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A meaningful deed has been done!

Many came to the land of the kingdom of worms, stayed there, many tried to challenge it by staying close to the previous ones, and many wanted to at least escape from a nightmarish fate, more terrible than any other to be found, but even they had to stay together with everyone else, to continue a terrible and fabulous existence, which has no end and cannot end. But not you, because you managed to get away from there, to get away, remaining yourself, and for this you have a reward corresponding to a worthy deed!

Received: one unit of characteristics to the attributes of Source, Power, and Spirit; two talent points available for distribution only to minor knowledge from the subsection of contracts with higher spirits; five talent points free for distribution, which must be invested in the same knowledge (if the number of talent points exceeds the limit of available upgrades of the selected knowledge, the extra points are burned).

Additional reward from Liarat si Merrinal, Lady of Gifts and Gift-giver, loyal servant of Innelas Innelay: one characteristic unit to the attributes of Sensitivity and Spirit; one random elite meta-skill; three random elite meta-influence tokens.

Five stats in total, the ability to add two contracts with the higher spirits, the ability to close any of the knowledge branches of his choice, and some elite meta-skills and tokens. Risk is rewarding, that's understandable, but the shaman really didn't want to take that risk again, even though his system reference stated that the deed he'd closed had been awarded such an uncharacteristically high reward for the reason that his deed was one step away from the next frontier of such rewarding achievements - a full-fledged feat, albeit at the lowest bar. Is this some kind of hint that he needed to get away from the queen of worms, or even the Queen of Worms, not to run away without a backward glance, but to pathos and epically slay her in direct combat? Maybe he needed to say some other retardedly pompous shit before the fight, eager to free in perdition all those who became part of the Queen?

//“Fuck that! The world has never seen such idiots, they don't even live to my age”. - The shaman thought and decisively stated. His acts put him every time on the brink of death, but with heroic deeds, he liked even less than the famous brave soldier Schweik. - “Yes, yes, someone, of course, has to finish the terrible tales that are such lost ruins and what lives in them. Yes, yes, I do occasionally make my way into altruism if it costs me nothing or costs me not too much. But this particular horror story will definitely not be finished by me. Amen, fuck.”
Швейк
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Soldier_%C5%A0vejk

With a groan and a creak, he stood back up and began to move sluggishly, realizing that at this rate he would be in bed for at least twenty-four hours, but more likely for two. The result of his ordeal and the constant replenishment of his reserve in the most harmless way possible had affected him surprisingly mildly but the last chord with the repeated acceleration of the higher spirit had worn him down a little. With a quiet grit of his teeth, he managed to get into a normal position, feeling the water gurgling nearby, and, turning his head, found a full-fledged river just under ten meters wide behind him, but very muddy and deep, with an extremely turbulent current. For the next hour and a half, he spent the next hour and a half strengthening his defenses, creating a protection line, setting up the mundane aspects of spirit support and camouflage, and admiring the same tropical landscape. The only difference was that the magical background was noticeably lower, and there were more large animals. The death roar of a poor creature caught by a predator sounded loud enough to make him sigh and strengthen his defenses once more.

Finally, after some thought, he summoned one of the last of the senior spirits at his disposal, designed to be summoned once for just such an occasion. Also a cover, primarily against magical search, including shamanic or advanced blood search. Just in case he left behind an auric cast, a full-fledged auric cast, not a maimed one at the expense of the Patchwork Echo, and the search for him would be very diligent. Stepan thought that was not enough protection, because he had a daughter of his mighty mother lying there, who might well be able to smell her now that she was back in touch with him. The young man now has no strength for aggressive negotiations or attempts to get away before this mommy starts to ask him about the condition of her daughter. And he somehow vaguely suspected that simply saying - here are your possessions, honorable, and I'm off, see you later - would be difficult, problematic, or simply impossible. No, he would talk to her first, discuss the options and, if necessary, erase her memory... but what was the use, if this world knew about the Tablet of Souls, and his grief-stricken partner also got bonuses from the generosity of the System. These bonuses, of course, will be less than his, just according to the logic of events and the girl's contribution to their rescue, but even half of what Stepan received will be enough to become a very noticeable leap. Suspicious to the extreme.

The growth of aura indicators, moreover such a complex one, didn't turn him off, against the background of the experience even refreshed these feelings, but made him stop call and concentrate on his state and the awards. He left the increase of some branch of knowledge by five points for later, very much for later, and also stopped paying attention to the whole complex of sensations from the aura growing in all directions. He promised himself to check the quality of the improvements later too. He focused on the tokens and meta-skills as the only types of rewards that wouldn't burden him too much. It wasn't that his consciousness was floating or going out, but he was frankly slowing down. The strain on his brain was taking its toll, and that mental crap kick from the wormy abomination hadn't gone unnoticed. He felt like a boxer who had fought all the rounds but missed a dozen blows to the head and was knocked down a couple of times. Everything is humming, and floating, and instead of thoughts in his head, the monkey is banging drums.

The meta-skill was called “distributed charge enhancement for meta-skill I”. It's really useful and really elite. He couldn't even believe it was given by the Autogoddess. The essence of the skill is extremely simple. For every three dozen points spent in the meta-skills section, any of the meta-skills that have activatable charges in them get an extra charge. Any kind, any kind at all. From clock or replenishing life with reserve, to gifting characteristics or properties on behalf of Her Milfness. It's already pretty cool at the current level, but this skill is pumpable, and the pumping limit is like the same Store. And yes, in the standard list of available to take for regular talents this meta-skill was absent. If to judge from the experience of pumping past skills increasing levels will decrease the number of other meta-skills required for the set of charges. This is already serious, very, very serious.

After some simple calculations, the shaman found out he had exactly forty talents invested in the meta-skills section, including the line he had just received. He had pumped up this branch quite a lot mostly by quests, not by personal investments. Among the rewards for these quests, meta-skills were bestowed most often. So, one charge in the appropriate skills, which at the same time also updated all the charges at once at the time of receiving a new skill - this small but nice bonus. In principle, this line is worth pumping if possible. You pump at once and the clock, and both replenishments, well, and more Autodivine gifts, but it is so, secondary against the background of already available. Taking into account at the moment the fourth rank of the standard meta-skill of simple and not rare-elite is the limit of pumping. This way of increasing the number of charges becomes especially valuable.

The first Token turned out to be really elite and most useful. His favorite, especially indispensable after a hard battle. Already once given and on the same day used to update the stock of summons and contracts, including even the summoning of completely similar in-function spirits to replace the lost or retired up to the bar of a strong spirit. Spirit senior and higher contracts were renewed and renegotiated, but new ones to replace the retired forever due to disembodiment did not call and did not bind. It's a pity because the earthling has already begun to look at the restoration of the skinny knight. The number of charges is different from one: “standard charge renewal of the shaman's contract book” had exactly nine charges. They could be used at intervals of no more than once every two months, while the range of “rollback-renewal” was only a month.

The second of the tokens was an Autodivine token, called “Sweetly Passionate Dreams”, which had fifty charges and varied in effect depending on whether it was used on himself, a member of the group, or someone else. Acting equally on men and women, the token induced guaranteed and very realistic wet dreams for two calendar months, and each night the dreams would be completely different, with different women, but always women and only beautiful women. The victim is guaranteed to wake up in his own bodily excretions, as well as guaranteed to remember his dreams perfectly, and the dreams themselves are centered on the themes of soft and not very soft erotic domination of beautiful women over the sleeper - feet, sitting on the face, games with delaying release are not obligatory, although they are very frequent. What will necessarily be present in each of the dreams is the use of charms and mental subjugation with a very high reliability of the transmitted sensations.

The victim, who is not the player, may realize the unnaturalness and impropriety of such regular, detailed, high-quality dreams. In which will be both completely unfamiliar and perfectly familiar to the sleeper characters, if the latter falls under the definition of a beautiful woman. But you can make a separate specification to make realizing incorrectness completely impossible. Yes, there will be irritation at regular changes of sheets and linen, but no more, nothing strange will be seen neither by the victim himself, nor by security checks, nor even by their personal psychotherapist, to whom the victim will recount his dreams. For individuals not included in the group everything will end there, only a high probability of turning even the most heterosexual girl into “(not) a slightly bi”, as a result of two-month nightly marathons, as well as the need to go broke on laundry. Things are somewhat different for the player or members of his group. At the end of two months, the victim gets a free level that fills the experience scale regardless of its completeness, as well as a free random little knowledge and an equally free property. Also random. And only once.

Oh yes, one more fun detail. This elite influence can be applied not only by simply looking at the victim in the crowd, but even by the image, if it reliably enough conveys the victim's appearance, or even by memory. At any moment, even on the other side of the world, but within the limits of this world or other worlds close to this world. Stepan checked separately with the reference. In general, the thing is extremely useless, first of all, because even if he decided to strengthen his bloodsuckers - the token will not work, because for its activation the victim must be able to sleep and regularly fall into that sleep. For the same reason, this effect will not work on demons or other forms of higher undead with higher cognitive functions, nor wormy abominations.

And certainly, the young man was not going to use this thing on himself, not one of the fifty charges. So he had to keep this token as a small weight or use it for small deeds. He could, of course, try to put erotic dreams on the representatives of the elven aristocracy from that memorable almanac but it was about as much use as begging Rodislav Gastoldovich Yanin to add points at least to a C-minus. Not even zero, but negative values.

The third token was also marked by the Great Milf's favorite pastimes, it had only fifteen charges and was called “Muscular Beauty”, and it was the token that could even be applied, if not for some individual aspects. What was unusual about the token was that it could only be used on a single target, as it was normally only female, up to three times. The first application of the token embellished the appearance of a woman or girl, making even an ugly or plain girl very pretty, and also increased the breasts by a size or two and, as it is not difficult to guess from the name of the token, added relief, athleticism and at least fifteen centimeters of height. Also, this first use increased physicality by one attribute, which, so to speak, can already be considered a success, as well as the rewiring of reflexes for the use of a new body.

The second application added another three or four sizes of breasts, more pronounced muscles, no longer an athletic maiden but a pumped-up lady, added twenty-five centimeters to her height, and increased her Constitution by two attributes. The third application made the breasts even bigger, even by the standards of the new huge body, the muscles became such that they remained at the very edge of where muscularity would pass from seductiveness to the category of very specific hobbies not for everyone. The height was also added, about another thirty centimeters, which, if you apply this effect on a woman initially not too low height will turn her into such a giant, which and on the other ogre will look down from above. Ah yes, the third application will give three units of Constitution and a boost of several points of knowledge invested in melee combat skills of a certain type. If the victim was proficient in the battle art itself, the development will move towards what they already know how to do as it is. The final result will match the level of someone who has spent a lifetime learning and honing the skill of killing and surviving in battle.

In general, universal recipe for creating a bodyguard, albeit with a rather specific but still cute appearance. Stepan even found a peculiar filter built into the token, allowing him to see what the selected target would look like at each stage of improvement. After applying this filter on the still-turned-off Singha, the young man blinked, trying to get the image out of his head and checking three times if he had accidentally activated the token. No, it was beautiful, but damn it, just damn it, just damn it to hell, especially since there was one more fun detail that would prevent him from using it on the shaman or anyone else. The essence is that this change, first, gradually increases, lasting from three to five days, during which the victim will eat a lot. The improvement will last longer if the victim does not have the money to eat a month's supply of food in three days. Second, this effect is not normalized. In the sense that it will be clear to everyone, including the victim, that there is some not very clear and clearly unnatural shit going on.
Тацумаки
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/DwtPeIPuQ4Y?feature=share

If it were possible to make the weight gain, height, and boobs growth as imperceptible as the effect of his other tokens, he would have improved Sylvia the first thing he did when he returned to Dantmark. Plus six to her Constitution, for a top vampire, with the power she already had and new knowledge that would match the bloodsucker's existing combat knowledge. But the growth of Malter, or anyone else from her nest, would be about as invisible to the whole of Dantmark as a parachute behind a cunning spy trying to break into the general staff.

