Готовый перевод Настучать в бубен / Hit the tambourine: Глава 19-5

* * *

A huge and brutal man in a biker outfit, armed with all sorts of firearms, desperately fights off a magical girl who uses anime magic, shoots hearts from a wand, and gives out pantsushot after pantsushot. But the hearts tear the walls as if they were made of paper, and a couple of civilians who didn't have time to run away were smeared in bloody mincemeat. The man responds to the magical barriers with a machine gun, and in response to the hearts, he throws grenades, both live and smoke grenades, and blinding grenades. He contrasted the unnatural strength and power of the girl's body with his pumped-up muscles and high-quality body armor. For a moment, the distance of the battle shrinks. The magical girl in an unnaturally clean uniform brings the distance closer, which is fatal for a mere human. He looks with hatred at the spawn of Hell, whose revealing uniform and skin sucks up drops of blood, entrails, and bone crumbs that fall on it.

The creature rushes towards the target, its magic wand shining in its hands, from which a stream of bright pink flame bursts, and the flame reaches its target, but only at the very edge. The man is heavy, slowly, as against the magical girl, but surprisingly in time manages to roll aside, throwing the machine gun in front of him, covering himself with it from the pink flame, and himself fires a shotgun at point-blank range. The machine gun fell to the ground with scarlet drops, but those drops were much less than the metal that was destroyed without any material residue at all, the gorgeous beard of the beastly and scary bulky man was burned together with part of the skin of his face, his body was also damaged, but he survived. And the magical girl received a shotgun blast to the belly and lost a bit of maneuverability. Enough that the man, screaming with pain and hatred in equal mixture, discharged and hit her with the rest of the charges in his shotgun, knocking shreds of flesh and blood, unnaturally bright and multicolored, from the fragile girl's body.

So he was found, sitting and barely breathing next to the disfigured corpse of a child, still clutching the barrel of a battered shotgun, with the butt of which he was beating the magical girl. People immediately began to help him, helping the winner and hero, who saved a huge number of lives, destroying the infernal spawn, devoid of pity, conscience, and compassion living on the lives and suffering of ordinary people. He is taken to the hospital, treated by the best doctors and surgeons, and then, after months of rehabilitation, awards, interviews, and ceremonies, he stands in a deserted cemetery and silently drinks expensive whiskey from his throat, drinking it like water, looking at the graves of his friends who did not survive that battle, despite the full power of modern weapons and the thirst for revenge. No tears, scanty and masculine, flowed down his face, disfigured even after all the plastic surgeons' operations, but the sadness in his eyes was unbelievable.

* * *

The incredibly satisfied namesake of Stepan, still as fat, but now at least a little pumped up muscles under that fat, washed and removed pimples from his face, makes love with two elven women at once, and twins at that. However, this love is very peculiar, expressing itself in the fact that the elven girls stick their feet in his face, and sit on the face of the holy and mighty hero-demon-fighter, only occasionally allowing him to get pleasure from their touches. They also talk, comment, and assert how nice it is to meet a young man, especially one so powerful and distinguished, a true hero who appreciates elven beauty and majesty, knows his place, and will do as the highborn maidens command him. But now they are ordered to kiss their feet and bring down human semen, dreaming and wishing, not daring even to hope, but secretly longing for their gracious permission to caress them. And they gave caresses generously, even the appearance of their victim did not interfere, for they were both professional seductresses, who had experienced more than their fair share, and they also saw the incredibly powerful aura of their helpless and trance-stricken victim, and this power was no worse than a couple of liters of alchemical aphrodisiac.

The same two elven women a little later, reporting to their queen, saying that the operation was successful and the necessary tabs in the mind of the human demon fighter were installed. He agreed that it was on the elven front that his presence was most important. It is them that he should help the very first, all for the sake of elven feet, for the sake of their sublime beauty. To be fair that is indeed true, no deception. The situation is heaviest precisely on their side of the fight. It is here that demons, rushing to the eternal souls, throw the best of their trump cards into battle, but the damned intrigues and politics are such that the human states that have tasted victory will only be happy if the elves are chewed harder, weakened again and again, forced to beg and plead, rather than demand according to the alliance agreement. That is why it was necessary to use those methods, which even the widowed queen and her agents dislike to the extreme. The young man, gifted with impossible, unreal powers, had indeed saved them all, and she, a hardened schemer with thousands of years of experience, still felt a certain itch where her conscience should be, that she had done just that to the selfless hero who had saved them all.

Neither mentalism, love magic, nor any other type of influence on a mortal saint's mind would work. Even his passive defenses were too strong, allowing him to break and destroy cursed relics with his bare hands. But there was one potion that this branch of the eternal folk had gotten from the times they had spent outside of this world. This potion, which had never been used before, was ancient, but it could break through even such a powerful defense with love charms and submission to passion. Despite heavy pressure from a few advisors, most of the noble houses and their hierarchs voted not to do anything truly dangerous and completely reshaped the hero's will. Some were constrained by caution and fear of retaliation in the event of a breakdown, some were afraid that if they enslaved the young man completely, he would lose his incredible powers, and some were, deep down, truly grateful.

They limited themselves to exactly what they limited themselves to. A path trampled into the mind, an opportunity to influence it with such natural passion and desire, an opportunity to convince in something, especially if the victim was already in doubt and ready to take the conviction on faith, especially if the request was voiced after a night of passionate languor in the best traditions of submission of the younger races to the older races. The Queen was genuinely pleased with the outcome right up until the moment when a pale and shaking her first aide stated that the alchemists had analyzed the single drop of potion they had taken from the vial, hoping to recreate several more portions of such a powerful and valuable remedy. And they gave an unequivocal verdict that approximately three thousand years ago someone removed all this potion, replacing the contents of the bottle with simple spring water. The queen felt sick, but she felt even worse when a pale and nearly fainting second assistant in the company of a riding diplomat announced that the Great Hero of Demonfighting Stepauron Greatest and Most Magnificent was requesting an audience with her.

With a quiet sob, the fainted head of the Secret Guard and her assistant, who oversees all operations involving seduction and love magic, settle to the ground.

The two agent twins want to faint beside them as they synchronously recall the power hidden in the aura of their target of operational development. They remember the records that showed what this young man had done against an entire elite army.

A few seconds later two more unconscious bodies are lying on the marble floor.

* * *

A bright and rather cozily furnished room, though obviously not rich in furnishings, but at the same time causing extremely positive emotions from being in it. On the neatly made bed sits and smiles a beautiful and extremely seductive woman in an obvious peasant, not urban dress and with huge juicy sweet slippery peasant tits, which she is right now moderately rubbing with some oil, slowly and measured movements making them shine. Her dress is pulled down, revealing her shoulders and big juicy sweet slippery peasant but otherwise remains very chaste, hiding underneath her delightfully tight pussy, incredibly soft and tasty buttocks, and neat, quite uncharacteristically well-groomed legs as for a peasant girl. She has a sunny and sweet smile on her face, and this smile does not fit with her occupation at all. This is how one smiles at a conversation partner, favorite nephew, or just a good acquaintance, but certainly not while rubbing oil on her big juicy sweet slippery peasant tits.

Pirius recognizable even in his dreams is sitting opposite the bed with his back against the wall and his mouth open in admiration. He watches the movements of the smiling and silent peasant rubbing and rubbing oil on her massive juicy sweet slippery peasant tits, while another person is talking and asking questions. A miniature and also very beautiful girl, who looks like she just recently got out of her teens. She sits in a soft, old, and shabby armchair, hugging her knees with her hands and looking extremely annoyed yet cute. Not even the small and neat horns, the thin tail with a thickening at the end, and the strange, unnatural eyes with cross-shaped pupils, now tired and as if faded, temporarily lost the impossible depth of their gaze. She asks the man soiling his linen from sight for the third time about what interests her, and with each repetition, she gets more and more irritated. She doesn't look so nice anymore, and she doesn't look harmless either.

After listening to all the details, checking them thoroughly, and ensuring she hadn't missed anything, she sent the man away, letting him clean his clothes with a pre-prepared piece of cloth. She just sits there for a few minutes in absolute stillness, staring at herself with immovable eyes. In the end, she still does not keep the mask of absolute calm and the sharp, whipping movement of her tail gives away the moral turmoil of the one who was thrown back three steps away from success. Well, five at the most. And there is no way of knowing if the target of her game is still alive or if it's time to give up hope and choose a new one. In the end, she takes control of herself, only saying in her melodious and tinkling voice:

"Yeah, yeah, screw me."

* * *

Stepan, the one who sleeps, not his namesake, is walking along a dark and unlit corridor, which seems to exist in several directions and places at once, gradually approaching the desired goal. A moment later, he is in a small and cozily furnished stoning room deep underground, right under some very well-fortified palace. Some time later, the young man sends a whole host of spirits, which are learned and honed to connect to the long-studied defense systems, deceiving them, slipping further and further into the most forbidden areas of the dwelling. For example, in the bedroom of the lover and favorite of the heir to the ducal family de Mont Ros, which is characterized by a marvelous beauty, malleable character, amazing charisma, sharp ears, as well as a private cemetery, which would be enough to populate several towns.

The shaman does not often take on system quests with auto-divine bias, but now he has to compromise his pride because this quest is not only the System but also quite real, given to him by a real inhabitant of the real world. And he, every day getting closer and closer to his goal, the same hit-and-miss-system, like himself, urgently needs the information hidden in the head of this nice and soundly sleeping elf. In fact, he didn't give a shit about the money and reagents, which were promised for the work to the anonymous master, - who was surely considered to be Master - representatives of the anti-elven political party of the ducal family. Moreover, he was not going to come for the reward, already knowing in advance who, how, and by what means was going to throw him or put him on the hook, or at least learn more and use the information to his advantage. He had taken that task only because he was almost sure that the elves knew about the order and guaranteed that they were watching the neighborhood, waiting for the visit of the hired mentalist.

The elves are waiting for this mentalist's visit to Lady Mistrael. She is being used as bait, while the main goal of the one who has been looking for the way to this goal for a week is the beloved wife of August de Mont Ros, the honorable and respected Lady Turiel. She supervised the operation. She was even summoned from her vacation in the native forests and sent back to where Stepan could reach her. And she had in her head exactly what Stepan had gotten into this shit for - information, the most valuable product in the universe. But the elves, several groups of them actually permanently located in Morgrave, shifting to new ones, the central headquarters of their illegal agents was located in the best brothel in the city, which was the best evidence of their ability to organize their lives beautifully, had underestimated the specialist hired by the anti-elves party. They knew for sure he was no Master, just as they did not realize the presence in the world of one more extra bearer of the System, that is, excuse me, the Tablet of the Soul.

To be fair, he did not feel the slightest sympathy for Lady Mistrael, for this poisonous snake, successfully training her “lover” with minimal help of magic and the broadest skills of psychological processing without magic was a poisonous flower. And she drank so much "blood" including literal elimination with her own hands from the opponents of the pro-Elven party that he even understood why these scum ghouls disliked her so much. On their background, they are really ghouls next to the ancient bloodsucker. And ghouls are not even very old. All the old ones were killed. Someone was framed, eliminated by other human's hands, cursed, or bewitched to a specially treated exotic concubine half-witch with a quarter of human and a quarter of ogre blood proceeded by masters of beauty. The public reputation of a great opponent of all non-human things, which was freely available footage of an illusory recording of him having fun with a concubine who tried on a strapon, was destroyed anyway. Among like-minded people, that's for sure. However, he never got rid of the “slave”.

Stepan is not sure yet whether he will fulfill the quest from Autogoddess, making the agentess flare up true feelings for the object of development, at the same time awakening her pathological passion to use hypnotic and love charms on her real lover. But he is sure he will get into the head of her boss. Not today, not this week, but by the end of next month for sure, and there, maybe, he will get answers to some of the questions he has been collecting for so long. He had started looking for those answers not so long ago, and he could only find them from those who knew more than others, and hell, there were no bastards in the world more informed about anything and everything than the inhabitants of the great forests with long ears and even longer lives.

* * *

A beautiful ancient and lush city, inhabited not by people at all, moreover, Stepan's sleeping mind could not identify the species of humanoids inhabiting this place. They looked as if some kind of aliens from Star Wars had been relocated to the fantasy world, and they had adapted well to the new conditions. Tall, thin, gray-skinned, with slightly elongated skulls, big eyes, and neat faces, they were even beautiful and certainly graceful. They were also full of magic, neutral-colored magic, mostly of the healing kind, which permeated them, the city, and the air around them, filling them with the power of primordial life. The strange and unfamiliar architecture, with its shades of South American aboriginal culture, formed an enchanting picture of something at once majestic, but at the same time disturbing the heart with the warmest feelings.

The image-dream of the sleeping shaman moves closer and closer to the city diving into vast, far more extensive than the above-ground part, underground halls, richly decorated, covered equally with elegant patterns and patterns of magic, passing into each other. The vision of the dream leads the consciousness of the beholder along these corridors, halls, laboratories, workshops, and living complexes, leading to a vast room, a room solemn and working at the same time, where the inhabitants of the city are engaged in the summoning of that which lives beyond. During some ritual, something goes wrong, the stable vortex of the portal-fracture moves, twitches, and tears, as if something is holding it together on the other side. The ruler, the supreme magician, full of power and might, the Owner of Life and the Ruler of Life, gives order and as a participant in the ritual acts in advance, cuts the connection, dampens the fluctuations of space, and stabilizes reality.

