Готовый перевод Настучать в бубен / Hit the tambourine: Глава 19-4

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The first thing Stepan saw when he looked into the system was that the experience scale had hardly moved. What had been added to it, not so little, was the result of an exceptionally conducted surveillance and listening to the magical-spiritual background of the network of worms. On the one hand, he was very disappointed, because getting a multiple of level ten and opening up the possibility of taking a second class would be useful now as well as one - or two, if Her Milfiness was generous - elite trait with an increase in characteristics. On the other hand, it would be torture to make such an important choice in such a cramped and dangerous environment, and he could get the right amount of experience, while no one would give him credit for “deeds”. And yes, his and Singha's performance of saving their skins from an extremely deep asshole was counted by the system as a “deed”, even though Stepan felt, intuitively and on the edge of consciousness, using the help tips, that this “deed” was one step away from a lower-ranked “act”.

From the shaman's point of view, it was an injustice. But he understood with his mind and logic that what was a mortal danger for an Adept Shaman was not a walk in the backyard of a personal mansion for a Senior Shaman, but it was no reason to make it a true feat. Willful effort unpacked a pile of images, which had not been activated before due to the danger of the environment, and then the young man who looked into these images smiled. Sparingly, barely noticeable, not too happy, but he smiled - the situation in which he found himself, which had seemed almost guaranteed to be a grave before, suddenly took on a slightly brighter aspect. Whether it was the System playing along again, rewarding him for escaping the trap, or just luck, the situation had generally improved.

A meaningful deed has been done!

For a dive into those depths where the children of Reality have no access and from which they have no return, for the swiftness of decisions and the swiftness of their realization in reality, for a swift victory in the confrontation of wills with the spawn of the High Spheres in the place of his power there is a reward corresponding to a worthy deed!

Gained: one characteristic unit to a Control attribute; three talent points available for distribution only to minor knowledge from the Contracts with Elder Spirits subsection; one talent point available for distribution only to minor knowledge from the Contracts with Higher Spirits subsection; one item from the elite list of the system purchase list (selection available from the list of previously saved elite items in the special list).

Additional rewards from Liarat si Merrinal, Lady of Gifts and Giver of Gifts, loyal servant of Innelas Innelay: closure of one random branch of class knowledge up to the development limit according to characteristics; one of the artifacts in your possession is randomly increased in rank similar to the effect of the corresponding token; two random rare meta-effect tokens.

Such a set of rewards was indeed inferior to the past deed, done, characteristically, also after meeting Singha. Just one point of free characteristics, instead of three, an internal toad and hamster would have set off a revolution if he had them. But here, three contracts with the elders and a full contract with the supreme spirit is exactly that, a perfect match for the coming battle. With such an entourage, he would be able to at least face an unknown creature in battle without dying in the first few seconds. The ability to select one of the elite-type system items he had set aside in the store's queue would be equally useful. He has thoughts on how to utilize this in the right way. The Autogoddess' reward is certainly autobodacious, but he wasn't really mad at her, didn't have the energy for anger, and was trying too hard to keep his cool. The situation was one step away from combative and permanently deadly.

As for the artifact enhancement, he almost believed for a second that his favorite mask would be enhanced again, which he had to deal with separately as to what it represented now, after the enhancement, but Milfic Calamity remained herself from the beginning to the end. Enhanced indeed one of the artifacts belonging to Stepan, not the one with him now, but remaining in the cozy underground cave. And not the totem-center, which, after the promotion, would be of some use even now, through the barrier of the cauldron, but the very first of all artifacts of this kind, which Stepan has at all. Yes, yes, the System, by the grace of the Autogoddess, improved by who knows how many percent the same unfortunate stockings, which are still lying in the gradually dusting kitset. And yes, he would be able to find out what exactly he had received as a result of this “most generous gift” only after he had personally looked at and analyzed it - the help would give a more detailed report only when he came into physical contact with the kitset-casket. Now he could only find out what artifact had improved.

The only thing that saved the glorious free city from the ass frenzy and the fiery rocket sent on a ballistic trajectory from here and towards Dantmark straight out of his flaming ass was that the young man was almost immediately overwhelmed with free knowledge. Quickly and forcibly calming himself down, having bought alchemy from three different vials from the System beforehand, he began to sort out the new knowledge, trying to do it as quickly as possible, because that's where you need to hurry and not waste a single moment. Strangely enough, either the alchemy was helping or he was very motivated, but learning a whole branch of knowledge, even if it was heavily pumped, was much faster and easier than he had expected. A surprise. Not a problem, but a pleasant surprise.

Received: ''mastery of mental-sensory processing of protected targets''; ''elite mastery of mental-sensory processing of protected targets''.

The acquired talents are added to the Player's overall status.

Of course, Lady Milfistopheles could not ignore such a picturesque and tasty block of knowledge from her point of view. Again - why the devil did Stepan's combat skills exceed his brainwashing skills in any aspect? It's not right! It should be corrected and, here, it was corrected, let the isekai thank her for all the good things. Why is he silent and his eye twitching so funny? Jokes helped to relieve a little nervous tension, and the usual anger at the Autogoddess did not let him fall into panic despondency from the realization of the abyss of dangers that awaited him in the very near future. With the prospect of ending the future with a fat dot on the same dangers.

The new knowledge was indeed similar to the analog of combat skills, though it was born from a subtype of agent work. Like agenting and combat grasp, it was pumped in a slightly different way, without the usual chain of base-advanced-base-base-advanced and beyond. At his current level, these skills were literally the maximum he could get with his characteristics, making him not just a competent specialist, but a natural elite of elites in his chosen field, able to work against targets of the level of dukes of free cities, masters or even magisters of magic, senior and high priests, or other persons of similar status, be it personal power and social standing. Yes, each such target would require a very careful approach, weeks and months of analyzing their habits, defenses, aura, mentagrams, character, very clever tricks, and rare consumables. But he realized with some amazement that he could, in theory, make Magister Miller fall completely in love with Duke Herbert's granddaughter in such a way that she would literally have him by the balls. Not in a month or two, with constant risks and the threat of disclosure, but he knew, in theory, what groups of spirits to use, what methods to use, how to break the impact into separate stages, influencing from hundreds of different vectors, merging them.

The ironic thing here was that this knowledge was ranked slightly, but still higher than the same combat mastery. Still, it was born from another knowledge, no less complex, deepening and narrowing the specialization exclusively to working with the consciousness of a protected target and nothing else. For the owner of such skills all the masters of the game of thrones could start a small war, but, more likely, would try to such a master together and forget about the throne games with strife to bury deeper, especially against the background of the existing Master, which is pumped in this direction. If he correctly understood something about his namesake then only in this direction he was ready to pump. But he was simply obliged to show perseverance and persistence at a level from which even Yanin, Rodislav light Gastoldovich, would put for the exam “Excellent” automatically.

