Готовый перевод Настучать в бубен / Hit the tambourine: Глава 13-2

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He didn't attack right away, but first checked to see if his attempts to reach Fantrel with his servants would work. The image of the city was still clear in his mind, and he had no trouble finding it. Cities and villages, but first of all cities, are reflected in high spheres. It's hard to miss there. It's not like a fugitive hiding in the middle of wild territories. The spirit-observer from the bird-animal sphere, sent by a pinhole with support on the totem, got there without any problems, giving him a look around with his "eyes", both from the real world and the spiritual world, which, by the way, is quite rare for weak spirits. Having looked around and more tightly imprinted the images of this town, Stepan rolled up the shop and began to prepare his entourage for the upcoming operation, again in passing rejected a minor assignment from the Autoboginja, which required to put on someone his honestly earned super stockings and then do all sorts of obscene things, while the wearer of the stockings holds this piece of closet on Stepan's face, closing his eyes. The modernization plans were postponed, the search for more advanced combat contracts was forgotten, and even the practice of leaving the body and wandering through spheres was reduced to staying in the clearing, albeit without a body, while that body was lying on a comfortable stone crib. The experience dripped slowly, slower than he would have liked, but still faster than expected due to the novelty of the case.

It took him more than a decade to prepare, he even had to summon a couple of very strong spirits, and then a couple more, but all things come to an end, and so did his preparation. He marked it by drinking a bottle of wine in the village inn in the company of Kirik, who was laughing merrily and telling him about how Meld was running away from Vomziak, who was farting on the move, and not just running away, but swearing at his swear words in return. At the same time, he very competently said that there was no reason to behave improperly with him, and he didn't accept his claims, because his friend didn't fart. Judging by the headman's reaction, the boy had no problems with it and even managed to express his point of view quite lucidly. True, he had to give away the secret of getting rid of flatulence, and without even hearing an apology from the man, but it was understandable, he was much older and therefore more authoritative. And the boy got the reputation of a boy who really understood something, who could do all sorts of things, and, what was much more important for Meld, the quarrelsome boatman who could not tolerate Vomziak and his sons, and all of them, including Meld's friend, finally warmed to him. The way he laughed at the misfortune of Beaver, who had been insolently punished for his cunning - he had received this nickname for his characteristic teeth - and who would now be called Fart for years to come, he even stopped chasing the boy with pitchforks and allowed him to come to the house to have a word or two with his granddaughter, and even let him eat at the table that evening.

Well, the boy seems to be doing well now: to be allowed to sit at the table is to be accepted into the circle and to say his weighty "yes" to the future engagement. Taking into account the realities of this world and the early formation of independent units, it's not just an engagement, it's a wedding, too. Stepan, having listened to the story he had heard earlier from Meld - only there he behaved much more heroically and almost defeated a man blazing with fire from his fart ass like Gandalf, who had defeated the Balrog - inserted a couple of comments and went to his room. To make someone else's business go badly, if not completely over. He would try to put an unambiguous and unambiguous end to the protracted revenge.

He took his time, slowly ferrying the necessary and potentially useful spirits to a kind of anchor he'd placed outside the city limits. The small totem, wooden and decorated with cubist carvings, had been created by him as a relay door. At first, the young man took great length and care in stripping the reflection of the totem from its matter, leaving only the wood empty and devoid of imprint, and moving the totem shining in the spirit world directly to the city. One of the summoned spirits opened its maw for a moment, it was that maw, from it alone, opened it both there, next to Fantrel, and in the clearing, next to Stepan. The shaman took the reflection with his spiritual limb, slipped it through the maw-here, slipped it out of the maw-there, and then brought the spiritual hand back, leaving the reflection of the totem at the proper point. The spell artifact flashed and pulsed, which was very noticeable to any gifted person who happened to be nearby, even a hundred meters away from the point, causing several spirits with aspects of silence and inattention to activate, hiding the magical anomaly and distracting the eye with cunning mental influence.

The lifeless wood left in the clearing flickered, became transparent and ghostly, and reappeared, but already in the place of its reflection, also near the city. Now the totem was hiding itself, immersed in the snow, hidden from sight and magical perception. The gate for transportation of combat and not-so-combat units was ready, the city did not notice anything and on the face of the phantom Stepan blossomed a satisfied and slightly sinister smile. Probably because it was sinister because he had unwittingly combined the usual smile and the grin of the spirit form, which slightly protruded from under the image of the face, revealing the sharp teeth that were now visible. The first to go, however, were not ravenous killers or quiet liquidators, no, the first to go through the totem connected to the main array were numerous scouts, stealthy and able to look into reality without getting out into this reality, as well as sleepwalkers and suggestors. With his improved skills and revealed synergy, he was now quite capable of getting into other people's heads, not only by long and tedious looking through dreams, but also by actually getting answers to questions.

And yes, he checked his talents on Kirik first, and again he didn't find anything red-hot, except for the lingering regret that he couldn't put his daughter under a magician. He had his suspicions, seeing that the strange stranger named Pann was much better at some things than he said, and he didn't brag about it. He especially remembered the amulet given to Meld against blizzard, wind, cold, and wet feet all at once... Maybe Stepan had really overdone it, but he didn't want to treat the boy's cold again. The headman's conclusion, however, was very unorthodox: Accustomed to the fact that magicians do not hide their power, and even on the contrary, try to force it (we're talking about weak magicians and undertrainees, not normal adepts and above, with which the man almost never crossed), he thought that Pann strict grandfather-teacher harassed to such an extent that he still can not raise his self-esteem, considering himself a weakling, although in fact is not a weakling at all. And as soon as the teacher dies, the boy immediately leaves the rest of the family.

No, they raised Pann very well, teaching him, instilling virtues, and teaching him to stand up for himself, both in word and deed. But obviously, they tried not to praise him too much, because he was already grown up and honorable from all sides, even though he was already so good, he still considered himself a boy who could do little. Stepan, of course, laughed at this interpretation of his own reservations, as he came out of his trance, leaving Kirik's dreams and ordering the spirit to send him something good and peaceful. He laughed, but he found no reason to dissuade Kirik from his delusions and even began to think about playing along with him even more, "telling him" about how he was fed up in his native home, that he left that farm at the first opportunity to see the cruel and bloody world around him, because it was unbearable to stay at home.

Stepan shook his head, pushing the memories away and returning to his own goals and plans. The spirits, a whole plethora of them, were oriented by the markings and signatures of the watchers, filling the city and gradually getting closer to their positions. Some of the watchers are concentrating on one of the most expensive and wealthy mansions in the center of the city, where the honorable representatives of the House of Krellb reside. They formally have their own lands, but they live mostly in the city, leaving it only on business and do not check their settlements, having left the affairs to the manager. This is because their land is not the minimum of one and a half-ruined farms, just to be considered for the land aristocracy, but not much, and the land itself is not fertile, there are few peasants on them, the family does not invest in the development of the land. The main streams of gold go into the pockets of the Krellbs from their patriarch and the father of the family, who has a strong enough magical gift and a very prestigious, monetary specialty - artifacts.

Stepan knew most of it from the late son of the current patriarch, and some of it he was learning right now, receiving images-answers from the spirits of the right direction sucked to the sleeping minds, only adding to the picture. He stayed out of places with magical defenses, didn't direct his servants at the owners of good magical amulets, and didn't tire himself or try to harm others. The Krellb family was known in the city, so he could pick up a little rumor or information from the first guard or shopkeeper he saw. He didn't go into the mansion itself, he didn't even approach it, sleeping and night, he just watched. He began his research and revenge at the tavern where he had once lived and where he had been given a tracking amulet made by the same family.