The only thing to do is look for a specific lady. Hire her, probably having rendered some very serious help, take a lot of oaths and promises certified by spirits, and only then upgrade, getting a bodyguard warrior. Only in this case, it will be necessary to look for a new worker far from home. So she changed and pumped up not meeting with her acquaintances. The personality will be remarkable to the extreme. Honestly, it's easier to do without a personal Amazon-Olympian in handy, than to solve all these little things. The young man tried not to think about the fact that Her Divine Milfness unambiguously implied the fact that her Chosen One would not conclude any agreements and contracts, but would simply take and solder the victim's brains in the right way. Only the thought that his namesake's tastes, under which all these tokens were issued, were so wide that he should have fallen into them, the bastard!

With a sigh, the young man stood up. Checking the time he realized that it had taken barely twenty minutes to sort out the tokens and meta-skill, and activated one of the charges to refresh his shamanic summons, covering their position with additional cloaking groups of spirits, just as he was strengthening his concealment from targeted searches. He purchased a couple of the most ordinary mattresses and blankets possible at the System Store with protection from moisture and vermin by the powers of quality household magic and dragged sleeping Singha over to the mattress. Not by hand, though it would be a perfect occasion to grope her and get some moral compensation for all the experience, but by air spirits, covers her with a blanket and, a moment later, falls on the neighboring mattress himself.

He used what little strength he had left in his exhausted mind to check himself and his partner, or rather their auras, for worm infections. More for reassurance than anything else. It was too obvious that the creature's power and magic outside its realm wasn't even weakening, it just wasn't working. But he checked anyway. Checked the defense-film of the elder spirit that did not break even under the will of the queen, scanned every shred of his spirit, and planted a few checkers of his own into the body of the sleeper. Her retinue was either dead or half-dead, having used up all their strength, and so would not be able to interfere, nor did she have the necessary expertise in quick summoning. Her cloak, too, was depleted to the brim, slowly filling up again and bringing tears of greed to his eyes. He wanted that cloak for himself, for himself! No, he could not complain, she had worked her gift faithfully, saving their skins, lives, and postmortem, but it still hurt. Well, nothing, but he has a token-enhanced mask! And stockings enhanced by the reward for the assignment... yep.

An unbearably brief moment later, he was already asleep and dreaming a new batch of dreams, and the posted doubled sleepy brigade of spirits, the best of them, covered their dreams with an inexorable guard.

He survived, after all.

He is alive.

Alive.

* * *

The flow of visions this time was particularly turbulent and jerky, constantly changing, reflecting the state of mind and psyche of the fatally tired shaman, who in these dreams realized himself even less than usual, only floating along as a soulless and thoughtless observer. Armies of ninja-pirates-zombie robots marched with forged boots, opposing attacking wedges of witches and wizards flying on broomsticks, led by a very brutal and pumped-up Harry Spotter with a wrench instead of a magic wand. Toad Pepe whispered ominously, demanding that they start Operation Wednesday right now, or they would definitely be late and not in time. Skyscrapers were falling in the flames of explosions and cities were burning, in the midst of which two giant combat hamsters were rampaging, burning everything around them with lasers from their eyes in an attempt to nail each other. There was a colorfully painted residential van trailer, in which a group of very stoned students were having fun, celebrating their graduation, except that this van was driving through open space and nobody was embarrassed by it. Sadly sighing human-deer cut off a piece of the name cake and looked longingly into the starry sky, where hundreds of thousands of lights of spaceships were visible, now and then taking off or docking with the colossal space port.

The images merged into a room filled with stacks of papers, in which a very tired-looking, gray-haired old man, neatly cut, with a well-groomed beard and a keen, attentive gaze that had not lost its sharpness despite his fatigue and age, was sitting at a desk, almost hidden behind those papers. The magical monocle in his eye glittered now and then, imprinting on a special crystal separate fragments of denunciations or reports, and his hand wrote new and new amendments to the already approved plan. He was not unhappy with his work, the old man, but he was tired of it and would have gladly given his position to anyone competent enough to do it, and retired on a well-deserved pension. Fortunately, he had a suitable candidate in mind, who was also a distant relative, so the process of transferring powers had already been going on, and not for the first year. Would have gone faster, but they are both professionals and have clear ideas about how to work as a secret guard of the Noble House of Dantrel, and sometimes these ideas do not coincide. And then they had to argue, politely, thoroughly, and without haste, to clarify the rightness and defend their points of view.

Some of the agents would not want to work with a successor who had trampled on the feet of their acquaintances and men. Others had sworn to serve the old honorable lord personally but had not given their oaths to the new mistress and would not want to give them so easily. Even an ordinary vassal treaty is not a bill of sale, it can't just be taken and given to someone else. And when it comes to the oaths sworn before the face of Lothar by those who have been living in the shadows all their lives and walking under an executioner's axe or a murderer's lash, everything becomes even more complicated. Some were ready to discuss the transition under the wing of the new mistress, simply demanding better conditions or loosening the choker on their throats. Others categorically wanted to get out of the game and live in peace. Some of them could be sweetened with symbolic or not-so-symbolic concessions, others had to be pressured and demanded, and others were helped by foul play with the use of means influencing consciousness or subconsciousness. Some could be retired, since they were so categorically demanded, others had to be persuaded and transferred at least to non-staff informants, and others were destined for a stone sack, interrogation, and an unmarked grave, as they had known too much.

The old and perpetually sullen-looking specialist was very tired at work. He had too weak a magical gift, which he had never tried to develop much after he had found out that he would never be able to master it even with the full support of his family. The gift is weak, and the powers can't be constantly fed and fueled by alchemy, even expensive ones. He's been taking almost double doses of elixirs for the last few years, but the results are getting worse each time. If he continues at this pace for at least five more years, he stands a good chance of being found one morning at this very table, already cold and stiff. Rictus de Myrtin was a man of extreme self-sacrifice and ruthlessness to himself to an extent almost as great as he was ruthless to others, whether allies or enemies. But a certain degree of lust for life he retained, and so every day less and less of the duties were personally upon him, more and more of them were assumed by the protégé.

It was the very same protégé who was knocking at his door now. He recognized the way she knocked. The tips of her fingernails tapping a rhythm on the door surface, a frequent staccato of sharp strokes. She could enter without waiting for answers; she knew all the keys to the defenses, and some of the defenses she could put up herself, using a far more developed magical gift, just on the edge of Rictus's unfulfilled skill at standing. Nevertheless, he waited for the required pause of three heartbeats and only then let her in, and she dutifully endured the pause. Also a demonstrative gesture. A demonstration that he respected her to the utmost by letting her in almost immediately, but that she respected him to the same utmost by not allowing herself even small liberties. Allysira de Fell enters the study with all her grace, closing the door with a snap of her fingers, and only here allows herself to shed the image of the haughty and beautiful mistress, reclining relaxedly in the guest chair.

It was as uncomfortable as it could be, too soft and too hard at the same time, and it seemed to her to be the ideal of comfort. She was as tired as the occupant of the office. Even more so, for she had more on her plate. Above average height, with beautiful hair the color of a very dark chestnut, marvelous greenish-emerald eyes, a pleasant face with a stamp of noble aristocratism, an excellent figure, and regal posture. Here she looked exactly what she really was. She was a tired woman, over fifty years old, even though she looked only barely over twenty who was fed up with the company of stupid and even more stupid subordinates. Her dark blue dress is immaculately clean and fits perfectly, her elbow-length gloves cover her graceful hands. Her expensive jewelry, which is also a set of magical amulets, flickers in time with the pulse of her overworked aura. For a while, she just lies silently in her chair, a relaxed and blurred jellyfish, while her formal superior goes through the papers.

With a quiet and despairing groan, the woman overcomes herself, adopting a look befitting her status and personality, and then takes the documents handed out by the old man, specially prepared and processed for her. The work of the very agents who, out of malice, principle, or calculation, deal only with the current head of the secret guard, but not with the future head. Of course, they do not refuse directly, and do not show disrespect, but, as soon as you go directly to them, then there are excuses, deficiencies, or even Endor's strike, when a subordinate does only that and exactly what was asked of them, following orders to the letter and showing no initiative. Tiresome as it is, tiresome! Yes, she is working on it, who re-bought, who re-persuaded, who eliminated from the sin away, taking advantage of the confusion after the recent calamity and the opportunity to pull the ligature by the neck to account for old sins, but still tiresome. Some of the problems had been solved, though, because one extremely insolent Quadroon with a quarter of dark elf blood who wanted to loosen her collar by showing formal allegiance solely to Sullen Rictus was no longer a problem.

She so overflowing with pride and self-importance, cunning, experienced, and devious. She survived and destroyed three of her patrons before coming under the aegis of Rictus, and got caught on such a primitive trifle! It's not just the cosmetics you buy that need to be checked. You have to check the people you buy it from. Check if they have taken a cast of the signature of your amulets, selecting a set of influences strictly under them, imperceptibly passing seemingly reliable protection. After cute Riri inhaled the third component of the potion prepared for her at their next meeting, her honed mind began to rapidly dull and her will finally began to fade. To finish the processing was a matter of only a few fleeting conversations and one long personal meeting, unspoken and only incognito, of course, in front of other people's eyes they can't stand each other so diligently that it's a pity to ruin such a well-established opinion for everyone. But how selflessly Rizaïra polished her bud with her tongue at that meeting, what lightning she threw with her eyes, sincerely believing that in this way she was expressing to her non-principal all her contempt!

Alas, there was nothing to boast about besides the claws had been launched into the head of the Quadroon after several months of searching for approaches. And the last few months were simply horrifying. One trouble came after another, failure after failure, and if that stupid case with the tropical birds could still be written off and buried in excuses, the rest could not. The uncovered network of influence of the damned August, or, to be honest, of his long-eared bloody slut from the cellars of the forest colleagues of Allisira nested under the wing of Madame Vibrisda, who had been repeatedly checked and considered to be completely controlled, could be considered a success. If it had been the result of her agency or a lucky hunch, and not a mere coincidence. The old woman had been unlucky, and if there had been anything other than bad luck, for rituals as reliable as Lie Eating don't just break all of a sudden, it was worse. So that assassination and framing were done intentionally screaming to knock a dangerous agentess out of the ranks of the game's chips.

And someone made the move. Someone had organized it and strangled the wolfhounds de Dantrel and the wolves de Mont Ros, strangled to weaken a rival, not out of a desire to help. Day and night, day and night, he and Rictus worked, looking for those who would benefit, looking in the testimony and knowledge of Vibrisda and her underlings or the tainted ones for what had alarmed the yet unknown player and caused him to spend his energies to get rid of the old Maman at any cost. Seeking and failing to find, only to miss another blow, also unclear from where and how it happened. A blow that cost the city a master of magic, who would now have ten years to heal and thirty years to restore the lost pieces of aura, which were not sure that they would be restored at all. Costing five dead and three crippled weaker gifted, four of whom were full-fledged and experienced adepts, and one of whom was Miller's direct apprentice. Almost costing Miller himself, who only at the last moment managed to wrest himself from the grip of what had come to call instead of the usual - well, maybe not so usual - elemental of the Hardness.

And then there's the reputational damage. We can't forget about them! A representative of a noble trading house was nearly killed by a mental attack. A representative of another noble house was missing without a clue, and this one was the heiress of one of Morgrave's most powerful gifted, who had the temper of a mad steppe wench! And Borshakl the Winemaker had gotten fed up with his, gods forgive the lady's inappropriate words, faggot whining about how he had lost his talented gifted mouser, and now there would be no one to get rid of the mice. And somehow he managed, the old manly man, to get through to her reception and personally hand over his petition for justice. He was so persistent that if he hadn't gone completely into trade, she would have tried to get him as a freelancer, for she needed such minds. She would have to negotiate with the guild to get them to relieve the winemaker of his mice problem since he had made his complaint to her publicly and justifiably.