The first of the two improvements simply increased the number and depth of working methods and added new summons and witchcraft tricks. It taught him to work not just on the protected target, but on the target protected by the pros, and it is the same professional-paranoid. The ability to counteract the defenses and precautions of those who know exactly how all kinds of charms work, countering the prepared defenses with specific and uncharacteristic methods of influence, which exactly against such defenses are designed. The ability to resist in such a peculiar duel of representatives of almost any type of mentality and social status, magicians and priests, warriors and rulers, humans and elves, orcs and dwarves, even fucking dragons, on which almost nothing brain-twisting does not work and therefore they allow themselves to be too relaxed, forgetting that it is “almost”. Up to the fact the idea of getting the status of one cheerful donkey from not quite a children's cartoon is quite real. Especially because true and experienced dragons and dragonesses can take humanoid form if they have the desire to do so and master this skill at the proper level.

But the most powerful was a new promotion, bringing the knowledge to the third rank and giving the very possibility of multidirectional influence, when it is necessary to rely not on one trick, but on a whole pleiad of such tricks, of different types, different schools of magic, different approaches, which will merge into a single suggestion only at the very end. The efficiency of such an approach is off the scale, as well as labor costs, because to work, in truth, there should be a whole group of collectors of information about the target, as well as suppliers of the rarest reagents. But Stepan had a System, a System Store, and an encyclopedic knowledge of how one really needs and can drive through the brains of the masters of life. Not something to be proud of, but you can't just take and discard this knowledge, a good deal of which could well be used in many other areas of magical practice - from agency work to witchcraft, from long-range control to contracts, from working with arrays to totems. To be honest, he was getting uncomfortable at the thought of what he could do with the new knowledge.

Just as a mental experiment let's take the head of some trading house, it is possible even female and pretty, so it would be more pleasant to experiment mentally. She's perfectly protected. She is well aware of the dangers of mentalists and sensualists. She has more than once dwarfed the heads of all sorts of smart guys with a vial of love elixir in their possession. Her defenses are top-notch. Her influence and wealth are equal to that of any other city ruler. Her paranoia is pumped to the limit and a bit beyond it. Even using elite elder exotic spirits won't guarantee it. Even a high spirit with the right specialization can be spotted by her defenses or her mind. You can even make this spherical in a vacuum businesswoman also not a weak gifted, a solid adept, no more and no less, because masters usually do not go into trade, and with that kind of money, it's hard to stay just an apprentice. This is such a fortress, which is not easy to kill, despite all the power of the System and a lot of contracts, and here you need to make her a faithful and obedient mistress. How to be then one fine-hearted isekai from a distant Earth, what to use, and how to subdue the chosen target?

It starts with the wind blowing more often over her house, and the base of influence is not near where her shields can smell it, for there are as many signaling devices on this house as there are in the palace of old Herbert, for example. No, no, the wind originates in the very clouds, high and far away, only currents of air driven by an elder spirit with exotic properties reach down. These streams create the effect of a funnel, a sonic mouthpiece through which floats a white noise inaudible consciously, but catchable by the very recesses of the mind. Nothing like that, just a gradual relaxation and softening of the defense for one particular type of influence, and even not a particularly noticeable softening, if you do not look for it, this particular signature, and the master will miss, will not be able to notice.

The surface of the mirror will be covered with some strange film invisible neither physically nor magically. From the film on the reflection will go barely noticeable waves, catchable by the very edge of the eye. Concentrating attention, distracting it, concentrating on the victim's appearance, persuading her to pay a little more attention and effort to this appearance, improving the mood, forcing a stingy smile to appear on the face, so rarely there. A very feeble one, only outside the presence of witnesses, for one must maintain the reputation of an iron lady. What iron lady? Mithril, no less, capable of bending crowbars with her gaze, or swords, as the local expression goes.

The water in the bathroom is always checked with special care and partiality, as well as toiletries and shampoos. Our lady definitely knows about that and doesn't forget about it but there's nothing in the cosmetics. It's just that a group of exotic spirits, from the strong to the senior guide, penetrated that plumbing quite some time ago, merged with the water in it, became an integral part of it and that's why the protection lets them through. They are water, not even saturated with magic, just liquid. So what if together with their bodies in the foamy and fragrant bath there are particles of different types of reagents that do not harm and do not affect themselves, but accumulate on the skin and body even after wiping with a fine terry towel?

Especially if even earlier other spirits had worked with the servants on harsh oaths and with voluntary, or not quite voluntary, mental processing, slightly distorting the already existing bookmarks in their heads, changing perception and slightly weakening the contractual bonds, so that it was not noticeable during regular scans and checks. There were no traces on the control anchors, which certified the contracts. The servants simply began to think that it was a normal part of their workflow - adding slightly different perfume to the bedding and slightly different cleaning potions to the laundry. Another maid will not notice or pay attention to the fact that the long-purchased magic crystals for lighting have for some reason begun to give a slightly different shade of color. Another servant will drop a drop of absolutely transparent liquid on the underwear of the mistress, carefully washed and ironed, not realizing that this drop fell from their own fingernail, on the tip of which a miniature spatial pocket was formed, which had already managed to dissipate imperceptibly by the evening.

Writing utensils and ink on sheets of paper will become a little different, so the eyes of a busy and morally uplifted lady will pick out separate letters in boring trade reports. These letters will be formed into words, quite understandable, but not realized, especially since after the first reading these letters, left and slightly changed by the spirit of words and meanings, will lose the shadow of the presence of this spirit and become again just letters. And the trading lady is doing well, perfectly well even, she keeps her workload lighter and lighter. She manages to rest for the brief moments of respite, the honed mind is already routinely solving those tasks, which before were not a challenge, but a problem.

Dozens of separate pricks fold, intertwine, penetrate under the monolithic protection, and braid the consciousness with an invisible cocoon, from which there is no escape, which will not be realized, until in one moment, no different from others, she will receive for her morning signature some such familiar documents, among which will be a contract on the complete transfer of all her assets and property to the power of an old competitor, as well as an extremely detailed marriage contract with the same competitor as a junior concubine or a full-fledged wife - it does not matter. She would sign and certify it with the same ease and certainty as everything else, accepting it as the norm, then change into especially revealing lingerie and a dress that covered neither breasts nor ass nor crotch, meet her new husband, and immediately begin to please him, spend a night of passion with him and return to work as his faithful assistant. As if it is so and so, as if nothing unusual, completely changed her life and did not happen, as if she decided to change the color of her nails, not to give her trading house and all the assets to a competitor. And God forbid someone try to convince her that it's all a spell. She will check herself and let herself be checked by outside experts. She will not forget to create a convincing semblance that it was originally her idea, that she was just bought out and that's why she ditched the old partners in favor of her new husband.

This is approximately how such an approach to mental and sensual working out works, when there is no single attack vector, no direct blow with a blade, which can be repulsed, be it even by a pack of higher spirits - there are hundreds of individual needle pricks, changing the consciousness and will of the victim so that no standard and quite a few exotic checks will help. Even if it is clear to everyone and everyone that the impact on our example businesswoman with an iron character was really there, they will still not be able to prove it, neither to her herself nor in a lawsuit to seize the property with assets.

