Готовый перевод Настучать в бубен / Hit the tambourine: Глава 20-5

Chapter 20-5

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Stepan smiled weakly as he set the last fragment on the right point, finishing assembling and customizing the puppet. One of the most difficult he had ever performed. This time the Autogoddess quest had given him the materials he needed, but not in a partially assembled form. Only materials. He had to prepare them properly and assemble the doll himself, and the doll was not simple. The prototype of the image of the envolt was a snake girl, so it was a lot of trouble with the flexible parts of the tail. It was possible, of course, just mold a complete structure, but the conditions of the quest did not give the path of least resistance, so I had to assemble a kind of constructor, partially even movable. He had seen something similar on Earth, in souvenir stores, where they sold wooden snakes made of many partially joined segments.

Having finished assembling the puppet, he moved on to the final process. He tuned it to a drop of blood inserted in the center of the body of the snake-girl with hypnotic eyes and no conscience, and then created a bridge and reflection. The first beat went as if by notes. It was hard not to feel the full blood, properly processed and strengthened, it is not a couple of hairs or only auric casts of low accuracy. Stepan moved methodically and quite unhurriedly to the second chord, as if he were a snake coiling itself into rings before a throw. The second chord was also played without any problems. A couple of spirits resonance-enhancing subtle bodies had been summoned by him in advance. They are not so much helping to tune the puppet to the snake as removing interference in the world of Spheres. They were at a considerable distance from each other, and even envolt magic, which is the least weak from long distances, was negatively affected by such a distance.

The jerk of the spiritual body and the increase in resonance, followed by a more substantial impulse, establishing contact and, more importantly, stabilising it so that the victim didn't even suspect danger, didn't feel something was wrong with the spiritual body. Judging by the fact that the quest didn't fail, she didn't feel it. What happened next was no longer important. Little by little the doll, long, almost as long as her elbow if the tail was vertically extended, was acquiring the auric features of the recipient. Stepan had no intention of using his labour for anything vulgar. He just didn't see the point, not at this distance. He ordered to freeze, scratch the nose, parody the sound of some bird, to fall asleep and wake up instantly, to freeze and lose his thoughts, and to take all of the above as the norm and not pay attention to what was happening. Finished after about two hours, having done a little bit of poking around in the victim's memory. Although the connection was still failing, even with amplification from spirits, territory control, and totem base. That's a lot of kilometres of distance, a lot.

There was very little of interest in Seyshassasssss's head. She had spent most of her life in the jungle, hunting and gathering things, reagents mostly. Not just a hunter but a trusted hunter of one of the Mothers, still limited and not consciously going to get out of her limitedness. Yes, it was interesting to learn from her more about the matriarchs of the serpentfolk society, who were closer to other giants in size and not lacking in magical power at all. Some of these ladies-mothers could obviously turn another master's brains into a tube with one look or one melody of a rattle on the tip of the tail. There were those among them comparable to magisters in strength, especially in their native jungles, where they could act very stealthily and from extreme distances.

The caravan is going along the green hell. In the distance, on the edge of audibility, the same rattle sounds a couple of times a day, inaudible to the ear and elusive magically, hiding in the usual fluctuations of the background. It sounds and sounds, nothing special, except for the fact that after a couple of weeks the caravan just disappears, and the tribe of snakes has new slaves, new delicacies, though not all of them ate reasonable people, and new males, which can fertilize a clutch. Yes, yes, not in ordinary conditions, but with the use of a special type of witchcraft and a ritual of preparation it is quite possible to make a captive mage on the borderline between adept and master to cum on the clutch of Mother and thus give up forever not only part of his gift, but also part of his mind, will and brains, becoming a submissive toy for a moment of pleasure. Seyshassass was born from such a clutch, by the way, and she saw her “father” personally, though he was barely a gifted student by that time, having successfully given away all his gift to his favorite snakes.

The shaman understood the purpose of the snake's captivity, and even regretted a little that he had kept her alive. He did not realise that her intentions were exactly that, because she did not intend to kill, harm or sell him into slavery. From her point of view, those with whom the Mothers worked stayed with them voluntarily and gave parts of themselves too, purely of their own free will. Well, in a society where the right is always the one who suppresses the opponent's will with the eyes, it can't be otherwise. Though, here is the problem. Males can't become Mothers, which is obvious. They, even if they are equal to Mothers in pure strength, usually still yield in the power of natural abilities and their bodies. And also such patriarchs make ideal Fathers so usually outstanding males quickly get brainwashed and then happily decide to pour themselves into strong offspring, while Mothers continue to rule.

Many of those Mothers cultivate their competitors. For them it has become a kind of tradition and a sporting competition. To let a talented and very young male learn that he is being prepared to be a father, which are still called by a funny term, the closest analogue of which, when translated into human language, would be ‘happy giver’, to let him think that he has learned about these plans himself, to cultivate in him a thirst for struggle and power, to pretend that you do not understand why he so diligently seeks strength and skill, on the contrary, bringing him closer. So that at the end he would still pour himself into the clutch voluntarily, considering it his victory, seeing in distorted dreams how he outwitted and deceived the treacherous Mother, seeing so clearly that he did not even notice how every month he was getting weaker until he became a concubine deprived of the gift, still living in the Mother's cave as a servant or a toy, which is very rarely allowed to the body of the ruler of the snake tribe. From this knowledge and memories, the shaman learnt several descriptions of such rituals, extremely tied to the connection with the jungle, as well as racial peculiarities of the aura and spirit of snake folk.

And also his victim did not know and had not heard about the fact that the male father-surrenderers managed at least once to defeat and kill, or even to subdue the mother.... so clearly she had not heard that it was suspected that these rare cases of victories were carefully hushed up or erased from memory. And the successful killers, fugitives or even subjugators were either killed by the matriarchal ladies or forced to flee very far and very fast, who knows? The jungle holds many secrets, there were few ways to find out exactly what was going on there, lurking in the bubbling cauldron of green hell.

Seyshassasssss' entire life, aside from hunting and extracting rare reagents, consisted of either fighting for dominance, dominance itself, or being under someone's spell. The Autogoddess would definitely appreciate such a society, perhaps even taking it under her patronage. Alas, the snake gods were hardly worshipped, unless you counted the Life Giver, Shera was right, they prayed to her everywhere, preferring more primitive beliefs and practices of unity with the world. Thus it could well be considered that they worship the jungle as such, as a biome and their own home. By the way, she, as well as her tribe, did not know much about the Queen, they only knew that somewhere there, in that direction, very far away, there was a place where one should not go, and it would be physically impossible to get out.

When he had finished checking the snake's memory, he moved on to the second, almost finished part of the work required by the quest. On a small pedestal stood an equally small copper circle framing a portrait of a snake named Seyshassasssss crawling through the jungle. The painting was the size of a large dish tray. It was as magical as a doll, and through this piece of art one could peek at the target, and see what was happening to her at that very moment. Not only to peep, but also to do it absolutely imperceptibly, even for exotic defences, if the most stubborn paranoia or something absolutely incomprehensible and therefore having no adequate countermeasures was not counted. Peeping and, if you were lucky, to influence, not on the snake itself, the doll would be enough for it, but on those near it.

He could get aura indicators, cast a subtle and weak compulsion, curse, or place a tracking mark. There were countless options, all of which could be useful. He could introduce a similar functionality to that of a doll into the painting, but a doll was much more practical and easier to handle when it was already finished. Yes, through the portrait you can, for example, gradually change the appearance or through the markers of that appearance to influence the consciousness - to add to the modest nun make-up of a prostitute, stupid expression and tits of the DD size, and the original will become promiscuous, lustful, stupid and prostitution-prone individual. But it is better to use dolls for reliable and variable control, while portraits and statues are already about very gradual and even more imperceptible influence of the highest level - no matter protective, health-improving or brainwashing, although it is not so difficult to combine. The hardest thing is to ensure that the portrait is able to represent all those and everything that will be near the snake, in the zone of control and natural sensitivity of her spirit. She, thus, as if became the antenna of a radio radar, and the radar was the portrait itself and the array of totems, while the shaman acted as a radio operator.

The portrait took much longer than the doll. Because the young man could not paint very well, he had to instill in himself a spirit-print, a shadow of an “unrecognized but talented artist” dangerously close to the undead, not a specific one, but an image of such, in order to give him control over the hands that had taken the brush enchanted to the last lint. Then he had to put a reserve in every drop of paint, to correct minor inconsistencies with magic, and still struggle with the paint, adding blood of the main target. This is a kind of spy camera which can be immersed in sleep mode, but is not very useful to him. He wouldn't mind influencing some of the Mothers near Seyshassasss through such a window, there are specific ladies and society there. But it wasn't his business, and it wasn't his war, not to mention the fact that he'd be a fool to influence such a thing at all.

The assignment was not immediately accepted by the Ыystem. He spent several more hours, until the evening, double-checking all the nodes and thin places, making sure that his products would not deteriorate, would not suffer from time, would not lose their properties from being in preservation and would not lose synchronization of communication with the reflections. In the end he finished when it was already dark and there was no possibility to go for a walk around the city, even under the illusion. That is, maybe some pretty cute juicy peasant girl with sweet slippery greased peasant tits would wait for him, but it was much more likely to meet a patrol of guards or a team of night brothers, catching lingering passers-by and their subsequent sale to whomever needed. Well, the more time to accept the reward for completing the assignment.

They promised him an immediate upgrade to the advanced base of one of the specialized knowledge for the Envolt branch, as well as a random meta-skill from those not yet revealed, either common or rare, and an elite token on top of that. Not a lot, especially considering the auto-divinity of the assignment. That would definitely tweak the tokens given out. But he also completed the assignment, which he was not against performing, returning the insidious snake for her deeds, which she pulled in the address of the earthling. Again, if not all, then a lot of knowledge of the Envolt branch is aimed at working with the mind and will of the target-mirror in one way or another, but at the same time many of them are useful enough for the shaman to think of taking them himself.

Oh, he will have too much to learn, to lie in meditation again with breaks only for the toilet.

For the epic rescue of Tahira, he was not even given a deed, not even an act. It was understandable, though. The task was definitely not up to his level, even though he'd been cleaning up loose ends and all those who'd seen her in her altered state for some time while Tahira was recovering in the “rented” house. He cleared her memory a bit, removing the most traumatic moments and allowing her to get over the fact that she had been repeatedly and regularly raped in especially perverted ways. A couple of individuals had a real accident. Especially happy for Chablai, son of Ablai, nicknamed Mud. He was firmly tied to the river and the land slavecatchers. This man is suffering - or enjoying? - his overweight. He had gone to the latrine and drowned there during a walk before going to bed.