Well, they will work. They will call you to account, demand old favors, blackmail you with old and new sins, promise to forgive those sins, lie about forgiving those sins, and just lie a lot. Such is the work in their industry, nothing to do, it is always worth remembering that those with whom you once again dishonestly behaved, will gladly bite your throat, just show them a drop of pity. Some of them will literally tear your throat out, like the bloody Malter, who's been active lately. There was a reason why vampires were so interested in the events with that elemental, especially in the fate of the missing girl. Somehow suspiciously this situation aroused their active interest, if only by the possibility to start supplying their goods to the Morgravian wind chantress, who sent her daughter for negotiations, disguising her visit as a mere escort of a possible future fiancé. Well, or the honorable Maega, to hell with her bad temper in the same pit where her daughter fell, simply hired these bloodsuckers for a possible search. Not the most surprising outcome of possible events, a blood search few could do better than those who live by blood.

Well, Rictus and Allisira would find all the clues sooner or later. But it was better sooner, of course, because every time she came out of his lordship's office as if she had been really fucked there, only it would be better if she had been really fucked, and not only moral violence, in which the venerable Herbert de Dantrel was a recognized connoisseur and master.

A moment later, the pair of individuals getting along perfectly had already returned to their hard and thankless work for the good of man.

One very particular man.

* * *

The world is blurring, spaceships are sailing through the expanses of the Grand Theater, reflecting the invasion of spaceships from the expanses of the Very Grand Theater, space striptease paratroopers are flying in combat centrifuges armed with combat poles, opposing the embodied idea of toxic behavior in the Internet, and from above, numerous girls are watching, who came to watch the victory of male striptease over common sense. Other images in these dreams are so far from understanding, as well as far from normality, that it is impossible to realize them. Some images are like nightmare visions and are simply not digested by the mind, but there are others, which gradually acquire understandable features.

In these features, the shaman sees himself again in the middle of Backlands, but differently. It's not a jungle, but a wooded savannah, less green and more arid. This time his condition and situation are even worse than it was for his awake double recently. Not only is he in the midst of a wild and aggressive nature, but he has also managed to be there without being able to use his gift. The young man can't realize what he was running away from in this dream and why he used all available meta-skills in afterburner mode. But now he is paying for the temporary increase in power with astonishing impotence. Spirits do not respond to the call, the aura has shrunk to that of a normal ungifted guy, there are only meta-skills, even not all of them, and his bad temper. Most of the system currency is blocked until the magic channels are opened and chakras are tapped, but he can buy something even now. A bundle of quality household amulets against parasites, diseases, bites, bad climate and to scare away common and nowhere magical predators. Without it, he would just die here, in the middle of fucking nothing.

Then he takes a spear, a simple one, enchanted for sharpness and durability, but no more, and on his belt he hangs the same machete, for chopping branches on his way. The amulet of combat-type protection allowed by the system is no longer enough, so he is left so defenseless that he is almost naked. He becomes no less naked a little later, stripped down to his pants, cut off below the knees, wearing only them and a string of household amulets. The heat is so hot that even the presence of cooling charms does not save him much, and there are fewer and fewer trees around, and more and more often there are flat and unmarked areas of savannah. He would have taken off his shoes, but then he was guaranteed to get his feet pierced, for he barely managed to avoid such injuries as it was. In the end, navigating by the sun hanging in the sky, indifferent to human suffering, he manages to get to the bank of a very large river, fifty meters wide, and a bunch of crocodiles on the bank warming their eggs in the sun. He walks along this river, and Stepan the Sleeper watches this path from the side so that he sees perfectly well the moment when a thin and short spittle dart strikes the traveler, deprived of any protection, in the back, hitting the place where the neck passes into the back.

Without realizing the situation, the young man involuntarily flinches as if from a bee sting, trying to reach the stung place and immediately, after a few seconds, sits on his ass, looks at the ground with a dazed look, and quickly and without a struggle turns off. The dart turned out not to be lethal, but sleepy. A pair of figures dressed only in necklaces of some sort and straw skirts stop above the sleeping pale-skinned man, letting themselves be examined. Both attackers have very black skin, the lean bodies of natural hunters, hair braided in some primitive dreadlocks, a set of spears, a couple of darts, and a blowpipe, as well as not insignificant tits and those lush buttocks that women of this phenotype can boast of. Yes, yes, both of the Amazons who attacked Stepan were Amazons, and quite cinematic in the sense that these combative and unimpressive beauties were beautiful, not ugly. And yes, they had jewelry in their noses, nostrils, and ears, but without the fanaticism that could be found in other tribes of Earth Africa. After a short talk and a shrug of the shoulders, they tied ropes around the pliable and motionless carcass of their victim, threw it on the shoulder of the pair that had lost the battle in some game of rock-paper-scissors, and dragged the load somewhere to the west.

A change of frame shows Stepan already naked and lying in some straw tent. A gifted Negro woman, clearly an adept of some form of witchcraft, looks at him. She is beautiful and tall, with a gorgeous mane of well-groomed hair, not dreadlocks. She looks at Stepan with various forms of magical vision and, for a moment, her eyes open shockingly in genuine surprise. She questioned the two hunters in much more detail and looked at the captive, who continued to sleep, in a predatory way, as if he were a very successful acquisition. After finishing her questions and ordering the same pair of hunters and warriors to follow the pale-skinned man's tracks, she dismisses them and thinks. This boy should not be in this place, but she could not just slaughter him as she would a man who entered the lands delineated by the Shabokadomba uss'aballtug, not after what she had seen in his blood, that state of the spiritual body that determines heritage and fertility.

This place, the domain of her tribe, lies under the blessing of a mighty spirit, mighty among the mighty, who has long since left this place, but his boon is still here and still strong. It keeps the women of this tribe, makes them healthier and stronger, tougher and even more beautiful, though that was not the original purpose of the blessing. With a sound spirit, there is a sound body, and in a sound body, there is beauty. It was dangerous and difficult to fight with a tribe where the mother-chief and her daughter received a special boon of strength, and the mother-hungan and her daughter received the gift of magic, and there was no reason to do so. So the tribe lived relatively peacefully, hunted moderately, and kept their numbers about equal, just enough to keep the old blessing strong enough. Sometimes, on particularly good days, the shamaness-hungan could, could, could call to the great Nglama-Kagobadonto, slightly strengthening and renewing this blessing.

The women of the tribe lived a long time, longer than the time allotted by the unconditioned, keeping their outer beauty and strength in their bodies until the very last day, but not to say that they lived much longer, excluding only the hungan and the chief. These lived even longer, going to the ancestors only having prepared their daughters, but not before. Men rarely entered the tribe's lands, more as prisoners and very rarely as guests, renewing blood and allowing new life to be born and then driven away. A few weeks a year there were great bargains on the very border of the tribe's lands, and then the blood was diluted more often. However, the beautiful and wild, unbridled, and powerful daughter of the savannahs was also often kidnapped. Blood was not only diluted but also spilled. But the power of the hungan and the chief, whatever she might be called to a place, deprived of the ability to leave that place, terrified the men and protected the huntresses.

Men were not supposed to be here. Each of them strained the ancient boon a little, making it spend its energy a little faster. But for the sake of this young man, yes, perhaps he could, even should, stay here longer. With a quiet throaty chant, in which magic was also invested, the Hungan performs his witchcraft, pouring a special potion down the throat of the pale-faced and young milk. The one opens his eyes, looking before him and seeing nothing, beginning to listen. Then answering the hungan's questions, listening again, listening, listening, listening, agreeing and believing, believing everything the wise and beautiful, powerful and desirable one says. To believe and forget that once upon a time he could like, ignite passion for any women other than her tribe and breed. He had always wanted only those bodies that were black like the night, only their color driving him crazy, awakening passion and desire, making his seed burst forth, eager to touch white to black, white on black, white on black, on black buttocks, on black tits, on a black body, a desirable body, a passionate body.

He needs to learn.

He needs to remember.

He needs to forget it.

Only to remember.

By her will.

* * *

The high ceiling of a beautifully lit stone room, which was part of a whole complex of underground utilities, in which, however, the living had not reigned for a long time. But those who had ordered the construction of this complex, often those who had seen it alive, did. The temperature and general atmosphere in this place were very comfortable, surprisingly comfortable, as for the representation of the living about those who had managed to escape from life, but had not come to death. What a surprise, but the ancient dead also love the simple pleasures of life, at least those are still available to them. The list of what is available varies greatly depending on the kind of undead appearance that was chosen for the sake of preserving eternity. Here, in this room, is the one who has benefited more than others from such treatment, well, or less than others. Opinions on how full existence is vampirization vary to the point of diametric opposition. Sometimes it happened that in debates for the correctness of these points of view non-living blood was shed and eternal non-lives of the disputants were ended.

Completely undead dead mages claim that vampires, in fear of a true step into eternity, branded themselves with an incurable thirst that bound them to the alive, deprived them of the very possibility of cutting themselves off from the world in complete independence, condemned them to the death of non-life, if only to perish the life that gives them blood. Vampires believed they were the only ones who retained all, or at least most of, the advantages of stepping into eternity, without losing the joys of life, the joys of the carnal and small, but keeping the clarity of consciousness and the will to exist. The stories of lichs and ghosts who have gone completely insane in their hatred of the living and hated life most of all because it gives them everything they sacrificed are enough to fill another library, while vampires if they go mad, certainly not from longing for the past. A lich, on the other hand, could sit in a laboratory for three hundred years and not even turn up his nose, while even a superior vampire would dry out to the point where it would take a couple of years to recover, even with a fine liquid diet and the care of loyal servants.

However, the woman sitting in the cozy and soft chair made of scarlet wood and upholstered in the best eastern cashmere had made her choice long ago and did not argue with anyone about its correctness. Moreover, she agreed, nodded, agreed with any disputant who argued about the inferiority of vampirism before a full transformation of one kind or another, and even helped to choose arguments and examples in his favor. After the first few times, they stopped arguing or proving her inferiority, but there was no shortage of those who wanted to put her to rest for good. However, those who wished for it left their desires as desires. Even the undead needed some form of diplomacy. Even among the vampires, few could match her in her ability to make a network of influence around the world, in every organization, every city. It was said that even in the Forest she had her network of informants and agents, and given certain special circumstances, those rumors had a good chance of being true.

The mistress of the richly furnished hall was outwardly beautiful and plain, simple, understandable, and unthreatening. Her appearance was beautiful not the kind of beauty that defines an ancient Blood Lady, majestic and powerful, beautiful and terrifying to the point of shuddering, no. She was the kind of beauty that ordinary girls from the next village, the next house in the city block, the next shop of craftsmen, the next estate of an aristocrat, and she was a maid, not the mistress of that estate, were known for. She had never hidden the fact that she had been turned almost by accident, as a temporary distraction from the hunters who would chase a fresh bloodsucker instead of an older one. And she had not been converted by any of the true lords but a fledgling kicked out of the nest and able to do next to nothing. She was a simple street thief with only a thirst for life and a willingness to tear the cruel world apart and win.

And now, how many of those ancient lords have passed away and died, and here she is, in their place, ruling their former fiefdom, getting everything she could wish to get from non-life. She was short, about seventeen years of age, thin and with the minimum of the forms necessary for a woman, with a beautiful and slightly rumpy face, bright blue eyes, blond hair braided in two dwarf braids, just below the shoulders, dressed in extremely simple and discreet dresses of primitive cut. She didn't look like a bloodsucker queen, but like a girl who'd gotten lost and accidentally fallen into this dungeon, not even too pale, with an abundant scattering of freckles uncharacteristic of vampires. An impression equally mistaken and dangerous, which has become a fatal misconception for very, very many who have chosen to cross this girl and her interests. She never argues, nothing can make her speak out directly against it, nothing can remove the radiant smile from her face, whether cheerful and laughing or modest and shy, nothing can force her to bared her fangs in threat.

Long gone were those who could be deceived by her image. Those who could be deceived by this image of her, long gone were those who would have underestimated her, something she regretted at times. It had been much easier then, though in some ways more difficult. However, there were and never would be those who underestimated her among the still living or not so experienced undead. Here, say, a tall, stately and proud vampire hunter, the fifth daughter of her noble family, who recognized the bloodsucker in the girl under her gaze and immediately tried her and eliminated her with an enchanted and consecrated sword. Lyra loved, sincerely and wholeheartedly, to go out into the field herself, looking for interesting prey or specimens to add to her collection. Having not killed out of thirst in nearly a century and a half, she loved to try new things and had a considerable passion for finding ever more amusing and capable of dispelling her boredom, new challenges to her bloody magic. She had no rivals in the charms and bloody control sections of her magic, even among creatures more ancient than herself.