This is just one example, which Stepan came up in minutes, while examples of those can be crammed into a dozen volumes with author's footnotes. Two sons of a sultan compete for the throne. They ask a shaman for help and pay well. One of the competitors will frequent the harem, will spend more time there, will be more interested in the life of his concubines, will admire the beauty of their clothes and bodies, and at the end of a year-long cycle of working out to distinguish him from one of the many and as one of the beautiful inhabitants of that harem will not help any Admiral Akbar. And what is it that the victim will get the idea to “play” his half-brother by pretending to be a new concubine? And there and then and fuck the throne and power, if the new life so liked.

The example, of course, was not one of those that Stepan would agree to pull off even for a dozen levels of reward, but it was just a demonstration of the fact that his tricks were not limited to the female gender. Neither in theory nor in practice there is no difference between working on a beautiful maiden or a brutal man - you can liberate an outstanding scientist from the world of magic to the point that she decides to go to the elite concubines or make it so that in the barracks of some knightly order every seven days to choose the boss of the gym. Or turn them all, both the maiden and the knights, into suicidal suicides to attack the king at the next ball.
бос качалки

The shaman spent half a day in meditation, which is really surprising for such serious and massive knowledge. That's what motivation means, the mother of labor feats. By the time he awoke, it was already dawning, and Singha had spent a good portion of her reserve fortifying the defensive line around their hill. She'd spent about three and a half hours adapting to the System and then decided to get down to business. Well, she'd gotten a little more experience, though it wasn't easy for her, now level thirty-one, to gain new experience. And yes, another injustice of the system read. With a formal level two levels higher than his she was many times weaker than him. Perhaps it was good that he “clicked the checkbox” and blocked her from looking at his own Status, having done it as a group leader. Otherwise, there would be a lot of questions and suspicions about why the hell he had such a specific leveling.

The status of his unwilling companion, on the contrary, he looked over, albeit glimpsed, not as carefully as he might have wanted. The development was quite competent, though rather lopsided. He could say it with certainty, like a shaman to a shaman - Air, Wind, Storms, Gusts, those were the Spheres she and her family nurtured, the rest of them on a residual basis. No, her root call practices and dialog were also quite good, as for her level, her attributes were not bad, especially the class ones, also the Source stood out for the better - genetics and heredity were good. She also had a few decent properties, which were also sharpened to the wind, expressed by separate marks, but other elements were also given to her, such as Water, which she was able to call at the level of an adept, and the Flames and the Depths would not be completely deaf to her calls. From the non-spiritual spheres quite a decent level of communication with the Animal subspheres of birds of prey, as well as a little slope in the light sub-branches of the Healing Wind. Skills of out-of-body work, totems, and stationary calls with a focus on ancestral blood - this part of knowledge he did not have, which was not surprising.

There was a lot of small knowledge or rather contracts, and most of them were labeled “ancestral”, and some of them were blocked since not all the spirits bound to the family's blood could be summoned, or they might come and the family wouldn't have an heiress. There are more contracts with strong spirits than Stepan's, but the quality of those contracts, even if certified by the System as sufficiently high quality and reliable, is not impressive. Either a rare summoning, special summoning conditions, a regular subscription fee to join, some other limiting factors, or all of these together. The six available senior summons picks were the same. The only normal contract she could summon was the guardian spirit she still had with her now. It was average, as for the rank, and average at best, but it listened to her as if she had not “advanced developed” in the spiritual dialog, but “master”, no less. And this spirit, while Stepan was learning the knowledge, followed her and found her. But now it does not leave her, because it is too strongly connected with her and someone, Stepan even knows who, tried to trace this connection. Thus activated the cauldron of the network of worms. In general, this spirit can't leave the cage now either, and it seems that it doesn't hear the call of its elder relative anymore. The mother is probably hysterical that she lost not only her daughter but also her trump spirit. But the spirit felt how evil and unkindly the witch's aberration began to press on him, clinging tightly to the defendant and blocking the pressurizing aura of evil will with his own spiritual body.

"Good morning. Did you call, did he come by himself or did his relatives send him?" The shaman clarified hoarsely, swallowing saliva from his parched throat and starting to squelch his greed with thoughts of ordering food from the Store. "He doesn't really want to talk to me."

"Hai. Her mother sent him away, following the trail of blood." She answered, yawning, her eyes slanting at the hint of sleep that had almost caused her meditation. "He could not leave now. This abomination presses, cutting off the call. Wind and sky to you, too."

She didn't ask what he'd managed to get and whether he'd come up with a rescue plan. Though, she was as curious and vital as he was. It's also scary because she is a smart girl, though a fool in some places. She realizes that he may well try to fight his way out alone, or even use her to call the dark spirits and sacrifice her. To be fair, he had seriously considered those options as well. Not over sacrifice, of course, but over trying to escape on his own without coming into conflict with the guardian of the source. He has a Shroud and an improved mask. He roughly understood what exactly happened to that mask and, if he chooses the right contracts to replenish the retinue, has a good chance to slip through, wrapping himself in the Shroud tightly and distracting the network of worms with blows of spirits. Only the Shroud will have to be sacrificed, it, according to his own calculations, will literally tear with meat from the thin body, along with part of the gift, and cripple in the process. How badly and whether he will be able to survive the further journey home after that is an open and debatable question. As well as whether his cave is worthy to be called home.

Stepan saw no use in heavy thoughts, focusing on the less heavy present, noting that his gift control had improved to a good level even by the standards of classical magic adepts. For a shaman, of course, not the most necessary attribute, but useful, especially for him with his multiple of awareness, because for the correct coordination of crowds of spirits must also feed them at the same time, separating the streams of strained reserve. And partial transformation becomes more flexible and dexterous, the higher the control over the gift of which the transformation is a part. The shaman, without distracting himself from his thoughts, gave commands to the spirits, fed all sorts of small things for reconnaissance purposes, and baited some rather large snake of medium venomousness, despite the size of a large python and the fact that pythons do not usually possess poison, planning to let the snake for kebabs. At the same time, he evaluated the control and the degree of its effectiveness in the explosive growth from the System. He remained satisfied with the evaluation.

He started with the tokens, wanting to get rid of the most unpleasant emotions at once, and he experienced some of those emotions, but only some. The first token was quite usable, though of little use to him personally, because it was called “mass small warrior's blessing”, had five charges, and covered up to fifty creatures, increasing their Constitution by two and Sensitivity by one for half a day. For a simple ungifted person, it is very serious especially if we are not talking about peasants with pitchforks, but experienced and skillful fighters. The effect of the token includes the adjustment of reflexes to the increased stats so that a deadly and experienced fighter will become even more deadly. Three in the Constitution is not a small amount, especially if the Sensitivity will also increase. In principle, the thing is really cool, but not for Stepan, because he does not have a personal squad of fifty snouts in armor, and for a more compact group of bloodsuckers, this enhancement is not so cool, because you can not use the full potential of the token. However, raising Sylvia's corporeality from a nine to an eleven... wouldn't be an effect that could be easily ignored.