The memories of those days were still fresh, regularly fueled by vengeful anger, so he sent the images to the spirits with the utmost clarity, quickly finding the unfortunate establishment. He was already remembering a lot of things, stimulating his memory with spiritual influences on himself, which was also a form of mental influence, and therefore easy to do. One of the maids, a skinny and gnarled woman with an evil and frankly greedy look, a long-standing anger at the whole world, which she had thrown at the young man who had settled there. And she was still working there and sleeping there too, so there was no need to look for her. No, he could have found her, in the world of high spheres the connection between a worker and his place of work means a lot, there are special entities that will follow such a trail and Stepan had summoned such units ahead of time, sensing their necessity. But still, it's nice that he didn't have to look.

What was more unpleasant was that he was looking in the wrong direction. The aunt turned out to be really bad-tempered, beaten by life, with health problems, and therefore often drank to dull the pain, but in moderation. She was also very God-fearing and law-abiding, so she would not even think of doing something openly unkind and harmful to other people's lives. And she was wolfish about Stepan because he reminded her of the one who had broken her. the asshole who broke her heart, who broke her life in many ways, and therefore she truly hated him. The shaman didn't intend to kill or punish anyone for the slanted glances, he wasn't a Chinese cultivator. He limited his intervention by sending the bitch good dreams and a healer spirit to fix her chronic stomach and kidney problems. After this little embarrassment, he no longer trusted his intuitive senses, turning to the experience of a combat caller, who at the second rank knew a lot about elimination and search, even if it wasn't exactly agent work.

He started with the innkeeper, who was also very bad-tempered, rude, and liked to water down his beer, but was also a very kind man, even kinder than Kirik in many ways. He helped and treated well only his own people, even if he remembered any good done to him, while this one helped strangers whenever possible. With local zest, having exhausted all nerves, trying to collect the help later, and also only if he was sure that the help was vitally important, and the troublesome person was not deliberately puffed up. He helped the same sick bitch with healing potions without asking, even if he brought her to tears with his nagging and grumbling that he didn't need a sick assistant. In general, this one was also not involved in the beacon, and all his criminal tendencies ended with the fact that he paid a bribe to local criminals and very, very much disliked one of the guards, dreaming, at times, how he could hit him on the head and bury him in the yard.

Stepan had already begun to think that someone else could have put that bone in his stuff, unnoticed through the window, but still, he found his client. A cute young girl, a couple of months younger than Stepan, looking innocent and smiling with such a shy smile, that her mememe-meter started to malfunction. Well, by local standards she had been a woman of childbearing age for a long time, and in the villages, such women could give birth to a second child, but she still looked very young and girlish. Stepan remembered her, politely "not noticing" the offer to help him make his bed, he then considered her much younger than himself, and he was not looking for adventure. But he left her a tip, just for good service and unobtrusive communication.

As it turned out, for nothing. The little snake was so cynical that he, reading through the spirit of her thinking, was even somehow uncomfortable. And she also genuinely believed that all those who lived better than her, richer than her, happier than her a priori deserved everything bad and then to die on top of it. Without hatred or negative emotions, Stepan would have felt such feelings, it was not for nothing that he was constantly planting spirits-readers and interpreters of words in himself. But she behaved quite normally, smiled sincerely, thanked sincerely, and dropped the bone plate given by her benefactor into the small gap of her slightly open backpack with sincere pleasure. The benefactor, by the way, was one of Krellb's men, who regularly tossed her another coin for better information, as well as giving her such tasks with a stench. The girl understood perfectly well how this nice young man would be threatened by such a gift. She was not completely stupid, but she was not even indifferent, but happy. He was young, healthy, with money and good teeth, which meant that he lived better than her, which meant that he did not need to live.

That's it.

Stepan came out of the trance for a while, returned to his body, stood up from his bed of stone plates, and for three minutes simply looked up at the sky, desperately regretting that there was nothing to smoke. And this despite the fact that he had never smoked before! No, he had always known that there were all kinds of assholes among people, he knew that the female sex was also subject to this rule, but still, there was something deeply sick, maimed, wrong in her thinking, which the young man had touched, albeit through the entity-mediator. Some distant part of his consciousness even suggested that she might be the most ideal candidate for testing the pool of talents that the honorable Lady Milf had bestowed upon him. He assumed it but dismissed it in passing. He was ready to use the Autogoddess's gifts against those who had screwed him proportionately, as he had done with a couple of almost-forgotten herbalists from an equally forgotten village. But this laughing lady intended to kill him, even if not directly, by other people's hands, but knowing for sure that this traveler, like the previous ones, would disappear without a trace, and it made her feel good.

No, the doctor said to the morgue, so let's go to the morgue. The young man did not kill her. He just noted that one of the contracts with the creature, which would give anyone ungifted and unprotected a fatal heart attack even if he had never had heart problems, was already reserved. So the shaman continued his main mission. While he spent all night and part of the morning fiddling with the inn and digging in their heads, four spirits who had successfully combined their efforts were working on target number one. The mansion of a mage, and an artifactor, albeit still only an adept, had protection, and not a bad one, and the four of them were analyzing it. And they analyzed it well! Aspects of understanding, display, power, and invisibility intersected with the spheres of water, stone, space, and, of course, death. There was no way without death; after all, this was not only an artifactor's lair, but also a necromancer's.

By mid-afternoon, when Stepan was back in his body again. An ordinary clay tablet, even a clay brick, lying in front of him. The construct he had made earlier, a simple mold for the images, now contained a very detailed diagram of the outer and part of the inner defenses on the mansion. In fact, there was nothing that Stepan couldn't recognize. He would have been able to overcome it, too, but what he needed was not a pathos assault on the abode of evil with the help of a retinue of the strongest of his spirits, but an opportunity to enter quietly and discreetly, do his work, and leave without leaving a trace. And so, taking this brick with him, the shaman began to study and memorize it, occasionally breaking off for rest and meals. Meld brought a cauldron of delicious soup because the frozen Dantra allowed fishing right on the ice, so there was nothing wrong with fish for the meal of the day.

The young man did not return to work on his little project. First, he updated the retinue of summons, adjusting it to the new realities. It took another three and a half days, as well as a system quest with a penny reward. Another lot from the elite section of the store was also unnecessary because Stepan saw no reason to call the entity that would be tempted by the magically saturated extract from fifty babies that had already formed an aura and soul but had not had time to be born. He liked to play for the dark side in video games, but this wasn't a game right now. Getting dirty, getting his hands and conscience dirty in reagents like this... didn't want and that was putting it mildly.

The first layer of defense on the stranger's house was opened almost without any problems. It wasn't even a protective barrier, much less a full-fledged closing field, but a simple mesh, albeit a dense one. A classic magical defense, which he knew and read better than those who applied it. He knew the weak points and the elements that were leaking energy better than the owners. If they didn't fix them, they probably didn't see them... or they just didn't care, who knows? The second layer, embedded in the walls, presented a real challenge. Stepan would not have been able to get around such a thing unnoticed without prior spirit reconnaissance even if he had personally tried to infiltrate a spirit body. Amulets built into the walls, more amulets under the ceiling beams of the interior rooms, ashes of the dead poured into the gardens and flower tubs and a few urns with guard and battle ghosts. The latter were extremely primitive and it was obvious that Krellb was much better at artifacting bones and flesh than he was at working with ashes and spirits, but that was not surprising. Working with the intangible undead is a line between necromancy and shamanism, there is a very specific training needed to implement such an approach. Such an adept will get a beating from both shamans and classical necromancers, especially in the early stages, before learning how to fully utilize the benefits of the approach. Stepan did not intend to give the honorable Rumorias any time for in-depth study or to correct his lack of erudition.