The asshole had a normal toilet in the house with magical heating, air freshening and gnome-type sewerage, but he had a sudden seizure in the place where there was only a toilet for servants. So he had to order the guards, swearing and cursing, not to let anyone in until he relieved himself. And then just the spirit of decay with the witch's curse on the rottenness of the boards, and on top of that the witch's and the shaman's simultaneous silencing of sounds, done through another spell and another call, respectively. The guards neither heard nor saw anything suspicious, and waited a good half hour before asking if their master was all right. He could sit in the latrine for an hour before, Chablai's stomach was weak after a couple of drops of poison spiked by his beloved late brother. By the time the alarm was sounded, he had already started to cool down, and the guards were trying on a wooden raincoat. They would be the ones to blame for the boss's death. If the shaman is not mistaken, they would decide to go on the run almost immediately, even before they had organized themselves. He almost expected to see them at the same gate as Tahira, leaving the city with her.

A couple more individuals had to arrange a mutual poisoning with shitty alcohol. The two thugs, who had access to Tahira's body as well, who knew perfectly well who she was, liked to save money on booze. Stepan helped them to realize the wrongness of their way and the danger of counterfeit alcohol with a lot of fusel oils. This time he did it purely by spirit, a curse of a similar type would have left traces, but he cleaned up the spirit's actions, so that the two freaks had not just a shitty brogue, but a real toxic booze until the liver precipitated and the pancreas came out of the chat room. The former financier of the boss who drowned in the toilet, when he found out that his boss was all dead and gone, said “fuck it,” said “fuck it,” packed his things, opened the safe with the commonwealth with a copy of the key-amulet made long ago and run off into the sunset before the panicked guys could come to their senses and even before the mansion of Mark the Reed, formerly de Vasek, burst into flames.

Already in the empty and dark streets of the city, the paving stones split under the feet of the fugitive who was running to a familiar stable where he had a horse and a set of things for a long journey, turning into a pit five meters deep. He fell into it with all his gold. Then the walls of the pit, like the mouth of a sandy worm grinded body. Then it came back, even putting the stones in the same order. And since the man's body was now buried under the crossroads, many standards and not-so-standard search rituals would fail wildly, and all the seekers who were familiar with the subject would take it as a sign that the fugitive rat had skillfully covered himself from the search. Stepan amplified the echo of the crossroads, and the traces of his intervention were covered and erased, just to be on the safe side. By the moment Tahira, covered by the illusion, left Klyuchevoy, there were no living witnesses to the fact that she had not been finished off with Lesch's team. The shaman did not like what had been done to a pretty girl, whom he could well call not an ex-girlfriend, but just a good acquaintance.

Comparing this task to how he'd cleaned up the Krellb network, it was a lot easier. A dozen levels of difference and a lot of labor to get those levels, and it was not about the levels, but a lot of side knowledge and properties. As a reward for his good deed in the framework of cleansing the new world from very unpleasant personalities, he received only one free knowledge: “basic fundamentals of witch benefics”. Actually, the thing is quite useful, just on all sorts of enhancements and blessings focused, and not only imposed on living beings, as with Tahira, but also simply on the land or territory can hang such benefits. His witchcraft healed or restored the health of several individuals who had earned his pity and mercy by their fates and deeds, and It also played a role.

In a bundle of synergies, the ability to put witchcraft into the spiritual entity, to enchant it for a more stable service or to strengthen some aspects has become very strong. Again, from a blessing to a spell or influence on consciousness is in fact not one step, but a quarter of that step. Strengthening health and at the same time changing the hormonal background to greater loveliness? Creation of a strong protective veil, which at the same time forces one to focus on a single goal, and even so that nothing else in the mind simply does not linger? Or maybe lifting the curse of infertility at the same time with the cause instilled such natural desire to immediately conceive a child with the one who lifted this curse? In general, the options are countless, although you can try.

Separately, he was pleased to see the methods of getting to such calls, which do not require standard dialog or protective circles. The entity is simply imposed on the restraining and affecting the will of the witch, which will force it to act according to the will of the caster. Actually, this is how witches work with spirits, in addition to standard contracts, especially if you need a spirit for one contract, not a long-term contract. But this does not mean it is impossible to make a contract for centuries in this way. Just there will have to act more subtly, best in combination with the classic shamanic dialog.

Having learnt this knowledge in three and a half hours, the young man finally decided to distribute his two free points for past levels into territorial magic and flow control, bringing them to advanced development. But first he wanted to finish the task with the snake and the snake puppet, and then return to the mansion and accept the new knowledge in full comfort. The only thing he couldn't decide for himself was to choose a branch for full closure, there were too many options, and there was no categorical need for something specific right now. He was reaching for individual options, and then he was pulling himself back as if he had been hit on the head with a sandal, not with a light sandal, but with a solid gold sandal.

* * *

The mansion welcomed the shaman with a friendly maid who was already serving a late dinner and a very happy Sylvia in the company of Jaspera and Lemira. They had successfully closed an important deal before the deadline because the increased power of the main bloodsucker allowed them to close the order for special alchemy much earlier. The reserve was enough for longer, the blood was controlled much better, and her knowledge was connected by the threads of synergy. In general, while Stepan was huddled in his underground complex, the three were arguing about what they should ask their customer for speeding up the deadlines. The customer, sitting very high in the palace, demanded or begged to speed up the arrival of the shipment because his customers were already twisting his arms.

Sylvia, having managed to fulfill this request, was now thinking about what to get from her customer, listening to the advice of her two older daughters. Rowena also had something to say, but her option of trying to secure the patronage of the same customer for the customer, and from the opponents of Herbert de Dantrel, was rejected because of the risk, and the angry bloodsucker went to her room, pouting like a child. The remaining ladies chose between “a lot of money” and “access to rare amulets and goods restricted to distribution”. They wanted both. They reacted to Stepan's appearance with politeness, friendliness, and even a little joy, but immediately returned to the argument. Sylvia didn't even try to order her pet to kneel and work with his tongue.

Stepan created a passage between the small nightstand and his cave, pulled out the dolls of Rowena, Lemira, and Jasper, and then put in the necessary compulsions and went to eat. He noticed an angry and vindictive Rowena coming to her friends to punish them for not believing in her strategic scheming genius, intending to lick all three of them one by one until they all came to some sort of consensus. The other three would see her action as a perfectly normal act on Sylvia's part, punishing the insolent bitch for her disrespect. Even Rowena herself, when she gets over it, won't pay much attention to it and will consider it just an analog of friendly and instructive teasing from her parental superior. Which, by the way, is not so far from the truth, Sylvia really could express her disappointment in the chick's intelligence in this way, long before meeting with the wandering master of shamanism. But of course, usually for such a punishment, one would have had to misbehave markedly more than gently challenge the parent's point of view in that argument, where she had ordered her suggestions to be challenged, looking for alternatives.

Some part of his consciousness demanded not to limit himself to what he had already done, to bring some vials with fragrant oils, to smear the vampires with their big pale tits, maybe even enlarging them with a token, and then to fuck, lick, fuck and kiss until his eyes went black, and the slippery tits of huge size began to come even in his dreams. But he heroically suppressed this part and went to eat something very reminiscent of okroshka according to the recipe of the cook turned out just fine. He could hardly keep himself from overeating and then feeling sick to his stomach. While eating, he looked at the gift meta-skills and tokens, both completely Milfy, just from the Chamber of Weights and Measures, and his eyebrow twitched, but he had no strength to be angry, he was probably too angry. In principle, the same meta-skill could be used against Malter, because he fit perfectly.

The system property was called “sweet essence of passion I”, acting only on beautiful women and only for those in the same group as Stepan. If such a person swallowed a full load of his, Stepan's, seed after a long and thoughtful or a quick and passionate blowjob, she would instantly have one completely free talent point. Given how often Sylvia sucked the shaman's dick and without such a skill, this wasn't a problem at all, more of an inevitability. It worked for the shaman too, only it was not sucking, but licking. And not just a classmate, but all beautiful girls and women, who were in the same group with him at the time of gaining or increasing meta skill. By the way, it was possible to increase it up to the second rank, but there were not enough characteristics for the third and even more so for the fourth rank. Apparently, the increase simply nullifies the effect and allows you to get the gift again, only at the second level will be two points of talents, and at the third already three and a free characteristic on top.

Quite frankly, without the bragging and declarations of steadfastness, he might have gotten that effect. Although he was not going to kneel before Sylvia, they still had a new round of mental resistance training planned. There was no avoiding defeats, which Sylvia was sure to reduce to erotic practices, and she loved forcing her partner to lick her pale pussy. Alas, but it was required not just to lick the pussy of the representative of your group, no, it was necessary to lick all of them at once. Stepan imagined how he would address Singha with such a request, as well as her facial expression and reaction, and somehow immediately, without long and disembodied thoughts, he decided that he could do without free talent and live without it.

The token was also inexpressibly beautiful, being called ‘Victim of Temptation’, had only five charges and was barely a Token-based Deal. The chosen target, whether female or male, but a woman had to be beautiful and a man at least not ugly, would receive the analogue of the tag that Singha and her mother had, or that an Earthman who had made a Deal would receive, or that would be given if the afterburner boost was used. Multiples, times and orders of magnitude will increase the probability of becoming a victim of bewitchment, seduction, mentalism, enslavement or any other kind of sexual and cerebral violence. Likewise, the probability of successfully getting out of the captivity of passions and feelings, having survived for some time in this captivity and having received only moral, reputational and limited material damage, will also increase. That is, some cunning seductress can convince a rich heir to the count's family to buy her jewellery for a fabulous amount for her, but not to empty the treasury and get into debt up to the bottom.

As a reward for this mark, the victim receives two random characteristics and a random elite property, which will give the same characteristics. An analogue of a super-property from the system. If the victim is not in the group, the normalisation of what happened works. No one will be surprised by the appearance of such a property and features in yesterday's titty sweet peasant girl with sweet juicy greased slippery peasant tits, or the heir to the throne, although his aura was studied up and down before his birth. On the members of the group works a shroud of oblivion. Neither Stepan nor anyone else will be able to realise that he is under the influence of the mark, until the end of the Token, which lasts about half a year. Only the shaman himself is necessarily aware of the situation, but his companions only at the request of the leader of the group. No, Stepan would only use such crap if he wanted to take revenge on some particularly annoying, but not deserving of something more serious, person. Hmm, the same Fanye, for example, for she has long ago fallen under the description of a beautiful woman. Or her lovely maid Nika... by the way, Stepan didn't even take revenge on her, having forgotten and got caught up in the swarm of affairs! That's who he can test the token on. Let them learn all the charms of what fuck brains, at the same time getting two attributes and a unique property, which even the magister will envy....

For a moment, it seemed to Stepan that something was wrong with his thoughts about revenge and that the revenge itself was somehow wrong.

//‘No, it's nonsense.’ - He came to the obvious conclusion, pushing his uncomfortable thoughts that he had in fact just forgotten about revenge, rather than patiently and methodically waiting for the right opportunity, further into his subcortex.