The strange humanoids act like a single organism, using a long-honed methodology to stop the ritual that had gone awry and prevent a catastrophe. This is not their first or hundredth failure, but they have also known many successes, so no one worries, no one panics, everyone knows his job. But they should have been worried, they should have panicked, they should have checked each other a little more carefully. A small mistake on the part of one, lack of insurance on the part of the other, and weak control on the part of the third led to a sad result. Something small, insignificant, completely invisible to scanning charms due to its weakness, slips through all defenses and barriers. It is the size of a speck of dust, invisible in the complete sterility of the ritual hall. It carries almost no power, only the germ of a strange and unnatural life. A life that has come to this world from a place where no one dies because they are too afraid to live, where the very concept of life exists beyond the concept of death. A barely perceptible speck of dust, an egg, the embryo and zygote of something greater, falls on the high collar of a mantle enchanted to the last thread, worn on the shoulders of a concentrating woman standing to the left of the supreme ruler and sorcerer of this city.

A germ from which invisibly, slowly, hiding in the natural background of the enchanted garment, sprouts a slender one, thinner than a hair, thinner than a thread of a spider's web, thinner than thoughts, feelings, and magical weaves...

worm

The frame changes. Here is the same magician, already stripped of her robe and most of her other clothes, riding some of her colleagues, getting unreal pleasure. The frames change and the lovers change, sometimes in the thoughts of the magician, whose strength is even growing a little, though barely, but extremely fast for simple training. There are suspicions that she is weird, too promiscuous, and these mood swings and strange dreams. The frames change. More and more often she makes love not in her chambers, but wherever she has to, wherever the incredible need, the natural need that flares up with narcotic withdrawal forcing her to take off her toga. In a corner corridor, in a warehouse filled with reagents, on a laboratory table. Frames change. Sometimes her partners are frankly perplexed by the behavior of the lover, sometimes directly refusing, especially in such conditions, dirty and fast but such a strong healer has no difficulty to induce the victim to intimacy, to artificially disperse excitement and collusion.

The shots change and gradually the lasciviousness and licentiousness of the orgy grows. More and more often her colleagues, mostly those with whom she had managed to get laid, are themselves fucking around the nearest corner, but no one seems to care, and if they do, they stop caring. At the same time, both the magician and the others are lush with life and beauty. Their bodies emanate an impossibly tantalizing odor. They seem to turn into perfect machines of seduction, created on the basis of a bunch of pheromones, healing, changes in the biology of the body, and probably something else. The scenes change and here the magician forcefully kisses the new assistant, who obviously sees that in this place, in the whole department of the research institute, something is definitely wrong. But his resistance is quickly weakening and here he relaxingly allows the boss to do anything. She before quenching the desires of the body, mechanically and aloofly kisses him, deeply, with the tongue, continuously and greedily, for at least half an hour. A new shot and here he and she are already two of them knocking up some other enchantress from the subordinates of the boss while the husband and lover of that one bang into the mouth of another colleague, right at the workplace, forgetting some important experiment.

New scene. The chief woman who has entered the toilet is shitting an unnaturally abundant amount of shit, and then, having already stood up and flushed after herself, she abruptly experiences a strange attack of nausea, leaning over the sink and starting to vomit, it even seems to her for a moment that in the viscous black mass something is moving, almost like...

worms

...but she refuses to notice it, rinsing the vomit away with a stream of water, sending it down the drain, forgetting about it even faster than she leaves the bathroom, not knowing that in the neighboring apartment a minute earlier the same trouble had happened to a trio of servants, their boss and her eldest son, who was also another personal adjutant and a walking phallus of the smiling enchantress. Images change, images merge, more and more in the corridors and streets of the city sex, stupid and meaningless intercourse with each other, more and more shit and vomit, vomit and fecal masses in the corners of different corridors, more and more strange taste of seemingly perfectly purified water from the plumbing system, more and more different shades in the food, more and more rare are normal magical experiments, more and more often they are replaced by stupid and animal orgies, less and less their participants speak, even outside these rooms and corridors, using separate and general phrases, as if they do not need to speak, as if instead of thoughts and words in their heads have been moving for a long time...

worms

A new shot and images show a huge and vile orgy devolving into conflict - over and inside bodies crawling, moving numerous...

worms

...members of the ancient magical race are trying to fight back, but there is too much other, alien magic in all of them, their resistance is weakening, and they are slowly being drawn into the unbridled abomination that has fallen into the streets of the city, taking to themselves the last of those who still resist. But there is little resistance, for what has long been sleeping in the bodies of almost every inhabitant, magician or not, what was drunk with water, taken with food, taken with kisses and hugs, is no longer hidden, weakens, breaks the will, takes away the mind, memory, and magic, there is no longer a city, only piles of intercourse bodies, only rivers of vomit and filth, in which continue to swarm new and new...

worms

In the very ritual hall where it all began, it all ends, lured to this place by the promise of a hot body and caresses the dim-witted High Magician has long carried within him all that his assistant has. He cannot resist. He grows weaker and weaker as the former and current mistress riding him empties her stomach and intestines on him. There is no foulness to be seen in this vile moving mass, only the black slime-covered whitish bodies of a continuously moving living carpet that enters flesh as easily as water. The vestiges of pretense are dropped, the bodies of women and men mutating rapidly, retaining some excruciatingly painful mixture of outward attractiveness and inward repulsiveness. Everywhere, everywhere, everywhere - on the floor, on the walls, on the ceiling, in the stone walls, and even in the air are moving, writhing streams of creatures, all as one, large and small, all united, and only they rule here now, only...

worms

The mage almost merges with his mistress. They are almost hidden by a pile of moving whitish organisms, not just alive, but too alive, embodying one of the most obscene aspects of life, but by some remnants of consciousness, he manages to strike the last blow. They merge into one, and he disintegrates into the same pile of parasites, pouring back into the perfectly beautiful and disgustingly horrible body that has grown a meter and a half, pouring streams of parasites into all its cracks and holes, creating new ones, which immediately heal and tighten, becoming one. And bringing his last will with him, for he, the One who knew Life, becoming a part of the whole, becoming one with everything and everyone, gave his last command, and that which replaces the mind of the something that came into the world did not recognize this impact. And expansion didn't happen. What happened was entrenchment. The entity lost the ability to escape beyond the city walls, instead becoming even more closely associated with this world, no longer being a stranger to it, gaining a certain residence and rights. And the city continued to exist, only now it was ruled only by...

worms

The scenes change again, rewinding in fast-forward. The magically reinforced stones are overgrown with vines. The unbreakable tunnels covered with a moving carpet from the inside go underground. The creature's power over reality grows stronger and stronger. A huge net dome, cauldron, and cover grows up, covering a piece of the rapidly savaging jungle, from which the remnants of those who lived in the city have managed to get away. Deprived of the best mages and warriors, and access to untouched warehouses and magical laboratories, libraries, and treasuries, they are quickly erased from the pages of history, lost in these inhospitable lands without a trace. And the city stands, the city waits, goes deeper and deeper underground, the area of the network grows and widens, little by little, a centimeter a week or a month, but it grows. One side of the network beckons and calls, promises, and entices. The second side does not let out those who believed the first, and between them crawl spiritual and energetic images that infect those who pass through the network with what lives in the city, infect and call to join the common chorus, to let themselves in....

worms

Years and centuries go by. The source becomes more and more fused with the creature that cannot leave it. This something finds contact with a powerful spirit not afraid of this contact. It also wants a part of this gradually growing power. It does not believe the new queen of this city. It believes she desires him too, that she is able to attach him to her, despite the fact that the spirit is immaterial. The spirit is entirely right, but he is clever, he is cautious, and he manages to get his way, to achieve an alliance, albeit unequal, but safe. With a jerk, the expanded territory covers some more tropics, feeds the city with new bodies, and then, centuries and centuries later, the same is repeated with the third source. The city stands, the city waits and there waits it's.....

wormy

...Queen, promising a part of herself to all who can hear. She is beautiful and kind, she will give all that you desire, share the wisdom of a race of mighty sorcerers who have passed into oblivion, knowledge beyond the reach of mortal minds, coming from beyond the edge of all that we know. It does not matter in reality or in a dream, nothing matters, only her beauty and kindness, only the willingness to agree, the willingness to reach out to her, to take her hand, to take her hand, perfect and beautiful, made up of thousands and thousands of individual particles, organisms unable to die but so willing to live. It is only necessary to accept it, great and omnipotent, ideal and inviolable, eternally giving birth and being devoured, to accept it completely, to accept it to the end, to give it thoughts and feelings, memory and will. For the mere touch of her, the price is ridiculously low. Just to accept it, just to touch it and wake up once and for all, never needing to sleep again, just to let it bestow itself...

with worms

Stepan looks, as if from the outside, like a specially prepared dreamer spirit, who took his, Stepan's, appearance, thoughts, will, and consciousness, for a moment became him, to give in to the shaman's dream call of the ancient and terrible past, replaced by no less nightmarish present. There was nothing left of the spirit at all. It was completely absorbed, and Stepan, even in his sleep able to call, quickly broke and canceled in emergency mode the necessary contracts, or else this crap would follow on the appropriate connection. Hardly, it's even overkill for this kind of crap, but little else? This affliction unequivocally ignores some of the world's usual magical constants due to its triple nature - both matter, spirit, and magic, but none of those things separately. Sleeping in this place, it seems, should also be done very carefully and in short bursts, and with such protection that it should not let the crap into real rather than fake dreams.

The shaman was so careful with his protection and observation that even from the rest of the dreams he caught quite clear remnants of images. But it is not clear to him the meaning of these images, which are simply not related to him or his affairs. Some biker-maniac shooting at a cute teenage girl in a Sailor Fuku with a shotgun, machine gun, and English-speaking swear words, and then standing alone in some cemetery. A group of elves and elven women talking animatedly about some development object, some of which have fainted from horror and the rest of which are trying to hold their bladders. Totally unremarkable and unfamiliar to him is a succulent sissy luscious peasant girl with sweet slippery sweet peasant tits, the likes of which he had never met anywhere else. Stepan, sitting in an underground unfamiliar shelter, carefully opens the protection of some palace. It seems to be full-fledged and even quite long scenes, but there was no use unless you count the surprisingly clearly remembered story of the fall of an ancient civilization. Right according to Howard's precepts: “Beware of fumbling in the abysses of things, children” - only they were not afraid. Extremely entertaining information, but still a very small price to pay for all the risks and losses.

//“I have lost the best of my dreamers.” - He gave out images-words, which are full of irritation and thoughtfulness in equal measure because he had taken the information he had received into consideration and had learned a great deal about the enemy, even the adversary. - “And also his substitute, which I kept for myself in case the first one die.”

The last phrase he says to Singha hovering in non-dreaming. She is near him and even thinks not only at the expense of his support. She was definitely not a master of dream calls, and her dream awareness was on a very primitive level, even if she could do it. But her skills were definitely not enough to repel an attack. Just the property of contact with the aura of this ancient container with worms. Therefore, if he didn't have the spare spirit and reassurances he shared with her too, it would have turned out very badly. By morning she would have taken the worms in herself, and even if they would have sprouted in her brain not instantly, but in three or five days she would have had a sudden desire to kiss the shaman, to throw up worms in a pot of soup and feed him with the resulting dish.

“Thank you.” - Singha replied with a single word-image, and had a look that could only be more beautiful in a coffin.
Краше только в гром

//“You're welcome.” - The shaman replies absent-mindedly and machine-like, thinking of his own. - “Time to wake up.”

* * *

On awakening, they were both a little greenish. The images they had been shown in the dream broadcast continuously throughout the centuries, seemed tolerable only in dreams because the spiritual body has no sense of nausea. But now, remembering some of the juiciest details, one wanted to call Ichthyander. Stepan even panicked a little and began to check himself and the defense put up by the spirit, but no, it was not worms sprouting, it was just disgust. The combination of the angelically beautiful images of the Worm Queen and her favorite children with the fact that these images consisted of thousands and thousands of constantly moving parasitic worms, the very movement of which caused disgust beyond rationality, was madness. But, as Stepan's grandfather would say, nothing could cope with motivation better than the unwillingness to turn body and spirit into an incubator for a partially intelligent swarm of foreign worms. Well, he didn't say that, but he certainly would have in a similar situation.

"It's about twelve kilometers to the lake. I don't quite navigate these measures of yours, and I use the usual measures of distance, but you've seen the image yourself." He says, tying his bracelets around his hands and activating the necklace, which now is not hidden under a camouflage field supported by five spirits, blazing with the power of those in the necklace. "Let's move out, go without haste, if you need to put wind in your legs, I'll help you. We don't waste energy, but we don't hesitate. Every extra hour can be worth a lot, especially if that thing catches our presence, and realizes it's eaten the deception. Did you handle the cloak?"