The glorious, combative, courageous, experienced, and passionate daughter of the House of de Cerst, nicknamed Victoria by her father, was her next catch, a combination of entertainment and work. She could mix these two substances masterfully, following the ancient wisdom of the half-breed people. That wisdom said that if you do what you love and manage to make it profitable and surplus, you will be doomed not to work a day in your life. Or non-life. However, a more extended part of this proverb also says that if you turn your favorite occupation into a source of success and income a little too much, you will be doomed not only to lose your favorite occupation but also not to know a day of rest and relaxation. Lyra, however, perfectly coped with her duties, and to try to catch her at the moment of unpreparedness, at the moment of another game, has not tried even old Seshsh. It is she outwardly irresponsible and obeying her whims, but in fact, each of her walks into the big and living world for the sake of new impressions is the result of a very long and very painstaking preparation.

Then there will be rumors and speculations about how she is related to Fortune, that she manages to hit the most vulnerable moment, steal the desired toy, and retreat, then they will attribute her frivolity and extreme luck. But before that, she studies the approaches, gathers information from informants, and prepares a dozen escape routes to the point of portal penetration and at least fifty reserve lairs. All in order to get the impression that the bitch Liramil just took and went without hiding especially to the ball in the ducal palace, right there seduced the ducal son, depriving the cutie of the back side innocence, and convinced him that he was that maid and that he had dreamed of being a boy and a ducal heir, and now run and lick the slit and feet of his maid-girlfriend and his no less charming and charmed sister.

Both sister and brother were then returned to their normal state of mind. Lyra's control was burned out and reversed, but it was rumored that until his death, during the next power-sharing, Romio, who remained extremely handsome and youthful with potions, liked to change into a dress. But what was claimed for sure was that the Duke de Versadil had lowered the intensity of support for the clerics and stopped the persecution of some of the long-known and conflict-averse nests. She had a very clear proof that there was no war between herself and her students and the de Versadil family. If that unspoken war had been real, the Duke would not have been able to find his heir.

"You said you never found out, huh? Who was in the mask, huh, girlfriend?" She asks her almost-almost-sister Vi, stroking her face with her bare foot until she starts tickling her foot with the tip of her tongue. "Yee-haw, how sneaky you are, girlfriend, how clever, oh, I don't even know what to do! But all right, all right, my kindness knows no bounds, I'll take you out quietly, get you out of sight... if you promise to do something else for me, okay, sister?"

The vampire hunter, who rolled her eyes in mild and unkind irritation, having taken almost two weeks to solve her cases, during which her team and colleagues would not even look for the missing woman, only intensified her attempts to tickle the vicious ghoul, covering her legs with quick and sharp kisses, getting closer and closer to the lips of her flower. In the imagination of the huntress, who had already told her all her secrets, of course, in secret and under the honest-to-god word not to tell anyone, she had seduced the pretty Lyra, taking advantage of the fact that the girl who had just stepped into non-life did not understand anything, believed everything and obeyed in every possible way the huntress who had promised not to harm her. It is only necessary to calm her down, and what calms her down better than a dozen tender kisses on tender feet or a skittish tongue on a flower bud? Why do you have to think about where to go, why do you leave the city walls, why do you step into the portal - what portal, sister, there was no portal - why do you talk mostly by yourself, why did you agree to give your little sister a little sip of scarlet drop and all the other little things?

Little things don't bother the good sisters girlfriends.

Lyra stretched her legs out with a satisfied smile on her mischievous face. She placed both feet on the face of the kneeling de Cerst in her chair, completely suppressing her thought activity. She had always been good at direct tactile stupor-type charms. She had been able to apply it with literally any part of her body, not necessarily her hand or lips, since her early years. She was even better at it with her feet, especially if she convinced her sister-girlfriend in advance that she was putting her feet directly into her clever head, bypassing the bone, which made all her thoughts disappear, replaced by her girlfriend's feet. She sighed tiredly and a little playfully, even if the only witnesses were hiding in the closet agent of the Secret Guard of the Forest following her assignment to keep an eye on Lyra, one of the three most influential vampires in the world, for a century now. She took the soft pink panties she had pulled down earlier in her hands, removing her feet from Victoria's face in one motion and pulling a piece of her clothing over her face.

The huntress rolled her eyes and almost cummed, stopping at the very edge of what she wanted, and then began to count slowly from a thousand to zero, preparing to fall asleep at the number of winters she had lived. Let her sleep, let her bookmarks settle down a little, let her mind, softened by Lyra's work, come to a comparative stability. She opened the closet without "noticing" the elven woman fondling herself for her alchemy-enhanced tits. She changed into another dress, also simple, but made of expensive and status-appropriate fabric. That lost argument has almost expired, but for seventy-one more years, nine months, and five days she must wear clothes worthy of her status, not her favorite plain dresses. The ancient ghost had done her in, tricked her, she admitted.

Having taken from under the buttock of the “disguised” elf her report for the remaining in the Forest superiors, Lyra “does not notice” how “accidentally” puts it to the rest of the correspondence standing on a small table in the corner. Stepping outside her chamber, carefully covering the door weaving her signaling charms with seeming carelessness and plenty of mistakes and weaknesses that would be so convenient for an intruder to exploit, she nods to the fledgling standing by the door. She didn't like making chicks, more often stealing them from others, which could also be considered one of the stumbling blocks between her and those she had once crossed. Zaeris was not converted by her personally but at her request. She took control of the blood patronage afterward and remodeled that patronage a bit for herself. Those with whom she worked, never practically betray her interests, at most allowing themselves to steal a collection of favorite lingerie and inhale it to the loss of higher thought activity. If they were particularly serious offenders or went against her interests, such a loss of thinking could well be permanent or stretched out over two hundred years.

However, Zaeris is a good boy. He is intelligent and obedient. He doesn't do anything stupid, so he's allowed a bit more than the rest of her friends. Well, his age and status are of the Highest, with such already somehow not dignified to play her favorite games, at least openly, and not behind tightly locked doors. Lyra allowed those who didn't irritate or disappoint her to keep their self-respect but didn't spare the pride of those who weren't so clever. Especially if they tried to conceal their failures and disguise them by blaming them on someone else, such people often thought her anger had passed them by, that she had not noticed, had not recognized, had not understood, for the bloodsucker never communicated her displeasure directly, it was learned after the fact. Until it came to the girl, who had passed her sixth hundredth year, that she had not drunk a drop of blood for the second year already, not forgetting, however, to feed on the life from her personal small male flower garden, which had almost tripled during these two years, as well as her tits, which could not fit into the clothes that remained the same size.

“I'm going to old man Sesh. You're in charge. On that Project Irridion story later, tell them I promised I'd think about it.” Taking a bit of a pause she pauses, rocking back on her socks and pouting her lips, and then compliments. “And I will indeed think about it. It's not an uninteresting task, it could be a real treat, tempting. However, the risks are such that no one will want to take them, only the benefits. I want benefits too, and I don't want risks. Let him look for resources to amortize those risks. If he has the prior consent of at least six people, my boys and girls will get him what he needs. And if not, let him look for a fool somewhere else, I'm not hired to thin the net for someone else's ambitions.”

" It will be done, Lady," Zaeris answers her, instantly memorizing everything and still shorthanding himself in cipher when needed, which in response to her habitually indignant look adds just as habitually. "Please forgive my willfulness, Lady."

She tried very hard to force him to speak to her by her name, breaking the usual routines and etiquette. Certainly not using “lady”, which annoyed her in direct communication and still sounded mocking, even if unintentionally. She punishes those who allow themselves disrespect or familiarity behind the scenes and teaches them to the best of her ability but in direct communication, she cannot tolerate the etiquette of the undead who walk under the shadow of the Scarlet Drop. She deliberately epitomizes society so to speak. Alas, but Zaeris, himself quite an aristocrat by birth, categorically believed that she was worthy of the title of Blood Lady, for she had achieved much more than the other higher aristocracy, having become such by the fact of her accomplishments and deeds. And to any attempts to prevent him from doing so, he simply continued to do exactly the same, sincerely apologizing for his disobedience.

She tried, of course, her favorite methods but he noticed the bookmarks and glitches and, sooner or later, overcame them. Once she had distorted the perception of her best friend, certainly the best and most intelligent of the boys, so that he called her, in private and not in public, as pejoratively as possible - a despicable plebeian, a bloody slut, a harbor whore, and so on. So he not only managed to open the suggestion very quickly but also seriously and for a long time took offense! He almost sulked for ten years, until she apologized first, sincerely too, which they could make her do only three times during her long non-life, including that very time.

“On that story about the dead favorite of evil old man Seshsh, I did some work too.” She says, signaling to write down and take the edicts. “Didn't find out much, but I did snag the one who saw that Shaman, I'll bring it back later. I didn't find out much, but let him really search through his channels. The trail does not lead to the green-skinned, I'm sure, it's necessary to look in the jungle, the patterns and the manner of execution of the mask are very characteristic, and the mask there is definitely an artifact of great value, not some kind of handicraft.

"It will be done, Lady." Obediently Zaeris agrees, understanding also the unspoken wish of the Lady that the necessary answers would have to be found on her own, without the help of an outside nest. "I daresay it's not hard to hide the green tint of her skin beneath the mask."

"But not white hands, my dear." She parried walking through the dark and illuminated only by magic corridors, nodding now and then to one or another individual, among which there were almost no living people. Although there were. But they could not hear the conversations of the talking couple, not for the fog of Liramil's work. "Call it a gut feeling, but I am sure of the man hidden beneath the mask. Whether he's a Norse or a Hotta is a different question, but it's one I'm sure I can find answers to. A shaman of such, uh, breadth of talent will not appear from nothing. I want to know who to thank for beating out our old man's favorite. I can be very grateful, you know that."

"Indeed, my Lady." Nods her assistant, preparing to give orders directly through the blood bond, not trusting those crystals or paper. "I will begin the work now."

“'Go on, darling, go on.” She even stood on her toes and patted him on the shoulder, saying, “Good for you,” which caused another unreadably tired look in her direction. “Contact Remedy or Malter. The former has been roaming the wilds of the region for a long time, especially along the river. Something he might have heard and known, he has always been able to discern traces in the subtle world, and such a shaman could not make waves in that world. The second one sits on the vein of pure knowledge, all the rumors of the region converge in Dantmark, and she has been sucked to them for a long time. If our shaman's been shopping for special reagents or literature, it's there. If he's even local, of course. But check the locals first, honey.”

"Your will be done, my Lady." As always, any attempts to push through the armor of that brazen aristocratic stoicism ran into a steely defense, but she, Lyra, still wouldn't give up. "I will send messages this very day. I'll summon Malter by amulet."

“Better use my mirror. She's trained enough, she'll be able to take a coherent reflection.” This is an important correction because the resource of a mirror artifact, a creation of a very complicated magic school, which is not known to be used by many people in the whole world is always strictly calculated and dosed. “Rumors are coming from there, one more ridiculous and disturbing than the other, the living are playing their games again. If the bird is under the hood, it is better to be reinsured, it is better not to hurry. Look through the mirror, contact her inconspicuously, clarify whether she is not being followed, and only then proceed to questioning. I don't know why but think of it as intuition. I don't like something in Malter's letters and reports, lest she finally become Dantrell's pet bird. Start working that factor into your mind, my dear.”

Lyra would start as well, but first, she would talk to the ever-busy undead lizardman and then play with her new toy for a bit before bringing it back home. There are few comparisons to the undead in punching stealthy portals into the lands of men, they have had a lot of time, necessity, and opportunity to learn from mistakes. The elves could do no worse, they could make their way to the center of Iyastar and back in time, she'd read those reports. But the undead lords of the North, eternal and frozen in its eternity, also have something to boast about, and not only with portals. They say among the undead, jokingly so, not seriously, that a number of organizations hunting for vampires and other dangerous undead and unclean things that operate in the Middle Sea region have no more unwitting spies and Lyra's puppets than the official roster. Two large and a dozen small ones, to be sure, though no such thing could be said of individual units with broad specializations or just loners.