Received: "basic techniques for modifying active envolt"; "advanced basic techniques for modifying active envolt".

Acquired talents are added to the Player's overall status.

The new knowledge was, as promised, entirely tied to the envolt branch of magic, essentially allowing him to work with the fine-tuning of already completed envolts. Part of it he already knew how to do. The same recent thoughts he'd had about retrofitting portraits. But now he could work much more broadly and deeply. Change the parts of the puppet so that the built-in enhancement effects of physical strength and resistance to magic suddenly changed to stealth? Make a model of Dantmark along with a river overflow, and then dig up the dam or banks, forcing the river to overflow and flood half the city? Create a doll, and afterwards begin to rule its appearance and auric imprint, making the recipient-mirror of the doll almost a metamorph? This is only the tip of the iceberg, but the main essence of knowledge is the possibility to perceive the doll modularly, modularly modernising it. Not even control dolls in the first place, although there are some of those too, but amplifier dolls or shield dolls, which will take the blows. Fitting individual envolt-type items to the situation and the enemy. Even the ability to modify already made dolls. The latter is considered the most difficult for a reason. It is very much puppet magic static, once created, it is very difficult to achieve a change in what has already been done. This knowledge allows you to achieve such changes.

Actually, a very funny situation comes out. His second additional knowledge of envolt specialisation ‘techniques for achieving sympathetic resonance’, is designed to offset the natural aura drift of the target, allowing the envolt to remain effective even when the victim's aura has changed beyond recognition. Whereas ‘active envolt modification techniques’ allow you to do the exact opposite, modify a doll, effigy, statue, maquette, or any other envolt beyond recognition, but also modify the base of the bond! In combination, these two skills enter into a wild synergy. I'll have to experiment with the dolls some more, and maybe write a thread or two. Resonance will allow you to use the modification more fully without fear of damaging the envolt and rendering it ineffective. The flip side is that the modification will allow you to better match the resonance to the target if they are too defensive.

The other synergies were also available in the assortment, but still more modest. The separate focus of the knowledge branch itself had an effect. The most use was from non-class knowledge, like the skills of a fighter, agent, liquidator, brainiac, and vagabond - they gained the most from the new branch of talents. Master of brainwashing and liquidation in the first place, there are whole methodical manuals, what to write down, they will come out with a dozen bricks, dedicated to methods of stealthily and gradually work through the envolt so that no one understood anything, even knowing that the enemy has that envolt. Whether for killing or mental correction, it is in the use of puppets and other bases, it does not play a special role. The most important thing is to create the envolt. For killing or brainwashing is secondary, both of which are much easier than the creation itself. Or taking samples to work with. Auric impressions, hair, nails, blood, other bodily fluids. All of it can become a key to an attack, and therefore all of it is protected and cleaned by smart paranoids.

For example, Sylvia was well aware of the rituals of ‘renunciation’, which allowed one to successfully sever the connection between oneself and a drop of blood, a hair, or the traces of intimacy left on someone. These rituals have their gradation and degree of quality, but the best personalities of this world prefer to protect themselves with the best means. But Sylvia had never even heard of a range of summons, witchcraft spells, territorial changes in the laws of the world, which allow such renunciations to be blocked or rolled back. It was not that Stepan's knowledge of the System presented something very unique, something that had never been available in the world before, or that this information was not for everyone. More likely the second. Such techniques must definitely exist, just they are protected and not advertised, or countermeasures will be invented. And Sylvia is not the person who knows everything.

Although it is difficult to find an opposition to the elder spirit, which simply follows the victim and absorbs the dropped hairs, flaky skin, dandruff, and other wastes into a special inter-reality pocket. While the pocket of the spirit stays out of reality, the standard and not so standard rituals of renunciation do not work for them. They simply do not perceive the contents of the pocket as part of the world, but this is the essence of renunciation as such. To break the connection between the world and the particles of the one who inhabits the world. And this is only the most obvious variant. There are more complex and subtle, like an imperceptible hex on the earth, which masquerades as other, more standard, preferably bless type, weakening or even forbidding renunciation to work on its territory.

All in all, it took the shaman almost ten hours to digest the new information. He only got up a couple of times to drink water and stretch his bones, returning to meditation. It took him almost twenty-four hours to raise the two root knowledge of witchcraft to an advanced level. Though he took a break for sleep without raising both knowledge at the same time, so it was a day and a half. He didn't dream much, or didn't remember them upon waking, unless you counted Commander Shepard banging his head against the iron table while the Forerunner himself was banging his body against the iron meteorite, yelling something about the threat to all cycles at once and catgirls. And the female version of Shepard, together with Liara, was reading a pink-covered book, taking notes and arguing desperately while Samara and Morrint, dressed in erotic French maid costumes, were fanning them.

In any case, it was not about dreams, but about knowledge: “advanced developed techniques of territorial influences” and 'advanced developed techniques of changing energy flows' were obviously very synergistic with each other and with all other knowledge, including shamanic knowledge. Stepan froze no worse than Windows on weak hardware. He felt overheating in his brain. He was very tired even though he did not get out of bed. In fact, as he roughly imagined, by local standards and with sufficiently high characteristics, the advanced developed level would be accepted by the inhabitants of his new world as a full-fledged mastery. He had the stats to be a master. And not just a master, even a very strong one. In terms of Spirit and Sensitivity, he could even pull out a magister of shamanism, but he was not recognized as such by the System, and in other characteristics he was still noticeably lacking. He would become a master of witchcraft only when he got master skills, but he could get them. He just needed to gain two levels or get a couple of free talents in another way. Again his thoughts involuntarily drifted to the last token, making him wrinkle his face in indignation directed at himself.

It would be fine if for the meta-skill to work he had to find a completely unfamiliar and never seen before luscious juicy peasant bitch with juicy sweet lubricated slippery peasant tits, and then lick her tits or not only tits.... but to come with such a request to the Angry Steppe Tit, he simply could not, above his strength. Even if she would agree, and he was almost certain that she would not refuse, especially having understood the workings of the token, rather, even envious to the point of greening... well, just no, no and that's it, it's never going to happen, dixi.

Territorial magic on a new level has grown into a deeper understanding of the territory as such. It became easier to work with water. It became easier to raise the zone of control higher into the sky, intercepting wind flows and due to the control of those flows changing them together with the ether currents. It is quite possible at the current level to start creating if not a full-fledged magical source then an etheric amplifying vortex. In this vortex, in this territory, it is so easy to cast very complex and multi-component conspiracies of various types. The nature of the spells had changed, too; if before they existed separately, even overlapping each other, now he could unite several spells into one, each of which was growing deeper into itself. The same layering from simple to complex, only now in a multidimensional image.

It depended a lot on the point at which the two spells were intertwined. If you combine heat suppression and blood flow acceleration at the very beginning, when only the first layers of flow control go, you get enhanced medical spells for life support. At high layers, it will simultaneously suppress any poisons of hot type, even the level of salamander bite or dragon flames, and do not let you bleed out, even if naturally pierced through the heart, liver, and throat cut. Well, at least as long as there's enough power in the spell and it's fueled by the caster. If you combine these two influences at later layers-stages, when the control of heat turns into the control of even the most fierce emotions and protection from their reading by mentalists, blood dispersal will not allow any hostility and not authorized alchemy to get a foothold in the body, you will get a complex-bastion, very reliably protecting from subtle influences of mental-sensual type. Thus layers and control of flows are in fact not quite identical, but very similar, simply they joined and entered into symbiosis at different stages of creation.

With these types of spells, you understand perfectly well why witchcraft around the world is considered a bullshit extremely slow and clumsy, but at the same time very powerful, as well as insidious when necessary, almost unstoppable. Any self-respecting witch or spellcaster will have already available hexes, spells, witchcraft, which can be one way or another to finish file. There will be prepared and burrowed into the ground territorial conspiracies, but they are not even file thickly finished, existing exactly in the form in which they were created and spells. If you want to change or remake the effect, make something new or put on top of a dozen fresh nodes-spells, hoping that you can thus change the effect and not turn the witch's masterpiece into a toxic pumpkin, which will also poison your land.

And how it all combined with totems, especially if you apply the patchwork methodology and seize control over pieces of territory all over the world! Weave in one patchwork of desert heat and sandstorm, creating a curse that shrinks the aura of your enemy with tiny images of intangible grains of sand, and in the second patchwork add the fierce cold of the northern glaciers, which will make the aura of the enemy fragile and vulnerable. And after both of these flaps to bind one in one, from which the fragile aura will shatter like a glass castle under artillery fire, because even the smallest grain of sand will be death incarnate at such vulnerability. Most of the witches are limited to those streams of forces that are available in their territory, so they try to diversify these streams, to grow a garden with exotic flowers, to light a fire, which will never go out, to raise from the bowels of the earth stream with water key or create a break-gorge to the depths of the bowels. But even so, a spellcaster from the depths of the deserts will have great difficulty working with those streams that carry concepts-aspects of cold and snow, even if he finds substitutes or can pick up an analog of the desired effect. A patchwork spellcaster in the person of Stepan? He rakes out of all corners of the world only the most tasty things, as if gnawing raisins out of a bun, creating truly impressive combinations.

However, for the most impressive case, he will need a lot of totems, which someone will also have to maintain. Therefore he will need dolls-victims, whose hands he will be able to work and the eyes of which to watch, moving part of his essence in the vessel of their bodies. And the skill of witchcraft must first be properly raised, at least leveling it with shamanism. Then even three magisters with personal armies wouldn't be able to beat him in a fortified point. Especially taking into account that such a territory, which has also undergone special ritual reinforcements and reinforcements of witches and became one solid array, will allow him to call even the highest spirits with considerable ease, as he now calls and binds the spirits of the elders with contracts. However, with his current capabilities, even he would need at least a couple or three years to create such a territory, and preferably a dozen, to ensure that no one interfered with him.

He finished assimilating the new tricks, evaluated the expanded lists of possible spells and the recipe of summons, marveled at the types of charms and suggestion that he could pull off, the shaman went to sleep again and this time he didn't even dream about Commander Shepard and certainly didn't dream about the strange seductive peasant luscious bitches with succulent sweet slippery greased peasant tits, which were calling him to take a walk around the city, to look into one inconspicuous alley and there, there .... .. there. Stepan did not remember what was there, as well as other dreams too, because he certainly did not forget to call the guardian spirits of the dream spheres. When he woke up in the morning, or rather, in the afternoon, he stretched tiredly and began to stretch his body, thinking that it was time to give Sylvia a free talent.