The second of the tokens, alas, belonged to the Milfeyish category, called “Compulsion of Addiction: Hugged and Squeezed”, with twenty-five charges and a remarkably typical effect. The victim of this token, only female and only beautiful, gets a seemingly all-natural fetish for inflicting pleasure on her partner with her large and lush breasts. If the breasts are not large enough for jerking off with them, they will grow to the right size and this too will be perceived as completely normal by the victim and everyone around them. Those who already have forms are lush, there will be no growth of cleavage, since growth is not necessary. In addition, the victim will have a new shift in consciousness to showing breasts with more revealing outfits, deep necklines, and tight embraces of thin fabric. The last detail will be that the victim will prefer to cause pleasure fully dressed, removing the minimum of clothes, just to give the partner access to the hollow between the breasts, happily watching him cum on her tits and dresses, how the fabric of her clothes is soiled with streams of semen.

Stepan didn't know how to use this shit and didn't want to think about it, but as a consolation prize, not otherwise, the victims get a general improvement in health, guaranteed to keep a pleasant appearance for as long as possible within the ticking age, as well as greater plasticity of the magical gift, if any, and a disposition to develop it. Not an increase in characteristics, but rather an increase in the effectiveness of training and a guarantee that long years of working on oneself would allow one to reach at least the peak of adept or even the lower bar of mastery. The young man doubted that there would be many ladies who would agree to change their sexual preferences even for such a prize. It looked very modest against the instantaneous growth of characteristics from gifting, and the payment, on the contrary, was noticeably more serious.

That was the end of the Autogoddess' gifts, but Stepan still had four talent points to spend on contracts and an artifact from the waiting list. In the latter case, the choice was almost guaranteed, and he delayed only because he was reading through the list of available contracts, looking for the ones he needed the most. As much as he would have liked to acquire a higher offensive-defensive type fighting spirit that could be used to try to drag the rink against an as yet unknown source keeper, he couldn't. There were options. There were quite a few, but he sincerely doubted that even having access to the source and the vulnerability point of the worm cage would allow him to break through it with just a senior spirit.

No, you can't, it's the higher spirit that must provide the escape. Fortunately, there was one such spirit in the list of available options, albeit in a single copy. There was a second one, but that one, also working with space and movement, specialized in mass logistics and road work, allowing you to drag a hundred horses for a hundred day's journey in an hour's ride on a seemingly ordinary road. Or drag you alone from one end of the Confederacy to the other while you stroll at a leisurely pace and nibble on a still-hot pie. Only for the full work of the spirit, the two points of interest must be connected by roads or paths, even if they are crooked. And preferably by a straight path. It is possible without it, but the efficiency decreases, and there are no roads here, in the deep jungle, where for thousands of years nothing but a network of worms and that which gave rise to it has lived and never happened.

But the second of the available options was much more suitable, so Stepan made this higher spirit his first contract of such a rank. The conditions are quite good - four summons per year, and the countdown for each of the four charges is separate, not reset at the end of the calendar year, the possibility of transferring the contract by inheritance, but only one of the descendants, not all, and either the firstborn or the seventh in number. For such a serious spirit, the conditions are ideal, and given the specialization of the entity and its power even within the rank, it is difficult to imagine the depth to which the owner of such a contract would stick his tongue up the ass of local individuals. Space magic is a very separate facet of the gift, always associated with huge difficulties in mastering, huge costs of training and application, and huge profits from that application. The same city portals bring the creators and their families such profits that the logistics companies of old Earth would be envious.

The contracted one was much more interesting because he was not a standard teleportation specialist, no. He specialized in breaking paths even in places where ordinary, not quite ordinary, and quite unusual teleportation failed. The spirit was quite skillful in precise pointing and laying a point bridge-connection in the right direction. He could become for a single person or even not too large a group a kind of portable portal arch, only without the arch. But, if necessary, such a thing could penetrate even into the protected and covered by appropriate barriers section of reality, literally gnawing its way to the desired direction. Not instantly, and not to say it was directly unnoticeable, but it could. It could also help escape from the place where teleportation was blocked and blocked, though with great reservations - still, the main forte of this spirit was to break its way into the protected zone, not to escape from it.

Stepan couldn't find a more suitable spirit to escape the cage they were in, but even that individual couldn't break through the worm net right off their hill, the aberration too powerful and attentive, watching relentlessly simply because it couldn't be inattentive or not watching. Even with a higher spirit on a quick summon, it would need to access a weak point, to hit the net with the support of a magical source, which itself is part of the wormy something. Having a spirit doesn't even simplify his crazy plan, no, it just makes it doable in general, not suicidal. Except that in combat, the spirit won't help, and can't, it's practically powerless in reality, and in the spirit world it doesn't fight predators either, it runs away, confuses them, carrying either itself or the attacker. In a battle against the owner of the source help from him is not zero, but negative values, for the entity, will still need to cover from attacks. And yet, the young man had no better option than the spirit, called by the system name-image “Spokes-Piercing-There-and-Here”, so he had to work with what he had.

He spent the second of his summons not on a fighter, but on a defense, albeit a non-combat one, designed not to fight the creature near the source, but to survive in the aberration zone created by the crap that lurked in the ancient city. A spirit with no form or even image, just pure presence, it was very good at resisting curses and delayed effects, especially witchcraft. The entity covered the aura of the target or targets, becoming a kind of film over the aura and spirit, inert, not interfering, but not helping either. In such a state, the “Glade of Slipping Evil” did not exist at all, being just a consequence, a magical effect, a kind of barrier, but not a spiritual entity as such. Stepan chose this contract precisely because in this form the spirit was remotely similar to a network of worms. It was not an entity either, but an effect, an influence, a presence that had no will of its own, but carried that will.

In active mode this spirit was able, as Stepan hoped, to cover a couple of them, if not from the direct attacks of what sits in the city gone into the ground under its weight and the weight of centuries, then at least from the passive pressure of the vedic field, which will stuff the spirit and aura of each guest of this space of wonders worms, no matter sooner or later. One invocation per season, up to twenty-one days, but you can release the spirit and early, the ability to stretch the film of protection up to nine targets, but with each stretching multiple of three, the strength of the defense is weaker and weaker. There is no difference for two, but a three will already have a noticeable decrease in effectiveness, a six will have an even more noticeable decrease in effectiveness, and in the case of nine protected individuals, it will be easier and smarter to summon separate groups of strong spirits than this particular elder. Transferring a contract as an inheritance is possible, but requires a separate ritual and “acquaintance” with the heirs, which the spirit may refuse for one reason or another, especially if they are weak or the spirit does not have enough marks of the relevant characteristics.

The third talent point, allocated for contracts, finally went to a fighter. Stepan was choosing the best options from the best. He settled on an entity whose name-image was described by the system as “Lu'ni Tru'ni”, weaving together whole streams of meanings, most of which the material brain couldn't even realize without being boiled in its skull. The essence had a clear external image, belonging to a very rare sphere of memory, being literally a memory legend, which became part of the spirit world and embodied in a full-fledged entity, which later acquired not only the image but also the power. The young man did not know this legend, suspecting that it did not belong to this world at all, having come from somewhere far away, but he could well appreciate the power, combat aspects, and exotic abilities of the entity and was more than satisfied with them.