Singha, uncharacteristically quiet this morning, only nods silently, rolling her eyes in synchrony with him, giving the images a picture that would take too long to describe in words. She has really gotten used to the new toy quite well, understood the basic principles of its work, and taught the spirits there to understand and recognize its images, but she is far from complete mastery. The great luck is that it is the combat aspects of this cloak - the simplest, straightforward, and uncomplicated part of its structure, a lot of intelligence and deep understanding of the spiritual aspects and do not require, enough and what she already knows. Two shamans will always understand each other and he, adjusting to her manner of dialog, more rough and jerky, with a bias in the air notes, strengthens their bond, preparing to guide her in battle as well as himself. And he would have to guide her. His skills as a combat caller are not a trump card to be underestimated. He's almost certain that whatever and whoever their coming opponent is, his knowledge will at least suggest the best tactics for confronting it.

They gather in haste, and in the same haste, they make preliminary calls for their retinue, even if in Singha's case it was a paltry fraction of what she could call upon in a normal situation. She didn't really need to, because in the coming battle, her cloak would play first fiddle, not the crumbs of her retinue, but she couldn't stop trying, hiding the abyss of fear and despair behind the usual routine. Stepan would have laughed at the fact that she was not as bold and brazen now as she had been at the moment of their second meeting when she had praised him for summoning the mousetrap cat. But he shrank from terror even more, knowing better what he was up against and what kind of ass they were in for. They say that fear is a small death, but then Stepan had long ago turned into a lich. They say that fear breaks us and deprives us of will. But for him fear had always been the best motivator, forcing him to exceed the limits of usual possibilities, not paralyzing, but spurring him on.

The entourage comes to the call, and responds, pulling closer to reality. The entourage is ready, the entourage is eager for action, ready to unleash its might on the enemy. The hosts of spirits are not homogeneous. Not all of them are happy to be called here, many would try to escape, to break contracts, tearing them from their essence, losing some of their powers but escaping the trap. Many would do so, perishing immediately. The young man never skimped on his contracts. Some still manage to survive, others stop in time, even if they hint that they will be of little use, that they will try to take care of themselves instead of fulfilling the contract. The main strength and the main drawback of shamanism is that you can accumulate a huge hoard of contracted entities but it's hard to get strong and experienced creatures to fight to the death in a hopeless battle without long preparation and carefully calibrated dialog. If it weren't for the number of markings on Stepan's spirit that he'd gotten from the system's forces, at least half of the contracts would have simply fallen away, and wouldn't have shown themselves under the shadow of the worm cage. Now hardly a ninth part of the host had tried to escape or betray, and those were mostly the weakest, worthless ones, for whom no strong and strong contracts had been made.

The entourage comes to the call, responds, pulling closer to reality. The entourage is ready, the entourage is eager for action, ready to unleash its power on the enemy. The hosts of spirits are not homogeneous. Not all of them are happy to be called here, many would try to escape, to break contracts, tearing them from their essence, losing some of their powers but escaping the trap. Many would do so, perishing immediately. The young man never skimped on his contracts. Some still manage to survive, others stop in time, even if they hint that they will be of little use, that they will try to take care of themselves instead of fulfilling the contract. The main strength and the main weakness of shamanism is that you can accumulate a huge host of contracted entities, but it's hard to get strong and experienced creatures to fight to the death in a hopeless battle without long preparation and carefully calibrated dialog. If it weren't for the number of markings on Stepan's spirit that he'd gotten from the system's forces, at least half of the contracts would have simply fallen away, wouldn't have shown themselves under the shadow of the worm cage. Now hardly a ninth part of the host had tried to escape or betray, and those were mostly the weakest, worthless ones, for whom no strong and strong contracts had been made.

They were walking through the forest, but they seemed to be literally rushing through it, like two beasts on the prowl. He's planted the right spirit in himself, keeping his concentration without the slightest effort, despite his facial features distorted into a strange appearance that resembles both a predator and a deer. Even the ghostly horns on his head have been formed, and he may well strike with them in such a way that no bones will be collected because they will crumble to dust at the first touch. Singha doesn't show any surprise, apparently considering the possession of such an exotic branch of shamanism, and without losing control over the rest of the retinue, to be a part of the general image of the owner of the Tablet. Her mother, as the girl said with her images-dialogue, was also able to instill khao in herself so the degree of symbiosis allowed her to distort the features of the human body or, on the contrary, did not give the slightest distortion.

The girl helped herself with her cloak, but only a little, almost not wasting the reserve power of that cloak. It was replenished more quickly. She also tied a long white ribbon on each of her legs, taken from a ruined dress, perfectly clean even after all the experience, wrapping them above her knees, giving her legs the lightness and weightlessness of one who walks with the winds and goes with them. There is complete calm on her face, her eyes rolled back in their sockets, but that doesn't stop her from striding forward, carrying herself through the jungle and skirting the large obstacles, ignoring the smaller ones under the protection of the spirits. She watches with their eyes, moved by their pointers, and she doesn't need ordinary sight. Sometimes they talk aloud too, a few words, reminding themselves amicably that they are still manifest humans and not spirits occupying fleshly bodies. Sometimes they stop and wait, a few minutes at most, while the scouting parties search for the most suitable path, bypassing a ditch, a swamp, or a thicket.

No large predators. There are no advanced magical creatures, which in such a background would have to appear sooner or later. Direct evidence that the worms take those who exceed a certain level of mass, intelligence, or power. But there are so many useful and endemic flora, even very magical ones, that if they weren't so tense, they would choke on their saliva with greed. Even in the store to buy so many rare and strong roots he would be able to with great care on the number of purchases. But here he could just dig them up, put them in storage, and repeat until he ran out of strength and containers. It is not surprising, because the essence sitting in the ancient city does not affect the flora, or rather, does not affect it strongly enough. Even a hangman's axe hanging over their heads would not make them both eat fruits and berries, even very tasty and useful ones, which were abundant here. The executioner and the axe had a much better chance of fending off than getting rid of those fucking worms.

"This is it," Singha speaks, almost without parting her lips but the wind speaks with her, and Stepan nods in response, also seeing with his own and the spirits' eyes the place of their endeavor, the decisive point of the long journey through the wild and inhospitable jungle. "It is still only early evening. I won't be able to sleep here. I won't be able to wait. I can't."

It was certainly not about a large number of bites and poisonous insects, sometimes deadly poisonous, which did not bite them only due to the constant protection created by the summoned entities. The Earthman was not sure that he would be able to repel another attack through sleep. Last time it wasn't an attack, but a direct manifestation of the property of the damn enchanted kingdom, covered by a network of worms. A looped movie-history, the last will of the devoured great mage, who was clearly no weaker than the archmagister of some very specific facet of the gift at the intersection of healing and biomagic. Just for centuries and millennia since that moment even his warning and caution have sprouted worms, becoming another part of the general destructive field of this place, taking from those who got here even dreams.

"Me too." He agrees, not sure he'll be able to reflect impact through dreams, not wanting to test his skills again, since his best dream contracts, specializing in protection and deception, are gone. - We'll have to hurry. Going almost at random. I hate this kind of extreme improvisation if you only knew. We've got an hour, tops. I'll send out a search party. Try to figure out what we're dealing with. And then the fight. Follow me. I'll lead."

" Hai." She bows her head and you can see the genuine respect and determination in equal proportions in her head which causes respect on his part as well, causing him to respond with a mirrored bow. "Save my sky."

At that moment he finally dismissed his anger, his resentments, and his vindictive desire to give her three weeks of endless diarrhea. There was no room for such resentments, no time for them, no strength even; he would return to them, if anything, after their little adventure. Now they both have to put all of themselves into the extremely simple and extremely difficult task of surviving. Even later he would remember her for every mistake that had brought them to this place, remember every last crumb, but not now. Now they are equal before the face of fate, which is much worse than death, now they are closer to each other than blood relatives. Two shamans, two guides of spirits, merging their efforts into a single impulse, a single will, born in the thirst for life and unwillingness to accept the fate that is prepared for them. He does not respond to her words, does not turn his head, but every part of his spirit at that moment seems to promise her victory and salvation, promises her with the confidence that a student going to Rodislav Gastoldovich Yanin's exam, who has not studied a single ticket, feels. Just as that student is sure he will not pass, so he believes they will manage. Because it can't be otherwise, it shouldn't be otherwise, it won't be otherwise.

They stand on a small elevation, as the lake is in a lowland, and slowly begin to descend down, not helping themselves with acceleration. It is a little more than a kilometer to the still, dark surface, but the bones of countless small birds are already crunching under their feet, which are white in the solid carpet of the sea of grass, shading the scarlet flowers, like poppies, which grow in abundance in this valley. The seeker spirits scan the lake unceremoniously, lurking more for the sake of appearances than anything else. They don't expect to attack suddenly, but they want to know who they'll be attacking in the first place. The spirits try their best but get next to nothing. The surface of the lake hides and conceals everything, from the optical image to the energy background, to the memory images of the world, hiding something strong, something powerful, something akin to that lake. They walked forward like a couple of lovers on a walk, except that they were not holding hands, and even outwardly they looked like those fairy-tale characters that were still inappropriate in this place, and the lake was silent and waiting for them both.

Singha looked like an expert exhibitionist, leaving only her cloak, the patterns on her body painted by the system, and the ribbons tied just above her knees. Stepan left only his bracelets, necklace, and pants, and shortened them to shorts, walking forward almost naked and barefoot. He, too, was covered with ritual signs, a little hunched over, with a face distorted into the shape of a ravenous deer and ghostly horns. From the side, from the glance of the spirits-observers flickering in the sky, they seem to be the heroes of a children's fairy tale - a beautiful maiden and a terrible monster, a beauty, and a monster, except this fairy tale is from the old ones, not edited for children's psyche, more suitable for the definition of the genre of horror. The dichotomy of the two characters - opposites is a bit broken by what awaits them in the cursed lake, which makes the fairy tale about Beauty and the Beast a fantasy parody of the unforgettable classics.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly fucking drama.

If anyone asks, Stepan is Good.

The spirits were coming back with nothing, and they had lost a few of the less cautious ones who had gotten too close to the lake, the water of which was too ominous and dangerous, too full of magic, literally sucking in the spirits passing by. It suggested that there might be a strong elemental in the water, but intuition and some indirect signs showed that it was the material creature that would have to be resisted. It was a pity because, with an elemental, the two shamans would at least know exactly what to do. Step by step, unhurriedly and deceptively relaxed, they came closer and closer, and the shaman's retinue called and ready for manifestation, was already bubbling at the very edge of incarnation, preparing to unleash its full power on the chosen target. And the target, Stepan has no doubt, is ready to unleash its full power on them, who are not hiding and are moving forward brazenly.

At the next step, the young man activates a reward token on himself and his partner for two and a half hours, increasing the Constitution by three units. This is a higher reaction, more survivability, and a tougher body, and the improvement itself is instantaneous and without side effects, even reflexes automatically adjust to the new characteristics. The shamaness warned in advance through the images of spiritual dialog, only flinched a little, but immediately continued walking as if nothing had happened. Like Stepan, she began to manipulate her life, assessing her increased capabilities and figuring out which spirits, if anything, to feed with her own blood or just prana.

They are already a hundred meters away from the cozy sandy shore and therefore they can see with their eyes and spirit eyes every feature, every blade of grass, every feather on a small and colorful bird, resembling some very colored version of a duck, which swims on the surface of the lake, leaving almost no waves on that surface. The duck, a duckling even, watches them too, swimming closer to whichever end of the lake they are approaching. It looks surprisingly cute for something surviving in such a dangerous and ominous place. It is barely twenty meters to the lake shore when Stepan decides to stop, not coming any closer. The duck, too, stopped literally five meters from the shore, and then as if to greet them both with a very sonorous and extremely appropriate:

"Quack, quack!" Completely unexpected as it was for a tropical jungle sound, it turned out to be quite melodious and even funny, causing Signha to laugh in surprise. "Quack, quack!"

“So sweet, just sut-rammash...” She said, imperceptibly taking the third step closer to the lake when she was stopped by Stepan's sharp jerk, whose ghostly hand grabbed her as if pulled a part of the web that had entangled the shamaness's mind with illusion. “What? Arshhtan uk!”

The illusion that created the feeling of harmlessness and appropriateness of the presence of this duck collapsed, for Stepan had become skilled in the skills of influencing the mind and defending against them during his adventures. The shamaness stepped back, hiding behind the back of the still-motionless young man, who looked at the duck with an unreadable gaze. His eyes changed colors and pupils changed, then stretched vertically, then increased in number, then disappeared altogether, leaving only a continuous milky-white veil. The modes of perception due to the settlement of spirits changed, the spirits that took the place of his eyes changed, but the answers did not become much more. And yet they appeared, yet he still saw something, perceived, realized, and, realizing, became more and more serious, slouching and hunching, as if preparing to put forward his ghostly horns, and in his throat there was a quiet and evil growl.

"Quack, quack!" The duck responds to Singhi's scolding tirade, and Stepan senses in that quack a mockery, a dangerous, dangerous mockery, and a sense of superiority. "Quack, quack! For nothing!"