* * *

There was something strikingly meditative about the way Sylvia, immersed in a trance, sucked his cock - evenly, like a pendulum, without distracting herself with breathing, without loosening her grip on the ring of lips, swallowing it to the edge and then almost releasing it, leaving only the head in her mouth, caressed by her tongue. This measure and cyclicality of her hypnotized and bewitched almost literally, and the shaman, who was about to cum quickly into the mouth of the bloodsucker to give her a free talent and then go about his business, involuntarily delayed. He could have changed her orders at any moment. He could have seized the initiative, placing his hands on the back of her head burrowing into the thick black hair of hers. He could have, but he was unwilling to force himself. Following the last order, the woman sucked successfully, leisurely and carefully controlling her movements, keeping her partner on the edge of eruption as he clutched the crunching armrests of the chair with all his might, almost rolling his eyes in pleasure.

He, to his slight shame, could not resist and literally cried out at the moment of orgasm, splashing into his partner's mouth, feeling the tantric hearth boiling from the bundle of their auras and noting with satisfaction how Sylvia was cumming with him. She was in a deep trance, however, and so she did not show her orgasm outwardly, only a slight twitching of her abdominal muscles, which was almost invisible under her clothes. He didn't order her to undress, and she didn't want to. There was something about the sight of her, the fact that she was fully clothed and not even exposing her huge, pale, sweet tits, a sense of control over her, of her control over his pleasure. Perhaps, he decided, he would have to try something like that again: undressing himself, but leaving Malter riding him fully clothed, except for ordering her tits out of the corset. Yes, he would have to.

Meanwhile, his faithful associate and frustrated mistress had come to her senses, falling out of her trance and smiled contentedly, predatorily and triumphantly. Well, yeah, it's not like she even needed a nudge through the doll to go for that blowjob, considering it a paltry payment for a point of talent. He had put her into a trance purely by tantric influence, not control through the doll, and she was quite aware of that influence. Sylvia would have been very angry about that, had it not been for the suggestion, but now she felt only passing irritation at the willfulness of her toy, which wanted so much to please her mistress that it even dared to use magic and put her into a trance. She would definitely punish her toy and supplement his bookmarks with the necessary prohibitions, but sometime later, not now, a hundred years from now.

"That's great, pet, just great." She said, rising from her knees and stroking him, still sitting in the chair, on the cheek with a palm clad in a thin glove. "I'm almost not even mad at the way you've looped me, sweet doggie, but you'll still enjoy your punishment. Follow me into my office and crawl under the desk, though no, not walk, but crawl, like a doggie should. And forget about talking, pet, just forget it, you'll only bark at my command all day long. Not too much, it'll give your tongue plenty of work. Oh, come on... oh, well, that's for another time."

The shaman who had listened to her orders once again laughed a little and sent Sylvia off on her errands. He already knew that she was going to upgrade herself to the second of the root skills of her class, achieving the status of “Advanced Master of the Practice of Blood Formation”, bringing that one up to its maximum level. The young man was tempted to watch her learn this knowledge, but didn't want to so badly. And the knowledge itself was not a modification of the aura, which the vampire's mind tolerated much harder, so, as in the case of the super-property, it would not turn her off. But it was a pity, he liked to watch Sylvia completely “enveloped” and caress her unaware body. He didn't even expect another perversion from himself. He was hooked, much to Autobogina's delight, no other way. The assignment to turn another random woman, but necessarily beautiful and gifted, into a doll, albeit a mental one, he had resentfully canceled while sitting in the underground hall and working on the portrait of the snake.

Now he was planning to go back underground and make new contracts, as well as selecting all sorts of spells and creating purely witchcraft blanks for combat, support, healing or something else, but again the lazy desire to walk around the city, to look at the bustling people and rest a little. He was about to enter the city, but then something hit him in the eye, glinting something golden in his glazed eyes. He stammered awkwardly. With his Constitution and his perception of the world even without eyes, he hit the back of his head against the stone wall, and as if he had regained some of his sanity. No - he didn't recognize himself lately, so much so that he was drawn to all sorts of bullshit instead of work, he had to get into a rhythm. And if you think about it, it was a strange situation indeed: what no one had ever accused him of was his work ethic, he was always ready to work and had no problems with concentration, and now it was as if something was pushing him... wait a minute.

It was really suspicious, especially against the background of his skills in agent work and practice of countering compulsion! And the fact that he had not noticed it for so long, despite the same skills, was suspicious not even threefold, but a hundredfold! Everything seemed to be in order, there was nothing to worry about, but the desire for self-development was squeezed out of his head as if by soft and large juicy sweet slippery greased peasant tits of a cute peasant bitch. Juicy sweet slippery slippery greased peasant tits, hidden under a simple country sundress, which so shines through the fabric tense nipples, which is so easy to pull down, exposing juicy sweet slippery greased peasant tits of a cute peasant bitch, that he had never seen or met before, that it felt so good to kiss and lick, that it felt so good to hold her and burrow into the hot hollow between her juicy sweet slippery slippery greased peasant tits, smelling the stupefying aroma of wild berries and fresh grass. ..

Shaking his head, the Earthman returned from heaven to earth and began to create a work plan for the coming week. And with this plan he was going to appoint another exit from the body, in half with a group of calls, which will need to be conducted outside the body initially. Still he, as a shaman, needed to do such things, and it was really interesting. You can literally see the world without physically leaving the house. However, the first violin in his affairs was preparation, as always, as full as he could make it. Protection circles, protective incantations, anchor-spring, returning to the body in case of alarm, creation of not only shamanic, but already purely witch's bed for the body. Especially the latter he had previously lacked. Keeping the body in perfect condition would be noticeably easier now that the appropriate spirits had come together in symbiosis with the beneficent spells tied to the territory.

The still unchosen branch of knowledge beckoned with options, but he couldn't, really couldn't, make up his mind. There were several equally useful and important options, but none he needed right now. There was, for example, a branch called “suppression of territorial presence”, which not only allowed to effectively open up foreign territory and prevent all sorts of witches from witchcraft, although that too. The main property of the branch is that it will be possible to lay its power over the land not just imperceptibly, but really invisible, leaving a shadow of presence so small that outside the heart of the future concentration of forces, even a professional witch in the rank of master will pick up mostly small and not particularly understandable fluctuations, which is not even the fact that the consequence of the work of the adept witchcraft. Well, unless she knows for sure that her colleague is here and actively working, unless she knows what to look for and how to find it.

Of course, this level will be reached not at the first rank of knowledge, but at the maximum, that is, the fifth. Only he has exactly five of those points, just for closing the branch, only for one branch, and intended for one branch! And knowledge is really indispensable if he wants not just to practice witchcraft, but to apply this witchcraft on a scale, to do it at least half as seriously as shamanism. The trouble is that this option is only one of several, and everyone is more useful, cooler and necessary than the other, all with a logical justification. And spin as you wish, Stepan, choose and think. Honestly, he tries to assess the coolness of his System sensibly and not to get greedy, but at times like this he wished he had been given fewer options or chosen in advance instead of him. Yes, he got greedy, yes, he actually got a separate specialization of a magic master out of nothing, and now he's crying that it's hard for him to choose. Whereas a normal master would have spent half a century mastering this knowledge. And only if he found a place to master it and managed to pay for it.

In general, Stepan had no solution, so he habitually drifted into his work, drowning himself in it to the point where silly thoughts did not enter his head. For the next three days he enjoyed the coolness of the stone hall without going upstairs, where the bright summer sun was blazing. Well, enjoyed it how? His body, which had been thrown off and supported by spirits and conspiracies, lying in a gently influencing circle of protection, while the real Stepan, hanging opposite the reflection of the central totem in the world of Spheres, was working like Papa Carlo, multiplied by two or even three. There were not so many resources available, the work of meta-skill on their regular summoning gave much less than desired, but still fabulously much, if compared to the usual practices of the magical art, so the young man called mostly those spirits for which there were reagents.

Mostly fighters, of course, for three to five draft picks. But there were also longer-term deals. Some of them settled in totems and became another part of the defence lines. Even one elder, though not particularly strong but cunning, agreed to become the guardian of the totems and the place of shamanic power. The entity is not powerful, even weak by the standards of the seniours, not suited for combat, but synergises perfectly with the ++Opener. This mole-like creature, woven from constantly moving black bubbles like small obsidian beads, was excellent at hiding and suppressing energy signatures and traces of spatial discontinuities, especially those of a spiritual nature, coming through the spheres. It became easier to practice with him, because the spirit who agreed to live in the totem for the next twenty years in exchange for a portion of the offerings going to that totem and a certain share of the power pumped out and accumulated by the totems, significantly reduced any flashing. The local lords weren't looking for him much anyway, apparently believing his teleport to be the work of Maega, daughter of Maedra, mother of the Stupid Mare, and now they might not look for him at all. Well, not until he'd given another important clue.

Other spirits were contracted for the future, and the stock of contractors and contract masters was renewed. He managed to find, quite by accident, a very funny spirit of oath-making. He could not and did not even want to punish for breaking an oath, but almost guaranteed and instantly informed the other party about the fact of violation. In other circumstances, it was even more useful than another curse on rotting blood to the entire tribe. The locals without Stepan know how to deal with such crap or use similar methods, whereas it was not clear how to defend against such thing. The Earthman, for the sake of interest, had conducted a mental experiment, but even for him the task was difficult and required a fantastic injection of resources and considerable risks. In fact, he need to put himself into clinical death by witchcraft, completely stopping all processes in the aura and spiritual body. Then the entity, the presence-reflection of half of which will be with the deal-maker will consider the shaman dead and will cease to monitor, going off on his own business. But even for him, with all the preparation, there would be a very slim chance of driving off to the land of the eternal ponies, for it would be too deep to drive into himself the analogue of locking the path, only not as traumatic and deadly as the original curse. It's not just stopping your heart and breathing. He can really fall off even with all his skills!

Most of the summons, however, were of strong and lesser spirits, simply filling in the gaps in certain types of impacts and methods of inflicting damage. There was another pack of hounds, which were excellent at hunting fellow spirits, eager to be sent after the entities that had betrayed the shaman. They didn't charge much if they made offerings, but they ate up reserves and strength like crazy. Without the presence of a good totemic circuit, which fuels contracts on a large scale, even a very strong adept of shamanism will not handle such a pack. It would drain him dry in a couple of weeks just to keep them waiting. Stepan could afford to spend power, and he was also very good at putting spirits of this type to sleep, plunging them into a pleasant slumber inside the totem so that they did not burden the totems so much. To bring them out of their coma-stasis had been a matter of half an hour for him before, and with the use of witchcraft, which could easily run forces through the subtle bodies of the summoned entities without harming them, it was a piece of cake.

He finished on the call of another fighter of a suggestive type, which simply drove the victim into a stupor, so that even an experienced well-defended warrior would forget which side to hold the sword and in which direction to fight. And you can also order to hit the area, but the effect is much weaker. It works only against a crowd of unprotected fighters. And unprotected crowds are usually militias. You can't take away a fighter's skills if he doesn't have them. Having made a contract for thirteen summons every eight days, indefinitely, but only as long as the shaman possessed his totems here underground, he allowed himself to return to his body. Not for long, just to drink water, to go to the mansion to warn and calm Sylvia, to fuck Jaspera at her desk, without even letting her realise that she was being fucked. She was reading another boring letter with the whining of a subordinate merchant, who was underpaid again and could not explain it in any way, except for assurances that he was crystal clear. She must have been very surprised for a second when reading and re-reading the letter of complaint began to seem pleasant, and then it resulted in a loud groan and an inkwell almost dropped on the documents.