Bone and ordinary artifact blanks were good, but they worked according to the methods of classical magic and against it, while from the spiritual world ghosts and ash artifacts were supposed to cover. Maybe the shaman was a bit biased towards his opponent, because the amulets against spirits, which were used by the artifactor's men that were sent to the visiting gifted, were remembered by the guy for their good quality, but now he had become stronger, and this degenerate was not. He quietly fooled the ghosts, blurring their perception and shutting down their sense of life and magic so they wouldn't even see a bleeding virgin mage, even if only a meter away. The ash field from the garden and flowerpots should have weakened and repelled the small spirits, but the retinue picked up and amplified through the totem transmitter, simply did not notice the effect.

The next stage required a lot of effort to drag a strong and very difficult spirit through the totem lying in the snow. Stepan used the familiar trick again, plunging his phantom hand into the central totem in the clearing to level the distance, pulling out his tentacle already near Fantrel, feeding the totem, and helping it to hold the load. The spirit looked like a lump of old and eaten rags, belonging to a very rare realm of dust and desolation, embodying equally rare aspects. After reaching the Krellb mansion, the spirit crawled closer to the defenses and crawled into them, merging with them, disguising itself as a background magical flow, drawing out all the signals, and temporarily lowering the shields deeper into the world of the spheres, allowing the other spirits to pass through the temporarily ajar window.

The first to go in were a pack of specialists who looked like a blend of mice and cockroaches, and who, following their aspects tied to the outer image, were able to be very stealthy inside the dwellings, ignoring, deceiving, or simply making all defenses fail. The most restricted areas of the house were the bedroom of Rumorias, his daughter, the last of the gifted heiresses, as well as the basement laboratory and the "normal" laboratory, the basement is protected much better. He managed to see both the man himself who liked to take people apart and the to collect artifacts from them: a tall, handsome, and stately man in his fifties, he was clearly a favorite of women, perfectly falling into the image of a Byronic character. His daughter had inherited her father's looks, not those of her mother, who had been dead for nine years, but if her father was a plus, she was not. Her face was too elongated and long, her thin lips and eagle nose, not the most favorable impression. On the other hand, clean skin and healthy teeth, beautiful light brown hair, as well as a nice figure blurred this disadvantage. If in the face looking at the girl could be given seven out of ten maximum, then from behind strong, like her taut buttocks, nine.

A mice-roach, hidden in a gap between the floorboards, smaller than a gnat, and merged with the floor material until it dissolved into it - a peculiar form of camouflage settlement in a material object - managed to look under the dress in the spirit of Japanese perversions, betraying the image into Stepan's mind. Well, the fashion for lacy lingerie in this world has already been revealed. Could it be some isekai had arrived here earlier and become the creator of the new fashion? Either that or the locals themselves, which is not even surprising, given the magical nature of this world and very conventional "medievalism". The young man immersed in a trance involuntarily flashed a lazy thought that it was possible to nail only daddy, sending him to his son for a date, but to test his gift skills on his daughter. This time he didn't let the thought go, not to the end, but it continued to hover in the depths of his thoughts.

Stepan spent the next day and a half in a trance, never leaving it for more than a couple of minutes to drink water. He wasn't going to plunge himself into a coma like he had during a long dive, and he had adopted a much gentler alchemy, but he couldn't physically leave for long. The rag spirit slowly but surely made a network of passageways for the other spirits, occasionally replenished or replaced, but still only those who could camouflage themselves very well got in, for Stepan did not want to turn a stealth mission into a massacre. The magician's office and bedroom were the first to surrender, as well as the outer laboratory, which was easier to call an analog of a shop and a demonstration stand for customers because there was almost no serious work there. Stepan was in no hurry to get into the heads of the gifted, protected by amulets and his gift, though he was quite capable of doing so, because he had the necessary contracts, even without the Autogoddess's "gifts".

He chose as his target the brains of a fat and fussy man who had been Krellb's closest and most trusted aide, along with the late head of his power corps, and who had died, choking on blood from his lungs, seemingly an eternity ago. The man had his amulets, but they were weak, and not good for anything. Stepan's spirits didn't even turn them on or off, they just bypassed them, passed under them, diving in from the spiritual world. Sleep was replaced by a trance without returning to consciousness, and one of the best reading spirits began to pump out of the victim's brain everything necessary and not very necessary. At the same time, the essence was also healing the asshole, so that he would wake up sleeping well and satisfied with life, which pissed Stepan, who hadn't slept for twenty-four hours in a row until his teeth gritted.

And the necessary and really important data poured in, so much of it that it was necessary to extract only the most important, leaving the rest for later, or ignoring it altogether. Thus, it turned out that a lowly mortal and a village-gifted man named Pann was not even seriously suspected of the disappearance of his late son. Or rather, they began to suspect, and even sent word to the shadowmen to find and bring the head, but then their brains fell into place and it became obvious that such a person could not have vanished all the pursuers without traces left. The camp and the horses of the son and his band had been found, but further on they had gone nowhere. There were no traces left. They had been eaten by the spirit. They couldn't even find the body by necromancy. So they concluded that there was a conflict of interest, that they had crossed someone serious, but it was not clear to whom.

The possibility of the village fool's involvement in all this remained, it was not dismissed, but they rather thought that he (Stepan-Pann) had been used at most, but, more likely, had simply killed a witness who had come to hand. This version was slightly broken by the information that the kid knew how to curse and remove curses. Criminals did not keep silent in response to the generous questions. As a result, both Rumorias and his "man for all his errands" were torn between different versions, not even knowing whether to consider Pann one of the elimination groups, which was waiting for poor Kamla and Dilr outside the city walls, or a random witness.

However, Rumorias and his business were in too much trouble. Recently, there had been a large-scale purge of the entire dark and gray sector of the magic services. They were looking for some very big shot in the spirit of the local Moriarty, who had managed to piss off the entire royal cavalry, army, heavy infantry, and drum ensemble. And in such searches, all sorts of side-frames, also illegal and also suffering from the arbitrariness of the seekers, would come to hand every now and then. Stepan would have tried to find out more, but there was no time. He was interested not in who the secret guards from Dantmark and almost the whole world were looking for - certainly not one modest user of the System, who could not make a mess of the world search with all his efforts - but all those involved in the kidnappings and brutal murders of those on whom these moral freaks had their eyes set. He searched for everyone, all those who knew, who saw, who used services, who helped to plant beacons and turned a blind eye. He wasn't going to kill everyone, but he wasn't going to kill them all, and that way half the city could be killed legally, most of them he just memorized for the future. But Rumorias' gang and his network of helpers.... he was going to put them on the collateral damage list.

They were girls and men in taverns, almost every tavern except the most expensive ones, where it was dangerous to buy informants. Small traders and even innkeepers, could get a customer drunk to the proper condition. Guards who could "arrest the victim" and then take him not to the jail, but directly to an inconspicuous house in a poor neighborhood, where he was already loaded into a container, dragged through an underground passage to a small warehouse in the Krellbs' possession, and from there taken to the mansion. Some of the thugs and killers from the local criminal underworld, who themselves could look for the right victim - by the way, there were no those who spoke to Stepan among them - brought them to the exchange point. It wasn't much, less than two dozen people, but even that was a lot for such a small city by Earth standards. Most of the workers and servants were at most suspicious of their masters' dark deeds but prudently did not hurry to ask.