The Earthman stammered for a split second, trying to figure out if he'd just heard it or if the duck had actually spoken instead of quacking, realizing pretty quickly that it didn't sound much like a quack either, if you thought about it, more like some sort of mocking parody. And then the duck stood up, rising out of the water, revealing what it was. Obviously not a duck, not even a bird, and certainly not small and harmless.

The duck was a small outgrowth on a long and flat nose-bill, like that of a giant platypus, only the nose-bill with this outgrowth-bait at the end was attached to the head bearing the features not only of a platypus but of some ape. The absolutely bald body was pale and whitish, the torso resembled a human or monkey, like a gorilla, and the arms and legs were not less than a dozen pairs. The arms and legs did not differ much from the legs, combining the presence of quite grasping fingers and webbing between them. And then there's the size. We mustn't forget the size. The torso with a head was not inferior to the size of some African elephant, even one and a half, and in combination with a lot of limbs, like spider's legs, opening in all directions at once - not a small creature appeared. There were different numbers of joints on the arms, but no less than five, and the entire whitish body with well-defined muscle bundles was covered with a grid of dark-blue lines-wreaths, which seemed to flow pure magic, which was quite true.

Just the size of the thing was still nothing. He had already reached that level of power when the size of the cabinet only determines the volume of the fall, but the aura, the aura of this thing was comparable to another master - novice, but full-fledged, which, given the size. And, as the shaman suspected, the presence of some form of intelligence, made the huge thing a foe that could feed on young and even not-so-young dragons. Singha, who sobbed quietly behind his back, clearly shared his opinion, and Stepan himself did not weep in horror only because of the strong spirit planted in his body, which pressed his mind with instincts, not letting him panic, replacing this panic with the classic reflex of hit-or-run. And so, instead of screaming in terror, the young man smiled, grinning, his teeth lengthened, though not sharpened, in a not good-natured grin.

“In vain!” Now the voice was no longer ducks. Now it was a quacking and rattling something that resembled the sound of a pile of crystal and glass-filled racks, next to a freight train, now it seemed thunderous, penetrating the mind and making the bones shake, forming into quite distinguishable phonemes of the Confederate language, only pronounced with a terrible accent and a nauseating tearing. “In vain! You come!”

Singha was the first not to withstand the pressure, which included some form of mental pressure, suppressing the will to resist and inspiring terror, a sense of inevitability. Stepan covered her, so she did not freeze like a rabbit in front of a boa constrictor but explode with an attack. The camouflage over the ally paid off, supported by a well-coordinated team of exotics, hiding not the aura, but the properties of the cloak, and the shaman covered himself perfectly with the shroud. The creature, seeing the two adepts in front of it, practically powerless before its wrath, was very surprised when it was directly into the side was hit with an air battering ram of such power that another magister would envy, not only breaking through the natural resistance to physical damage but also pushing it away from the lake and a small island on it. It was under the island, on which a lonely and low tree covered with scarlet flowers grew the main source of the magic of this place was located. The creature missed the first blow with an audible and surprised quack, even though it didn't suffer much, at most a couple of cracks in its bones.

But it was after this blow, the first chord of the coming battle, that the real chaos began.

The creature answered instantly, even before the wind, which had become rock-hard in its hardness, had finished its ramming blow, throwing the creature away from the lake. In fact, the creature's blow was directed from the side of the lake, which had suddenly burst out of its banks with a hundred thick and sharp stakes and a rain of small black drops, one touch of which could break auric control and cast a most unpleasant curse. The lovingly prepared attack was in its essence a direct control of the elements, an application of natural magic, and a reliance on species properties, but behind the perfection of this trick was an intelligence and reason that was not inferior to that of humans. Had Stepan not prepared for this outcome initially, the story might have ended here, but he had thankfully prepared. An image-command to the spirits, another series of images for Singha, who was in close connection with him, as well as an outpouring of power reserves, an appeal to the reserve and the mask on his face, the creation of the shroud of the pre-door and the simultaneous activation of the necessary contract.

He and Singha take a step backward, but the foregrounding turns that step into a step in place, while the other spirit, embodying the very intention of the steps, their primary nature, has its own effect. The stronger the resistance, the attempt to prevent the step from being taken the less distance one has managed to cover, and the stronger the effect of the spirit. The side effect of the precursor made them literally move in place, unable to step even a millimeter, and it put the exotic property of the spirit into overdrive, turning the immovable step into a true miracle of teleportation. They were not carried a kilometer away, right to the border of the lowland and the forest from which they had come to the lake, only because the source and the creature's power over it had prevented the distance from breaking so ultimatum, intervening, interrupting the control of space and imposing its will. Still, they found themselves six hundred meters from the shore and from the creature that had just begun to rise, found themselves instantly and yet already ready to attack or defend.

The creature quacked something, clearly intelligible, but in a dialect unknown to Stepan, and then molded from black droplets and spears one huge projectile blob for ten thousand liters, which rushed after a couple of shamans. The shaman exhaled and made no more sound, but his retinue answered for him. A hundred and fifty spirits, no less, incarnated around them, merging into a single network and allowing the stronger entities to support the weaker ones. There were old acquaintances like Lizard and Trio, as well as the newly-acquired Leaf, who had taken the reinforcing protection not of Stepan but of the other spirits, including Lizard and Trio, and at least a dozen of those who did not show up in the system status, having been summoned on temporary or one-time contracts. Singha soared upward, low, about three meters, still close to Stepan, within the anteroom unfolded in a large sphere. Her cloak fluttered over her naked body, the wind cold and prickly, twisting into hundreds of wicked blades.

At the same time, he attacks a water snot full of such evil magic that touching the water is like bathing in acid, only with the difference that his body will not be harmed, but the thin bodies will be melted. He grins, emitting a wicked chuckle, and hears that laughter being picked up by the three summoned spirits who came to his call, even without a direct request, laughing with him in all three forms - childish and innocent, girlish and playful, husky and sinister. Stepan's attack does not come through the spirits; he applies one of his small knowledge, clinging to a clump of flying junk with a few hooks made of small entities, and then expelling both the hooks and the thing that clung to them. The huge watery thing seemed to flutter, transparent and ghostly, disappearing without a trace a few moments before it made contact with the shamans' defense.

The shaman's retinue is already rushing forward weaving its net and changing the battlefield with its presence turning it into a chessboard arranging the pieces until every single part of the whole is in place. Singha attacks, too. Much more direct and brutal, but that's exactly what Stepan lacks so far. The brute force. The paroxysm of direct damage that his gift to her reveals. Many effects embedded in the memory of the spirits' inhabiting cloak are useless against their opponent. There is no point in pumping oxygen out of the air in a mass asphyxiation, which can kill even a couple hundred fighters covered by experienced adepts if the creature is so saturated with magic that it can easily go several hours without breathing at all without inconvenience. A masterly technique of making the thinnest cuts the throat will not help against something that is constantly covered with a cloudy and strong cocoon of wild elemental magic. There will be no use of sharp heating and cooling of the air from zero to a hundred if the skin of the creature is able to withstand full-fledged blows of ice and fire magic with much larger amplitudes of temperature fluctuations.

But in the arsenal of these spirits were, in addition to subtle and cunning tricks against enemy armies, and quite powerful attacks against single and well-defended targets. For example, what the daughter of the steppes and winds used now, Stepan suspected that originally the cloak spirits were trained on this technique to resist the dragons that decided to devour the cloak owner, pouring at least a tenth of the reserve of the artifact's power storage into this attack. The multi-armed platypus was at this very moment finishing his own game, directing the individual streams with the movements of his many hands, merging them into a kind of net, and not only physical. It felt like the same method of witchcraft that was used in the network of worms around the cursed region that was this jungle, only it was based on a different power, one that belonged not to the worm abomination but to the lake abomination. Now that was a good one, Stepan might have thought, if he had time for it and could afford the extra thought.

Singha's blow interrupted the wild spell. It also flattened the creature. Its eyes, which were small and tiny, especially against the size of its head and torso, and almost completely black, with no sclera at all, were nearly bursting in its eye sockets, bulging with surprise and pain. What did you want? Vacuum shock, after all! If it weren't for the dense and powerful armor of wild magic enveloping the creature's entire body, as well as some absolutely fierce physical and magical resistance, the battle might have ended. Alas, the shamaness failed to kill or even seriously injure the enemy, only to anger him, and force him to throw the net at them somewhat before it was finished, lacking that swift, almost instantaneous effectiveness. The spirits of the aspects of understanding and war, which looked at the battle and allowed a better reading of it, were sure that in full execution, in execution perfect, this net would have appeared immediately around the victims, not thrown at them.

Witchcraft, old, powerful, primitive yet sophisticated, was not a trick that the anteroom could reflect. The essence was too different, literally growing through the spirit world, the same spirit world imbued with it. The physical aspect, like pure magic, doesn't mean much to these charms. They are much closer to curses, and the anteroom is already weaker against Maleficent, let alone Maleficent so strong that it would break through the defenses and not keep the ateroom intact. Stepan understood that, and so did the evil platypus, striking towards him, trying to entangle the victims, to shackle them, to deprive them of thoughts, will, feelings, to make their minds and bodies like pliable and immovable water, obedient to the will of the spell's creator. Stepan did not strengthen the anteroom. He did not even try to reconfigure and strengthen it. On the contrary, he narrowed it down to the smallest possible sphere that covered them both, ordering Singha to drop down, to stop floating in the air, and to move closer.

Instead of defending himself with the anteroom, he took a step forward, stretching out his arm as if trying to grasp the deadly water net with his hands, and, at the moment of contact, something moved in the depths of one of the eye sockets of his mask. Then the whole water net was sucked into the greedy yawn of the eye socket, into the bottomless depths of the giant drainage canal, in a fraction of an instant, leaving not even a fraction of memory from the almost already worked charms. The Platypus appreciated, the Platypus quacked something hurt and offended, and then met Singha's new attack, also with a battering ram, but now it was sharp, like a huge air drill, rotating simultaneously on and off its axis, capable of boring a passage in solid rock in a matter of seconds. This time the attack had the same result as the government's attempts to fight corruption - zero. The creature met the flow of air with a sweep of about half of its limbs, creating a deceptively thin water hemisphere, which shuddered only slightly as it struck it, falling in weightless droplets a moment later.

And then the creature reminded them both that it was not a mage in the usual sense of the word and, in addition to possessing wild magic, had outstanding physical size and physical power. The jerk wasn't just fast. It was almost lightning fast, and at least half of the distance the platypus traveled in some analog of the extended teleport step that the humans had retreated in seconds ago, relying on the power of the source master. The monster had literally a second and a half to cover two-thirds of the distance to the shamans. The remainder of that distance would have been covered even faster if it had been able to strike close to the shamans, tearing the bodies of the invaders to pieces with its numerous arms with long, long fingers. Except, Stepan's retinue which had finally been put into combat positions was coming towards him. He was not completely ready. Not all the planned schemes had time to be realized or passed on to the spirits, but he was given no other option. The other option was death, and this outcome did not suit the shaman even more.

Lizard was the zero boundary, putting all his reserve into attacking, not physically, but with dark smoke, taking advantage of its exotic properties to interfere with perception. The haze that enveloped the creature's head and body was hardly dangerous, quickly dripping off its body and dissipating into a cocoon of protection, still as dense and solid. But this haze bought a split second for further moves, allowing the real attack to be hidden behind it so the spent Lizard went back into the spheres fully satisfied. The spirit had fulfilled its role, though judging by its images, it would have liked to poke the huge carcass with its yataghan blades. But the entity's intelligence was enough to understand the simple truth: they would stab him, and with his own blades, and probably by shoving the taken weapon into the Lizard's ass, for the weight categories were very different.

Speaking of actual blows, the static electricity, familiar from the battle with the vampires, was the first to go, covering the huge and ominously, angrily even, quacking carcass with hundreds of small spark-lightning bolts. They didn't even penetrate natural resistance, let alone defense. But they illuminated the thin spots of the alien magic, pointed out its weak points, literally seeped to the right parts of the cocoon, to the joints of it, and made them even weaker, even more prominent. The second strike came with the first and it was quite the move. Several strong spirits with paid contracts put their strength into one single synchronized strike. Three lightning bolts, thick and dazzling both ordinary and magic vision at once, wriggling along an unpredictable trajectory, striking exactly where they needed to. The first one struck from the shaman's palm, flowing out of his bracelet in a snaking doom. The second came, as lightning should, straight from above, having been formed and born in the javi three hundred meters above the ground, aiming clearly at the duck-like growth on the huge flat beak. The third snaked along the ground, slithering in a carpet of grass, burning scarlet tropical ne'er-do-wells, leaving a clearly visible clearing behind it. And on all three of them, like stickers or painted pictures silvery leaves attached to them, resonating with the spirits' auras, amplifying and energizing them.

Only one of the three lightning bolts hit the right spot, and not a single one achieved any results. The spirit released from the bracelet was simply intercepted by one of its palms, catching the lightning with its long webbed fingers and crushing it. The spirit had no time to even try to retreat or strike, and in an instant one of the segments of the shaman's bracelet was gone, crumbling with electrified dust. The water droplet that struck from beneath the carcass rushing forward confused, slowed down, knocked out the sight of the one who was streaking along the ground, almost disembodied him as well. Only the sylphid that struck from above, the same one that had once managed to destroy a pesky vampire with a cleaver, achieved her goal, but her attack only made him stumble slightly, cover his eyes until the flow of electric magic ran out, flowing more along the protective cocoon, leaving only a barely visible blackening on the whitish flesh of the huge beast.