For a moment he wanted to order her to lie on her back, expose her huge, pale tits, oil them with a pleasantly slippery oil, and sink into motionless catatonia, but he managed to resist again. The ritual structures could survive without his presence for a couple of hours at most, and then they would have to be dismantled for three days and spelled again for the same amount of time. He didn't eat, still in his stomach there was a grey foam of familiar alchemy, which relieved him from hunger and degradation of the gastrointestinal tract, while the body was in a coma. He drank only plain water and congratulated Sylvia, who was literally destroying the underground polygon with her new knowledge of blood magic, to which even very large-scale attacks and defences worthy of a really very erudite supreme vampire had been added. He received from her a promise of reward-punishment for her favourite pet, and went off into the underground darkness.

There, in the darkness, he lay down on the bed that still retained the warmth of his body, leaving this body again and now no longer staying near the totemic place. He wandered a little in the earth's firmament, the sensations were very unusual: the environment, as well as its reflection in the Spheres, was very still and monolithic. Even in spiritual form it was as if you were floating and shifting much more slowly and unhurriedly. The spiritual currents are much smaller, while the gaps to the deeper layers are even greater than in the river flow of ether, and they are quite imperceptible. To his perception the place seemed to be innumerable piles of boulders, stones and pebbles constantly moving and levitating in the etheric mass. New passages were constantly appearing and old ones disappearing. The currents of ether were much smaller than a river stream but they were many, separate and swift, sometimes capable of pulling between the rocks and spitting them out at a deeper depth, where there was more ether and less solid rock, or, on the contrary, sending closer to reality, where there was solid rock all around.

That piece of stone staircase leading upwards will indeed bring you closer to the goal - the depth or the edge of reality, but only in the opposite order. The one who wants to go upwards will sink further and further with each step of movement along the image of the spiral staircase carved in stone, and the one who wants to check the depth of the firmament will, on the contrary, surface into reality. And that stone tree over there with stone fruits can be really valuable, if the fruit can be kept and processed, if it can be partially pulled out of the material value into the real world. These fruits are very inert and heavy at the same time, but they also easily come into contact with the spiritual body. Figuratively speaking, the plucked thing, resembling a marble apple in appearance and image, sticks to the one who plucks it, then becomes very heavy and drags it to the very bottom. And over there, at the bottom of the perception, is a ring of stones circling around itself, attracting the eye and mesmerising the consciousness. The shaman could not be sure, but he suspected that he would be transported to the jaws of the creature or creatures frozen on the other side of the naturally born, but deliberately strengthened and turned into a mesmerising bait, portal.

There were enough dangers here, but in many ways it was even easier than in the reflection of the river. First of all, different speeds. Yes, there were more traps. Yes, it was much easier to fall into the Depths even without any anomalies, but the place itself was noticeably slower, enough time to react and plot a route. The Earthman still liked the reflection of the surface rather than the depth, but this place had its own charm. Experience, again, dripped a little faster for out-of-body wandering. In the reflections of the world above the surface of the earth, it flowed out even with a slight regret. He successfully fell out exactly where he wanted to, outside the city walls, so as not to run into the occasional tracker. By the way, there were more of those trackers near the tower sharpened against spirits rather than simple signalling threads, just in case the mare's mother had left her indelible impressions.

He wandered, as he had done last time, along the course of the Dantra, for it was a convenient landmark. But now he was not in the stream itself, but near the banks, enjoying looking at all sorts of anomalous shit. He found a couple of nests-pockets of senior spirits, very old and asleep, as if those spirits had not left them for centuries. One was the guardian of a piece of woodland and half a dozen hills, just hills, not mounds, being a mostly peaceful and non-evil entity. The second was unambiguously nasty, an abomination of abominations, and occupied the ruins of some long-destroyed village. Even the foundations were already gone, hidden under the earth and grasses, but the creature was still sleeping and waiting for the humans to return. Not without difficulty hiding from the sleeping something, he groped the area with his own spiritual techniques, performed at the expense of his transformation, as well as specialised packs of spirit seekers. The longer he watched, the more infuriated he became. The abomination, brought to the village by one of the villagers along with a cursed artefact found in the river, had killed the whole village. No one had left. None of the fifty-two people living here, including the children.

It was a long time ago, about 300 years ago. The spirit tied to the anchor had fallen asleep, and the locals must have been smart enough to stay away. Mages or priests have been here too. They also had enough sense not to touch and certainly not to destroy the stone statue buried in the basement of the headman's house. Only to mark the place with forbidding signs and a couple of protective and fencing prayers around the extinct village, which had died out a hundred years ago. The most recent, fifty-third skeleton of a very brave woman, a novice or even a junior priestess of Gaia, also lay in the cursed cellar. Consciously, the lady went to her death, hoping to throw the crap into the cellar in time and seal it with a prayer, but not believing in success. By the time she brought the statuette to the cellar she was no longer a young milf, but a decrepit old woman, but she put a prayer seal on it. The statuette, even all these years later, could not call and subdue even a pigeon, not to mention a random passer-by. This sight was shown to him by a full-fledged vision of one of the very rare strong spirits of clairvoyant type, who was able to show the vision of the last hours of life and thoughts of the one to whom these hours belonged, and even very ancient images caught quite clearly.

The shaman only shrugged, spiritual and ghostly shoulders, and waved his hands, all three pairs and three separate hands that had no pairs. He shrugged and waved, and began to prepare the trap. The creature was strong, dangerous, and had killed a lot of innocent people. Eliminating such a threat was a great thing in itself, morally acceptable. But what inspired him more was not the great justice and the prospect of being a hero, but the fact that for the shaman to confront a creature chained to one place, unable to escape or catch up with the fleeing one.... is a pleasure. Then again, by the time it gets wind that it's being attacked, by the time it leaves its pocket, by the time it identifies the attacker and its target, it's had time to do most of the work. Turquoise and Aquamarine are already at his side, preparing to defend if needed, but he didn't limit himself to them, preparing a contract call for the Elder lodged in the totem. Appearing in spirit form as a stone and completely immobile statue dressed in only a maiden's robe with a masked face, this spirit was, like a couple of jellyfish, super-competent in the realm of spirit battles and shaman defence.

The entity's main speciality was the creation of stasis and inviolability barriers, which it used to cover itself, the defendant shaman, and allied spirits, which it used to shackle and then literally crush and grind all manner of evil crap. If it came to a fight, but it would hardly come to a fight. The shaman was not going to take any risks or waste scarce combat summons. The statue had a different rate for summoning without a fight, just to be on the safe side. Instead of a direct attack, he calls three packs, spiritual combat specialists, and all three are very similar. The spirits in them look like a mixture of shrews, moles and blind lizards, although they are all different in their own way. They are joined by a rather exotic and powerful spirit perfectly capable of opening spirit pockets and creating punctures, which is important, unnoticed.

An entity that looks like nothing at all. Its image was exactly the incorporeal presence. For a few minutes it takes the image appearance of a part of the barrier-lacuna, part of the pocket, and then simply opens in itself the hidden and very weakly radiating passages. Here in these holes, swarms of predatory small spirits dive. Call is still alone, it is not to be regretted, and they do not mind taking risks. Stepan's dialog was enough to explain the sleeping state of the senior. There was no fight as such, the creature broke out of its pocket not immediately, not even realizing at once that it was being tormented and that its pocket was no longer partially subordinate to it. The spirit intruder managed to get out of harm's way, about a quarter of the little buggers were destroyed by the waving of the creature, and only the lump of filth that burst out, like a mixture of smoke, pus and bubbling foam, was met by the jellyfish. They attack from its analog of invisibility, hiding behind the image-shadow of the shaman.

The Earthman struck forward too. The creature didn't even try to defend itself. It didn't notice the shaman at all. His limbs, which had become mantis scythes did a lot of damage to the senior spirit, forcing it to pay attention to him. It was like sticking his hands in the slop. It was good that he had covered his immaterial grasp with a protective layer of witchcraft and a couple of spirits, or he would have had to clean off the curse. The shaman didn't have time to be frightened, though he immediately broke the distance and struck back with slowing witchcraft, literally twisting the ether currents around the creature and shackling it in a fragile and short-lived, but already handmade pocket-lacuna. In the spirit world, these techniques were not only not ineffective, they were even cooler in many ways. The creature tore his trap in a matter of moments, letting through the mangled small spirit of filth thrown at him, a kind of fellow aspect, inside which was hidden sympathetic connection, another curse and envolt billet.

Ironically, the witchcraft poured into the suicide spirit was cleansing. In fact, it was almost a blessing, though it would have been harmful to a human, too, cleansing the upper layers of his skin and intestinal microflora. But it was as if bleach had been poured into the smoke-and-foam lump, so it skewered it and even partially damaged it, not disembodied it, but seriously wounded it. He was ready to take the retaliatory sluggish spit of some of the filth on the witch's protective shield, slowing the flow of aether around the lump. To be more accurate, but the attack had passed him by as it was. The jellyfish, waiting for the perfect moment, tore a pile of pseudo-flesh from the enemy in three cycles, losing a tentacle each, simply discarding the dirt and rotten part of it, as tentacles grow as well as tails on lizards. The creature was finally dead. The shaman additionally covered its remains with a new cocoon of stability, and pushed this cocoon directly into one of the ether currents, carrying it away.

The statue in the long-abandoned cellar had cracked and was giving off smoke clearly visible even to the average eye. It was seeping through nearly three meters of earth. I had to call on witchcraft again, uprooting the statuette's curse and stabilizing the currents of power around it. The crap was ready to sprout a curse-manc in the ruins, and these ruins were only seven or eight kilometers away from the other villages, which were already quite inhabited. A pack of hunting dark creatures could very well have caused a tragedy. All the while the shaman was blocking the call and preventing the curse from embedding itself in the ground, he was cursing the creators of the statuette in a sonorous and florid manner. Considering his being in the spirit world and his affinity with that world, he had to consciously keep an eye on his curses. The creators of this thing could not be harmed anyway, they were either dead or so strong that an attempt to curse them with a mere word would only attract attention and put him under attack.