The image of the summons was specific, like a thin skeleton made of thin bones, as thick as twigs of brushwood, remotely resembling a human skeleton, but with three eye sockets, seven fingers, three joints on the arms, and a strange, perfectly round skull. These bones are black as night, literally absorbing light and any other radiation, but they are really thin, and the closer one looks at them, the thinner they seem. This thinness contrasts even more strongly with the tallness of the skeleton, not less than three meters with a tail a full embodiment of the spirit in reality. In the center of the rib cage, twisted as if the same black ivy began to grow there in addition to the bones, wrapping each bone with additional armor, is hidden the heart of the spirit, which looks like a black stone, shimmering in time with the heartbeat of the shaman who called this dolt. And on top of that is dense, perfectly fitting armor, as if molded from smoked glass, retaining the lion's share of transparency. The size of this armor was such that it would fit a humanoid of appropriate proportions with a normal skeleton and meat on that skeleton. But the thin wicker man still carries this glass dungeon as if it were a piece of fluff. What's strange about it? Spiritual entity for which weight and inertia mean nothing at all.

The spirit is armed with a massive two-handed hybrid of a spear and sword, the hilt of which is about the same length as the blade, and the weapon itself is made of the same black material as the bones of the spirit's base image. And likewise, this weapon appears to be thinner the closer one looks at it. This subtlety, this weightless all-pervasive deadliness, is consciously manipulated by the spirit, seeping blows through shields, defenses, matter, and even space, delivering aura- and spirit-dissecting blows even from very considerable distances. This is backed up by the ability to stride longer and longer than normal as if teleporting a short distance, as well as the strongest resistance and defense to compensate for a very narrow attack arsenal. The strongest exot for direct combat against a single and strong target at his rank from those available to the shaman through the System. One single summoning per year, but for five days of continuous presence, or until released. A high degree of obedience, a good understanding of dialog, as well as complete contempt for danger. The spirit is absolutely indifferent to everything, he will go with a blade without a doubt, against a lousy goblin, even against an incarnate god.

Stepan couldn't allocate the last talent point given for the deed for a long time. Because it depended on him what he would have to do not only with his plan but also with his unwilling partner. The smartest thing would be to call some defense specialist to cover himself from the attacks of the owner of the source of magic, which century on that source was sitting and accumulating power. Actually, the young man had purchased a contract with such an entity, although there were doubts and they were very significant. He also wanted to acquire some kind of memory modifier, which would be able to hide the secrets of the earthling from both Singha and her mother, who stood in her skill very close to the rank of the highest shamaness. But, he decided to himself, he had to save his ass first, and then he could think about what to do next. After all, this couple still had the mark of his Automilf Patroness on them, so he could, if he set his mind to it, fix their memories and shift their thoughts in the right direction even without a specific contract with an elder spirit. The more so because he could summon a suggestor with the right characteristics. Some of them he had already summoned and contracted, though the spirit had a slightly different slant on the aspects.

Instead of a contract that works with memory and information, Stepan acquires a combat contract of a defensive type, a system marked with the name “Rest of the Serenity Keeper”. The name and the spirit reeked of something Asian as if had escaped from some novel about cultivators. The image of its manifestation also corresponded to the name and the sensation, for this entity covered a certain area of space with the petals of a lotus, ghostly, slightly transparent, and surprisingly strong. Physical, magical, spiritual, or any other damage by this spirit was stopped and leveled, the blows flowing down the indestructible petals, along the rest of the spirit's body, partially hidden in the world of spheres, into those same spheres and flowing away forever. The petals themselves were indestructible to the point that they could only be broken by a supremely powerful great spirit or god-like entity, but this was offset by the fact that the absorbed and redirected damage hurt the main body of the spirit, taking damage from so much crap passing through it. The petals would remain intact, but after absorbing a certain amount of damage, the spirit would silently and without a long goodbye flee into the mist, leaving it to deal with the problems on its own. To be fair, the Cultivator's absorption limit is quite significant, and even an attacking master fighter wouldn't suddenly saturate it.

It is possible to bypass this obstacle, exotic types of attacks, designed to counteract absorbing fields, just can quite well, love, know-how, and practice opening such tins. But Stepan's defense against exotics is quite good, there is a crowd of minor, strong, and even senior spirits, who were engaged in this role. But to keep a direct flow of aggressive charms or physical attacks - the very thing that is needed. With physics in the first place. Most likely they will have to deal with it, as the enemy will clearly be some monster terrible outside and even more terrible inside. It would be better if the source was guarded by a duck, even a plastic duck, harmless and not dangerous... although, there is nothing to be done, because even a duck, for hundreds of years on a strong source, will mutate into such a monster that no one will be funny.

There were still ordinary talent points left, received for honest efforts in raising the level, and Stepan had almost invested them but stopped at the very last moment. No, not out of greed. To save points for further pumping in such conditions would be only a complete, absolute, extreme, and complete imbecile, which his mother had not given him a brain as a child. He did not dare because of the fear of spending these points in the wrong way. He could put them into combat contracts, defense, and attack spirits, or he could put them into something that would cover or facilitate retreat when breaking the spatial blockade. If you choose combat effectiveness, it will be much easier to sell the guardian of the source, and as a result, you will spend less effort on the battle... only to be devoured by the creature from the depths of the ancient city awakened by the battle. If you choose support and work with space, you will spend a lot of time and effort on a battle, which you can lose, or even just not be able to win until the moment when the creator of the network of worms decides to come out to look at the one who organized the battle there.

Instead of long deliberation or making a possible erroneous action, he took advantage of the System's property allowed him to pre-allocate points in the right way. And in several modes at once - in the upcoming case it would be enough for him to wish clearly, send an image, and he would immediately receive the necessary contracts. One or another option, depending on the choice of one of the pre-allocation schemes. The minor knowledge of a single contract is very tiny in comparison with the usual arrays of information, to internalize it, and then use it, he will be able to directly in battle. Especially because of all possible information regarding the chosen spirits he had already managed to get from the help.

The last thing he did was to take the mask out, pull it out, look at it closely, gazing into its bottomless eyes and smiling more and more. Yes, he had not mistaken it. His vague and fleeting sensations of contact with the artifact did not fail him, he had correctly guessed the direction of the artifact's amplification. The mask used to be an openly non-combat device, the role of which was reduced to an incredibly useful aid in confronting aggressive spirits that came to the shaman's call, as well as support and protection when going outside the body. A very worthy thing, a fine and flexible tool, but not for combat, but for the craft of the shaman intended. The fact some aspects of the mask were used by him in combat is of little consequence. A laser cutter can also cut someone's arm off, a water pump can be inserted into an asshole and tear the victim's intestines, and a microscope is pretty good at banging heads. This approach does not become smarter because it can be applied with some degree of efficiency.

But now, now everything is different. The very shell of emptiness around the body and spirit, which appears when the mask is activated and put on, now not only protects from attacks from the World of Spheres. No, now it is a complex and very deep defense, working on the principles of the same coordinate shift as before, but now against direct damage of any kind. This is not the limit of effectiveness, many quality amulets will give a simpler defense, but not less effective, but this is just the beginning! First, the previously tried-and-true enhancement of the anteroom through the mask has now gained a hundred points of power, allowing for much cheaper and more flexible manipulation of the anteroom, plus the enhanced one. For now, there would be the same film of emptiness between Reality and the Astral, in the very center of the anteroom. It was thin for Stepan, but insurmountably deep for the attackers.