They didn't just catch the gifted, by the way. That's with a little luck. Mostly just illegal slaves or random passersby. Legally purchased slaves could be slaughtered or otherwise killed, but not for sacrificial or magical purposes, for that you needed an expensive license, which you couldn't get for simple money. Krellb never managed to get it for himself, but came at it from the other side, acting semi-officially. Citizens who bought youth potions, battle amulets, guard nets, and other necro-shit understood everything perfectly well but did not hurry to worry. Who would care about slaves or just some village witch doctors if they accidentally wandered in? Rumorias knew the ropes, he didn't touch other people's workers and mages, he didn't open his mouth, and he was a companionable man with whom one could always have a drink, play dice, or go to the club of Ruada's Admirers.

While Stepan was finishing with the steward of this family, restoring him to maximum working order and wiping away the traces of his actions - well, the actions of his spirit - with another call, the rag spirit finished with the protection of the basement. The cellar was very large and spacious, another floor, but that wasn't surprising. Necromancers tend to bury themselves deeper in the ground than classical mages as if the grave beckoned to them when they were alive. And they are pale not only from the impregnation of the body with necrotica, but also from a banal lack of sunlight. It has its reasons, such energy really suits them, but it's still a little funny, just a little.

The cockroach-mouse was the first to slip into the thin break in the protective barrier, checking, searching, looking for signals and traps, but there is a limit to the paranoia of a semi-legal necromancer, there is a limit to his skill, and there were no new surprises. The closed field of signaling type, a full-fledged field, not a net or a barrier cocoon, can not notice the mouse, can not perceive the spirit, whose essence is imperceptibility and invisibility. After the first spirit in the breach the defense enters the next, they do not care that this breach is the size of the eye of a needle, for them the gate is already open, they go to High Spheres, where distance and size mean nothing. The spirit-translator, through which Stepan gives orders to the rag spirit and the mice roach, is the last to pass, he already has to be covered fully, he is too conspicuous, even though the shaman tried to pick one who knows how to conceal himself. But the task is too hard. He broadcasts the will of the shaman simultaneously through the totem outside the city and through himself, the double load causes disturbances in the background, and it can not be avoided. If Stepan had been around, even outside the walls of Fantrel, but in person, everything would have been much more fun and, most importantly, faster. Well, the young man increased remote control of spirits not to personally get involved in all sorts of adventures, enough of his adventures.

There's a lot of stuff in the basement, smelling of magic, classic and alien to the shaman, but recognizable, only he wasn't too keen on recognizing it all. Stepan sees with mouse eyes, peering out into reality, ignoring the signaling properties of the field. He sees shrunken legs hanging by the wall, three male and one female, the flesh on which has not only shrunk but has become transparent, like gelatin. They are cane blanks, which will be a counter to the curse if it gets it, but they will look much more normal, like ordinary canes, not this horror. They just waiting for the flesh essences to be absorbed by the bone. There's some wrought human skin hanging there. It's a camouflage artifact for some infiltrator agent, and when you put it on, you'll look like a common peasant. Height and weight are not important, and you can wear it over clothes, but not over armor. There is a cage trap for an immaterial entity, made from a rib cage, and this one seems to have belonged to a gifted person, and it is also often used. It seems to be the one where ghosts are restrained for protection or for sale.

Stepan uses a connection with two spirits at once, he looks with the eyes of a roach-mouse but sees with the images of the spirit of understanding, which analyzes and suggests the application of this or that subject if Stepan lacks the erudition to understand. In most cases, by the way, he does, but now the depth of System erudition is not to his benefit. In the most spacious hall of the basement workshop, Stepan finds two anatomical tables. On the first only pieces and fragments, impregnated with magic and alchemical potions reagents for simple in essence things, only effective and cheaper to make than their counterparts from normal materials. Sometimes many times cheaper, or even by orders of magnitude, which is why this small workshop thrives in the spirit of tales about ogres and witches from gingerbread houses, but the houses are not gingerbread at all.

The spirit-transmitter hovered over the second table, on which lay a corpse not yet dismembered, or rather, only partially dismembered: no eyes, part of the skin removed from the face. Its lower part, and neck, the sternum opened and giblets pulled out, genitals cut off, hands lacking fingernails. As it happens, agony is often important in necromancy of this sort. Pain provokes the aura to release more power, and to pulsate actively, so sacrificial rituals are often painful, especially if the material is scarce and its quality has to be compensated for by effort. Ironically, the cooler the black mage, the less need he has to torture his victims. Here, apparently, the material was poor, and the mages were far from skillful. It was clear the main specialty, for which Krellb was trained, was classical artifacting, but he began to study necroconstruction much later, already independently seeking his path. He could tell from the state of the material and the victims.

Stepan did not immediately realize, looking with his spirit's eyes primarily at magic, not at reality, that in front of him on the vivisector's bed lay an actual boy. Even though he is older than Meld, about sixteen years old, he is practically an independent man by the standards of the local mentality. Stepan knows that he will regret it, but he does it anyway, yielding to a fleeting impulse and the pressure of intuition. The spirit repeater works again, letting through not just a spirit, but Stepan's ghostly hand, in which the necessary essence is compressed. The essence is poorly able to disguise itself and moves in the layers of spheres close to reality too chaotic and jerky, it is easier to deliver. True, the sensations were specific. First through the gluing of two points of space between the totems of the glade and the totem-mark, and then from the totem-mark to the spirit-transmitter. It was as if a ghostly grip was being pulled on a rack and chewed lightly at the same time.

Disregarding the sensations, clearly aware of their temporary unthreateningness and constantly making sure the Raggy Spirit continued to mask him by distorting the workshop's sensors, the young man plunged the proper spirit into the dead man's open sternum. If there was anyone here and now skilled in magical sight, they would have seen the strange picture of a barely recognizable clawed paw appearing out of the void, which plunged into the dead man's chest for a moment, immediately disappearing again. It disappears along with a whole swirl of images of someone else's life and, more importantly, someone else's death. Ordinary life, fun games, gradual growing up, the death of his father, followed by the death of his mother, a quarrel with his relatives who had squeezed out the rest of the property, and a forced escape to the city. A magic gift, its crumbs, which he didn't even know about, allowing him to be a little stronger, a little livelier, a little healthier, a little smarter than his peers, an attempt to get a job in Fantrelle. New acquaintances, new faces, drunken chatter, too-strong beer, a spinning head, and someone's hands dragging him along. A dark cellar and stone walls, occasional servants carrying food with a strange flavor that made him feel sick, and then two faces. The noble and terrible face of a gentleman, which you can see at once that nobility, and a beautiful maiden who looks like him.

And pain.

There is endless pain as they cut him, without words, without ominous screams, as was expected underlyingly because of the village folklore about bloody magicians, but with complete indifference. He wants to scream, but no one wants to listen to his screams. His vocal cords were cut at the very beginning, it almost didn't even hurt. All he can do is to breathe wheeze, gurgling blood, under those indifferent and collected stares with which the boy and his relatives cut the cattle. Working mood and all that. But what he remembered most of all was the way the girl carefully wiped the sweat from his forehead, blood from his body, and drool from his mouth open in a mute cry. It is this caring indifference of hers that breaks the victim completely, not the indifferent contempt in the noble's gaze, but the equally indifferent and ruthless carelessness in the beautiful maiden's actions. And reason leaves the young man, breaks to pieces and no pain can cause him any further suffering, because only the body suffers, only the meat, and there is no reason left in him.

Stepan cut off the contact carefully and calmly, curtailing the actions of his spirits. He took them out of the laboratory and then out of the mansion, leaving all of Fantrelle only observers and tag bearers, who could be visited from the spirit world. He returned to his body, came out of the trance, and dimmed the totems, doing all these routine actions completely calmly. It was night again, only the heavens remained black, the bright dots of stars hidden behind a sheet of clouds, so watching the had to look into an analog of Malevich's Square, only with a fantasy-space setting. There was no nausea, the ++fortitude of spirit saved him, and everything simply weathered away during the time he was cleaning up the traces of his presence in that laboratory. He remembered his thoughts that he could use an almost beautiful woman, who wasn't exactly involved in his problems, to practice his charms. The smile on his face was sincere, but somehow inanimate, dead, just like a piece of his soul after contemplating those images. The System, as if waiting for this reaction, immediately came up with a new message.