Withstood and held it. He prevented the curse from taking root by taking control of the area, and then simply binding a couple of cubic meters of earth into a dense cobblestone brick with his will, and then used the “banishment from reality” on it, sending it into the depths of the spirit world. He deliberately made the banishment noticeable, slow, unsuited to combat, but threw it into the deepest depths he could push it to. The sudden change of currents pulled him into the breach, but he waited for it and did not give in to the current. The ground in the place where this couple of cubic meters of matter had disappeared sagged, and the shaman looked, seeing through the matter perception-consciousness-gaze, mentally pressing F, paying the last tribute to the unknown priestess who sacrificed herself for the sake of others. The thought that Gaia's village priestess must have had big, juicy peasant tits tried to pop into his head, but he suppressed the inappropriate thought almost violently, not wanting to make himself look like a lustful and insolent teenager, even if only to himself, since there were no other witnesses.

With a claw of his intangible limb, he scratched out on a boulder brought by a funny little spirit one of the signs of the Life-Giver, a schematic image of a wheat ear. That was the end of it. He didn't give any heartfelt speeches, nor did he recite any prayers, or Gaia might have heard. He didn't need such adventures. A moment later he turned his spiritual body into a sprouting bird, rising on the streams of ether and flying away into the far distance. The mood was melancholy and peaceful, as if he had done a good deed, even though he had not gained much experience, though not a little either. No new knowledge had been revealed, no deed or act had counted, but that wasn't surprising. The task was not difficult at all. A very deadly and dangerous abomination, even to a system cheater with a lot of tricks up his sleeve, can pose a danger, was killed suddenly and without getting the opportunity to give battle.

And it was the most awesome battle imaginable. That was Stepan's opinion, and there was no changing his mind. And all kinds of overpowering and battles with equal or even superior opponents, the thoughts of the Queen or Uck almost made the Earthman's eyes twitch, even though the body was not material, were better left to those who got high from it or were simply stupid or crazy. Someone could go after the supreme archidemon with two knives without extra enchantments, but that's a consequence not of courage, but of stupidity. Stepan, if he fights, prefers to deliver a killing blow to a bound, exhausted, cursed, weakened, and mortally wounded victim, and ideally not to deliver even this killing blow, killing from a distance and without direct contact.

The problem is applying that paradigm each time when adventure, or even ADVENTURE, fall on him completely fucking out of the blue.

The further journey was of no particular interest. On the near layers of the spheres, which were almost indistinguishable from reality, it was difficult, but not impossible for him to meet serious dangers. He did not forget for a moment about it and never lost his guard. Several dives to deeper layers also passed without pathos confrontations. He destroyed some other non-material things and found the lair of a benthic catfish that had merged with the spirit and suppressed it, the kind of creature that the individuals living at Dantra were so fond of swearing at. The creature was a perfect candidate for the star of a horror film, but fortunately not aggressive. It didn't even need to eat much, feeding on the magic of a small source and preying mostly on whatever swam up to it to challenge it for possession. He'd had a taste of humans, too, but only because the rivermen had executed their victims in this pool by smearing the bound ‘floaters’ with rotten meat. To blame the catfish for eating them was at least strange. And it had been a long time since there had been any new executions or breakwaters at all. The camp seemed extinct and abandoned, as if the gang had been shut down ten years ago and never returned. Or maybe they'd just found a better place to live, who knows?

He also memorised the place of some operational laying of an unknown person. The shaman could only see the subtle signalling spells around the inconspicuous place, which stood out in his spiritual perception as absolutely inconspicuous. After making sure he was not in trouble, as well as having a lot of trouble getting to the hiding place. He had to take the image-form of something like a bush, putting ghostly roots into reality and probing the path with those roots. He found a set of amulets and expensive alchemy in insulating containers, impersonal robes of sthealth mages with excellent enchantments, several specific tools for ritual magic, and another trap, which was supposed to capture the auric imprint of the one who found this place without knowing how to disable the trap, and then send it somewhere, where exactly it is not clear. But there was no death trap or poison gas capsule, apparently not to risk the lives of his operatives if the capsule turned out to be corrupted by time.

Having realised that he was absolutely not interested in what this cache was and who it belonged to, the shaman, who had practised his agent skills a little, left the place untouched and swam and moved about his business, returning to his usual spiritual image for wandering.

* * *

He moved to Morgrave unhurriedly, gradually, sometimes freezing for several hours in etheric currents, sinking into a meditative trance and passing through himself, it seemed, the whole universe at once. Along the way he collected some interesting reagents, partly material and partly otherwise. He had enough small plates of reflections, which were spiritual effectors removed from the material anchor, on his body. Remembering the same bracelets and belt he had used to protect himself during his first outing, it was much easier for him to create such things now. Mostly due to the extended control of his transformations and full-fledged witchcraft. In fact, this time he wasn't wearing a belt or bracelets, just more than forty shimmering plates slapped onto his spiritual body in a special order. Each plate was a separate effector, but they all worked together, and, most importantly, it was not necessary to maintain the humanoid form of transformation with them; they changed their position on the body accordingly, along with the distortions of the body-image.

He immersed all sorts of interesting things into those of the plates, which were assigned the role of a mixture of a spatial pocket and a house of spirits. It was impossible to put anything really material there, but the spiritual reagents obtained directly from the spirit world were stored there. In theory, you could put something entirely belonging to the real world. You just need to drag this something from the reality into the spheres, but in such experiments, the properties of the object change very much, not always for the better. It is only coins, silver and gold, that can be stored in such a way. They are very magical and quite inert, will not melt like a candle burner at the same moment. That's why they are valued by mages so much, they are a great material for so many enchantments, rituals, calls and other magical shit. But dragging that same gold from the realm to the realm... let's just say it's not easy, because it's heavy in every sense, you can't push it into the spiritual world, and once you do, you can't hold it without dropping it. Stepan was not sure he would risk going to the bottom layers of the high spheres for some gold ingot.

And why does he need gold at all? He's already on full support. If you need gold, you can simply activate the option of the system store, the exchange rate there is quite favorable, and coins of any coinage are not so expensive. But they are of much less use than, for example, the blazing scarlet embers of a fire that burns in the spirit world, not in reality. He had found the fire at a roadside camp where large caravans had stayed for years, if not decades. It was a good-sized, stone-lined campfire, with a hole dug and tamped with magic, a couple of primitive incantations on those stones, and even a trace of a guardian spirit with a touch of firebrand, who had either gone to free bread without the right offerings or had burned and been reborn. In the real world, the fire was now extinguished. The caravan had left the campground not long ago, but in the Spheres the fire was much more active.

It wasn't burning brightly, no, but the embers in it smoldered in an assortment and warmed up pretty well, too. A whole bunch of little things were flying around, feeding off the scarlet embers, but the place had no keeper. The fire itself was too hot and aggressive, literally burning and turning to ash those entities that took too much from it. The young man did not take much. Only a handful of coals, large and burning a bit even his spiritual flesh, protected by the property and witches' gloves, as well as a couple of handfuls of ashes, also an active and valuable reagent. He thought for a moment about making a mini altar with totem properties, but decided it was too public and too far from his main lair. He could do it if he was in the mood. To make someone happy who found this totem and customized it. But not now.

The exit to Morgrave was not along the river this time, or rather, it was along it, but he got out of the stream beforehand, not letting himself be carried into the sea. With his current characteristics and knowledge, he was sure that he would be able to get out of the sea ether and not go to the depths, but he didn't want to check, nor did he want to activate the evacuation technique. The city, just like last time, was amazing. Even at first glance, there was a lot more magic here, and a lot more magical protection, including from any spirits or those who liked to wander in the ways of such spirits. Not just monolithic armor. Getting into the city itself was relatively easy for his current skill set, but the Earthman still noted a lot of places he didn't want to go, even with all his System cheats. If it didn't kill him, then flash and mark him. He didn't want to alarm the local population. Everyone here was nervous and anxious as the cottage cheese. The palace of the local ruler was so enchanted that old Herbert must envy it. It was a fortress, impregnable and bristling with deadly thorns, only wrapped in openwork lace and with a bow on top. Such was the association when one looked at the residence of Augusta de Mont Ros through spiritual perception, which sounded funny in description, but was not the least bit funny in reality.

He spent about half a day on reconnaissance, assessing the weakest points of the barriers both on the walls and on the individual buildings of Morgrave. He did not look with his own eyes, but with the eyes of spirits, and he had to summon not just watchers, but masters of stealthy observation, unnoticeable not only to mages, but also to fellow shamans. And such specific and strong contracts at his disposal were not to say that a lot even with all the system's cheats. Some shamans would consider even one such contract to be a clan secret. Stepan summoned seven of them at once, and three of them, airborne spheres and carriers of wind aspects, had to be sent away and added with a kick from above. The wind in this place did not obey him at all. It was only thanks to paranoia and habits of perceiving the environment through the prism of agency work, he noticed how the will of the stronger Wind Caller began to undermine the fidelity of his calls, making not directly betray, but, say, delay and flash almost intentionally.

It was foolish to take the spirits up into the sky, where the winds ruled, so he did the opposite and called to the spheres of Hardness and Water. A pair of water snakes, capable of becoming completely transparent in spiritual perception, like transparent glass in a jar of water, floated down the Dantra, ending up in the city limits. A separate earthworm slowly and gradually climbed through the outer wall of the city, becoming for a moment part of the wall and began to listen to the surrounding world with the whole wall, picking up every spell, trap or signal thread, throwing this volumetric map into the mind of the shaman with a stream of not particularly legible images. Another one, with no elemental sphere at all, a carrier of the basic aspect of parasitism under the beast sphere, simply leeched into one of the observers of one particular shaman mother, simply tapping into his perception and scanning the city the way Maega, Singha's mother, had scanned it.

No kidding. It was the riskiest, but also the most successful approach. The spirit to which the parasite had attached itself had been flying over the city for years, and had been able to study it, the city, along with its defense sectors and scanning charms. Yes, the map was coming out a bit lopsided, airborne. The falcon spirit entity only supported a couple or three modes of scanning and perception, but it was very detailed. And yes, the spirit could look with physical eyes too, though it had to be regularly fed bird's eyes in an offering to do so. There were two groups of five spirits flying over the city - a daytime group with images of falcons and eagles, and a night group with images of owls. It seemed that this was not just a part of the shamaness' paranoia, but her contribution to the city's defense. At least with regard to the early warning system. The Earthman observing the perception of the alien spirit could see that the day group was looking not so much into the city itself, though not without that, but beyond the city walls, especially actively gazing into the flat surface of the sea. If one recalled the fact that the relatively recent attack on Morgrave had come from the sea, and even more suddenly, it was not surprising that Duke Augustus had splurged on additional reassurances.

While his spirits were picking up the keys to the city, the shaman found a shelter for his spirit in one of the satellite villages near the city itself. With witch control of the flow of forces, he twisted the flow of ether into a convenient hammock-pocket, secured the effect with shamanism, and summoned a couple of stealth spirits so they wouldn't find him. It turned out to be quite a convenient place for observation and meditation, only, again, he had to actively monitor his thinking, so as not to fall into a drowsy stasis, or you could lie there until the death of the physical body. Well, in theory. In practice, he would be drawn to the body by the necessary contracts and the totem itself, if he lost control so much. Only it would still be shameful as fuck. A master shamanist who couldn't keep his consciousness in check.