Lyra was in no hurry to dissuade anyone, though in reality, of course, not more and not even half of them, even if it was a lot. She fundamentally did not try to destroy hunters and fighters of her bloody tribe or revenge them for successful hunts, leaving that to the lizard. Which liked to personally bleed a victim defenseless before it, or send its chicks after that victim. If she, the victim was not defenseless, or they might hurt him, and he had not lived long enough to risk his scales. But many hunters and huntresses had been under her control, sometimes quite famous, and one of her favorite chicks, though not her own, was a former hunter, almost a legend among her own kind. And she had been Lyra's submissive toy, who loved to lick her feet, long before she found her fame. It was Lyra who gave her that fame, eliminating rivals and competitors with the hands of a human legend.

Who knows, maybe this unknown shaman will become another such legend? Ready for anything, for any feat or accomplishment, just to let her good sister touch her flower with his lips one more time? The unknown man seemed quite young to Victoria in appearance. Judging by the skin on his hands and the general motor skills of his movements, he was clearly young and did not shy away from appearing young, which already put him favorably in Lyra's eyes. She herself didn't understand why male mages, even after gaining power and developing a gift, were so eager to appear more aged, wise, mature? Why? Why, if the young and young-looking ones so underestimated considered to be just idle, frivolous opponents?

However, if she does happen to meet this master, chat, play, and sit on his face, she will definitely ask.

* * *
+++
This is where the language should be stylized. Something like rednecks or hillbilly. But I'm not very good with accents and slang.

This time Stepan does realize himself in the dream. He feels a kind of heaviness of his presence here, as if he were looking not at the past or the future, but at something that was already guaranteed not to happen, because people at certain points in time behaved differently, in a different way, which led to a completely different result. In this dream, Stepan sees himself, in the arms of a smiling and very lush-breasted woman, who lowered her simple dress, revealing her huge tits to the shaman, while riding him and showing him in a satisfied tone how much she appreciates such training in the development of the gift. Yes, it was training, not just pleasure, because they were both engaged in tantric practice and quite advanced, at a level of near-developed mastery, both of them at once.

The herbalist, Truda, who he knew well, cummed once again, pressing Stepan's face into her monumental tits, and he happily grabbed a large pink nipple with his lips, biting down on it, feeding some reserve right to the energy node. Truda screamed with pleasure and vindictively squeezed him with the grip of her pussy, forcing him to cum next, falling on top of the guy with a near growl, exhaling with him and savoring the pleasure and pleasure after good sex. Mentally, she thanked herself once again she had talked herself out of the most obvious option on how to get the reagent she needed that night by simply asking. The boy did not refuse, which completely knocked her out of her rut, and she was ready to offer herself, but she was ready to offer herself because she saw his eyes on her tits directed at her. It's not the first time that girls get what they want, no matter what Relka said, no matter how much she blasphemed but it happened. She just had no way of knowing about it, so her words were perceived as lies.

The boy, whom the herbalist offered in sincere gratitude to stay longer and wait for her to finish with new herbs and make good potions for the road, agreed to stay. That same night she hopped on him, and Lashka jumped in afterward. Though it was the first time they had ever had two of them riding on the same cock while the man was conscious and not under potions. It was not for nothing that she decided to thank him, for Pann was grateful too. His gratitude was worth more than that thrice-cursed and even unnecessary tongue of the Forest Scarecrow. The one she was going to steal from the poor guy after giving him the last portion of a rare spell potion. Levels and System, he called it. But before the inner eye of Truda and Lashka, it seemed as if it were a book written on the soul itself, a heavy talmud, like the one in which she kept her mother's and her grandmother's recipes and the secrets of the craft. Only that talmud described her, described her, and allowed her to add new pages.

They have plenty of time to try new and passionate things.

* * *

A new dream, but as if a continuation of the old one. Here the shaman, deprived of strength and with a gift blocked due to the rollback of the strengthening meta-skill, is sitting in the middle of a spacious and cool straw house in the middle of some savannahs, in a tribal camp of local Amazons, who live peacefully but privately and do not welcome men but do not refuse to help anyone in need. This is said, smiling with snow-white teeth, by an inky-black shaman-witch of unclear specialization, dressed in bunches of beads, bracelets, amulets, and nothing else. The shaman, who fainted from lack of strength in the middle of their tribe's lands and was dragged by the hunting team like a sack of flour, is very grateful to his savior, who rescued him, who almost collapsed from sunstroke.

She asks him about the world beyond her tribe's lands, and tells him about her own lands, serving him a hearty and quite tasty dinner. Scones, dried meat, wild honey, some fruit, and a very tasty fruit root that tasted like a potato and a very dense melon at the same time. For a moment he finally relaxed and realized that he was not going to be killed or resold as an exotic commodity. He decided to reward the lady who had saved him as much as he could, but later, when he left, so that she would not understand why she was so lucky. A local chief, tall, two heads taller than Stepan, athletic and practically naked, if you do not count a set of gold bracelets. Here the morals are different and they used to use clothes as much as it is necessary for convenience, and it is convenient for the chief to be mostly naked because she can walk on coals and dull volcanic glass against her skin, such is her strength and the gift of the great Nglama-Kagobadonto, really, it seems, the great spirit, which once blessed this purely female tribe in a purely female land. Boys were not born here. Only girls and only of the same phenotype as their mothers, as the shaman realized from the confusing explanations.

The lady spoke broken, but wholesome Confederate, whose traders even traveled here, so there were fewer problems with communication than one might expect. However, the spells of the shamaness which is locally called Hungan, and the images of this word combine witchcraft, shamanism, some forms of alchemical practices, and much more, also help. The closed field created around her house allows them to understand each other relatively normally, and the shaman happily indulges in conversation about everything and nothing, trying not to squint at the almost naked bodies of her interlocutors. Half-darkness, almost darkness in which the whites of eyes and white-toothed smiles are visible to the interlocutors helps. However, the leader got up from her seat and walked to the nearest magic lamp, a dried gourd with a spirit of light inside, with a dexterous movement and, probably, with a part of the reserve, which Stepan, deprived of the gift, could only guess, lighting the light.

She walks around the house, lighting every single lamp, and lifting the last one from the floor, bending down in front of the shaman who turned his head after her, bending down and showing him her juicy, firm, lush, inviting black ass, the color of bitter chocolate, and her plump pussy, which seemed even a little wet. He freezes for a moment amazed at how beautiful and desirable she is in the light, how much he wants her black, sweet, black, tender, black, strong, black, desirable, black, black, black, black, black, black body. Then Hungan who never introduced herself, never gave her name, only her position, and he didn't ask, already knowing that names are only given to their tribal sisters, says some words. He does not understand and even interrogates, unable to tear his gaze away from the butt of the chief, who is looking for something on the ground, and who, as if on purpose, shifts her weight from one foot to the other, time after time. Hungan repeats, once more, and then a third time, and something in Stepan's mind, exhausted by the sight of black, sweet, black, black, black, black, black, beautiful pussy, ass, buttocks, her whole body, clicks and falls into place, becomes as it should be.

He comes at once. At one glance, he cum on the straw-covered floor, on the empty table, and even on the smiling shamaness, who had two small drops on her face. With the semen goes shame, awkwardness, and any complexes, goes the will to resist his desires and women's beauty, the beauty of black and alluring bodies, black and beautiful, the best in the world bodies. The chief saddles him right there on the hard mat while the witch collects the seed of the white-skinned guest for her rituals. He looks at her, her black body, her beautiful. The black body against his white, black and white, black and white, black and white. She sits on top of him, and he thrusts into her pussy and immediately cum again, he doesn't need more, he just has to, has to pour into her black womb and it just can't be otherwise. The satisfied leader says a word and he, who has almost cum again, finds the strength to hold on to his passion, starting to thrust at her, caressing her, kissing her black tits, and black lips, covering her black body with kisses.

Then the shamaness presses his face into her crotch, and he licks her black pussy, her black buttocks, kisses every bit of her black body, from her feet to her ears, then fucks the chief again, which allows him to take her from behind, only to cover the warrior's strong and muscular back with kisses, only to tell her how much he loves her, her body, her black, strong, powerful body. Frames change. He again spews his semen into the now unfamiliar black woman, pouring white into her black cunt, pouring his seed on her black tits, then aggressively demolishing her, then letting her take the lead. Faces, beautiful black faces, change from one to another and he falls asleep, even the magic of the hungan can't keep him standing, can't bring back the male desire. And he falls asleep, falls asleep in the arms of another Negro woman, desirable and beautiful, running his white fingertips over her black tits, touching her nipples, playing with her breasts until his eyes close.

In the morning he would wake up full of strength, remembering with slight shame his wet dreams of beautiful naked black women and how he would cum in them and on them, and by evening he would be talking again with the hungan and the chief, or with one of the huntresses who knew the basics of Confederate, translating to his girlfriends at the same time, talking and listening, sharing funny and simply interesting stories. To talk and try not to stare at the alluring black bodies of wild and primitive black and beautiful women, ravishingly beautiful, outshining all his previous experiences. He would watch them furtively until the evening, until the sunset, maybe even furtively trying to jerk, but not finding time to do so under the constant observation of curious and eager-to-talk black women, and in the evening, when the fires and magic lamps were lit, one of them would say a word, one word only and for some reason not translatable by the magic of the shamaness. And he, hearing it, will immediately cum, violently and suddenly, and will realize again how much he wants them, wants to love black women, to obey black beauties, to obey them and cause them pleasure.

To wake up the new morning with the memory of a new wet dream, to have it all repeated for a new evening, time after time, with a change of partners and scenery, but no change of plot.

Again.

Again.

Again.

To leave when he was asked, with all the supplies he needed for the journey to the borders of their lands because the blessing of the great spirit would begin to squeeze out the extraneous element. And the same two huntresses who had brought his unconscious body to this tribe would be called upon to guide him. Each night, of the seven that would be needed for the road to the border of the lands, said a word and then graciously allowed him to ejaculate and pleasure two sweet and beautiful black women, pleasuring them in any way they could think of and desire. To then leave their lands, hugging them goodbye and hearing one more word to make him cum again, but with the seed, giving up all memory of what he had seen and learned in the tribe's lands.

They will look on, chuckling, at his bewildered look at them, swaying on his unsteady legs, covering the ground and the thighs of his guides with white drops, and then they will go away. And he would glance at them, shrug his shoulders, and go on his way, forgetting their faces as soon as he turned away, but still remembering the sweet image of two pairs of black buttocks, slowly receding along the savannah. The System would give him back his gift and power after another half a day of steady walking in the opposite direction from the tribe, and it would take him another two days to realize the effect on his mind, realizing how unnatural this strange lapse in memory and the clear certainty of his unbridled love for black beauties and only them. And, having regained his memory, having cleared out of his consciousness all compulsions and commands-activators, he would be very upset at how unfairly he had been treated, even though he would be grateful that they had not killed him and helped him find his way. Only from his revenge neither the Chief, the Hungan, nor all their tribe of black people with gorgeous tits and asses, a good deed done will not save him. However, he would not be able to force himself to kill everyone there, and not only because some of the tribe would obviously soon crave salty food.

But this revenge and the further fate of the tribe is already clearly the story of a very different dream.

* * *

Stepan's awakening was surprisingly mild, as for the horror he had experienced, and his general well-being was not spoiled even by the images of extremely vague and almost indistinct dreams. Only a series of fragmentary visions were clearly remembered, in which he first wandered on some savannahs, then loved in many poses beautiful black Amazonian women. The images of black tits were so tightly lodged in his head that in the morning he had to soothe his flesh with breathing exercises so the flesh did not protrude when communicating. Carefully standing up, he began to survey the surroundings, both with his eyes and his spiritual perception, as well as the perception of the many spirits that had descended from the chain. Judging by the weather, a downpour mighty and tropical had recently ended in this forest. The temperature and humidity outside the circle of protection were extreme, but not a single drop had fallen on the sleeping couple. The earth deepened and bent, and the spirits themselves realized the need to create a system of channels to keep the sleeping masters from being flooded and washed away.