System assignment (average): apply the Mind and Passion Mastery to Ritze Krellb, distorting her personality in a depraved manner to the best of your understanding. Satisfactory use requires rewriting basic aspects of her personality, changing her life paradigms and priorities; complete use requires creating at least three full-fledged subpersonalities of the depraved type (maid, lover, doll, and the like); perfect use requires imposing all of the above effects on Ritze Krellb's original personality without her being aware of her changes, which will be triggered by activator effects of any type. It is permissible to use the gifts of Liarat si Merrinal, the Lady of Gifts, and the Giver of Gifts, the faithful servant of Innelas Innelay.

Reward: a significant increase in the effectiveness of enchantments, a significant increase in the probability of slavemancy branch talents among those available for selection at level up, one free talent point; at full performance: one talent point for each of the modes-subliminals, but no more than seven; at perfect performance: one random knowledge of an advanced or elite type, one unit of characteristics in the most undeveloped stat.

For a second Stepan gave in to weakness, thinking about how to accomplish this task at all, roughly realizing that he had some chances to do it even from a distance, even if not immediately. He would have to get her blood and hair, tune into her aura, create a specialized totem, and summon several strong spirits, or even some of the older spirits of the specialty in question. success in summoning and contracting with a senior entity. But then he remembered the image of Ritze wiping the face of the tortured boy, and the weakness went away. It wasn't worth it, even despite how tight her ass was, it still wasn't worth it. It was a matter not only of his revenge, but also of someone else's, of retribution for the one whose images he had so carelessly taken, albeit with every precaution-they still left their mark, even if not spiritually or magically, but simply in the banal human desire to make this shit go away.

" No, no, no, you can't fool me with tits." He said indifferently and without emotion, getting to his feet and stretching his stiff body. "Even if I'd agreed, I couldn't fuck something like that, not after the images I'd seen. I should have suggested it before I became familiar with this family's modus operandi, then there would have been a chance."

Sighing, Stepan refused the assignment, left the clearing, and went to the house to eat the pre-ordered dinner and send home Meld. He was dozing at the table. Boy gladly took his permission to eat, if he knew how to measure it. He sent the yawning boy down the path already trampled in the snow, pushed the still-warm boiled potatoes with butter, onions, and scallions into his mouth without tasting them, and went to sleep. He didn't have nightmares, he didn't have nightmares about that dead kid, whose images-memories bothered him less and less, no. The dreams were, of course, far from normal, but not terrible. He dreamed of Stepan Fatty, who remained on Earth, but for some reason he dreamed in space, dressed in Mass Effect armor with the emblem N177KILOS on the armor, desperately haggling about something inaudible with the Catalyst, which pulled his hair out of his fury and threatened to complain to higher authorities. Behind his namesake's back stood Commander Shepard, dropping his face into his palm and repeating over and over again that he should have left while he had the chance.

The young man woke up rested and rested, finally recovered and also formed a plan on how to do what he had planned as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible. Everything seemed to be fine, but Meld, who came in the morning and brought half of a still-warm turkey pie when he saw his smile almost dropped the pie and turned pale. And it was nothing, Stepan had been careful not to let out a spiritual grin. It wasn't just that his face was very grim.

That's okay, someone's mood will soon turn grim.

* * *

The same actions, the same methodology, only the trap checks are even more paranoid, but no, they didn't notice his last visit and didn't prepare a meeting. The phantom limb stretches through the real and spiritual space again, only now it is much more powerfully saturated, which makes the spirit try much harder to make the workshop's defenses ignore it all. And not just one clawed hand, but two clawed paws, clenched in a boat-like fashion, between which beats a heart-wrenching strong spirit that has taken on such an image, a spirit darker than ever, malicious like Yanin's ideological follower, dangerous.... well, like a dark spirit of high power and dark orientation. The limbs of the spirit body sink into the spirit's chest, disappearing, leaving a bleeding and writhing heart inside the body that continues to reach its conditioning. It had been moved around a bit since the last visit and seemed covered with a fresh coat of some important alchemy, but Stepan couldn't identify it immediately. It was definitely something for preserving the remains of thin bodies, but not specific, and an odor suppressor, so there was less stench and only a slight note of menthol.

The hands disappear and the spirit slowly takes root in the heartless body of the dead man. It can't be seen with the naked eye, but inside the corpse, the cut veins are fusing, the blood vessels are strengthening and seeming to move with earthworms, and some too-dark and black void is settling in the empty eye sockets. In the magical reflection, it does not show through at all, Stepan's spirits do not even need to disguise anything additionally, the sub-settled one copes with its invisibility by itself. At the same time as the shaman has fulfilled the main part of the first stage, the rest of his spirits began to act, he called them today with a reserve, and the coordination of such a crowd takes a lot of effort. Seven of the relaying entities alone, even if they were simpler than the one that had gone into the basement workshop had to be summoned to relay orders to all his fighters and non-fighters. I had to be stealthy, too, so that some of the local mages wouldn't smell something wrong, or they'd start yelling about an orc raid since so many spiritual observers were hanging out here.

The spirits take up positions near those who cooperate with the Krellbs in their hard work of extracting material, not exactly close, but within reach. All those little brats like the snake in the inn are under indifferent and relentless scrutiny. It's nighttime, most of them are asleep, and they either don't have protective amulets, or they have such amulets that it's as if they don't exist at all. The part that had protection was given special attention, but there were only a couple of them - the steward and Dilr's newly appointed colleague in charge of guarding the shops, force actions, and all that. The rest will be enough for something simpler, but with an overkill to guarantee it. Stepan had accumulated four-fifths of experience up to level twenty for the summoning of all these assassins, which took four days, and he expected to take this level by the night of judgment.

Meanwhile, while he's getting the assassins into position, the body of the slain young man in the basement has moved, unhurriedly at first, tentatively, but more and more surely with each passing moment. Spirit does nothing, but the defense and sensors do not see the corpse moving, although deep within the partially closed wound on his chest, where the opening scar was, shines with a distinctly magical scarlet glow a ghostly heart beating in place of the seized real one. The defenses can't see it, because this spirit works with some pretty funny concepts: the body it occupied died here in this room, mad with undeserved but terrible pain, and so the defenses that were here when it died don't perceive the actions of the entity that took the corpse, can't perceive it. If the defense had been better, more complete, varied, and flexible, such a spiritual-aspect veil would not have worked, but the defense was what it was.

The spirit raises the body and hangs its legs off the vivisection table, slapping its bare and skinless feet on the floor, leaving no trace of it. Complete darkness, diluted only by the glimmer of a scarlet drop deep in the corpse's sternum, does not disturb the creature, and neither does Stepan, who controls it. The entity is not easy to control, it wants blood and vengeance for blood and pain, it is willing to listen to the shaman who provided the receptacle and purpose, as long as he follows the terms of the deal, as long as he promises to set the creature born of the desire of unjustly tortured slaves against those who destroyed this body, who drove it mad with pain, opening the spirit to the possibility of coming to reality. The spirit willingly takes nourishment from the shaman, and the shaman channels power into it from the totem as he draws it from the clearing, but the power and nourishment of this entity are not so necessary. Its purpose, its desire, the remnants of the young man's thin body, its pain, and mad agony, feed the creature as well as the shaman, nourish and energize it, strengthen it, and make it quite deadly. Still not enough to defeat two gifted in the place of their power, especially if one of them is adept and quite strong, but that's even better. The entity, though thinking in other categories, understands the concept of aid and willingly exchanges temporary obedience for the support of a spirit-speaker. Such rarely call this spirit, an old spirit, unpleasant in communication and contact, more often he tries to come himself, but also never refuses help, as long as the help is not contrary to his aspect nature.