A creature that only slowed down for an immeasurably tiny fraction of an instant.

An instant, which was enough for two shamans who wanted to live.

The huge carcass seemed to stab into the thickening air, which became an insurmountable wall, but it was not a wind attack, as one might expect, no. It was a weightless veil of dust that caused it to slow down and then stop completely. But every speck of dust in that veil seemed to add a dozen kilograms to the weight of an already heavy body, as soon as it touched the enemy's aura. He grumbled and clucked writhing and burning away the curse that had burned through him. He regained his normal weight, hurrying to get back before he was crushed by the weight of his own body. It would have folded in on itself by now if he hadn't been wearing such a strong protective canopy, if he hadn't reinforced it with magic. And he tore off those dust particles with the weight of the rocks, tore off and threw away the shrieking spirit that was generated by that dust and rocks. Only to see with astonishment that the halo of protection around him began to retract into the earth, to retreat as water must retreat into the sand. A defense worthy of a creature that could eat magisters was tearing, cracking at the seams, because the senior spirit, one of the first but by no means the last in Stepan's arsenal, had been used.

With a quack and a shuffle of its feet and hands, the creature pulled back taking from the spirit what it considered its own pulling new portions of water from the slowly shoaling lake right through the spirit world as if it were a micro-portal. And it managed to do it, despite Stepan's attempts to stop it from doing so, covering itself with a blanket of water a moment before the young man unleashed a temperature inferno on the creature. Singha's air spirits helped. They made the air extremely dry, devoid of even a drop of moisture, made it difficult to support the defenses, and pumped more oxygen into the air, so much so that one could pass out from a single breath. By the end, her cloak had lowered the air temperature to the fiercest winter chill that even Siberian descendants wouldn't risk eating ice cream. A moment later this chill was replaced by a fiery hell as the temperature rose under the blows of Stepan's spirits, driven by the will of the Embraceable One who had gained leadership. It was the heat that struck first. The heat ignited a flame, and in flame numerous fire spirits, from small to strong, acting together and harmoniously, manifested themselves. They were led by the spirit of the fire hornet, eager to strike with its ghostly sting where the defense was weaker, to strike and pour into the body more unbearably hot poison.

The irony of the situation was that the hornet chose for its attack the same tactic that material bees use against material hornets in reality. To wrap an invulnerably strong opponent with their bodies and roast him until he is baked in his armor. The flaming blanket had some success, boiling the water cocoon, forcing the giant to let out a pained and angry quack in equal measure, but no more. The counter-strike stripped Stepan of at least a third of the fire contracts represented in that blanket in the very first second alone and the second second half of the remaining ones. Neither the combined power, nor the leadership of strong spirits, nor the reinforcement with the Mass Blessing Sheets helped - the creature was too strong. And smart, which was even worse. It did not even try to forcefully tear the defense which Stepan expected and was ready to prevent, no. It simply and uncomplicatedly repeated the call of water, only not directly to itself, but outside the fiery cocoon of hundreds of materialized fire entities. As they wrapped the platypus in a cocoon, trying to boil it, so it wrapped them in another, on top of their own, beginning to extinguish the flames.

Only the strong left, and not all of them. Those who were in the middle of the fire blanket managed to avoid the hammer and anvil while those less fortunate died in between. The vapor cloud instantly cooled and condensed into sharp droplets, and in this halo of droplets, the enemy stepped forward, almost unharmed, unhurt by the blow. And immediately struck with these very drops. Only the two shamans didn't move, letting the attack just miss almost at point-blank range, dripping off the defenses of the antechamber as they struggled to fend off a second, more dangerous attack. The geyser that struck from beneath the grass cover... didn't hit. The same will of the elder spirit of the firmament that had tried to take away the platypus' water now prevented him from summoning a new one. It was not a physical barrier, no, such a torrent from the still-shoaling lake would simply break through like a tsunami washing away a house of cards. The elder essence simply absorbed this water, its entire flow, and redirected it into the very bowels of the earth, from where it could not be called back. Formally, one could perceive this trick as a very exotic offering, performed by a shaman, who literally paid the elder spirit by making it intercept the deadly attack, and even so that the spirit was grateful to the shaman.

If he had time, he would have spent some of it on telling his partner how fucking awesome he was, especially since she had seen everything. Time, alas, was not available, because it was a very scarce commodity, unlike pussies, and they were delivered to Stepan and Singha in freight cars. The Platypus, which had finally shed its relaxation and realized that it was facing an almost equal opponent, stopped playing and holding back, attacking seriously, with all its might. It was the lack of experience that helped because this shit obviously didn't fight at the limit of its strength very often, if ever, and also Stepan's own experience. The experience of someone else, but appropriated and learned - only now he really understood what the lines of the description “skill of an elite martial caller” meant, only now he realized.

Despite the creature's power and intelligence, despite the fact the platypus tried to think, did not give in to blind anger, and did not go to the beastly tactics of pressure by sheer force, the shaman still knew what to do. He knew, understood, knew how to counter, knew how exactly to act, what orders to give to Singha, how to maneuver, what spirits to sacrifice, how to win the initiative or grind the enemy's attacking potential against a seemingly weak defense. And it was his knowledge that led the pair of shamans along this deadly trap, it was this knowledge that kept both from collapsing under the onslaught of such dangerous stuff as a cardboard box under a hydraulic press. Though it was by no means easy, it was still not as nightmarishly terrifying as he'd hoped, not as deadly and hopeless as it should have been.

//“Well, aren't I fucking awesome?” - He thought in passing as he met his opponent's attack with his defense. - “It's not like you can play cunning social intrigue and seduce elven beauties with the help of shit bought in System Stores, any isekai can do that! But like that, you gotta know how to do it! And I fucking know how. And I'm practicing. But I'd rather not practice.”

The creature didn't have time to strike again. It just released another cloud of water spikes, letting them fly past their targets under the influence of the anteroom while contact with the bodies again didn't happen, because the shamans again stepped on the spot to move one very long step, moving to the left, again breaking the distance by half a kilometer at least. Shamans, unlike classical mages, have far more tricks to work with space, but where high magic allows for to do these tricks at scale, shamans have a hard time creating group portals for the uninitiated. Orders of magnitude more difficult at times. The problem for the platypus was that both of his victims were quite competent shamans and thus could fairly confidently jump out of trouble when needed. Of course, this assessment of simplicity is highly biased, based on the combination of an extremely rare and powerful exotic spirit, and the equally exotic type of magical influence that was the precursor. All of that was true, all of that was true, but the viciously quacking chthonic platypus had once again managed not to catch its prey.

The people's response comes out as a combination. The first violin is again played by the wind created by Singha and her cloak. She tries new tricks, searches for new approaches, and follows Stepan's prompting images, demonstrating a very high skill of “wingman two”, clearly having the habit and practice of following a more experienced shaman. Her attack resembles a sudden release of pressure. Not a vacuum blow, fast and deadly, which the creature is perfectly capable of countering, but the creation of a large zone of reduced and increasingly decreasing atmospheric pressure around a large and survivable target. The creature is very magical, literally imbued with magic from its fingertips to its quack. However, it remains a material, physical entity, dependent on the body, and the body wants the same things as other living creatures, albeit to a lesser extent. For example, a platypus does not need to breathe at all, it could manage without air at all, but blood circulation in conditions of such low and very sharply jumped pressure did not improve at all.

The creature slowed and swayed. Its physical jerks require a great deal of effort, and its heart must be beating to a rhythm that would put Eminem's song to shame. It can breathe without oxygen, having already realized that the enemy works with air masses, the creature breathes simply by pouring a lot of oxygenated liquid into its lungs, as the shaman's spirits managed to understand. But the pressure surge, long and persistent, depriving it of strength and coordination, made the monster slow down, stagger, almost fall, and miss the attack from Stepan, who put most of the rapidly regenerating reserve token into the order and sacrifice to the senior spirit of the hardness forcing it to attack the slowed down target again. The ground swells with mud tentacles, enveloping the standing arms and legs of the platypus, trying to drag it underground, but it doesn't resist.

It does not resist so much that Stepan, who has already managed to estimate the degree of vitality, strength, and power of this creature, immediately senses something wrong, not-his-and-his experience, multiplied by a rocked spirit and shamanic intuition. And when the monster's blow is already struck, he again manages to meet the trump card, to block, to overlap, to make it in time, and to save his own and other people's lives. The attack of the Platypus is again at the junction of wild elements and equally wild witchcraft. It is expressed by weightless and rapid fog, almost invisible optically, but at the same time very deadly. A fog that draws fluid from human bodies, not primarily from blood, but from bones and spinal cord - death is quick, unpleasant, and almost guaranteed. It was also specially chosen to resist the anteroom, piercing it like a needle stabbed into a tin wall.

The shaman managed to summon, or rather, give the order for one of his last contracts to appear, one of the strongest among them. The will of the creature, its spell, was met by a calm and indifferent Smoothness, embodied in the petals of the lotus that covered the pair in their embrace. The attack simply slid along the petals, causing practically no harm to the spirit-bridge, and then was immediately replaced by another, already purely combat, a real shaft of water blades. These simpler attacks he repelled no longer by the will of the elder spirit, saving the charge of the strength of his petal shield, but by his anteroom, deployed and effective again. In his mind, completely focused on the battle, the thought flashed that this creature was too skilled, too good for the beast that sat for centuries and centuries on its source, practically never leaving it. There was a flickering understanding that this was perhaps one of the parts of the payment that the wormy shit hiding in the ruins had given him - knowledge and training in the use of the gift. A simple monster, even a very smart one, simply had no way of knowing and being able to use such complex magic. There was no need for it if you could achieve your goal with just streams of pure power. However, that was not a fact, because he had no idea where and how the many-legged platypus had mastered his spells, where and from whom he had studied, or whether he had studied at all.

It doesn't really matter, either. What mattered was that he kept trying to kill the two of them, ignoring the huge guillotine of the air ram, striking downward and sticking in the water cocoon, breaking through the muddy embrace that had already grabbed him by the paws, freeing himself and even attacking the older spirit in return. Attacking only to be struck by another, now not elemental, also summoned by Stepan. The new spirit was one of those whose one-time contracts he had signed during his time in Dantmark, not the strongest of its kind, not even a fairly standard one, but no less powerful and deadly for that. The spirit body, devoid of a clear image, seemed like a pile of transparent shards of glass, and the spirit's power was in extremely powerful aura attacks, and through some types of defenses. For example, through wild elemental magic.

For perhaps the first time during the battle the pain was heard in the creature's quack, and behind the pain came the fierce anger with which it leaped upward, pushing itself into the belly of the water geyser in time to grab the spirit that had so seriously injured it before it could retreat and regroup. A second later, the shaman barely had time to break the deep connection to the summoner, who was simply torn to shreds by the creature's many paws. //“And I was paid for two summons of two strikes each,” he thought with a slight resentment as he and Singha took another shot, combining her air ram with sharp spikes, further enhanced by the only elder spirit at her disposal, not just her cloak, and his stream of fiery wind, only more vicious and carrying aspects of death and heat at the same time, creating an extremely unpleasant cocktail. The deadening of flesh and aura is very easy to miss under the hot and painful stream of hot air, for the dying body has no time to signal that it is dying.

The creature didn't give a damn. It only shuddered a little and covered its eyes with two paws, breaking through the attacking formation and nearly tearing off a chunk of Singhi's retreating spirit. It also manages to strike out on her own, forcing the older spirit petal to take the attack again, slightly draining the reserve of whatever damage the jumper spirit is willing to take for the sake of this battle. A water blot, primitive but deceptive, opened up the foredeck again, despite the attempt to distort the flight path of said blot. A dozen sacrificial leeches attacked in response, all powerful enough to reach the bar of strong spirits, though, in reality, they were spirits with the power of floating. Initially barely small, they became all the more powerful the more life force, pure prana, in the body of whatever you sent a pack of them against. Originally there were eleven, but one of these creatures dies at the moment of summoning and attack, triggering a strengthening transformation for the others. The shaman originally made this contract, which, by the way, could attack the summoner himself if they managed to defeat the original target, in order to resist dragons and other giants if shit like this happened in his life. But this thing had more life in it than a dragon, pure life for sure, and maybe magic, too.

Barely pulling on small spirits ten became for a while almost equal in strength, their pure reserve, another senior, but they remained very primitive. Minimal features, minimal tricks, just very strong leeches. The platypus literally crushed them into dust, partly with its paws partly with its water cover, and one of them was squeezed in its beak and swallowed, despite the fact that the leech was desperately trying to reduce its materiality. There was still not a single serious wound on the enemy's body, and even the scratches already inflicted were healing before his eyes, but this regimen was not easy for him. The constant needle pricks of hundreds of small spirits, mostly elemental spirits, were sticking into the defense but did not allow it to strengthen and adapt normally and fully. The lowered atmospheric pressure continued to jump with the heartbeat of the giant monster. Around the shamans, the atmosphere was maintained in full normalcy by a separate spiritual group with two backups. The Platypus, staggering to its feet again after the increased expenditure of energy, was nearly knocked to the ground by three pigs, but weakness was too deceptive, for the creature not only held its ground, but almost mauled one of the pigs, and with it the rest of the bound trio, forcing them to flee quickly back into the Spheres.