Singha was sniffling softly, lying in something between a blackout and a deep sleep, looking almost cute if you didn't know how much of a fucking mare she really was when she was in an unconventional and dangerous situation. Sighing, shaking his head, and overcoming the instinctive urge to finish the sleeping problem and not scare himself with its presence, he takes up a more detailed medical examination, not forgetting himself. There's no need for personal palpation, especially of his mammary glands, and he doesn't even move, laying back on the mattress and gazing up at a patch of blue sky. His healing skills are now sufficient to be considered a good specialist, even if not a master, but no worse than an experienced adept who has chosen healing as his path. Of course, the specificity of his work is more shamanic, relying on spirits. With his own spiritual body, he is only a little better than that adept specialist, and even then, due to the reserve and control of spiritual transformation.

He had a serious set of spirits, though, and after the renewal, he saw no need to skimp. The fact that the sleeper didn't even notice his manipulations, and didn't pay attention to the way the shaman's servants were infusing her aura, said better than anything else that she wasn't all right. Particular nightmarish medical conditions were avoided. The girl had very severe exhaustion, an overstretched spiritual body, and a partial aura-spiritual spasm. Without care and treatment, she could well not lose the gift completely, so mutilates it and partially regresses in development, and in the terminal stage, even loses the ability to develop further. This he had already prevented, even before he had gone to bed, by controlling most of the symptoms. Now his counterpart needs plenty of rest, a set of good strengthening-healing alchemy, and less straining of the gift for at least three or four days. To apply a healing token, alas, would do little good, at most adding vigor. It was the patient's physical condition that was close to perfect, the spiritual reserves were exhausted and tired. His spirits had just finished clearing the auric nodes and relieving the spasm of the channels when she began to wake up. Stepan thought a little and strengthened her sleep a little, not putting her to sleep, but not letting her wake up, and then exhaustion took its toll and her unconscious state was replaced by a normal healthy sleep.

No, he didn't need to talk to her yet. There were too many unresolved questions. The most important of which was the one waiting for him at home. How many witnesses were there to their “demise”? How many suspicions in the address of the shaman? How much they are looking for this fucking mare? These questions worried the young man for quite obvious reasons, and he did not want to start a heavy dialog without the opportunity to properly understand the situation, what to press, where to give in, and whether it was worth coming back at all. Maybe it would be smarter to stay in this jungle and find some tribe of local Tumba-Yumba and become their chief. At this rate, it would have been smarter to just stay in Lyadya, but the road of fucking adventure was leading him, damn!

The puppet of his treacherous mistress lay in his hand as if it were an integral part of his body, allowing him to carefully start connecting to Sylvia Malter's brain. In the conditions of encapsulation of information and energy space by the forces of the network of worms, he never dared to check whether he could create a connection with the doll without disturbing the abomination sleeping in the ruins. He didn't risk it and didn't regret it, even though he believed in his success and the power of the artifact he had created with Autodivine's help. The risk of failure would have been deadly not only for Sylvia and Stepan but for the world at large. The creature could try to seize control of the doll and get the opportunity to carry its will beyond the dungeon created by the last sacrifice of the great magician. He didn't want to die, or rather, to know the life that was worse than any death, but he didn't want to realize that he had become the unwitting creator, if not the creator, of the natural end of the world. Even if he had the dolls of the whole nest at once, it wouldn't help him, and he couldn't provide anything that would help him in a fight with a Platypus.

Nothing was in his way now. So a moment later he closed his eyes, realizing the memory and personality of Sylvia Malter immersed in some papers and letters. The memory revealed a lot of interesting factors, starting from the hysteria about the attack on the representatives of two powerful trading houses, continuing with no less hysteria on the part of local trading houses, which were mad about what had happened, and ending with the almost magical duel between old Miller and the mommy-hen. Although, here, it's more like a mama bear, just a steppe horse, damn. She'd shown up literally an hour later, seemingly having claimed the city portal's backup time and poked her and her entourage, including her husband. Sylvia saw this scene both in the recording and through the eyes of one of the bloody puppets, though the latter from afar, the bloodsucker didn't risk bringing the guy closer.

The mother of his personal headache turned out to be a wow, both in appearance and character. And if the appearance of this Mongolian beauty with distant features of an Indian woman, who was from the indigenous population of the earthly America, not the earthly India, was quite pleasant to look at. Breasts, hips, waist, and the overall impression made one feel sincere envy for the fat and stately peddler-daddy. But the character of all these positive aspects paid off. Even though the anxious man tried to keep her in check, this miracle in feathers (as well as bones, stones, and other kinds of shamanic amulets- houses), almost took out the eyes and soul of poor Nertm, his father, who also came to the uproar by the same portal, and only clearly visible consequences of mental control and burned out in zero protective amulets of mental type saved the young gentleman, who was no longer quite arrogant. And the man had to cover the boy and his father with his own body when the venerable Maega, whose pupils had taken on a vertical shape and were filled with a golden glow, was one step away from a full-fledged attack capable of stripping flesh from bones.

But when talking to the honorable Magister Miller, he didn't hold her back and seemed ready to jump on the Master of Magic himself. Literally jump, like a wrestling star, with the weight of his whole body, so that he would be crushed. And, it must be said, the honorable Miller, though in purely magical terms was noticeably stronger, but still he clearly did not want a conflict. He really didn't. If to believe what Sylvia knew initially and managed to learn during the absence of the shaman, the powerful spirit caster could well have in her stash those contracts that would have done badly to the master. She, too, because she'd have to pay for her participation in the battle, up to and including her life and soul, but the mom had a look that Miller intuitively understood. This one would pay. With her life and soul. Maybe even his, not her own. However, the magician also had his pride and, at the moment of another particularly colorful statement about the cursed khanur, he sighed tiredly, rubbed his face with his palms, and without diplomacy or attempts to smooth over the conflict, he spoke back.

The old man was saying that he was in a bad way, of course. His students were dead and his reputation was damaged. He had personally burned out the gift and broken the spine of the moron who had hit the residential city with siege charms based on tower structures and thrown him out into the street but that idiot was just an ordinary apprentice-servant who was trying to get ahead. And yes, there is no dispute, for before the honorable Maega, Maedra's daughter, he is guilty in every possible way and does not hide it. But if this honorable daughter continues in this vein, he will spit on his reputation and more trouble later, find her words offensive, challenge her to a duel, and her daughter, if still alive, will be left an orphan. Because he's a magister of magic, with combat experience and his tower behind him, and he didn't spend so many decades working his way up to his rank to put up with this sort of thing. And the fact that it will be even worse for him, that his reputation will be razed to the ground, and a line of blood enemies for half of the Steppe will be lined up behind his head, is not much consolation to the honorable, which by that time will be ashes. And anyway, his line of blood enemies is not exactly small, so maybe it's not worth lengthening it so categorically when it would be worth joint efforts to search for the missing girl..

To tell the truth, Stepan, who was watching this record-crystal with Sylvia's eyes, initially had a not particularly positive opinion of the master. But when he stopped trying to be polite and smooth the conflict, at that moment it became clear that he was a magister, and his interlocutor and opponent were not yet. Further poop-throwing slowed down, and both sides began to prepare a search ritual of higher magic, with a simultaneous reliance on the tower and the source, blood bond, and summoned spirits. The ritual was performed right at the site of the disappearance, on the very stone paving stones that now looked like a mixture of hardened cement, fine gravel, and the ugly faces of unidentifiable entities that had almost crawled into reality from the hole where Stepan and Singha had fallen.

What surprised Sylvia, the magister and all the others was a very quick and positive reaction of the elven emissary, who in record time got the reagents missing at once for both Maega and Miller, greeting both of them and conveying his best wishes personally, together with his assistants and helpers. He also offered the help of the forest gifted, but it was obvious that the shamaness would refuse. She allowed Magister Miller to the search ritual only because he was a magister, very strong, and would lead a ritual of classical search magic parallel to the main ritual. The whole area was fenced off and the ritual itself Lemira, sent by her parent to watch, could only see it from very far away, using a magic telescope and sitting on the roof of one of the distant mansions. On a neighboring rooftop with similar trumpets settled the peepers of the secret guard and some other staff which Lemira did not identify. Perhaps representatives of local nobles or merchants were also interested in what was going on.

Somehow correlating the time, it became clear that at first, the shamaness had tried fumbling through more standard methods and searching through blood. When the spirits she had sent did not return, and yes, only her eldest was able to get through to Singha, several others, including another eldest, were eaten by the network of worms, when the main and backup circuits of the search ritual burned out, she called for something that under normal circumstances and sanity would not be called for. The Magister thought for a few minutes about screwing his “partner” but gave her permission, directly sponsored by the head of the guild of city mages and the owner of the tower, much to the displeasure of the Duke, who did not like the prospect of calling such shit in the city limits. Half the neighborhood was urged to either evacuate or activate the defenses of their estates at their own risk. And then Maega started calling, and even undead Sylvia two blocks from the epicenter, became uncomfortable.

Stepan, using his knowledge, as well as the ability to analyze very clearly the feelings of both Sylvia and Lemira, tried to understand what was there at all and seemed to understand. And he also realized for sure that it was a bit too early for him to mess with this mare and mare's mother. She was calling for a higher one, strong, experienced, angry, and damn motivated. Bound by a contract so long ago that it had practically disintegrated already, motivated by what he'd been promised for his coming and participating in the search for his daughter. And immediately it became clear that the mother really loves her daughter sincerely and unpretentiously because it was not difficult to identify the type of offering. A pile of valuable reagents, most of which Miller had given from his personal stock, served only as fuel for the fire, a bait, and a sign of respect for the higher being. The payment was a part of his life and gift, and not half of it, which could have killed his mother on the spot, so Stepan even quickly rewound the bloodsucker's memory in search of the necessary details.

Singha was lucky. She was not an orphan. Her mother had the wisdom and experience not to pay upfront, only to accept the spirit tag, demanding results first. Maybe she could get out of it later, for example, by pulling the mark-payment on several strong gifted and sacrificing them, but hardly, such a maneuver should be prepared in advance, not implemented at once. Stepan could do it, but he has a lot of knowledge outside of his main branch of specialization, including agency and contracts, which includes a thousand and one recipes for fucking up a summoned shit with payment before it eats you or fucks you up first. But even he'd need to prepare at least a week in advance, in full parade and relying on the system store. Maega didn't have all that. But she had been lucky in that the spirit had gotten greedy and had run into it, apparently being completely devoured by the network of worms, all of it, without a trace.

She screamed so fucking loud.

It's unpleasant as it is. The backlash from the contract and the death of the spirit, and yet the spirit itself probably should have at least sent images of what it encountered before it died. A higher one. Not even the Worm Queen could take a bite out of him, especially if he was in passive mode and not awakening. He clearly had time to call for the shaman's help and try to drain her of more power to get away, even partially succeeding, but he was still gone. But it was clear why the sleeping cunt had woken up so quickly, why it had started moving even before they had fought Platypus Ucking, why it had managed to intercept them and almost intercepted them, it was clear who was to blame for Stepan being left without a system contract with an elder spirit. //“This fucking horse family wants me dead!” - such were Stepan's most censorious thoughts at the moment of this realization, the most polite and calm. As Stepan realized and as Sylvia suspected approximately and reasonably, the mother was knocked out by the kickback, but she lost neither her gift nor her life, only she was very upset and got exhaustion and sensory shock on top of it. There were no new search rituals yet, and probably they won't even be practiced. Because what Maega saw in the transmission cry of the higher spirit was clearly enough to understand the fate of her beloved blood.