The spirit was following Stepan's lead, and the latter, despite the enormous strain on his mind's resources, despite the need to control so many goals and tasks at once, involuntarily burst out laughing when he realized he was playing a very postironic version of Dark Souls with a hint of Bloodborne. That didn't stop him from bringing the body of a dead man possessed by a dark entity - or an entity that had taken up residence in a dead man, so much so that the remnants of the young man's aura and bloody heart were fused together - to one of the stands. The one where the cane blanks were hanging, which were still someone's mummified and gelatinized feet. He gazed again at what he had seen a few days ago, when he had first entered the place with his-alien eyes: a kind of alarm-sensor that monitored the workings of the charms embedded in the dead flesh. If suddenly the workpiece began to deteriorate, to ooze strength, and the gelatinous flesh began to liquefy, the special weave would signal to an equally special amulet, and the necromancer would come down here and fix everything.

The fingernail-less finger pokes at the right point, giving a crumb of power, Stepan's erudition does not fail and the spirit activates this very signal. It twitches all the muscles of its body, it does not like the next order, but the creature still listens to the shaman's arguments. A ritual knife, resembling some strange scalpel or dangerous razor, flickers in its mutilated hand, appearing and disappearing. The weapon seems to be both there and not there at the same time. It is not material, but its wounds are no less terrible. And this blade is also a replica of the tool used to hurt the spirit-occupied body the most. It is attuned to the aura of the one who inflicted the pain. The old magician tormented the young man too, but it was not so memorable to him, not so imprinted in the posthumous shadow as to manifest itself, but Ritze, Ritze is a different matter. To attack with such a spiritual blade, and against one who was its prototype and target.... it would take a master to repel such a thing. Attuned to the gift of a pretty necromancer, the blade will simply ignore simple shields, and some of the complex ones as well, and will work with greater efficiency against the rest.

That's why it is necessary to destroy the bodies, getting rid of imprints and images, which become clues for vengeful spirits and then come at night to the murderers! The shaman had no doubt that the Krellbs knew this, and that was why he kept the body, which was about to become something useful, in a locked and isolated laboratory. But they had to use the body for reagents and materials, they had to preserve the remnants of subtle bodies, otherwise, what was the point of the ritual killing process? Well, we should admit that the probability of the spontaneous emergence of Stepan's summoned spirit was not great. Even in an isolated hall, it was negligible. Well, they neglected it, practiced their necromancy, and ran into a vengeful peasant!

The spirit is dissatisfied, but it obediently leads its body, returns it to the table, lies down in its former position and freezes motionless, stops the manifested knife, extinguishes its aura, pretends to be an ordinary corpse, even the light in its chest is almost extinguished. In the meantime, the mouse-observer sees Ritsuke wiping her eyes with interest, looking at the amulet pulled out of her belt pocket, quietly exhaling a few words that a proper lady should not know, rising to her feet and adjusting her dress. In the images from the dead man's memory, she was dressed in a work pantsuit, but now she's not going downstairs to work, she's going downstairs to fix her broken preservation charms, so why change clothes or put on a battle set of amulets?

"Maleficent catchers, father." She explained to her parent, peering into his office. "Leaking again, I'll fix it, but I'll need to check again tomorrow."

"Do it and go to bed, Ritza." There was an unexpected tenderness in his voice, the diminutive form of her name sounding touching, and Rumorias's wrinkles smoothed out and made something human appear. "Your youth will pass, and all those hours of lost sleep spent reading will be returned a hundredfold, remember that."

"Yes, Father, I remember, so I'll do your will and go to bed at the same moment." She smiled, too, and Stepan, looking through another roach mouse, noticed that one corner of her smile was slightly sagging, no other reason than that it was the result of an old injury that had damaged her facial expression. "Otherwise I'll be a wreck like my honorable father."

She laughed in response to the joking threats to deprive her of sweets, where through the deceptively dour tone there was the same cheerful but suppressed laughter, the girl went downstairs. If anyone would have had a conscience after that, not Stepan, who had put himself into a deep trance and was torn between dozens of spirits. He must have hardened even more, because the image of the concentrated and attentive face of the same bitch, when she worked with her knife on the phalanges of fingers and nails of the fixed "patient", was too fresh in his memory. Well, they are all human beings, even such scum should not be treated as human beings, but somehow are. They all have hobbies, passions, lovers, and friends. Such specimens, which cause evil, suffering, unjustified sacrifices with breaks for killing puppies with kittens literally twenty-four by seven.... they're vanishingly few. Necromancer bastards, inhuman freaks, bloodthirsty cultists, skilled executioners, cruel witches - they behave like perfectly normal people apart from their professional pursuits.

They live and enjoy life.

That someone else doesn't have.

The illuminating crystals in the basement hall turned on simultaneously before the massive door even opened. Ritze-Ritza enters the room calmly and relaxed, walking into the very room with the prosector's table, only dabbing her gaze over the motionless body, not paying attention to the corpse's barely-altered pose. The healed scar from this position was poorly visible. She is all engrossed in those very canes from the stranger's legs, peering out the expiration and genuinely pleased that the cause is not poor work on the material, but rather an idle alarm. She carefully straightened the bent part of the weave, though she would have noticed the fact it looked as if someone had deliberately hit it and damaged it. But she has no combat experience, and her sense of danger is not even rudimentary, so she misses the hints of fate. Her brother, who was experienced, could have figured it out, but it wasn't a sure thing, either - not many people expect an attack in their own home, especially one so sudden.

She corrects the spell, turns around, and starts to leave, checking the body fragments lying on the prosector's table, which are also very demanding to pay attention to. And only on the seventh second, having checked another empty skull without brains, she stops as if struck by lightning. Neurons in the brain become active, memory finds a discrepancy with the picture of reality, and the brain takes the signal and forces the body to inject into the blood a portion of hormones, among which adrenaline prevails. The girl does not fully understand the situation when she slowly turns towards the second table, where the corpse of the boy is lying.

There's a void on the prosector's table. The mind catches an error and gives out a blue screen, because a person, especially such a homely one as this girl, lives by expectations and patterns, sudden and unexpected changes in the usual picture of the world knock out of the rut, driving her into a stupor. Ritze Krelb is still an aristocrat, albeit a petty one, and a magician with a very unfriendly specialization, so she comes to her senses quickly. She hesitates for less than a second, assessing the situation, looking around the room with a quick glance, not finding the missing body in front of her, which, as she would like to believe, could have just slipped and fallen under the table, even if her subconscious realizes that this is not an option.

"Oh gods..." She exhaled, realizing, without seeing the body in front of her, that there was only one direction in the closed hall where that body could hide from her gaze. "God..."

She turns around in a swift motion, reflexively raising one hand in an attempt to defend or attack, the other reaching for her amulet belt, but not quite in time. Her turn is quick, but she is met with the mangled face of a dead man, the empty gaps where his eyes had been. And then there is the pain. The pain of a scalpel knife. The same one lay in a separate room of the underground workshop with the rest of her tools. The pain is swift and deadly, the pain of a blow that barely touches the flesh but instantly deadens the most important auric node, spreading in a swift stream of hungry black dust through thin bodies, gnawing away the aura, licking the shells and mutilating the spirit. She opens her mouth in an attempt to scream, but only lets out a trickle of blood along the corners of her lips, fading into a very quick but violent agony, an agony like the one she herself inflicted on that corpse, only contained in a single second, she hears the words coming out of a throat unable to speak. Words are spoken not by the spirit, which knows no words at all, like concepts, but by Stepan, who has taken over some of her control.