A new step-on-the-spot. A new transfer. But the spirit that was performing this trick was running out not even of strength, which Stepan was continuously pouring into it, but of faith in its nature, which allowed it to manipulate space so easily. One more step-no-step at most and he would definitely go into the sediment, the next years and decades being powerless to repeat his influence, reacquiring the necessary fluctuations in the world of high spheres. And so the creature almost made it in time, reaching a couple of shamans with its paw for the first time, causing Singha to panic and nearly die as she tried to break the distance and almost leave the anteroom. She would not have been able to avoid the blow even with the cloak, which gave the greatest maneuverability and speed in the air, not on the ground, only in the process of takeoff. Stepan had to make her freeze with a sharp distortion of the spiritual dialog, literally analogous to a mental blow to the mind in a soft form. But he made it in time, deflecting the paw strike through the anteroom, just as he had time to take another water spit on protection. Then the distance had already broken again. Again the shaman struck with another elder summon, choosing again not the elemental, but pure doom.

The spirit of cemeteries and tombs was, in general, a specialist in combat necromancy, if we speak in terms of high magic. His full power was revealed either in the necropolis, under the cover of normal necromancers, or in the necropolis, but when confronting necromancers under the cover of some good paladins, stern inquisitors, and pretty priestesses. Stepan remembered his own unsuccessful contacts with such mages and was reinsured for the future. The ground here was literally strewn with the bones of all sorts of small animals, the flesh of which had been washed away by water magic and sent into the lake, while the bones had been left on the ground. So the spirit entered these bones, all of them at once, lifting them into the air and sending a sharp rain into the surprised and angry quacking platypus. It grunted, but again did no damage, shoaling its lake and wrapping itself in a very dense cocoon of water. The monster then used its power over the source and the territory, literally squeezing the power over the bones and the spirit in those bones out of its valley. The creature was good, very good, so good that the elder spirit barely had time to retreat and not be disembodied when faced with a hard magical attack.

A new dash towards them. A new exchange of blows, where from the side of the creature went into flight soaked in water magic and witchcraft boulder, torn out of the ground by a huge hand, and in the opposite direction hit a powerful stream of wind twisted into drills, breaking the stone to release aggressive and cursed water haze, mixed with dust, which was hidden in that stone. The dust and water are dried up by a stream of heat and sunlight, literally scrubbing the curse from the face of reality. Then a new attack from another elder spirit, one of the last ones Stepan could summon for direct combat in attack format. This one also deals direct damage to the aura, but a single attack from a one-time contracted spirit slows the creature down at most. It slows it down just long enough for Singha to use most of the remaining strength in his cloak to shackle it in the stone-hard air for another second.

The shaman deliberately ignored another attack of water and witchcraft, letting it hit the wall of petals straining but not breaking through the defenses. He finishes the call, drawing Squidward back into reality for just a moment, not so much for the attack, even such an exotic, powerful spirit would be of no use against such a creature, but for its ability to summon darkness and thereby blind the enemy. Singha had been warned in advance and was not surprised to find that not only her normal vision but also her spiritual perception and even the images of her spirit observers had gone out. Everything was blinded except for the one individual who had once fed the octopus that had come to call with the first rays of the spring sunrise and sunset. The Platypus was perfectly capable of striking from memory, oriented by Squidward's last coordinates, so he didn't linger, just showed his flag, so to speak.

The blow to the osprey was a wave, albeit a strong one, albeit powerful and deadly, but it was a wave, for the creature had focused its main effort on covering a couple of shamans with a new attack, and now, Stepan suspected, it would be able to overwhelm the Smooth and force the petals to fold. He didn't have time this time, Stepan finished early, though the monster did its best to interfere with the shamans' ability to call and summon an entourage. The darkness vanished instantly with the disappearance of the sprite that had dived into the spheres again, but the first thing that the platypus encountered upon its disappearance was an unformed and subtly irregular figure in smoky-glass armor, with the bones of a stick man of absolute blackness dangling inside it. The moment the darkness disappeared, the incarnated elder spirit exot was about a hundred meters away, almost next to the shamans, which made the multi-armed abomination react with a delay, not believing how fast this knight with an aura of overwhelming willful indifferent fatalism could be.

This aura had worked on Stepan and Singha, too. It covered them with a strange indifference to the outcome of the fight when you fight and continue to fight not out of fear or thirst for life, but simply because you have to. An ordinary man, even a mage, would be stunned by such a state, but Stepan was ready for this effect. Shamans are also much better than other gifted people at being active in an altered state of consciousness. If you believe the evil tongues of those who despise wild magic and focus on high magic, their whole life is a single altered state, like a drug trip of an infinite length. The shamans did not fail now. A moment, less than a moment, less than a hundredth of it, the skeleton armor spent on one of its steps, being in close proximity and at point-blank range to the platypus, striking a powerful and swift blow with a huge spear-blade the color of its own black bones. And here, for the first time in the entire fight, the platypus felt not just pain or danger, but a wound, a real and serious one. The spiritual entity did not strike at the limbs but aimed directly at the torso, cutting open the side and ribs on the left side of the creature and releasing dark red, almost blue blood, which also ran from the wound very fast, despite passive regeneration and active attempts to stop the blood.

Another round. The second blow was stopped by an extremely dense water barrier, like a small shield, covering the platypus' head and beak, and the shield even withstood the blow. So that the third one, which grew out of the second one, was not a slashing swing, but a stabbing poke, which almost opened the creature's throat, piercing its chest under the collarbone. The spirit stepped through space twice in quick succession, dodging both the physical blow and the water lash that followed. He simply ignored the curse attack of the unidentified Stepan type, relying on his own resistance and the reinforcement of resistance by the personal aspects embedded in his essence. As hard as the platypus was to penetrate, the thin knight would not yield to him in that. The creature had taken more damage in a second than in the entire battle, albeit not without being weakened and suppressed by the rest of the shaman's retinue and Singha's assistance. And not without taking into account the token's fully restored reserve, not Stepan's, but the spirit's own - the spirit was skilled and practiced at putting large amounts of reserve into a single attack, spending more than two-thirds of its reserve on its three steps and three strikes.

A clash, blood, and then a divergence, when the creature literally jumped away from its even more biting prey, making a quack, not so much angry as painful, surprised, and childishly offended. The fight took hardly more than a minute from start to finish and stopped abruptly. For long seconds they just stare at each other. The duck-billed platypus, whose lake is already more than two-thirds shallow, wraps its inhabitant in a dense cocoon of almost black condensation, like a miniature rain cloud. Stepan sorted and replenished the retinue, counting the losses and almost sobbing mentally at the fact he would have to fill all these losses. Yes, the backbone of the retinue, the strongest of the exotics and the most reliable of the contracts remained almost without exception intact but the middle and lower ranks, especially the elementals, were cut out in groups. It was much easier to replenish some part of such a group with a stronger guide than to create a new one if the group had been wiped out.

But the strength is still there. The young man will still be able to spend two, an extreme of one and a half, similar tacts, but there is no certainty that he will be able to succeed. The platypus was wounded solely by his main trump card, a thin knight with a name hard to pronounce for human throats. The other blows the creature did not ignore, but it did not receive damage, serious damage, to be exact. The platypus is also unsure of himself. For until he met the last trump did not receive any wounds but was exhausted by such a dance - especially the combination of huge physical exertion and the fallen atmospheric pressure, which beat so hard on the frantically pounding heart, which did not stop only due to the support of the lake and his magic. And there wasn't much of that lake left, and soon there would be a threat to expose the bottom and leave the source defenseless against what sat in the ruins of the city. And the platypus, despite all its power, despite the pact it had kept for centuries, was not eager to leave itself and its source defenseless.

"Quack, quack!" Deafly, and not at all like a duck, he quacks, so unnaturally that this quack could be taken in quotation marks, as if it had been read from a leaf, not from the throat of a beast. "In vain! You started it for nothing! Why did you come?!"

The monster's Confederate dialect was very shitty, its horrible accent making it almost unintelligible, even though it had a linguistic base from the System, which allowed it to understand the most pretentious or flawed dialects. And, as Stepan suddenly realized, it was not only the same dialect of the Confederation of Free Cities but also hopelessly outdated. So outdated that the difference was almost the same as between modern and Old English. Wherever the creature had picked up the human language, and it was familiar to him and to the shamaness, who was breathing heavily like a hunted horse, but it had been a long time ago. Stepan thinks for a few moments about whether to continue the fight but realizes it is a very big risk. There is a chance to win but there is no less chance to die. And the chances of leaving even a modicum of strength to escape the trap are slim to none. They are not here for the head of a giant chthonic platypus, but for salvation, for the slit in the impregnable dungeon guarded by it.

Their fight could have awakened the dormant scum as it was. It should have. Only the quickness and transience of that fight had saved them. And now, when the creature was not covered with monolithic protection when he and his suppressors could look under it for a moment, the young man realized that the platypus was also unwilling, terribly unwilling to cause the interest of the wormy abomination. Stepan does not rush into the conversation, does not show his desperate situation, and his voice, strengthened by the spirit of the air element and the sound aspect, sounds smooth, calm, and with a confidence he does not feel for a single brief moment.

"I want to leave." He almost whispered. The wind rustled his voice, and his very bones shook from that penetrating rustle, as if that voice if it sounded not a whisper but a shout, would make his bones crack and shatter into dust. "Away from here."

“So go away!” the platypus shouts with the same resentment and perplexed anger. It sounds like a whiny child, not a chthonic creature, which scares him, perhaps, even more because it looks and sounds so absurd, not matching his appearance and strength. “Am I blocking your way or what?!”

Stepan almost choked on such a question, seriously thinking about it, but then he pulled himself together. Yes, even if formally Singha was the first to strike. However the attack of the platypus was just as obvious, and in general, it was not with good intentions that he tried to lure two people to the bait in the form of his own nose. Still, for a moment the shaman lacked the words to speak more harshly. Chutzpah can be disarming sometimes. It was probably for the best because if he'd answered with a swear word, the creature might have taken offense. The shaman was not in a hurry to rush into battle, although he was relatively ready to perform this dash into battle, was ready to invest additional talents, calling two of the strongest battle spirits, which he found in the list of available contracts. Well, he had few competitors after the skinny knight of the strongest. Some were better at hitting areas, those with more power, or those with a deck of trump card tricks. But none of the available seniors could match the black and thin skeleton in pure direct confrontation against a single and wildly powerful target. The higher ones, alas, don't count.

“I want to go very far.” Patiently, like a small child, Stepan explains, smiling an unnaturally wide grin, showing off his elongated teeth and jaw deformed from under-settlement. “As far as the net of what sits in the ruins of the city south of here won't let the two of us out.”

He backs up his words with images, conveying the meaning of these words in such a way that the creature, who obviously knows Confederate fragmentary and weakly, understands every word. He also applies the knowledge that Her Milfness has given him so many times and for so long. He influences the mind of his interlocutor with his "dialog" since he allows that "dialog" to reach him. This is already a junction of mentalism with shamanism, an analog of that mentalism on the principles of wild magic with a bias to the use of the subtle body, not weaving charms or mental resonance. A rare and unusual school. It's impossible unless one transforms one's own spirit properly. Unless one has a whole list of very specific and deeply developed knowledge. He acts as stealthily as possible, but to his considerable surprise, he realizes it works. The outer contours of defense are passed almost without resistance, and he can exert some influence, not just ask. Not to subjugate, not to take control, not so quickly, but at least to add to the persuasiveness of his images. He was able to do it now.

“So quack away! From her!” The interlocutor quacks loudly, powerfully, and penetratingly, with an obvious mockery, realizing perfectly well that there is no way to leave, realizing that the wormy abomination itself must have heard their fight, smelled it, and started to awaken little by little. “Quack I release!”

The shaman, still holding the trapped spirit in his body perfectly deer-like tilts his head sideways, shaking his ghostly horns slightly. The spirit he keeps planted is not for direct combat, it is simply the strongest of such contracts that specializes in accelerating perception and speed of thought, which allows the shaman to think and act very quickly even without the use of a system clock. He is groping the monster's consciousness, looking for clues, already picking up the surface and some of the other, deeper thoughts, but maintaining extreme caution. Even with full training, even with all his skills and working on a duck-billed platypus unaware of its existence, he would not be able to subdue it faster than in a few months, and even then not a fact. But to read the interlocutor, just a little nudge in the right direction, and, most importantly, to say exactly what was necessary and what they wanted to hear from him. It was already possible.

"I wish to open the door from here," Stepan said, still as calmly and ingratiatingly. The words seeped into his ears, flooding suspicion with a warm milky stream, lubricating aggression and cooling the blazing anger. "And I ask for a foothold for that. Your island in the lake. I can get away from there."