The better for Stepan, the more time he had to make a decision - whether to erase the memory of the rescued or to try to make a contract and a non-disclosure oath. The problem with wiping is that any blockage on the memory can not be bypassed, so at least by indirect signs to understand, and given the fact that the girl's head will add new knowledge from nowhere, as well as grow characteristics of the system, there will be questions. And the answers will be sought very persistently. Local wise men and not wise men really know about the Tablet of the Soul, and Singha herself will also actively help in the search because she will be afraid if she is fucked in the ass Scary Fat Maestro and an honorable member of the society of Ugly Bastards of the Universe. The oath will give the cooperation of the girl herself, who will be able to stick to the legend, not to shine new characteristics and knowledge at least in front of the rest of the world, if not counting the family. But to shut up the kin, especially taking into account the mark of fate on Maega, is much easier than to shut up the whole world and the same elves, with whom this family, as it turns out, has quite good relations.

Stepan opened his eyes and started to rise again just in time for Singha to awaken from her normal sleep. She pulled herself up in a surprisingly funny way, tried to cover her face with the blanket, and only then began to blink perplexedly. Stepan wanted to make a joke about someone who liked to sleep longer, but he was not without sin in that respect, and the situation was not conducive to jokes. The shamaness woke up and looked around bewildered, but then she suddenly realized that she had almost fallen over in the process. She looked wildly around at the surreal picture of a mattress lying on the bare ground in the middle of the ridged jungle. And the river was also making noise, carrying water, and the birds were quacking. One of them had a particularly nasty voice as if asthmatic wheezing after a run was trying to breathe.

"Good morning, my personal fucking misfortune," Stepan said hello as politely as he could, pointing his finger toward the three ornate vials with scarlet, clear, and slightly greenish liquids in them. "While you were delirious, I fixed you up a little. I removed the harshest symptoms, straightened out auric knots, checked you twice for worms, and checked yourself twice more, and the same number of times on top of that. I think we're out. The vials are fortifying alchemy - red in two hours, and take the other two right away. And let's figure out how we're gonna live our lives."

The girl listened to herself obviously scanning her spirit as best she could, but afterward, she tensed a little. Then calmed down, apparently realizing that if Stepan had wished her bad things, he would have already done them. Shrugging she tipped the first and then the second vial into her mouth, wrinkled her nose as if she had taken a shot of vodka with pepper, and then looked into his eyes with her eyes, which were big, beautiful, and the color of gold. One of the remaining spirits she had transferred into one of the feathers on her new cloak. The color of her eyes was golden for a short time, and then she covered them with a groan, but it was hard to hold back the groaning. The spasm of her spiritual body was no joke, and she felt well only because of Stepan's efforts, not because she had recovered quickly.

"Hai. Let's talk. Ask what you want, Pann." Calmly and even without negativity, but with that undercurrent of expectation of trouble, she agreed, preparing to listen. "I know honor. And I know gratitude. If it weren't for you, there wouldn't be me anymore, either. Or there would be. But in a way that would have been better if I hadn't. I cannot promise for my family. But I'm ready. For anything."

At the point of that "anything” her voice shook on some note, but she quickly regained control and showed no weakness. Yes, and in the emotional sphere, there was that very readiness, not without apprehension and not without the thoughts lurking in the back of her mind that some fees she would rather not render, having ended her life herself after all, than choose a shame worse than that life. But there was also an almost complete faith that nothing really shameful and terrible would be asked of her. She did fuse spirit and mind with him in one stumbling symbiosis, and it was not hard to understand the man, or any other sentient being, with whom one became so close.

"First of all, I demand silence from you, and it must be confirmed by an oath you will not break," Stepan said honestly and quite sincerely, and then added even more sincerely. "And most of all I want you and your family not to appear in my life anymore and not to spoil it. It's the second time I see you, and the second time I get some kind of nonsense."

"Hai, I'm ready to swear any oath, even on the altar of the Lord of the Word." She used a very unusual variant of the name of the local chief lawyer, Damokar, which made Stepan not immediately realize who she meant. "I'm also willing to give up my memories as a sign of my intentions. I've done it before. But then... I don't know how I'll react if you try to remind me of my debt - I'll forget it too, won't I? I mean, I could seal a message to myself in some kind of khao, but then..."

The shaman interrupted her with a wave of his hand, even a little irritated, noting to himself that she had honestly admitted that if her memory were erased, she would forgive all the debts she owed him because of her nasty nature. And just as honestly she tried to find a mutually satisfactory and not breaking the secrecy, in which it would be possible to remind her of that debt. No, thank you, but he doesn't need any debts at all. Just leave him alone and don't touch him.

"If I erase your memory, it won't solve anything." He says, not hiding his irritation. "Your cloak remains. You'll still have the gifts the System gave you for our escape from the wormhole. And also... hey, did you even... fuck..."

Apparently, she didn't even think about the fact that the cloak would remain in her possession. Not in the sense she didn't hope and only dreamed, but she didn't think at all. For her, the fact that the cloak would be taken away was as self-evident as the sunrise and sunset, the blowing of the wind, and the wetness of the water. And she was very surprised at his words, not even happy, but stumped because she could not understand the reasons why such a gift would be left to her, if not taken away as a concubine for life. Then Stepan told her about the System and its rewarding deeds, and Singha involuntarily focused on the System, and then she was overwhelmed by the realization of the new gifts. The shaman even peeked at her status and was pleasantly surprised at how she had been rewarded. Now that the deed was “unpacked”, the peek was possible, on the same rights as the group leader. She was less fortunate than the shaman himself, but still very cool, especially for someone who had not been familiar with the System and its gifts before.

The same any branch for five points of pumping, that is, immediately to the end, and the excess will be burned off, if it has enough stats to pump immediately to mastery. Probably not, there, even purely class-air knowledge will have a maximum of "advanced developed". Two freely selectable contracts with senior spirits from those in the system set. There's mostly airmen of all types and aspects, clearly. And one point in power and one in spirit, the second from the Autogoddess. Stepan was even offended by the fact that she had given her a useful gift, especially for a shaman, and without any jokes. And no, with a catch. One random contract with an elder spirit, also an air spirit, but even he was not to say that straight extremely Autoboddess.

The System was called “Winding Rustle of Grass” and was a mixture of a lurker and a suggestor. It could press on the subconscious mind very imperceptibly, for a couple of weeks, inclining even a perfectly protected target to the necessary choice and decision. A kind of sublimatory processing with a voice audible only to the subconscious, going past standard and even exotic types of defense, multiplied by the imperceptibility of a level higher than even the Winder. Given her actual position as the daughter of the head of a trading house, Stepan did not doubt her house's trading business would go up. Nine summonses a year, where a summons is one specific goal and a list of things to put in the goal's head. Succession is already written into the contract, you just have to specify the heir or heiress to whom the spirit will go, not even necessarily bloodlines. In theory, he could have demanded that the spirit be transferred to him, but he saw no point. He could summon a similar or not much inferior spirit himself without the System.

Since she hadn't chosen her knowledge yet, like Stepan, and the changes in her aura weren't distracting her that much, it took Singha about ten minutes to come to her senses, looking at the world around her and Stepan personally with eyes that were no longer slanted. He thought the correction of the Asian squint to European or even anime eyes was a fiction of anime fanfiction authors. No, to be fair, it wasn't anime eyes, she just had them wide open and bulging a bit with emotion, like the hedgehog from the joke. But it still looked a little funny, it was very, very hard to keep a serious face, though he managed it.

"If you try to summon a new spirit while I'm around, I'll kick your ass." He said only as Singha regained her senses and stopped seeming so deep in herself. "Continuing with what I said. I need a vow of silence on your part. One that won't allow you to crack even in case of interrogation. For example, certified by a higher spirit."

It was such a shame to waste one of the two free points of the contract with the higher entity that he almost convinced himself to just use the Mark of Destiny and brainwash the steppe girl in a particularly intimate way. In this case, according to the reference, the probability of revealing the very fact of hexing and memory work would be close to zero. But the simplest options are not the way Stepan chooses if he has to violate his whims, that is, of course, principles, principles, not whims. However, among the available contracts, there was one of the highest, which quite suited the conditions of the shaman, providing the necessary anonymity and at the same time resistance to interrogation. However, his oath is valid only when the swearers, both parties, though they can be up to seven individuals, are equally willing to take this oath. In fact, hence Stepan's desire to settle the matter amicably.

"Hai, I'll take an oath, even in front of such a strong Khao." He was already getting a little annoyed with her prefix before every agreement, and her manner of inserting words from a vocabulary unfamiliar to the young man was annoying. "But your gift... I can't...."

“Quiet, just quiet. Your cloak, as I said, consider it payment for the fight with the fucking platypus.” He repeats though he can see she doesn't fully believe him. “Well, seriously, what am I supposed to do with it later? It's tied to blood and spirit, it'll be a long time before I can find the keys to the artifact and unlock its bindings. I don't see much point in just taking it away from you. Just keep it out of the public eye, that's all.”

Judging by the expression on her face and the mood read by the spirits, she saw a reason to confiscate the cloak in order not to give it to the one who had brought him so much trouble and put him at risk. Perhaps with conditions of ransom or exchange for services and service, but to give it away for nothing - she could not think of such a thing, and Stepan began to suspect that it was he who was not quite right in the head. Still, unlike her, he understood the price of his gift, but he did not realize that price. For him, it was a cool, powerful, trump artifact, a dream, but not the kind of thing he couldn't buy himself. But for Singha it is not just another system lot, but a real relic that belongs in legends, which is why she is so rigidly stunted and doesn't believe it.

From her point of view, it was not even the level of idiocy “to give a vaguely familiar girl a brand new iPhone”, because here they give a limousine, a yacht, a diamond necklace, and on top of that enough for a three-room apartment in the center of the capital. The girl was a little scared to take such gifts because if Stepan in return would demand her ass for intimate use for a couple of years, then fuck knows how her mother and grandmother would respond. At the very least, they wouldn't send her away right away but would bargain and knock down the price, or try to take it away by force. He didn't go deeper than superficial thoughts into her head, but at the same time, he sensitively grasped the realization that for such a gift a certain Khylan-Khan would give his beloved daughter and a couple of nieces for a change.

“I suggest choosing knowledge not now, but as soon as we jump back to Dantmark.” He said assessing his condition and figuring out if he could apply the summoning of himself and her to the mega-totem without extensive training. “I know from experience that even a single boost of any knowledge shuts you down for half a day at times, and a whole branch, pumped in at full, will just drain you dry. With spirits, you can choose now. There the load is minimal, the gift of Her Divinity, as I already said, do not call. Not that I don't believe you outright, but don't make me doubt, okay?”

"I would not, sah marai an khao-seran!" This last she did not swear out but rather asked the venerable shaman not to insult her honor with such insinuations, only in the Steppe. "But I understand, hai. I will not call upon this khao. I will not call upon the gift of your khao-yanash-mal."

The last expression meant a special denotation of an entity equal to the gods and gods of all above, as she understood gods and godlike spirits, as well as simply entities that could be equal in power to the above-mentioned. It seemed to Stepan that she even blushed a little as if she had said something vulgar, and it was she, not he, though he did not understand the reasons for her embarrassment. He didn't try to get into her head, ensure she was completely and utterly sincere in her intention not to use the system's gifts against him. She would hardly be able to deceive him, and even if she could, she would not be able to summon her suggestor even through the contract she had already prepared. But it would be hard and exhausting. She would not be able to summon this spirit without Stepan and his watchful sentries noticing.

"Well, then, I suggest we get started on our recuperation." He said, then decided to say what he could say, but he was being very vague. "I still have means of contacting Dantmark. I sent no messages, but I found out what I could. Your mother almost killed poor Nertm on the spot. Then she tried to call you through the blood. She got a kickback, but she's fine now. I made sure. Don't look at me like that. So far our search is over, no one's calling for blood. But! She'll sleep it off and keep looking for you, and we're no longer under the worm net dome. If we're not back by then I urge you not to answer the call and break the disguise around us."

"Hai..." At first, she seems to agree, but then, clearly not knowing where to keep her eyes, she clarifies certain points. "I'm afraid. For my mother. She won't know. And she knows the names of the Khao, whose toll is terrible. I must ask - how soon can you get us back under familiar skies, Pann?"