Secondly, the eyeholes have changed from being just an amusing, albeit frightening detail, to a very serious weapon. They are still the same bottomless. They still violate the distance metric, making it possible for an object even a hundred meters long to fall through them. Only earlier this object had to be shoved into the eye socket of the mask so it could get through without damaging the eye socket. Now the eye socket, each of the two, can attack something not too material. Material can do it too, just harder. A super-saturated fire lance would simply draw in the etheric current, despite the channeling module in the weave, devouring the enchantment and sending it into the void of the Astral depths. An evil spirit or elemental will also be sucked in like water into a bathtub drain and there's no way to stop it, absorbed by the emptiness of the eye socket won't even be able to fight back, its attacks and magic will be sucked in first, and physical jerks won't be able to leave the peculiar event horizon.

You can't use this kind of trick often. Each activation of the influence embedded in the eye sockets will send the trap doorway into a reset for a long time. For a simple fireball or other purely magical weaves, this period would be barely a couple of hours; a powerful spirit drawn into the depths of the spheres would shut down one of the sockets for a day or two. An elemental like a stone snot for a week, and something completely material and actively fighting back cannot be absorbed by such an attack. But you can suck up stationary defenses with this method, if they are not too active and not too powerful, because if Stepan tries to pull a piece of the worm net into the mask, this net will chew his head off.

It had been barely a couple of hours from the moment of awakening from the assimilation of knowledge to the end of analyzing the mask, and it was not even night yet. The sun was still glimmering at the very edge of the damp and gloomy jungle. Now, having already gotten used to the surrounding noise and having started to filter the information coming from the spirits. It was obvious that the jungle itself was also abnormal. There are few, very few large and magically active animals, especially for such a high magical background. But there are a lot of rare plants and some of them Stepan is unable to identify at all. He is clearly neither an herbalist nor an alchemist, but basic erudition in such matters is part of call practice, but it does not help. Probably some of these endemics don't grow anywhere except in this section of strictly fenced jungle.

"I'm done." Quietly, but in their long silence and a loud voice, he says, meeting the hopeful and fearful gaze of his partner, realizing his gaze is no better now, and that the manly stoicism of the Earthman's image is sorely lacking. "There are chances. So is the risk. We'll move tomorrow. We'll scout. See what we can find out about what we're dealing with. I've acquired something to protect us from the common field so we won't grow a wormy apple in this jungle. I'll call on it before I go to sleep, it'll protect us both. We need a good night's sleep. My brain is melting, to be honest."

"Hai, we should. But I probably won't sleep here. The nastiness is crushing." They both speak like Tumba-Yumba tribesmen in short and simple chopped phrases, which proves the degree of mutual tension better than any hysterics. "I can't stop. Remembering. Seeing. Who created this and why? Even the scariest khao-thash or khao-madreg, they're scary. But it's not just fear. This is an abomination. Something that shouldn't be."

"Well, I personally have no idea, but I suspect it's exactly the same story here as in Dantmark." Grinning an unhappy smile, he gives out a very disturbingly plausible theory. "That town. That we saw through the eyes of the spirits. There were mages living there, too. So they summoned something. Probably. Or grew it. Something. And it ate the place up. Everyone."

"I don't want to be like that. Not like those beasts. The memory of what лhao saw." She gives out even more sadly and depressingly, shifting into some kind of completely suicidal gloom. "Better on my own."

"It won't work, Singha. As optimistic as I am, it won't. It'll take control of a fresh corpse even faster. You won't have time to cool off. Or die." It's just a guess, but the shaman doesn't doubt its veracity, because the creature and its creation have very distinctive aspects. "Like vampires. Unlive. So is this thing. Undying."

"And never lived." His companion finished for him, shrugging her shoulders in disgust. "Never."

Time after time the shaman shuffles the images of what the scouting spirits find, moving farther and farther away, stalking in the fringe of manifestation, along the ground itself, hiding in the energy backdrop of the jungle, afraid to dive deeper into the spheres, for in the spheres the presence of the network of worms is even more absolute. He avoids looking too closely at the city. His spirits watching from afar, just in case something comes out of there, but he doesn't go in. He doesn't probe, he doesn't collect data, he doesn't map. Fuck it, just fuck it, it's too much even for his fortified spirit. high attribute of the spirit of the spirit of the mind. But he looked at the third source, found it, localized it, and got closer and closer to it and its master. The creature is strong, a clear beast, material and evil, but it is not a dumb animal, one can sense a spark of intelligence in the fields that shelter the source. A creature strong and deadly, but still “young”, even if only relative to a spirit nesting in a huge tree or a worm something from the ruins of an abandoned city. Weaker, much weaker, and less dangerous, giving its “weakness” a non-zero chance of success in case of conflict.

This source is located in the middle of a clear lake on a small island with a couple of lonely trees covered with vines and ivy. The ill-fated lake is literally full of power. The water in it is so full of magic that it can replenish the reserve just by drinking it, and there are no emanations of parasites and worms in that water, as everything here is saturated with them. So the keeper of the lake, whatever he is, is not completely subordinated to the wormy thing. He retains some autonomy, a part of it, which is just fine. The creature is hiding in the depths of the lake, not just hiding, but also consciously using this lake to filter the general background, to draw from the source exclusively purified and filtered power, and not full of alien witchcraft almost a living and moving mass of self-generating spiritual worms from pure energy. However, the witchcraft of the worm network itself does not get into the lake and does not press it intentionally, as if being in a long-standing balance with the owner of the lake.

What will the owner surprise the guests with? Water. That is hydromancy of the wild kind, not any kind of weaving, but direct control of the elements, with elements of advanced witchcraft. Whether the creature was naturally skilled in such a school of magic or learned it by watching the network of worms, the lake was covered by its own dome, more primitive, weak, and segmented, the individual elements of the spell clearly visible. Water, witchcraft, and perhaps physical power. He's not sure he's right, but intuitively, from the very hue and flavor of the magic protecting the source, he senses something large and massive sits there. The lake is small, only two hundred paces in diameter, almost perfectly round but the water, though clear, is dark and opaque, hiding its contents from both sight and scanning. Oh, Stepan would have a lot of trouble with this lake, he would be sick to his stomach!

"Okay. Okay. It's time to rest, but first of all, protection from witchcraft and, here's more, for the coming battle." Stepan already speaks almost normally, having almost forcibly disconnected himself from the scouts' spirit packs, ordering them to go back to the call point. He concentrates on the System. "It's a pity I can't re-bind, but don't consider it a gift. It's payment. For the battle to come. Water it with blood, let the spirits in it get used to themselves, and realize what they can do and what they won't do. You'll be wearing this tomorrow. Or not tomorrow."