"No." It sounds a rumbling, double tone, in which you can hear the snarl of the creature eager to exact its vengeance and the voice of the young man who gave the creature anchor and flesh. "Just me."

And then, for Ritze Krellb, who had experienced the full range of other people's pain in one second, was only darkness.

Eternal and endless.

* * *

The spiritual image of her ritual dagger thrust into the heart of the innocent maiden became the trigger for a whole series of actions that Stepan began to perform simultaneously, miraculously without confusing his orders. First of all, several weak spirits flew into the body of the falling girl, and in an instant, they took control of the fragments of her thin body. No, this was not healing - his vengeful ally would be out of control in a second for attempting such a thing - nor even the creation of another walking puppet. This trick had only forced the signal фьгдуе linked to the life and blood of the murdered woman to show not complete and final death, but merely a pre-mortem state. He didn't need an artifactor adept in his own house, but a worried father, rushing not to fight, but to help his still living daughter, who might have accidentally miscast something and hurt herself.

Who knows what the hell happened to her?

Necromancy is a life-threatening science.

Especially when they come to ask for this science.

The way Rumorias twitched, staring first at the ring on his finger and then at the small bone circle that looked like a clock face on his desk, it seemed that Stepan's trap was working properly. The man grabbed a string of amulets, a wand flew into his hand, and he practically sprinted toward the basement, stopping only long enough to open the safe stash and retrieve some potions. Stepan was still looking with the perception of cockroaches and mice. It didn't have absolute clarity and accuracy of transmission. However, he could still bet the central totem of his clearing against the copper penny that half of the things Rumorias had grabbed were first aid kits, not battle amulets. The rest of the clearing, against the same copper penny, he'd bet that the old mage, if he chose to fight, would have been able to arm himself better, having unpacked his stash for a rainy day.

The possessed corpse grabs the corpse ordinary by her long hair, pulling her up by her side and tearing the amulet ligature from her belt, coming closer to the basement door. At the same time the visuals of both the spirit itself and its victim flicker, the creature itself happy to help, it grasps the man's plan for itself, letting the shaman lead the way, supplementing its actions with its own. It's a surprise, but a pleasant surprise, lightening the already stunning load and investing in one short moment. To run to the basement is not a very long time, especially for a strong man on a horse dose of adrenaline. The image of both blurred mirage in the heat, and now the refreshed dead man drags not the corpse of his killer, but still breathing and twitching, desperately twisting eyes in the eye sockets poor thing. If you look closely, you can see that her movements are overly puppet-like, looped in a few short frames, but you have to look closely here, don't you? And the shaman, viciously grinding his ghostly teeth, wasn't about to give it time.

The amulets work properly, the remnants of Ritze's aura, aided by the spirits in the corpse, are enough for the defenses to recognize the allied element and release the dead man into the dark and sleeping house. They meet in the first-floor hallway, literally around the first corner from the basement lab, as if in a movie. One end of the hallway, immediately flashed with bright illuminating crystals by the same will of the artifactor and the owner of the house, is occupied by the dead man. Mutilated and, seemed to be mockingly canting a freshened face, holding a life-signaling Rizke by the hair, even raising that head higher to face her father so that he could see only fear and nothing more in those eyes. Rumorias Krellb appeared at the other end and immediately froze, stately, grim, anxious, and already raising his battle staff into an attacking stance, in the classic dueling stance. He only brushed an eye over his daughter, fully focused on the dead man, who behaves much smarter than the inferior undead, and therefore much more dangerous. His face was a mixture of fear for his blood, for himself, and also desperate anger, understanding, and indignation at the same time.

Stepan deep down wanted these bastards to understand why the trouble had come to them in the first place, why they were meeting a night guest, but he also realized that in this world even the dead speak, especially in the house of such experts. That's why he didn't talk and explain about the mistake they had all made, considering the wandering shaman a worthy billet for some craft. What is doubly amusing is the reaction of the man, who, it seems, was able to understand, analyze, and think up a consistent picture without needing any hints or prompts. Another thing is that his conclusions turned out to be somewhat false, but they were consistent!

"We had a deal!" His voice was at once angry, pleading, fearful, respectful, and hateful. "Yes, I was in jeopardy, but I did not give away names or secrets! I had almost paid, my letter should have reached you! I... ah, by the devil, I'll give the full amount, for knowledge and patronage, but don't you highborns push me to the brink! I can still be useful, you have given me... assurances."

He spoke the last word almost in a whisper, paling rapidly, clamping his trembling lips together in a line and looking at her with such hatred in his gaze that it alone, combined with his gift, could have been the basis for a targeted curse, and not the weakest. The spirit, at Stepan's command, dropped the cloak from Ritze's corpse, and the man who had switched to true sight immediately saw that there was about nothing left of her aura, but a few more nodes occupied by the spirits that prevented the amulet-controller from recognizing death. In this despair, in this hatred, the creature literally bathed, realizing that it could not win the battle, but was satisfied the shaman's revenge had already, in fact, accomplished. The shrieking freak was offering to "negotiate" while he was watching the dead man, not noticing the more serious danger not even behind his back, but all around him.

The rag-weaver spirit goes to its empyrean, having finished its work and deactivated the necessary element of defense. The mice are retreating, returning through the holes to their native plane of existence, other observers are rising higher and higher, almost losing the corridor and the events in it out of focus, the old magician raises his wand, not even noticing the danger, preparing to at least try to reach his puppeteer colleague through the body of a random gifted person captured by an anonymous patron. At this point, the shaman gives the order, and the prepared spirits break into battle. It was them that Raggy-kun was paving the way for, temporarily weakening the enchantments that prevent the spirits from moving normally, passing in and out of the spheres. At the same time, the controlled dead man, following the summoner's request, raises his hand, not showing his middle finger, but only lighting a small light, as tiny as a lighter.

And everything is covered in white.

Not by light, but by color. All the free air space is covered with a very dense cloud of snow-white dust, or rather not dust, but flour. A strong and old spirit of the mill and millstones, without a clear sphere, with the aspect of a guardian of the place, only not of the house, but of the very mill. This spirit, once settled, in the millstones, located, it seems, not in this world at all, owned the flour. It took the remnants of grain dust, soaked with human labor, which rose into the air, this labor, this will and desire, for its nourishment, at the same time helping the millstones to spin, protecting the miller from injury and still collecting excess flour. Year after year, century after century, generation after generation. And all this flour was his, he owned it and ruled over it, used it as he pleased, and kept it in his little spatial pocket, where nothing but flour could be kept. And on this night, the shaman was able to persuade the spirit, not too spoiled by sacrifices and invocations, to sell some of his flour reserves, which were in a full micro-domain, in exchange for power and the same surplus flour, a whole sack of it, taken from a hundred and three other mills - a surprisingly cheap purchase.

The payment was accepted, the spirit opened micro-portals from his domain, and another spirit from the sphere of space, using the path laid out, filled the entire corridor with flour. The flour, which was bursting with power, became for a time a very high-quality accumulator, holding as much magic as ordinary flour can't holds. But it was still flour, so it was of little use if only as an alchemical reagent. Or set fire with a small match flame so the fire naturally for flour released excess energy, creating a volumetric detonation and noticeably more powerful than of simple flour, due to the additional released energy.