“Your mother was lucky to have the right methods of summoning dark entities. The crap she pawned a piece of gift and life to was eaten by worms before he could claim the payment.” He said it, though he wanted to keep silent and not make trouble for himself by explaining how he knew it. “It also woke up the queen of those shitty helminths, and she almost got us. That's actually why she got knocked back. Or do you think something weaker could have so reliably disabled a shaman of such power?”

"I understand, but I don't." Apparently, they believed him immediately and unconditionally, which is even flattering a little, to be honest. "How do you know that? How do you know? I can't even sense the altar or the house right now. I'm weak. I'm not well. But the Khao can still hear me. And that's not enough. How can you know what's being said?"

"I'll put it this way - it's one of the properties of my System, its gift." He answers honestly, for Sylvia's doll could indeed be considered a gift. "To understand it better, look at the description of the meta-skills line. It's not certain that you have the right choice, but the principle should be clear. I can always find out what's going on in Dantmark. Well, or not quite in Dantmark, depends on where I place the anchor to perceive the information. I can't see everything, only part of it, but it was very hard to miss the ritual your mother arranged right in the same place where we were carried away into the depths of the spheres."

This calmed her down, and they both spent the next four hours in meditation, with Singha needing little help, as she knew how to nurse herself back to health after severe exhaustion and minor injuries. And with his efforts, they were light injuries, not even moderate. She drank her last potion and ate a piece of fried lizard with considerable appetite, not even wincing at the fact that she had to eat, well, a lizard. Stepan, who had cooked this prey and rubbed it with a set of spices bought from the system, also ate it without squeamishness. There was a lot of meat on this miniature varan with iguana features it was tasty and juicy. It tasted a little like poultry, but the consistency was denser, a little tougher, like tongue or heart, even though you were eating pure fillet of tail muscle.

"My father had been served a similar game once." The girl bragged, wiping her mouth with a piece of expensive but stained cloth left over from her last dress. "Only it was marinated in citrus and stewed for a long time, but I'm pretty sure the meat is the same. It's good."

"Listen, and, if it's not a secret, what does your father do for a living?" The Earthman asked, nibbling the tail vertebrae of the unfortunate lizard. "They told me about Nertm, praising the new contractor, but they didn't even tell me anything about you. Otherwise, I wouldn't have been around that day. I'd be sick. Yeah. A bad sore throat."

"It's not a secret, I'll tell you." She said, ignoring the rest of Stepan's comment, which he himself realized after he had said that she would have died from the collision with the elemental, or would have been badly hurt because that entity was trying to escape, not to kill everyone. "And I would like to ask... well, why did you accept service from that Ahmay? He's been pushing you around, putting you in the back row at the table! It's just... almost like spitting in the face or whipping someone else's horse!"

" Heh, you're really curious, aren't you?" He doesn't wait for an answer, answering himself, his answer is obvious if you think about it a bit. "It's simple. Trabius didn't ask questions, let me live in peace, and introduce myself as his employee. He didn't expect much from me and wasn't interested in what I did in my free time. It's much easier than posing as a senior shaman and getting into the vat of local politics. It's a bubbling mess. Pardon the unappetizing details."

“I couldn't do that.” She confessed honestly, looking at him strangely, and Stepan got the feeling that he was the one who didn't understand something, not her. “To live as a mere yalom, not even a nuker or pasan-van under Khan, to tolerate other people's words and treatment as a... no, I couldn't. She would expose herself. Anger at the insult. Anger at the attitude. But I'm sorry, I forgot my answer. My father, Urwag of the House...”

The shaman only inwardly cringed at the aristocratism of the little bitch, but did not comment on it. Yeah, and it wasn't the arrogance of hereditary nobility there either. It was felt in her attitude toward servants or mere passersby, more of a realization of her strength, power, accomplishments, and rights. She was, after all, the daughter and heiress of a full-fledged Khao-seahar, and that was not to say worse than the same ducal daughter. De Dantrel has many daughters, as well as grandsons and granddaughters, but an heiress to a mighty gifted one who will become no less mighty than her mother, given only time, is still a wow. And now add to that the status of a daughter of a large merchant from a large trading house, which in the Confederation of Free Cities is equal to the highest aristocracy, only in small things like the rules of wearing a coat of arms inferior, then you get that still explosive mixture. And this is not even to call it some kind of snobbery, because by the standards of this world, she is amazingly liberal, literally very, very much allows the people around her.

In general, I could only marvel, and listen to her story about her own family. She knew a lot about her father's affairs, though she didn't deliberately go into them. Mother and father had long ago agreed, and the shamanesses did not get involved in financial matters, only fulfilling magical orders, and ordering supplies of all sorts of expensive reagents or luxury goods. They were given everything they asked for, and they fulfilled all the requests on the magical part, which formed an excellent symbiosis within the family. According to Singha it wasn't always like that. When her father brought her mother from the steppe, promising to show her the world and paying such a kalym for her ransom from her parents that he was then tested for six months for hexes, there were more problems and conflicts. She was still a little girl when the most implacable opponents of the steppe wife and half-breed daughter were squeezed out or forced to change their minds. There was no blood or anything like that, just that Singha's mother did not help them in any way, but she helped those of her husband's relatives who were polite and courteous to her. The way she talked about it this was not exactly public knowledge, but it was not a secret.

Her father, the honorable Urwag de Lomer, the de facto deputy head of his house, the second most important of the house's trade bonzes, traded in everything that the vast steppe could offer the world of big stone houses. It was not only regular raids of greedy steppes and horse raids of slavers with harnesses but also reagents and herbs valuable for alchemical research. These are horses, the best horses in the World, which can be compared only to the Sultanate trotters, but they are more expensive and more difficult to deliver, which also affects the prices. Wild wines, hides, wool of special varieties of sheep, rare ceramics, and special items made of the rarest varieties of clay, short and powerful composite bows, which can be surpassed in their class only by elven bows. These are special sweets and dried berries, a handful of which can satiate a warrior for several days, these are rare types of enchantments, mostly on light cloth clothes, which cloth makes stronger than chain mail.

In turn, from Singha's father and Maega's husband to the Steppe goes everything that the Pearl of the Seaside can send, starting from drinks, spices, fabrics, and all sorts of goodies, continuing with potions and amulets, mostly household, ending even with weapons of good steel. The latter only under the oath not to resell and to arm only his warriors, which Khan has long ago brought and does not forget to honor. One should not forget about the ransom of prisoners from raids, which is easiest to conduct through your family-friendly steppe khan, rather than looking for a counterpart himself, but here the main thing is not to overdo it. Often to take advantage of favor and kinship ties in such a business is fraught with the fact that from a merchant little by little you will become a Catcher, and this, you know, is such a profession, the owner of which will not be given a hand in decent society.

If you think about it, the girl's father was not only one of the richest and best men in the city but also had such connections that you didn't want to get into a conflict with him, even without taking his wife into account. Urvag was the voice of reason in their family, as they joked all over Morgrave, and he was the one who calmed the rambunctious steppe woman who was always trying to cause injuries. In reality, of course, it was more often the mother was angry for the appearance. She let herself be coaxed and calmed, but no one wanted to see what would happen if the frantic shamaness was not restrained by her husband. Singha confessed, without shame, but not boasting, that many of those who insulted her or her mother with epithets, such as the love to trade one's body, which was mistakenly considered common for steppe women, in fact, was just a stereotype, just sticky, there were fewer whores among them than among white-faced people, or Singha lied for the sake of her people's reputation, simply did not have time to beg forgiveness from her father. They died sooner. The mother of his interlocutor had an unpleasant way of strangling people for their words.

Stepan could do the same, but his spirits acted faster, immediately making the air unbreathable or pulling it out of his lungs to the point of vacuum collapse of those lungs. Maega's victims, on the other hand, suffocated slowly, with each thousandth breath of breath coming down their throats a hundredth less, and less, and less. Given that at first, such oxygen deprivation depressed thinking activity, it was not always enough for the victim to start sounding the alarm. And those who were rescued often could not be pumped out properly and brought back from the state of a vegetable whose brains were dead from hypoxia.

The evening and part of the night passed before they both went to bed. Stepan updated the perimeter defenses and strengthened them a bit. Just for the sake of calming his nerves. They'd been thrown out in a region that wasn't particularly magical and certainly not inhabited, because the spirits had scattered to the sides and hadn't found even a trace of intelligent life within a ten-kilometer radius. Of course, with the distance from the central point and the place of their stay, the accuracy and quality of intelligence fell, especially without totems and rituals, but still, the remote control was allowed to work. And the traces of cities, towns, and roads in such conditions could not miss a damn thing, so it was possible to exhale a little. But only a little, because in this jungle could be anything. Like a giant predatory turtle sitting in a nest downstream, eating a slightly less giant predatory crocodile right now.

When the shaman awoke, the system pleased him by giving him another assignment, a small and rather interesting one. He spent some time absorbing the images and working with the help but found no reason to refuse. In the sense he should be able to do it in twenty-four hours, maybe a day and a half, but more likely less than one, just in time for Singha's recovery, when her spirit bodies could be safely teleported without risk of harming her gift. And the fruits of the task could be used to further the work of returning home in a swift and decisive teleportation.

Received system assignment (small): secure a lasting natural restorative blessing on a curse and parasite-affected wizarding black tree at the specified coordinates.

Reward: some increase in affinity with the spheres of nature and regeneration; one random knowledge of the “contract with an elder spirit” subtype; one random rare token.

Not bad, not bad enough to be worth the risk. Especially since the tree was only a little more than fifteen kilometers from their camp. With a boost from the spirits and the same ghostly predatory deer, it would take him less than an hour to get there, and he'd spend barely a twelfth of his reserve on such a run. The only question was what Singha would do and whether his absence would be a problem. Whether she would decide to do something stupid. However, if she starts summoning that spirit suggetor his own spirits will smell and report, just as they would report her attempt to send a signal for help. Quite frankly, there would be no need to block such a signal. In her current state, she simply won't be able to call, and her senior guardian spirit is still resting and replenishing its strength. In principle, he can try and complete the assignment. The system promises the spirit, not the Autogoddess, which is a very telling point, so the contract should certainly not be useless.

"So, this supreme power gave you an assignment, the payment for which is an eternal and blood-bound agreement with the mighty and ancient Khao-amash?" The shamaness asked him when he told her about his assignment without hiding since he was going to call her to the oath anyway. "Hai, I will wait as long as necessary. And keep my word."

Judging by her reaction, she honestly thought that if she tried to throw a tantrum, she wouldn't offend him or insult him, but would just sign her absolute idiocy. Well, from her point of view, the opportunity to get such a system contract with a senior entity would be worth more than a day of solitude while she still replenished her strength and health. For the sake of such a bargain, one might well consider sacrificing his temporarily powerless companion or worse. Singha, whom he scanned without much concealment, answered honestly and honestly was going to keep her promise. Having considered all the factors, Stepan came to the conclusion that her mother would be in a weak condition for calls for another five days, so there was no need to fear any problems from Singha.

Intentional problems and sabotage.

There was no talk of unintentional suicide attempts out of nothing.

"Oh, all right, you silly. I'll leave a reinforced circle of spirits. I'll summon one who's almost senior, who'll freeze on the border between the Reality and the Spheres, and I'll order him to help at your first call." The lizard could use some exercise, and he's really good in a fight. "Don't go outside the circle. I'll buy food from the system, so there'll be plenty to eat. I'm begging you. Don't show that admirable ability to get into trouble on the spot and live to see me back. Because if you manage to get yourself into trouble again, I'm gonna cry, I'm gonna weep."

To her credit, she had the good sense not to comment on his words with outraged cries that she wasn't so silly, though she was visibly sulking. She nodded, and then agreed aloud, shivering at the very vivid image of her mother's displeasure. It felt like she'd been flogged after their last meeting, though he didn't go deeper into those images. He bought the same bread, honey, and some kind of jam made of cherries, so he left her a supply of provisions, and, having planted a deer spirit in his body, turned around and hopped briskly in the right direction, allowing the protective group of spirits to deflect branches from his face and rocks and roots from under his feet.

There was work ahead of him.

* * *

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Переводчики: Camrad_RIP