All his efforts and proper choice of words were just enough to keep the Platypus from attacking at once. The very idea of letting the two of them into the holy of holies, into the only thing he had that his wormy abomination hadn't already fucked over, was, to put it mildly, very repulsive to the beast. So serious, in fact, the Platypus almost fluffed his fur, despite the complete absence of that fur, spreading his numerous arms wide, except for the ones he used to cover his wounds. There was a quiet but shivering growl, like that of a cat that had finally had enough of the evil hand game. Only this cat was part duck so the growl was replaced by a quacking sound.

“No, no! I won't give it back! Mine!” The creature speaks, immediately shifting to cover the island to be closer to it. “My authority! My power! Quack, quack! Waste not! Take away not! Take away no-n!”

But the creature was really scared, first of all, because it understood, and recognized the fact that Stepan and Singha had some chances of success, small, weak, less than dying in the attempt, but there were, definitely there. And this fear Stepan only fueled, with his calmness and the subtle, like weightless feathers touched, influences of the spiritual dialog. After all, what could be better than if the creature itself wants to get rid of the annoying couple, which does not go out to kill and eat, just by sending them to hell? He continues to smile and act as friendly as he can, feeling the precious time slipping through his fingers, but not daring to hurry, for haste is even more likely to kill than delay.

"We are shamans." He speaks, putting an abyss of meanings into the name of his class, sending off these images and hiding among shades new and new touches of the invisible pen. "We talk to spirits. We make deals with them. We make deals with you. We don't need your power. We don't need your source. Just the right to approach it. To lean on it. And walk away. That is my request. And my condition. Let us pass. Or keep fighting. Till someone's dead."

In a different situation, this creature would have tried to press much more aggressively, but the shaman knew his craft, even if not quite voluntarily learned. He subtly pressed fear, reluctance, apprehension, and flattery of his opponent's strength. Without directly saying a word of praise, he filled his images with how much the shaman himself did not want to fight with a strong, cunning, experienced, skillful, and generally awesome duck-billed platypus, calmed him with this apprehension, at the same time frightening him with the readiness to step over both apprehension and fear. The beast was fully confident of its victory, but it was also aware that it would get wounds, new ones, different ones, and each wound was a possible gateway through which the omnipresent worms would enter the body. The beast did not want to aggravate its situation, and the shaman gave it a great chance to keep its own and stay in its own way. The only pity was that the strange beast wanted not only to keep his own but also to get some profit.

" Quack, quack! Leave it! Female! Me!" This shit is quacking, almost licking in the emotional background, having not tasted human meat or even game for a very long time, feeding only on the power of the source, afraid to put into his mouth anything that was under the shadow of the net of worms, except for the birds living near the lake. "You go away! I'll let you through! I'll let you out!"

The young man felt the tension and fear of the shamaness with his whole being, because she had a clear idea of what it was like to negotiate with the mighty uncleanness, knew perfectly well that it was quite possible to leave her here, it was quite possible to neglect her. And wasn't that why he had been guarding her for so long, covering and helping her? Wasn't it so that he could save himself now? A horse in the steppe is kept above life, but only to save the rider with its life, if there is a deadly need. And here the shaman is silent, not in a hurry to answer, obviously thinking about something, and the girl's nerves are getting stronger and stronger, from which she is preparing not to run away, not to attack, or all of this together. And the worst of it is that she will not be able to escape on her own and without help, she will not be able to retreat or survive here, in the shadow of the wormy will.

"You know, my dear, you don't seem to understand much." He speaks with the same honey-sweet notes of calm, only now there's a little more menace and a little less apprehension. "We came here alone. We'll leave together. Or not at all. You're stronger, I'll give you that. But we will not seek to kill. Only to hurt. Harder. And I will strike at your source. To undermine it. Breaking your power. Your will. Let us die. But you. Wounded. Weakened. You will be without power. Not for long. For a little while. But something tells me. It's a hint. To whatever dwells here. Just a little bit is enough."

The threat is calibrated just enough to be deadly to seem as real as possible to the platypus. He is not afraid of the two of them. He doesn't fear the battle, and he doesn't even believe in losing. The shaman's powers cannot instill fear in him. In front of his favorite. But the Worm Queen is afraid of the platypus to the point of liquefaction of feces and brains, and he also immediately and unconditionally believes in what the shaman said. Because he would have done the same thing himself. Or rather, if he couldn't give the female as a pledge of his life, he would have done the same. He evaluated his desires, his strength, his power, the battle that had already been fought, the pain he had already experienced, the wounds he had already suffered. And he surrendered, retreated, and made one last concession. Stepan felt this concession even before he realized his decision, thanking the system and its admins for what he had done, rejoicing that the platypus had faded a little from his wounds and weakened his mental defenses.

Also glad that he hadn't delved further into the images the shaman had sent back, because personally, Stepan wasn't sure he'd be able to undo the bond between the guardian and his source. On the fly, without preparation or the right spirits. In the lists of minor knowledge of contractual and witch-type, there were the necessary calls, but he would not be able to find, study, and apply them at once. Even if he were able to realize it all... a contract through his teeth was better than a pathos death, even if he would die proudly, unbroken, and with his head held high. Because his head is completely empty and therefore light. There is no need to strain his arms to lift it high. And he would have to lift his head with his arms only because he would be guaranteed to have his head torn off up to his ass.

“Quack, quack! Quack, quack! You should have! You should have told me your female was carrying a batch! “I didn't see it. I didn't see it.” Irritated and angry, but with some perverse degree of sympathy, the platypus replies, seemingly having drawn his own conclusions from the shaman's unwillingness to sacrifice the weaker mate, which of course has little to do with reality. "You seal the deal! Quack ya'll check, I'll know if you're trying deceit! I'll look, I'll look, I'll look, I'll see! I'll be with you all the time!”

She suppressed the outbreak of embarrassment and indignation on Singha's part, and Stepan was already acting according to the plan. Mentally he wiped his forehead because the narrowest and most dangerous moment had passed. If things had gone differently, if he hadn't pressed him, or if he had decided to start on a different note, the platypus wouldn't have compromised. As it is, it expects meanness and guile, it fears for its source and its integrity, and the shamans need to finish their oaths as quickly as possible and start winding down their rods. So far, the etheric picture of the world is still quiet. There are no particularly significant disturbances, other than those generated by their own battle. But somewhere out there, far, far away, it was as if one could feel a shaking, like the marks on the water in a glass beaker when someone stomped their feet loudly on the floor nearby. The Worm Queen hasn't awakened yet, but she's not slumbering. Ideally, she would wake up when Stepan and Singha have waved goodbye, but it would be ideal to reach that ideal.

The shaman stepped forward, remaining in place at the same time, as if for a split second, becoming both himself and his reflection, a sort of guise, a dense illusion worn over a normal body. He raised his right hand upward, stretching it along his body, palm up, straightening it at shoulder level. Around his wrist, something gray and smoky seemed to flare, like a chain forged from ashes and dust, a few links of it, gradually growing new links. The bracelet grows, its long smoky tail fluttering in the wind, stretching upward, stretching a meter and a half at least. Not a chain, but an image of her. Its effect is an irresistible obligation, that cannot be broken, otherwise, this chain will pull not upward, but to the very bottom, to the depths of the Higher Spheres, and will pull forces, pieces of aura and spirit, even the soul and that will be torn out after that aura. Each link is one of the conditions, each condition is a reinforcement of the total power of the chain, the more over-insurance, the harder the chain is to bind, the higher the load on the spirit, but the more reliable it is. The strongest of his vow spirits, perfect for such a vow, quick and given in almost combat conditions.

It is only a strong spirit, but one of the best of its kind. He is followed by a dozen and a half weaker spirits of the same nature, also oathbearers, also masters of the bilateral agreement, each in their own way, with their own conditions and penalties for breach. Four of the elders, the rest small, but almost all exotics of one sort or another, the most unique for their rank and aspects, the best of those who could be summoned now and for the specified purpose. Another moment, Stepan steps forward again, remaining in place, but his illusory doppelganger steps forward instead. Unlike Stepan, who is still holding the battle omniscient, this image looks the same as the young man does in his normal state, walking deceptively leisurely, but with each step becoming many times closer than it should. His arm is still put out to the side, and on his wrist is the same chain as the real Stepan, who is straining all his strength, draining the reserve and preparing to replenish his strength with a token, trusting in the stability of his own gift and the resistance of the channels to prolonged strain.

The Platypus looks carefully and cautiously at the image coming to him. He sees its complete identity as the shaman. He listens to the images Stepan sends. Images of an oath - extremely simple and equally extremely honest, binding both parties with equal strength of commitment. To give passage to the source, not to interfere, not to attack, to let them go in peace - this is the will of the shamans, this is the favor granted to them by the ancient beast. Not to spoil the connection with the source, not to try to take it away, not to break the network of protective witchcraft, not to shit in the end - these are the requirements of the Platypus, this is the will of the people. Stepan carefully averts the thought, even the suspicion that the oath can be deceived. The spirit will not allow to break the condition bound by the chain, as long as it goes straight through his essence, which now very qualitatively copies the energy and spiritual body of the shaman. It will not allow such a thing for free, but if you properly feed and placate this spirit in advance, and properly negotiate everything important then it can help even extremely powerful agreement to level. Drag all the sanctions on himself, taking advantage of the fact that for him is not at all fatal that is fatal for people or other spirits - one of the aspects of this mirror double was a lie, there was betrayal, there was a realization of enmity and meanness of the one who is reflected in front of you in the mirror.

Hence the property allowed partially blocking, partially leveling, and partially accelerated healing and restoration of the damage received as a result of betrayal of the oath. In a normal state, this spirit does not leave the body of the sworn, does not create a separate image, hides in the aura of one of the participants of the agreement, to then, in a controlled environment, tear off all the seals and stamps. He could do that even now, and if the platypus insisted on sacrificing his partner, then he, his partner, would of course turn off mentally, and take control over her. But to give would agree only at the last moment, and then would show the hungry cannibal shit obscene gesture before leaving, not hesitating to try and curse through the connection with the source. But the monster showed mercy in time, so the hero, who agreed with the monster will show honesty at the same time, preserving for the future the right of a contract with a deal-breaker, which is too expensive to spend just for the sake of petty revenge.

"A bargain." The spirit speaks through Stepan's mouth and Stepan through the spirit's mouth, and a moment later the same smoky and upward stretching chain, only its outline, its outline and sketch, envelops one of the platypus's hands, the same hand that he touched the hand of the doppelganger, almost material in its appearance. "Concluded."

“Concluded!” Quacks the platypus, with very noticeable difficulty in pronouncing and enunciating a previously unfamiliar word, the imagery of which he understood but had never heard. "Coming through, I'm letting you through!"

The shaman was genuinely curious as to how the creature had learned to speak in Confederate. Now, taking advantage of the faded danger and the opportunity to exhale a little, he could even ask about it. In fact, he was simply taking the opportunity to safely exchange images with the monster, continuing to process it little by little and keeping that one in a neutral-positive mood. Silently following the orders of Singh carefully and unhurriedly, but still very quickly lifts them both air currents bringing them directly to the islet, bypassing the shallow lake the water which can on contact mutilate the aura impregnated with witchcraft. There was just enough room on the small island for two people. There was nowhere for them to swing their arms, but they didn't need to. The shamans synchronously put their right hands on each other's shoulder, simultaneously touching an incomprehensible tree, the breed of which could not be determined, with their left hands. Adjusting the aura to the source takes literally a couple of minutes, during which the tremor in the etheric fabric of the high spheres, coming from the side of the ancient ruins, becomes more and more distinct.

But we did learn how the platypus acquired its linguistic knowledge. In a way quite typical of black witchcraft, i.e. by eating human meat. There is a whole series of rituals that work by eating a captive opponent, preferably a gifted one. Eating someone else's youth, trying to transplant a part of the magical gift, and getting rid of diseases and curses were only the tip of the iceberg. It is also possible to pick up a linguistic package, as well as a piece of knowledge, only much more difficult and risks going mad from such arrays of other people's lives and memories. It is quite possible not only to eat and strengthen but also to get a piece of knowledge. Crumbs, but still useful, especially if you have centuries and centuries of time to digest what you have eaten. This particular creature, it seems, had some innate and after-acquired through positive mutation properties to facilitate the digestion of such meals.

