parts of the Stone! And since even I was lost, I'm afraid to imagine what it would be like for the guys who would come here to help the besieged. It makes me feel better!

Camrad_RIP 13.08.22 в 18:53

The same clairvoyance that I used to pierce the corridors and the fog that hid them helped, as I reached the next reference point. So far, most of the corridors and rooms were waist-deep in fog, and a little higher near the walls. It was enough to make you lose your bearings, your strength, and your ability to think, as if the mist wanted to get under your clothes, under your skin, and into your bones, to crawl into your ears and devour your brains. The activated Aegis of Shadow repelled the tentacles of mist, and clairvoyance led me through the empty stone bowels.

Camrad_RIP 13.08.22 в 18:54

In some places, Mist rose higher than my head, and I had to climb to the ceiling, clinging to the shadows and crawling like a cockroach, fearing every second that I might fall into the fog which, I don't imagine it, reaching out to me with its tentacles. My head began to ache, but I did not risk stopping for a second, knowing that the countdown to the moment when the mist would fill every corner of the Stone was long over and that I had not had much time before half an hour ago. Now was the perfect moment for panic-panic-panic mode.

Camrad_RIP 13.08.22 в 18:56

The most frightening thing was the few moments when I had to pass through those sections of the path where the Mist covered the entire space. The few hundred meters that passed along the corridor, where the narrow slits of the loopholes, previously covered by the force fields, exited to the outside (to the territory of the fold), seemed like an eternity to me.

Camrad_RIP 13.08.22 в 19:00

The fields were long gone, and so was the corridor - all consumed by a milky whiteness, thick and churning, as if it were trying to squeeze even deeper into the interior of the stronghold. As I entered it, I realized very clearly a simple truth: if I took even one wrong step, I would be lost in the fog forever, never having reached the opposite end of the corridor, frozen and hovering in the weightless, misty sea forever.

Camrad_RIP 13.08.22 в 19:07

The clairvoyance stretched to its limit and a little higher, becoming for brief moments a steel cable that would lead me to salvation. Every step made the space shake, the sphere showed nothing at all, as if there were no shadows in the place, and never had been, and the Aegis trembled and threatened to disintegrate at any moment. All I had left was the cold stone of the floor, on which I took the next step blindly, trusting that I would keep from falling.

Camrad_RIP 13.08.22 в 19:07

Once I was out of the danger zone, waist-deep in the misty haze, I almost cried with relief, like a little girl. The Mist might be far less frightening than The Shadow, but it was no less dangerous. Where The Shadow gives only hunger and chill, this abomination remains indifferent but unstoppable. I have no idea how the unfortunate ones who got the Mist classes connected with this realm, but I sympathize with them in advance - it takes a lot of nerve. These one hundred and forty-three steps through solid fog were the least bit easier than fighting a full-fledged Hero in the form of Ferer.

Camrad_RIP 13.08.22 в 19:09

After a few more minutes, I found myself in front of the squeezed and fused gate that led to the steel golem-filled hangar of Stone.

Camrad_RIP 13.08.22 в 19:10

I found what was left of her almost immediately, nearly hitting her with all the strength I had. The clairvoyance was a red-hot forceps into my temples, making me see and understand things I'd rather not witness. That blob of mist was still Hestia Raimel, or rather what was left of her. And I suddenly realized that I loved and adored my own Shadow Aegis, who had never let the mist touch me. At first it repelled the Mist at a distance of a meter and a half, then the distance decreased, and now the monochrome haze of the Aegis encircled my body like armor, stopping the hostile tentacles of mist a few centimeters from my flesh.

Camrad_RIP 13.08.22 в 19:14

I wouldn't have known for a century exactly how the Mist takes its prey, but, alas, clairvoyance does not allow me that kind of mercy. The last moments of Hestia's desperate struggle against the blind element, when mere stubbornness forces you to keep sacrificing everything you have to keep your soul and mind intact, are forever imprinted on my memory, alongside a mountain of other things I'd rather forget.

Camrad_RIP 13.08.22 в 19:20

I showed up just at the moment when there was nothing left to pay her, and the Mist decided to take the last of what she had left. It wasn't even the anger or hatred that had so often given me strength, but the purest disgust with which one crushes a poisonous spider with a slipper. The effort of will made the shadowy tentacles manifest in reality, their ends sprouting right out from under me. There are no shadows in the Mist, but it couldn't take away my own shadow.

Camrad_RIP 13.08.22 в 19:21

The few black-soaked cloths that had become shields of sorts pushed back the whiteness reaching for its prey, which retreated with the same indifference with which it had previously devoured my ally. As always in critical situations, my tongue began to work ahead of my brain, dispelling the grave silence that lingered in the ruined and almost obscured hangar.

Camrad_RIP 13.08.22 в 19:23

"Can't you even take a step without me?" My intuition convinced me that even in this state, Hestia heard me, and when she heard me, she wished to knock.

Camrad_RIP 16.08.22 в 16:41

It's fair to say that, judging by the fact that there were no whole golems left after her battle (judging by my visions, they were nightmares from the same pack that almost ate me and Ferer), the overpowering was truly epic to the extreme and pathos to the point of impossibility. There was even, like, someone alive inside that steel giant, only unconscious.