In addition to the hammock, while he was looking for a passage, he healed the villagers, curing chronic gastritis, beginning cirrhosis, in the latter case also adding a persistent intolerance to alcohol, spinal hernia, resulting in infertility consequences of an unsuccessful alchemical abortion, rotting wisdom tooth and beginning schizophrenia because of a rough and shitty applied spell. The girl, which the passing magician decided to use, could only sympathise and he even considered the image of this child molester from her memory, the spell was at least one and a half years old, and the prickly and agile girl was just now barely sixteen, and tried to look for him by his efforts. Well, you know, to stick a cleaver up his arse following the traditions of some radical bloggers on Earth, but he met only a grey-white veil of death. This individual didn't live to see retribution. Well, or someone else had petted him earlier, not for molestation, but for something else. The individual, to all appearances, was a very, very bright person, whose brightness had brown shades.

Having finished with the psychological rehabilitation, as well as being quite tired, Stepan ordered the parasite to leave the essence of the alien spirit unnoticed and harmlessly. He used the data he had collected and cautiously made his way into the city. He had to sit under two complex witchcraft's camouflage canopies and under the cover of a specific strong spirit of the sphere of secrecy, which was insured by his slightly weaker colleague. And also in a personal and mobile pocket, which without skill in repeating the properties and tricks of spirits-exots can not build, but he was again saved by the synergy of skills. In the hammock-pocket he had created as a hiding place in that very village, there remained an envolt-image, a mixture of shamanism, witchcraft and puppetry, made of straw and clay, which he had to pull out of reality with a ghostly limb. In fact, this envolt was the image of a lacuna-pocket, which remained stationary all the time. That allowed the pocket to move around itself as if the pocket remained in one place. Under normal conditions, the very nature of lacunae requires real estate and staticity, only the very stubborn exotics can drag their house around with them.

Well, now Stepan can too.

But he is not crazy.

Probably.

But that's not certain.

Hiding within the walls of Morgrave was both challenging and quite fun, because it was a really interesting task, requiring a constant strain of mind and imagination. When he was almost caught by some crap sharpened against intangible shit, based on a prayer, apparently, to the Oath Keeper, Stepan hid from the light in the carcass of a cow being dragged for slaughter. Already bloodied and cut into pieces, but these pieces were still spiritually parts of the whole. It was especially amusing when he seized control of the dead animal's material body, making the cow's head wink affectionately and almost playfully at one of the butcher's apprentices. And he'd probably stuttered before.

After he had already gotten out of his temporary lodging and spent a lot of energy cleaning all traces of his temporary stay there, he looked for reasons why he had to hide. As it turned out, a full-fledged and experienced priest had been summoned because the late grandfather of some aristocrat, who lived not so far from where Stepan was at the moment of the divine miracle, had taken to coming into the dreams of the house guests and telling them stories from his merry life. And it would be fine if he just told about how an orcish cagal of scouts had captured him, used the ampoule with a gaseous alchemical composition of will suppression sewn into his collar, and fucked three of them before he escaped. He'd been boring everyone with that story since he was alive, and it was completely true, by the way. The problem is that he told such things, which in his lifetime were hidden under oaths on the altar or relics of the Guardian! And now he's dead and can boast, and his grandson gets a lot of losses and a challenge to a duel from an old acquaintance who found out where his lieutenant and bastard, who also learned too much, had gone!

The priest nodded, listened, recognized the matter as falling under the jurisdiction of his religion, and struck the mansion with a cleansing prayer. It is not clear whether it helped or not, but Stepan, who thought it was the priests who had come for him, was quite frightened. As his namesake would say in this case: “If I had a body, I would shit myself. Having come to his senses and cured the stuttering of the unlucky butcher, the shaman began to look for further paths and ways. It was not difficult to find the mansion, even the mansion of the honorable Urvag de Lomer, especially for a shaman, where he could feel the fierce force of a hurricane and tornado in the spiritual world around that place.

Stepan honestly calculated his chances of getting into this house unnoticed, asking Singha a few questions, and admitted that he was afraid of something. That is, he had a good chance, a very good chance, he had the right knowledge, and he could, being part spirit, take on many of its qualities. And, if he sets his mind to it, prepares, doesn't hesitate to put in reagents from the store, he will pass this defense, bypass and outwit it. Yes, it's not just wind, there are enough classic guardians, and animal spheres are represented, but still too, from his point of view, a monotonous approach. Monotonous does not mean weakness, but still, but still, but still.

For several hours, the young man just rolled this idea in his head, figuring out how exactly to fulfill and implement it, selecting the optimal configurations of spirits, looking for those variants of conspiracies that would support his idea, selecting methods of using envolts, as well as many other clever thoughts. And when he thought, he simply said out loud, even though the body was absent, classical and eternal: //‘Fuck it!’ from this great thought he and discarded his plans to invade the place of power of almost a magister of shamanism, which not one decade of years strengthened it with all its strength, not to mention that the classical magic and this place was protected by a very decent. No, it's much easier to get a meeting with Angry Tit in other ways. Knocking on the fence, figuratively speaking, was a lot safer. He was sure he'd be let in and listened to with all respect, at least at first.

//‘No, I've had enough of stupid risks, idiotic adventures and pathetic overpowering from the very last effort’. - So he decided, and was very pleased with his decision, as well as with himself, who had made the clever decision. - ‘We'll go the other way.’

He spent another two and a half days in Morgrave, taking the house of the shamanic dynasty under surveillance, which was a challenge in itself. Still, there were at least two senior guardian spirits there. The shaman was sure that one of them could spot those who looked at the house, especially if they looked too closely. He had to dive deep into the Spheres and summon the contracts. One particular spirit had to be summoned from scratch, without a circle and inside a densely populated and magically secure city. Again, he had to turn to the manner of creating a lacuna-fence, closing with it and extinguishing the trace of the call. He'd managed it, of course, but he'd worked up a sweat. The problem was not in performing these operations and influences separately, but in combining them and having no margin for error. Yes, the city authorities and secret guards would definitely think about the shamanic dynasty, that they were at it again. But Maega and her daughter would know for sure it was not them who had created this disturbance in the Spheres, and their interest was even more unpleasant. A fisherman sees a fisherman from afar and all that.

The observation was extremely simple and as exotic as possible. The young man was going to watch not the house, but the emptiness around the house. If suddenly in this emptiness there was a bulge in the shape of the body of one particular shamaness, the spirit would signal. Then the second and third spirits would conduct a direction finding of the image-imprint of the Angry Tit's spiritual body, determining whether she was near the house, but not in the mansion itself. Thus, the shaman was going to avoid direct look, direct observation, and in general any contact with the protective array of the mansion. The result was very narrowly sharpened and target-oriented, but, as the shaman hoped, undetectable even for that nightmare for a saboteur, which was the defence of the ancestral nest of steppe shamans.

Because simply summoning alien spirits and hoping that he'd disguised them and the guards wouldn't notice the aliens was not justified optimism. The spirits had to be worked with a little more. The Voider, born from the image and concept of the bas-relief, he hid in one of the stones of the sidewalk, literally implanting the essence in the stone. The spirit had a good relationship with the hardness and no conflict, but the stone looked like a bas-relief, with Singha de Mare de Trouble's face on it. But it was an expected effect, albeit a side effect, so there were a few closing fields on top, when Stepan literally took possession of the territory of one single stone of the sidewalk, which provided energy cloaking. Then there was a physical disguise: another spirit of the spheres of dust and ashes, which subdued the clods of dirt so that they covered the stone that stood out for its creative appearance, at the same time acquiring the properties of scanning blocking, and then a little more witchcraft, so that the blocking became not so obvious and did not stand out empty when active attention. In fact, the young man superimposed one energy pattern on top of the other, hiding the basis behind a lie - classic, but no less effective.

The second and third spirits and auras they compared had been planted in the weathervane of another mansion, much more modest and quite far from the target. Both spirits were quite capable of working from a great distance. They would only need to have an optical channel, lines of direct sight to spot the target. Since the weather vane was aimed directly at the central entrance of the mansion, there should be no problem in detecting the “Boob Object”. Although he had to work hard on the weather vane itself. So its charms did not interfere with the spirits and the spirits did not damage the charms on other people's property. Or else they would decide to remove and repair the weather vane, at the same time noticing all sorts of incomprehensible details. This was the end of the surveillance work, and for the rest of the day and a half, the shaman just watched the city life.

He healed a couple of beggars in the slums, watched the best brothel in the city, and started to look at the brothel in a bad way. Its defences were not much worse than those of the aristocratic houses. That was just the first layer. A combination of classical high magic in the form of weaves, screens, and a couple of closed fields were saturated with power even a little more than normal, creating a heightened background in which the note of quite professional witchcraft and something else, unclear at this point, was lost. The impression was that a witch or a warlock had recently lived in one of the rooms on the top floor, actively practising, but with little or no territorial control. She had either moved to a new place or abandoned her practice, because some of her spells had already started to erode without binding and control. And there were several rooms, including the office of the brothel-madan, which turned out to be even better protected, right on the level that not even Sylvia, but Stepan himself could envy. He had determined the belonging of the office empirically, and afterwards he was convinced by scanning the memory of one of the guards, who had once been reprimanded in that office for bad breath, which had scared away a couple of clients.

The guards were not brainless thugs, but well-trained professionals, albeit with a slight vibe of mercenaryism or banditry, covered with amulets fitted into the set, including those for protection of the mind, not worse than guards, even noticeably better than ordinary guards. Complicated defence on the cabinet. The shaman was sure it was also multi-layered, and the following after the first layer only assumed, relying on the agent's knowledge. A vague and incomprehensible feeling that something else was hidden in this place, undetectable without prolonged scanning. All of which only convinced the shaman to stay away from the brothel. It was too strange, and at the same time too much effort was being put into making the place seem strange in an exceptionally measured way. He could, clearly, try to dissect this mystery, but he saw no reason to do so. The very fact that the local girls were healthy, contented, and even happy in some places, and that the clientele was not scumming and awarding with STD, spoke in favour of the owners of this place. Traces of the lightest, almost absent, not even charms, but pleasure boosters to make sex seem more pleasant, which he, due to the specification of pumping, found on a couple of clients, this already raised questions, but so, not very serious. The same Tahira used a much more active trick, and what he had seen in the Vicious Rose was closer to the methods of grey marketing.

The quest the System had given him was more interesting, and it occupied his thoughts enough to put the strange pleasure house out of his mind. The assignment was of a small rank and was given by Her Milfness, which almost resulted in the assignment being automatically rejected. But miraculously, the assignment was morally acceptable and so unusual that the young man even suspected something wrong. Wasn't his Autogoddess replaced, or was the script that complemented the system corrupted? The trick of the assignment was that the perverted and humiliating hex with elements of suggestion he needed not to impose but to remove. On the background of this unexpected event, he even forgot to be surprised that now the System communicates with him even in out-of-body state. Though the latter, he thought later, was not surprising. Right now, simply being out of his body, without battles or active calls, didn't require such extreme concentration that he couldn't look away or think. High Spirits, again, not allowing him to float away on the waves of feelings, falling into laughter, then tears, then just hysterics.