He tasted human flesh very rarely. It had been a long time since travelers or victims had reached him. Yes, the local black tribes used to execute their enemies without direct execution, sending them to this part of the jungle, almost forcibly pushing them through the outer contour of the worm net. Four and a half centuries ago among these savages, who lived in primitive tribes and did not even have normal cities, appeared a kind of novice Shaka, who began attempts to centralize. All those who fell for his “surrender and I'll let you go in peace and without blood” were kicked out here - the creature from the ruins had had its fat years then. Almost all the victims quickly sprouted worms and hid in the depths of the underground complex, on the way fucking each other, vomiting, and shitting right on the way, sometimes together with intercourse. Those who did make it to the lake were not eaten by the Platypus, as they were almost always too wormy, forcing him to continue his energy diet. Some shamans who could burn out the infection from the body - that was all his snack for centuries and centuries of “service and friendship” with the creature that bought his loyalty and word, once agreed with a young monster that occupied the Source.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaka

There was a white-skinned mage from some lost expedition among those he devoured. He had managed to get to the lake, burning worms and pieces of flesh on the way, cutting off parasite-oozing parts of meat, and counting on exactly the same thing as Stepan. Well, that was something the shaman had extrapolated. In the fight with the creature, a strong adept of water and fire at once, he could not show much and was quickly eaten after a long bath and boiling in toxic vedic water. From his memory, the evil monster inherited a fragmentary knowledge of the extremely archaic dialect of the free cities. This event took place even before the unknown Shaka's attempts at centralization began. As well as fragmentary and scattered scraps of knowledge of water magic. The problem was that those fragmentary scraps, when multiplied by a bunch of free time, a source at his side, and an insane personal supply of power, resulted in what the creature ended up being. It learned witchcraft in many respects from black aborigines, too, adopting the basics and mastering them over centuries of leisurely and lazy practice.

“That was a tasty quack-quack!” The creature, from whose images and superficial thoughts Stepan read many times more than from its very indecipherable words, murmured contentedly. “He came himself, for nothing! They always come! By themselves!”

"I begin." Says the shaman, warning his opponent and calling out to the higher essence, drawing it in, indicating to it the point of incarnation and the axis around which the spirit will have to pull the network of worms, opening the impregnable fortress. "Prepare yourself."

He did not know whether the call was to the platypus or to his partner. The spirit came into reality unhurriedly, gradually, and, alas, audibly, too noticeably, initially accelerating and preparing to create the kind of thrust that would be necessary for a spatial jump of a penetrating type. The strange vibrations of the spiritual field from the ruins of the city became even clearer and more structured. The platypus shook its head, scratching itself under the beak of one of its paws, squinting nervously in roughly the same direction. And the spirit was manifesting itself, embodied in the almost visible image of a giant crystal drill as if growing in dozens of different dimensions, which made it painful, dangerous, and sickening to look at at the same time. Every now and then the platypus squinted only one eye, ready to turn away or hit the traitorous little man if necessary. And the shamans were preparing to move away from here, trying their best to outrun the gradually coming and growing sense of the presence of something stupefyingly ancient, forbiddingly powerful, and unbearably alive.

The spirit essence coils itself on the island and the source beneath it. Spirit does so carefully and learnedly. Not the first time it has worked with the sources in its long, long stretch of eternity. If it were any good, the shaman would have torn up the contract long ago and ordered him to be careful and start speeding up the process, even at the cost of the stability of the source, but it wouldn't do any good. The spirit was already acting fast and couldn't get any faster. The platypus, on the other hand, would definitely try to kill the traitor, which would ruin him too. The bargain protects him, and keeps the worm's will from coming close to his source, but only as long as it is his source. Space seems to be cut into pieces but remains completely whole, as if it is twisted along the drill but remains motionless, space in its instability reaches its limit and into this limit step, two guest prisoners of this place are cursed by all gods. They walk, becoming more transparent with every second, accommodating themselves inside the spiritual drill, gradually losing materiality, and going to another plane of existence.

"So long, Ichthyander Ucking." At the last moment, the shaman suppresses the profane insult so as not to provoke the creature to strike, sending the image of a predatory, agile, and intelligent inhabitant of both land and water, a skillful hunter and prey, and the prefix “Ucking” pretending to be a respectful address, analogous to “sir”, “maestro”, “honorable” and so on. "And we go."

“Quack, quack! I like it! Ichthyandr Ucking!” Stepan only with great effort suppresses his roaring and keeps a serious look outwardly and spiritually, almost forcefully intercepting the control over Singha, who realized the background of the image because of the close contact of spiritual bodies, watching the surrounding world become transparent and pure, just as the two of them for the surrounding world, having become passengers of the interdimensional drill. “Goodbye! Go away! And don't come back!”

Stepan had no plans to come back here, and no one would make him come back for any money or System benefits. He had only negative impressions of the local resort, although, admittedly, not entirely. And somewhere in the darkest corner of his consciousness, some small, evil, and mean part of his essence is laughing from the realization that this chthonic shit has taken the name-image of the little-understood for almost all inhabitants of this world word combination “Ichthyander Ucking”. Of course, it will not pay off all the past risks, the probability of disclosure, the necessity to accept in the group an impudent steppe mare with a bad character, and also a high chance of being eaten by worms while still alive and without a chance to die. But it makes up for the whole dark and sordid story, and yet it happened out of such a trifle, as if in a badly staged vaudeville. Then again, what other name could he think of for the creature?

Not calling him a Little Human Flesh Eater, really?

First of all, it would be pure plagiarism.

Second, the name of such a monster should be, at the very least, Big Little Human Flesh Eater.

Third, the evil shit, by virtue of its location, was forced to be on a diet most of the time and do without flesh, human or otherwise.

The thoughts swarmed in his head and were so silly as to be almost ridiculous. The almost accomplished operation of escape had an effect, and therefore the consciousness of both fugitives was flooded with tons of distilled relief. And then Fate, its anthropomorphic personification, must have looked at Stepan and Singha, at the way they were leaving the mortal danger, and even not pathologically overpowering, but pulling the round by diplomacy, and decided - this is not the case. Everything went too well with these two, let's give them a big and juicy fuck-up! Fate looked at a couple of fugitives, at her records, took out a set of game dice from the closet, and decided that these two morons do not get a flying dwarf. The transfer-break-rupture, which was almost finished, suddenly went into a frenzy, suddenly began to lurch, and the spirit, calmly and confidently holding the course until now, began to send images that they were all being dragged somewhere wrong, that they were trying to forcefully change the route, to reincarnate the spatial coordinate, and not too far from the starting point.
машущий руками гном

The worst of it was the depressing fact that it was not the platypus, nicknamed Ichthyander Uev, that was making this attempt to capture the fugitives. Reality and space began to layer on each other once more, the picture became clearer and clearer, and a moment later Stepan, feeling how the figurative hand of the Grim Reaper on his balls clenched, realized the landscape appearing around him was familiar to him. Very battered by time, covered with mosses and vines, completely dark and illuminated only by the glow of a ginormous crystal drill manifesting into reality. It was the very room where the past lord of the ancient city had once met his end, equally fucked, shit, and vomited on by his assistant and apprentice.

And the apprentice was still here.

What she eventually became.

The tall and whitish body was at least four meters tall, almost blackening the slime and mushroom-covered ceiling with its head. The body bore features a bit insectoid, like Sarochka Kerrigan from the famous game, only with the features of a gray man from popular theories about alien life, but at the same time had an incomparably greater attraction, caused unbearable rejection. It was as if the sinister valley and the angelic appearance were brought to the absolute without interfering. The body consisted of hundreds of thousands of constantly moving worms, large and small, as thick as a couple of fingers or thinner than a thread, constantly braiding against each other, maintaining a swarming form like the murmuration of a school of fish. It was not a beautiful expression, but an objective reality. The very appearance of the creature was some form of visually effective mental witchcraft. One glance at its beauty and repulsiveness should have been enough even for another master to cause at once an uncontrollable desire for self-satisfaction and instantaneous finishing right where you stood, and emptying of stomach, intestines, and bladder at once, simultaneously, continuously.

It was the most powerful mental attack he had ever encountered, the most cunning, perhaps, but also the most unsuccessful. The spirits protecting the shaman's cognitive functions worked properly, taking on the attack, breaking it apart, intercepting the effect, and protecting the thought-reflex function for him and Singha covered by the backup group. Mentally and surprising to himself, the shaman offered his sincere gratitude to Her Milfness, and to the seemingly forgotten Truda and Lashka, and Shera, and Tahira, and Sylvia, who planted the necessary knowledge, even if indirectly, even if not for such a purpose. All those whose attempts to beguile and screw one humble and unconflicted shaman, successful and not so successful, provoked him to develop mental defenses and ways of preserving himself from all manner of beguilements. Because of the fact it was their actions that helped him to save himself from this shit the young man was ready to forgive them for almost everything they tried to pull off or even successfully pulled off with him.

The instantly applied meta-skill of “temporal awareness” provided such needed moments of reflection, making him shed tears of greed and pity as he gave orders to the summoned and never fully recalled spirit. Of all his contracts, only this one was capable of helping, and, far more importantly, only this one was willing to try at all without long exhortations or being nudged in the back by aggressively-suppressive dialog. The thin knight appeared right behind the drill wall, without a moment's hesitation, without a moment's doubt, without a second's fear of that creature whose aura overshadowed old Miller, who remained in Dantmark, as if he were a dachshund next to an alabai. The dachshund was vicious and quite dangerous, but for the larger beast anyway one bite.

The knight stepped forward, putting all the reserve renewed by one more token into one single attack, one single swing of the blade, not even thinking about defense, realizing he would not be able to defend, initially aiming to inflict damage, not to avoid it. Even under the acceleration of the immediately planted spirit, increased pumping of the spiritual body, increased by a token of Constitution and, for dessert, under the effect of the clock, Stepan barely recognizes not even the blow, but its general direction. The creature, too, falters, recoiling and hissing viciously with all parts of its body-bodies as its body, from the top of its head to the middle of its ribcage, is literally torn in two by a single blow of the deadly blade. The creature hissed, it did, and all the mental-defense spirits at work nearly tripled the rate of reserve absorption and resource drawdown of the defenses they created. The second blow the spirit does not have time to make, and can not. The counterattack of the queen of worms is so rapid that it is difficult to realize, to react could have time to spirit, but not Stepan.

Stepan and Singha, the latter at risk of breaking, were busy pouring all their reserves of power into the drill, spinning its flywheel anew, while the queen's disintegrating body covered the whole hall. They do because the shaman had a reserve replenishment token. However, the girl is partially exhausted and could have burned out her gift if Stepan hadn't risked ordering her not to continue, taking her share of the load taking advantage of the elite property of source resistance and the general plasticity of the entire aura. They can still see how slowly and inevitably restores the former, but slightly different appearance of the queen who was too late to catch their tail, who had dealt with the knight, but then the image finally disappears. The spirit emits a quiet and satisfied crackle.

The net held the space under the lid of the cauldron very tightly, incredibly tightly, but, what a nuisance, the drilling spirit, which took the name of knitting needle, seemingly only because the concept of the drill was unfamiliar to it, did not need to break through the barrier. He simply linked the two parts of the here-and-now together, pierced them like a knitting needle can pierce several different pieces of cloth at once, dragged along two passengers who were already fainting from the overload, and, moments before the rescued would have been smeared between Dantmark and Kishinev, successfully ended their extreme voyage. Breathing hastily with newly working and material lungs, two young gifted people, who had practically learned what it feels like to turn into a radio wave for a moment - thank gods and admins that at least not into a mushroom - collapsed on the carpet of greenery like two dropped sacks of flour. And for another three minutes, they could only cosplay fish on the shore and open their mouths in an attempt to fill their lungs with oxygen.

Before the eyes-consciousness of the shaman, as if a line of epitaph and a reminder of the price of victory ran a laconic image-message:

Minor knowledge is lost: “contract with an elder spirit: Lu'nn Tru'nn”.

The lost talent has been removed from the overall Player Status

Despite the rescue from a trap - and the young man already felt that they had left, though not the jungle, but the accursed dome of the cauldron, the domain of the worm queen's power - there was a little bitterness in his soul at that moment. He could say that the reason was that a virtually unknown spirit had given up his existence for the shaman and had actually gone to a heroic death. That would be true in no small part, but no small reason for the young man's frustration was the fact that he had managed to lose his first purely combat summon of elder rank on literally his first attempt. A fucking record with an “anti” prefix, and in such a cramped environment where there was nothing to save. The spirit had accomplished the task for which a shaman contracts with spirits, but it was still sickening. And the general thinning of the retinue especially the combat part of it, did not add any comfort. If the skinny knight had been the only loss, but he wasn't, not at all.

Glancing at Singha lying there exhausted, the shaman ordered another team of spirits, not the best of them, because the best ones were either in retreat, or had worked out their contracts, or were dead, to cover the place where they had landed with camouflage, household protection, exorcism of vermin and diseases, cover from possible search, and also to call the almost manifested Lizard to guard, even if temporary, replenishing his reserve with a token. There was no strength to get up, and not much desire to get up either, but necessity, as well as interest and greed, drove him to check his Status. Though the understanding that assimilation of a new wave of knowledge had all chance to kill him not physically, but psychologically.

No level was given again. The experience was almost at the same level as at the moment of awakening - about a sixth of a point short of the full scale. But the system evaluated their operation “escape from the worms” as a worthy deed, and, as Stepan realized, it evaluated not only for him but also for his partner, even though he could not, at the current value of the group's meta-skill, see her personal reward and the description of the deed. The kind of, you know, powerful deed that one can't help but compare the reward to that of past similar ones and find the comparison pleasing to oneself. Stepan would have rejoiced, but the mere memory of the horror he had experienced made him send the part of his mind that rejoiced at the award so far away that even Rodislav Gastoldovich Yanin had never been there.

A meaningful deed has been done!

* * *

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

Переведено на Нотабеноиде
http://notabenoid.org/book/86785/580093

Переводчики: Camrad_RIP