Singha was silent, staring at the cloak handed to her, like an accounting department at a new Windows. Stepan's heart was bleeding, his hands were shaking with greed, realizing that it would be impossible to rebound this relic - literally one of the strongest artifacts he had ever seen in the list of elite items, which he was saving for himself, but giving it to this fucking mare! And for fucking free! But there was nothing he could do about it, he'd have a lot of things to do that only he could do, without having the time to control the cloak that had been waiting in the waiting line for a long time. Even with the multiplicity of awareness, he, simultaneously holding the defenses of the antechamber, controlling the swarms of spirits, and punching his way through the wall of worms, would be able to use at most forty percent of the potential hidden in the system artifact.

But Singha, despite her weaker status, would be able to use and control the cloak as well as Stepan. The wind is her element. She has a short relationship with the spirits of this realm, and the cloak gives her power over the wind and nothing else. Its ability to transport through air trails is useless now, it won't get them out of the trap, but it's still a very powerful battle artifact. The higher, three elders, more than a dozen strong spirits, and the cloak itself, which is essentially an incredible power storage device, made it possible to blast air rams, hammers, walls of blades, streams of sharp needles, vacuum blasts, and hurricane gusts in a way that another master in his tower could not. The cloak will run out of power much sooner than the magister in the tower with the source, but not immediately, but it will be enough for one battle. Incredible maneuverability, the ability to evade attacks that you can't even see with a leaf in the wind, automatic protection from the same extreme saturated with the power and will of the wind, as well as a useless teleporter at this moment in time. Truly this artifact is worthy of a king, if he is, of course, a shaman.

"This... I can't accept such a gift...” The girl said, though Stepan could easily see how much she wanted to take the rag, hold it against her and shout aloud and in images ”MY-MY-MY-MY-MY-MY-MY-MY-MY-MY-MY-I WANT-IT! "I have nothing to give for such ilash hao-tar, not me, not my clan. And I..."

"Oh, I'm not going to demand that you sell me your ass and five generations of descendants into eternal fucking service!" Stepan can't stand her attempts not to say what she really thinks, trivializing her fear of even touching the robes outstretched on her outstretched arm. "You may be dying in battle tomorrow. So will I. I simply won't be able to use it and grind a path for the two of us at the same time. You'll have to use it to its full potential or you'll be useless. You either can't call your retinue or you're afraid to. You've got the personal power of a good Adept, I'll give you that, but here, where you and I are stuck, the Magisters would get eaten. I need someone who will cover my back, who can provide that cover and not die in the first second of the battle, who will not be a stone around my neck but will attack and block attacks with me. Consider yourself a mercenary if you want, and the cloak as payment for the contract."

"If such contracts and pay had ever been offered, the whole steppe would have gone to hired blades and spears." Having calmed down she took the cloak in her hands, then put a little of her power into it and dripped blood from the finger cut by the air stream, immediately beginning to listen to the dialog with the universes in this, in fact, altar totem, only in the form of a cloak, entities. "But, hai, your will and your gift. I will stand beside you, Pann, and I will fight, even if it be my last battle. I already owe my life to you. And now again. It's like I'm a harbinger of trouble, isn't it?"

"If I wasn't sure of the contrary, I would think that you had just gotten into my head and voiced my thoughts." The Earthman chuckled, which immediately knocked off the girl's solemnity, and clearly quoted from some steppe tradition, making her pout and blush a little, but he, with his Sensitivity, saw it in the darkness. "This is the second time we've met and the second time I've gotten into trouble. It's like a curse, honestly. And for the second time, I spend on you the value that I had prepared for myself, only this time the value will stay with you as a small souvenir. However, to be fair, I've successfully gotten into trouble without you."

"Last time, too...” Singha confessed quietly, a little uncertainly, and with a touch of shame under Stepan's perplexed gaze, and then explained. "The khao you used to save me, left alone with the innumerable hao-tash afterward. Well. Mother, after all, often releases her spirit into the streams of winds and clouds too... and we thought you were dead anyway... and so....."

"You stole my butterfly escape." Stepan finished for her, who had another nervous tic when he remembered his bewilderment at not being able to summon the Fugitive again because he had already been summoned by someone else. "So you like bright clothes, gold jewelry, horses, and steal everything. Tell me, do you have any gypsies on the prairie?"

"Mother didn't steal. You can't steal a free and unbound Hao! I mean, you can, if the call to him is secret knowledge and... but that's different!" She got indignant but was immediately embarrassed when she realized that her “this is different” describes the “secret knowledge” of the very fact of the possibility of calling such an exotic entity. "And I have no idea what beast or spirit you're talking about, I've never even heard the word before."

"If I knew a little less about local geography, I would say that it is only because you are gypsies yourselves!" The shaman shouted back, mentally curbing his desire to cast a more complicated spell on the mother of this pest so that it would not be fatal and would not cripple her mind. But to explain to her clearly the wrongness of stealing other people's contracts. "You will decorate your cloak with gold, make repairs in the house with stucco and marble floor and you can brag to your girlfriends. Steppes like horses, and horse-stealing is an honored tradition, for which heads are cut off now and then."

“This cloak can be bragged about in front of Khailan Khan or the whole Steppe. I won't decorate it without rituals, because that might shake the stability of the house of the Khao.” His subtle joke was not even ignored, but simply not understood, and the maiden herself, despite the obviously prickly character of a shamaness who knows her value, was all her thoughts in her new clothes, trying to understand what exactly these spirits can do. “Apologies to me and my House, Pann. Especially me. If I hadn't called out to the khao, that captive would have just left instead of attacking. It's my fault. If I survive, I will do whatever it takes to repay my debt. For myself and the Clan.”

"You're thinking bad things about me again, as if... oh, whatever, I just want to survive first." The young man was going to explain to her that he wouldn't hold a grudge against her family until they first started to put sticks in his wheels, but she wouldn't believe him anyway. Putting his words in such a way that for debts they would take away for perpetual use at least only her ass, and not the whole family up to the fucking twentieth generation. She wouldn't have understood otherwise. She was raised too differently. - All right. Fuck this. I'm going to call. Call for protection. From these. Three times. Fucking worms. Don't be frightened. When we. Covered."

With a piece of sharpened stone found near the hill, he draws the basic line, carefully entering a trance and falling into the spirit world from the body only partially, hiding himself with spirits and dampening energy disturbances, he begins the call. He called carefully, calling quietly and slowly, for fear of raising too powerful an energy storm. There is almost no defense, the contract is already ready and certified by the System, and the danger is minimal unless you kill yourself, but it is necessary to hide, it is extremely important for survival. The first call and the first dialog do not lead to the appearance of the spirit at all. They only exchange images, and Stepan also explains to the one about the situation and describes what his contract will have to work with. All the while, Singha continues to sit, wrapped in her new cloak, swaying and staring up at the sky with empty eyes, rolling them so that only the whites are visible.