Camrad_RIP 16.08.22 в 16:43

I didn't risk turning my Gaze off, because I can see through the Mist a little better than I can with a simple vision, so I had no trouble discerning the life spark of the unconscious mech pilot. While I had a cool battle, this victim had a real anime going on here, with mechs and hostile alien (can Dream be considered a different planet?) crap.

Camrad_RIP 16.08.22 в 16:44

I look at the sapient cloud of white mist.

Camrad_RIP 16.08.22 в 16:45

Cloudy is looking at me in some incomprehensible way.

Camrad_RIP 16.08.22 в 16:45

It may even be able to distinguish the view of me, despite the absence of eyes or other organs that can be used as eyes. She has no ears, either, by the way, but that doesn't stop her from hearing. What am I supposed to do with her now? Well, of course, I have to save her, but how the hell am I supposed to do that? She's weightless, insubstantial, and in the Mist, she'd vanish without a trace. She can't cover herself with shadows - Hestia is now a pure soul and a pure consciousness, which the shadow energy would spill out with the same hundred-percent guarantee as the Mist.

Camrad_RIP 16.08.22 в 16:49

Damn, it's always the normal isekai retrieves the wounded beauty in their arms. I've got a pretty girl that's turned into a miniature weather phenomenon, and there's no way to get her out of there, either. I can't stick it in my shoe, dragging it around like a knife. Like, all these useless guys carry key chains in their pockets, and I have a reasonable foggy tentacle there!

Camrad_RIP 16.08.22 в 16:50

Stop.

Camrad_RIP 16.08.22 в 16:47

Tentacle!

Camrad_RIP 16.08.22 в 16:50

I mean, a pocket, not a tentacle, but still a stop. I won't put it in my pocket, of course. But the idea itself is not without a certain finesse and inventiveness. Is it possible to put this mist in some kind of container, like a flask? I'm not wearing one, but there must be one somewhere in this hangar. There must be, there must be. The only question that remains is...

Camrad_RIP 16.08.22 в 17:36

"Don't take this as an insult or mockery, but can you get into a container, like a flask or a jar, in this condition?" I asked, knowing that she would not be able to answer, expecting to understand the answer by clairvoyance.

Camrad_RIP 16.08.22 в 17:37

Amazingly, it really worked! She even had time to start worrying about not being able to answer, and I already knew that such a solution was really available to her. The funny thing is that she was surprised, apparently not used to the fact that she no longer has a solid material body.

Camrad_RIP 16.08.22 в 18:08

"Yeah, I got it," I answer right away. "And yes, I can pick up on your intentions, albeit very vaguely. And don't worry, I'll definitely try to create or find you a new body. If I survive this mess, of course."

Camrad_RIP 16.08.22 в 18:09

My words didn't just reassure or cheer her, but literally flooded he with a sense of relief, joy, and gratitude. Though she retained her character and mind, she was otherwise utterly useless - her levels and classes scattered into the mist along with her body, and without it all, she remained useless little more than completely. She couldn't even suck anymore. A cold pragmatism asserted to her that no one needed her like this, especially the mysterious me, who had already managed to accomplish the mission. This meant that any usefulness she might bring was already exhausted. All the same cold logic argued that I should just turn around and walk away, leaving her here. Well, at most, a mercy stroke so that the rest of her soul wouldn't be devoured by the same thing that took her body.

Camrad_RIP 16.08.22 в 18:10

She is sincerely grateful to me for not leaving her all so unnecessary, even realizing that the very situation in which she lost her job, social status, levels, and the body was provoked by me. The number of pleasant wishes to the creator of the ring keeps growing and growing, and soon won't fit on the first hundred sheets anymore.

Camrad_RIP 16.08.22 в 18:11

The search for the flask could take a long time, especially with the lack of perception through the sphere, and there was no time. Sensing resistance, the Mist began to accumulate in the hangar at a much faster rate. It was already climbing to a height and a half of my height, and, if it hadn't been for my barriers, it would have swept over our heads. The aggressive cold of the Shadow was reluctant to dissolve into the omnipresent fog, giving me time to react.

Camrad_RIP 16.08.22 в 18:12

I rejected the idea of stuffing the rest of Hestia into a bottle at once: I don't have such large containers, and she couldn't fit into a small one, even with the deprivation of her body. My memory immediately tells me that there is a huge golem a dozen meters away from me, inside which there is a flask attached to the pilot's belt. The fog has already managed to hide the defeated magical construct from me, but I still remember where it should be.

Camrad_RIP 16.08.22 в 18:15

I reinforce the barriers around the defenseless wisp of mist, the soul of Hestia, and then jump up with my bare physics, landing directly on the robot still towering above the level of the Mgla that filled the room. It's a powerful robot, though! And it's well protected, not letting any fog inside. For a few seconds I struggle with the thought of simply breaking the door down, nailing the man inside, and removing his flask, but then I decide that there are enough deaths for today, and an unconscious follower of Ikari Shinji cannot be a witness by definition.

Camrad_RIP 16.08.22 в 18:17