In the hallway of a cozy and tastefully furnished mansion of a gloomy necromancer, right around that necromancer, who on reflex manages to cover himself with a hemispherical barrier and try to reach the amulets in the walls of the house, there is a very bright flash, a pop, and subsequent smoke. The avenging creature leaves the body a moment before the explosion, leaving only one spiritual false leg to watch until the end, consciously sacrificing the limb. The spirit watchers, the miller's guardian, and the spatial guide also flee, so the explosion is visible only to the observers hovering a hundred meters above the mansion, even though they are as sharp as eagles and therefore see everything in a good zoom, broadcasting to Stepan.

The glass in the house was blown out, as was the wall of the corridor, the outer wall but not the inner one, and in general, the building, fortified with high-quality magic, wasn't too badly damaged; the explosion was still in a relatively small area, and it was entirely on the mage and the dead doll. There, there was almost nothing left of him - a piece of skull and one foot, which were carried outside the cloud of smoke and debris. But further observation showed that there were comparatively few large fragments of Rumorias Krellb, even fewer of his daughter and the body of the avenged boy. The spirit creature Stepan allowed to connect to the contract with the observers in order to see the result of his actions, grumbled contentedly and went away either disappearing into the depths of the spheres or disintegrating and dying before the next summons. The shaman only allows himself to enjoy just a few seconds of watching his own labors and then brings his plan to its final phase.

One of the three servants who carried food to the prisoners, cleaned the workshop, washed away the blood, and swore no less bloody oaths of loyalty to the lord, receiving only double wages for it, and himself died, having gone to the toilet at night on the wrong side of the corridor wall, and therefore receiving a pebble in the temple. The pebble was a little larger than the victim's head, but much harder than that. The other two, already awake and panicking, wheezed and twitched, trying to breathe, trying to hear the beating of the heart, which had stopped pulsing abruptly, dying quickly and, in general, painlessly. A vaguely familiar inn maid, who had planted his beacon, and several other individuals involved in Krellb's affairs, mostly among the criminals, die the same way.

Since the number of heart attack masters at Stepan's disposal was less than necessary, some of the bastards had to be killed with whatever he could find. Stepan only tried to do everything so as not to leave traces not so much of magic, even a fool would realize its presence, as of the presence of spirits and the shaman's attack - heart attacks would look absolutely natural and they would be suspected not of the work of a shaman, but of some alchemical poison - so he turned mostly to physical attacks. One of the sleeping thugs, who hadn't even woken up from the explosion that went off all over Fantrel, only scratched his hairy belly and rolled over onto his other side. His own shadow, the shadow of a murderer without honor or conscience, moved, pulled the shadow bearer's battle axe out of its sheath, and struck his head three times, cracking it with a rotten walnut before returning to its normal shadow state, hanging the axe back up. It's only effective against murderous robbers or gentlemen of the night; against an honest soldier or an agent of some special service, this particular spirit won't raise any shadows.

The sergeant of the guards, by the way, the one the good-hearted innkeeper disliked, was already coming out of his house, hurriedly dressing and foreseeing the imminent problems with his work. And, suddenly, he staggered, wheezed, and breathed frequently, but quickly lost consciousness and died. The wind spirit began to steal his breath right out of his mouth. The air simply did not get into the trachea and refused to be drawn in. His assistant in these matters simply stumbled and rolled down the stairs, hitting his temple against a protruding rock, and knocking down a couple of colleagues on the way. Those just have bruises and abrasions, and this one was useless to save. The manager of the honorable Rumorias, the same man from whose memory Stepan had learned about the details of the agent-criminal network created by the family of murderers, managed to open his eyes, vomit half-digested dinner, and lose consciousness again. The liver, kidneys, and pancreas failed at once, and with the discharge of toxins directly into the blood - a verdict even in spite of a good healing amulet, which he simply could not reach. Here, too, they would suspect poison, not a curse, because the effect was too physical, and the aura was almost untouched.

The head of the guard, newly appointed after the death of his commander a little earlier, met that night in his own house. He went to the window, looked out, and even muttered something like "You've had it, you old corpse-eater," apparently to his chief, and began to think of going on the run. So he fell near that window with his neck twisted, when his head was squeezed from both sides by the translucent hairy paws of the incarnate spirit. The spirit, by the way, looked literally just those two hands along with the shoulder girdle, where the hair only covered the area around the hands and up to the middle of the elbow. A very powerful entity that was able to simply ignore the partially removed overnight amulet protection as if it wasn't there at all, but quite insidious. So, easily killing a seasoned warrior with a fractured vertebra before he even noticed, this entity would be completely powerless against the summoner's namesake who remained on Earth.

Why?

Well, the best defense against such a spirit, a guaranteed amulet, was wonking at least once every eight days. If you follow such a simple recipe, these hands can not even touch the protected individual. It would be very funny - actually not - if against this asshole, living with two slave-lovers, the summon would be useless. It would have had to end the whole thing in a hurry not with a measured blow, but with the summoning of some powerful beast that would leave clear traces of the shaman's involvement in the whole thing. But the Autogoddess had saved the absence of pornhub and hentai manga in this world.

Stepan had cleaned up all traces of his presence beforehand. The final stage had been carried out in the right mode, wiping up, as far as he could, the traces of spirits' presence, their activity, their reflections in the worlds of the spheres, and even their negotiations with each other. Some spirits could work with the invisible flow of information, confusing the cards to all sorts of fans of throwing fortune-telling dice, scanning the stone for those who walked on it, or asking the wind for answers, so that he answered clearly. No, if such individuals were brought here, they would be able to figure out that the murderer was a butler, that is, a shaman. But even they, unless they were the toughest, would find it extremely difficult to find any information about this shaman, let alone his auric imprint. Without such heavy artillery, Stepan had a hope that everyone would accept this event as the elimination of the necromancer by his patrons or clients. Actually, this thought was formed in those hours, while he was digging into the memory of the Krellb family's steward, concerning the conducted search among all the dark and gray elements. He was finally convinced of his rightness when the now-dead mage came up with a clear version of the misfortune that had befallen them and his family.

Among the goods created by the necromancer amuleteer were such a popular item as bone needles, which allowed to interrogate the corpse of a murdered person if necessary. And Stepan would eat his hat if the local guards didn't have a couple of them for extreme and not quite official cases. The bastard was killed only physically, the aura and shadow of the deceased are unaffected or minimally affected, they will still be able to talk if the body is collected, but this is a feasible task. And they will realize that the poor guy was simply taken and nailed by those with whom he traded his skills too badly or too well in exchange for patronage and new knowledge. They decided to clean up their younger colleague on the eve of the big purges so they would not be attacked and cleaned up. No clairvoyant can answer how many such stories there have been and how many more will be repeated.

Stepan finished his research by turning on the pre-installed mode of the broadcasting totem, which caused it to rot and lose all spiritual brightness, turn to dust, and cease to be in a minute and a half. Now you can find its remains only if you sit on them by accident, knowing exactly what to look for. Well, or just for the case will take a pro extra-class, the degree of coolness of which is banally beyond the understanding and paranoia of the young shaman. This is also possible, but here he tried to cover himself, to make sure that these guys were not called at all, distracting from other, undoubtedly important, cases, because everything is clear. It is a classic of the Earth criminal chronicles. There is no need for mysterious and unsolved crimes, such crimes will only attract more attention. It would be more correct to just give the investigation a simple and obvious version so the investigation would calm down.

But still, in the depths of his soul, Stepan realized that he, with this explosion, the simultaneous murders, and a pile of corpses of bad personalities that had appeared overnight, in some five minutes, to put it mildly, a little bit, just a little bit, literally a little bit too much.

But he just imagined it, didn't he?

Внимание! Этот перевод, возможно, ещё не готов.
Его статус: идёт перевод

Переведено на Нотабеноиде
http://notabenoid.org/book/86785/574218

Переводчики: Camrad_RIP