He fears, can't help but fear, that the girl will decide to get rid of all her problems at once, killing a strange and muddy acquaintance, and then simply trying to escape by air trails. The Earthling knows she has no chance but she might believe in her immortality. It's not pleasant to leave behind someone who has a weapon quite capable of killing a shaman, even if he resists. However, the mask he's wearing will hold off the first blow and then he attacks either to drive them off or to kill them. Still, there is really no other choice, with the wind she speaks not much worse than Stepan, so her possession of the cloak increases purely combat power and damage inflicted by their pair, if not twice, then by sixty percent exactly. And without the cloak, she's simply unable to help. The blood-bound retinue, if she calls for it, will give a trail to the house, and it will hit the noosphere cap of the worm network, which will result in a probable attack. And the blow of this stuff, even in automatic mode, the girl will be devoured without a trace, leaving only a body stuffed with spiritual worms quickly becoming real ones, which will not even be able to die.

Surprisingly, Stepan is able to operate his entourage quite calmly solely because he is a loner, with no family and no one he can call for help through his totems. Even so, with the unique power and quality of Sylvia's doll, he didn't risk touching it. Most likely, yes, exactly most likely, this connection even a witchcraft so ancient and literally flouting part of the laws of reality would not track or catch on. Especially if he would sacrifice the speed of work, not even incarnating the vampire doll, going by envolt connection, not embodying the toy hidden in the depths of the spirit into the material world. But it was likely, not guaranteed, so he would better think about defense and disguise first. For example, by summoning this spirit, which was very obedient and tactically correct in its concealment, incarnating slowly and unhurriedly, so that even Singha did not notice it immediately, only when it was almost manifested in reality, without a clear body-image, outlined only by a sense of presence, which was his body.

"It's my contract," Stepan calmed the shaman, trying not to breathe like a hunted horse, "Now he will give us protection. It should cover us from the wormy witchcraft. Then we can think about dinner. Or breakfast. Eat, in short."

Exactly later. Because now, if you eat anything from the local magic-soaked flora and fauna, you will immediately swallow the magic deposited there, magical, immaterial, existing more spiritually and aspectually than energetically or materially, larvae and eggs of those fucking worms. That's why he let go of the previously baited snake. To eat it is only to accelerate the speed of this place's influence on its guests. Very hospitable hosts, they would feed, water, and adopt at once, bonding on a level even deeper than blood. Involuntarily I wanted to get a nuclear charge somewhere and deliver it, preferably with the help of some analog of Tomahawk or some other long-range missile, directly to that city of the ancients, to thank the local lord for all good things with the warmth of the nowhere peaceful atom.

The spirit seemed to blink, imperceptibly and almost without disturbing the spiritual background then it disappeared, vanished, dissolved but in its place, there was a feeling of... well, the closest analogy would be that of being wrapped in polyethylene or latex, head to toe and without the slightest slit, but still being able to breathe, speak, move, and conjure. For the first few seconds, he almost started tearing this defense apart on pure reflex but he quickly got himself under control, especially since the protection extended even to the spirit claws released from his body. Singha similarly managed to control herself. Her spirit bodyguard buzzed a little anxiously but quickly realized that his ward was not under attack and hid again on the border between reality and spheres, just like Stepan's entourage, fearing the attention of the closed field and its creator. The witchcraft activity did not depend on the phase of the day, not weakening at night, but not getting stronger either.

"Does that help? I see it. The mighty Khao. Curses and evil spells will not touch me now. But will it help against the abomination?" In response, the young man only looked at her eloquently, and his eyes, which, from the settlement of the intelligence spirit, became three shining blue pupils in the left and two violets in the right, she read the answer without any words or streams of images. "Hai, I realized, no guarantees will be given to me even by the Sky and the Winds."

The dinner was bread bought from the system, consecrated in the light temple, and honey collected from the killer bees living at the source of magic. Singha was no longer even surprised by the abilities the System had given. She was just tired of being surprised and accepting everything with the fatalism of a suicide bomber. Stepan had chosen their late dinner for a reason, having overpaid for it with the system currency - purification, protection from diseases, from parasites, including magical ones, from curses and witches' magic. Not a guarantee, but an increase in resistance, albeit against the power of a worm cage - it's like hiding from a tank shot behind a pile of cardboard boxes. Well, he doesn't defend himself with cardboard boxes alone, he has to cope, hold out until the right moment, and escape.

"Sleep well." He wished it with such sarcasm that both of them laughed at once, synchronously. "We sleep in the protective circles, the retinue on control. If you need to go to the toilet or something else, then wake up, I'll send concealers and masters of the cover to cover. I won't peek myself."

All that came in response was a pebble intercepted by one of the protective spirits, and a resentful sniffle that was replaced in a matter of minutes by a normal sniffle. Their retinues, though Singhi's group was tiny against the background of Stepan's horde, intertwined and complemented each other where they could. I didn't want to sleep, but my organism simply shut down, unable to withstand the cascade of intense power surges - even without assimilation of knowledge, the day, or rather two days, just one day stretched out because of time zones, was simply crazy. Extreme comes out of all the cracks along with adrenaline. And also shit, but it doesn't fit through because of my ass squeezed from fear.

He never ventures to reach for the doll, even though the chances are there. The shaman fears failing due to moral and mental fatigue. Yes, his personal doll probably knows a lot about what's going on in the city. What's more, if the doll's quality is better than ancient witchcraft in terms of stealth, and it will be, he can not only find out the news but also send word for help. Sylvia could prove to Singha's mother if his memory serves him right, her name is Maega, which he has in his status, along with the mark of destiny, the truthfulness of his words, nothing difficult, if he has Singha and her memory, which he can easily get into even now, when she is ready and surrounded by her spirits. But what's the use? He'll declassify himself, his connection to Sylvia, and her likely submission through puppet magic, again he'll be suspected of being overweight with the same name, but what's the result? They are literally on the other side of the world, the portal here and the conclave of magisters with the archmagister at the head will not penetrate, around such antiquity that even the elves do not know about this place something more than “do not get in, it worse than just death”.

The spirits of meanings and words showed that Singha wished him no harm and was not going to attack first unless the shaman gave a reason. So he could sleep relatively peacefully. For a while, the young man seriously considered the option of reinforcing his partner with all the enfolding meta-skills in his arsenal but discarded the idea. First of all, there would be no use of pure characteristics, especially if the accident would not play into the hands of the girl, with whom he had not slept and was not going to take her by force. The shaman is strong with his retinue, and she has almost no retinue, only one senior spirit, and by the standards of the senior ones he was weak, a couple or three strong fighters, the same number of just strong generalists and a handful of minor ones, which were in her amulets. She couldn't summon the clan contracts, otherwise they would just be eaten up. Maybe some of them had already been eaten. It was Singha's blood-bound senior who'd been able to get through here in perfect synchronization with the heiress. The rest would have been chewed up by the worms as if they hadn't already struck out toward the shaman-mommy. Though, if she was really that cool to stand at the edge of the magister if it wasn't her daughter bragging about her mother, attributing half a rank to her, then she would be able to protect herself, especially in the place of her power, where she should call from if she smarts.

Thoughts darted about spinning a wheel of anxious states until fatigue darkened the remnants of self-control completely. Calling for all the dreamer groups at once, not sparing their contracts and fearing to sleep unprotected here, he let the waves of dreams carry him far, far away. To a place where he hoped, there would be no wormy and ancient cities.

* * *

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

Переведено на Нотабеноиде
http://notabenoid.org/book/86785/580092

Переводчики: Camrad_RIP