The assignment promised one token of unusual or rare type, which was not very necessary for him, given the almost guaranteed depravity of the token, a little experience, affinity with the spirits of the Sphere of passions, as well as a slight increase in the skill of removing spells and compulsions, which surprised him even more. Having run in his mind the images of the assignment on repetition ten times, not finding anything to dig up, the young man accepted the assignment, having received at the same time the image of the coordinates of his target, which lived not far away. One of the clerks, not at the trading house but at the usual merchant shops, promising and with a good reputation, despite the comparative youth. Twenty-four years old, he hadn't even grown a normal beard yet, unlike the mustache. Scanning the man's memory, easily bypassing inexpensive and weak amulets, the earthling studied the dirty and unpleasant history.

The usual adultery, quarrel, separation and punishment for the insult, only it wasn't the man who cheated. He came home at the wrong time and kicked out his not yet wife, but already almost a bride, returning that mom and dad. The bride, who had already set herself up to marry a promising deer, who was already being recruited by one of the trading houses for a small but permanent position with guaranteed growth in the future, was mortally offended by the damaged reputation and broken plans for a rich and peaceful life. Before leaving Morgrave, she went to her aunt's house in one of the smaller towns, also under the wing of Duke Augustus, and spent a lot of money on a witch. The witch did her job, without going into the vicissitudes of the story, and put on the man what she ordered, because his wife had scratched his face, and the blood from under her nails was enough to anchor the effect.

In general, the man was drawn to animals, preferably large, horned and at least a week dead. The clerk was not a moron, a moron wouldn't work in such a position. He noticed something wrong and ran to consult. The only thing is that the curse was ingrained qualitatively, and his wife did not spare to spend almost most of her savings to remove this shit was very difficult and dangerous. As a result, the victim had to take alternating decocts cleansing the blood from toxins and libido-suppressing analogues of magic bromine tincture, because he had no money to pay a master or at least a strong adept with a rare specialization to remove this shit.

Stepan marvelled at the woman's love and pettiness, and after three hours of work he transferred the shit onto the prepared stone statue-envolt, on top of which was stretched an aura mask-image of the clerk, and drowned the stone itself in the world of spirits without a trace. At the same time he restored a little health to the victim of someone else's perfidy, because he really messed up his guts with that magic bromine. Now it was nothing, but in ten years it would definitely come out. He would have sent his wife a more complicated curse. Like jet diarrhoea, activated at the peak of intimacy. He would have, but the man wasn't a magician, he hadn't seen her aura, he'd thrown away all her things that she hadn't taken away, and he had no blood, hair, or other body parts. A shaman of his calibre could only conjure the spirits from an optical image pulled from the victim's memory, but it was not so easy, it took a lot of effort, and he had enough to do.

He closed the assignment and received his reward, freezing briefly in his lair hammock while new marks appeared on his spirit that would make some types of calls simpler, as well as some types of witchcraft. At the same time, he examined the token, not rolling his eyes only in the absence of his physical body, and the part of his image responsible for his face nearly shrank to the point of turning inside out. The token was called ‘Here's My Pussy,’ had twenty-five charges, and worked, as it always did, only on a beautiful woman. At the moment of activation, the victim had a very rational and seemingly completely logical desire to expose her pussy, put her legs behind her head if it wasn't too difficult for her flexibility and if she had legs, and then watch the system cheater who activated the token look at her exposed pussy, or just look at her own pussy. Within about a minute and a half, she will begin to experience an increasing and also completely natural seeming pleasure from her position and another's gaze, until the tension explodes into a very powerful and violent orgasm. In this case, the victim will perceive what happened with slight shame, but as a quite normal manifestation of her arousal, and in the future neither she nor anyone else will notice anything suspicious in this. The only thing is that the victim will prefer to demonstrate her flexibility and nakedness only in private, and she will definitely succeed. No one will bother them, not notice or even know what they were doing in that room - even if they revise their memories minute by minute, they will still miss those minutes.

As a reward, the victim will receive a general improvement in health and much stronger orgasms in general, a tendency to reach these orgasms more easily during handplay or with a partner, and, if the victim is part of Stepan's group, also one meta-skill of the first level, chosen randomly and only at the first activation. Stepan will be able to give one extremely simple and uncomplicated order - to forget about something, to do something specific, to love some form of sex, and so on. In general, almost a full analog of that token, which Angry Titty used to make the earthman lick sweet steppe feet enthusiastically, and then open the protection of the spiritual contour. He even had a thought of repaying her with the same coin, but it appeared and disappeared almost immediately. It's not his method, if he wanted to, he would have done something similar with the stupid girl.

The opportunity to see his colleague in the magical craft came when the young man almost decided to apply the callback and wake up in his underground workshop to vomit alchemical foam. But the girl, who had never left home before, decided not to stay inside the four walls longer than necessary. When she went outside, she came under the gaze of all three spirits, which immediately signalled Stepan. Stepan had time to finish treating a neglected and crookedly mended fracture of some river sailor, and slowly began to move in the right direction, again hiding from several groups of protective and tracking spirits. Fortunately, this was what he had originally expected, and the defences of even the most perfect retinue were no match for the walls of the abode and place of power.

The girl was not let out into the city alone. She was accompanied by five competent guards, of whom only three were visible, and two more were following in the distance, looking out for those who were watching Singha too closely. Well, to some, perhaps, not noticeable, but for the knowledge-enhanced eye of the shaman, who sees spiritual reflections and literally feels the directions of gazes and the content of those gazes due to the spirit planted right inside the intangible body, their tricks were clearly visible. It was felt that the girl's guards had been reinforced not so long ago. Five guards were the main guards, elite bodyguards with a clear specialisation and experience, which her father had personally assigned. Besides them, there were a couple of companion maids, five servants-guards-assistants, a coachman for the carriage, some doorman-messenger, working as a solver of all sorts of problems and questions, and a couple of girlfriends with their servants and guards, but those only had one fighter and a lower rank. To summarise, the girl gathered as if not to the shop for shopping, not for a walk around the city, but almost to the war.

Her entourage of intangibles also appeared to be extended. It was felt that they were in no small measure not her spirits. Most of them belonged either to family summons or had been sent by her mummy. Stepan was almost ready to follow her somewhere out of town, or even to look longingly at her being carried away by the city portal on another long journey. But no, it turned out that she had gone to the market and wasn't wearing a cloak, but that wasn't surprising. It is a notable thing and obvious to an attentive looker, there would be an uproar if someone saw such a thing on the maiden. Her mother's - here it is still okay, here it is still understandable, although not without questions, but her status at least will allow her to possess such a thing openly and not be afraid that it will be taken away quite brazenly.

He had almost decided to take on the final part during a visit to a horse breeder. The girl clearly loved horses, and they reciprocated, which made Stepan's flat jokes about mares take on a new level of irony. Even the pro guards there rolled their eyes, apparently well aware of this weakness of their client. The girl really knew her way around the issue, easily keeping up a conversation about breeds, types of racing, saddle models and all that. She rode a couple of stallions but was not impressed. She rejected one for weak breathing despite a very cosy gait, and the second one was too aggressive. It takes a long time and diligence to ride him, and she didn't have time and desire. The owner of the stables saw her off with all honour and vowed to surprise her with something special next month. To surprise a steppe girl from a rich family, who obviously knew no denial in her whims and hobbies, with horses sounds like a joke.

The shaman didn't start the dialog at the stables primarily because he wasn't entirely sure how he was going to deal with the senior spirit following the group, also blood-bound. This entity was different, not the one that had come to Singha's aid in the Kingdom of Worms, and not yet so wide-ranging. It was specifically a guard and protector, covering the target, though not the best in its class. In the class of older fucking air sphere spirits with the right aspects. Somebody just seems to have gotten stale to the extreme with their system, so they're freaking out. The search for countermeasures, equally invisible and harmless, took him long enough, and he had to fly away, drift away, hide in a pocket hammock, and summon the right entity, and then summon it again, based on the analysis of images from the one he had just summoned.

He decided to start in a dress shop, where a girl was measuring samples of various very expensive clothes. And they were just samples, not ready-made dresses like in earth shops. Real clothes worthy of such a noble customer are sewn from scratch there, oriented on her whims and wishes. The colours she preferred were the same as the last time they had met - gold, scarlet and white, a little blue and a tiny bit of green. While she was fidgeting in front of the mirror, the shaman was at work, casting a large-scale suggestive net over the square with spirits and his own influence. First picking up the keys to the bodyguards' defences. Witchcraft helped to block the outflow and flashes, showing a perfect synergy with shamanism, at the same time reinforcing the spirits, mainly their resistance to work at the limit of their strength.

There was a trump card against the elder spirit as well. It was just a strong spirit, but very suitable for working on a target that hadn't noticed the problem yet. The image-form of the spirit resembled a hedgehog, but at the same time very tiny, as if it were not even a speck of dust, but something even smaller, and yet it was perfectly distinguishable, as if it were actually huge. Schrödinger's Hedgehog, only instead of life-and-death status it has size and scale. The beast spirit did not attack or act personally, its second part was at work. From the needles of the tiny enormous entity flowed scales, thin and seemingly shiny in Stepan's perception, like thin plates of amalgam with a silvery color. This spiritual foil covered the waiting elder spirit with an invisible layer and seemed to block his thinking-images in a continuous cycle. If he received an alarm signal. If he felt that the defendant was in pain or dying, he would react instantly, but until then, he was out and frozen.

The foil-wielding nano hedgehog finished the elder's fixation, but with it the suggestion-dialogs of the rest of the entourage worked, making them perceive a different picture of the world. In an instant, the living people also seem to forget to pay attention to Singha fidgeting in front of the mirror, remaining as focused and ready to protect or fulfill a whim, only the one whose whims they fulfill, whose well-being they protect, has disappeared from their thoughts. Simultaneously damping down sounds and words, not paying attention to the passage of time, and a slight lethargy to compensate for slippages in previous compulsions. And slacks will be inevitable. The young man acts softly to the extreme, leaving no trace that the checks, whether standard or not, will be able to show. However, brain checks for influence, thanks to Fatty, are nowadays conducted regularly, often suddenly, unexpectedly for everyone and everything. It's not that they are looking for puppets of their namesakes, or that they are simply taking advantage of the opportunity to poke around in the heads of competitors and political opponents with impunity. The Earthling would bet on the latter, though he did not discount the former either. The local authorities knew how to combine the pleasant with the useful.

And now, when his preparations were finished, and Singha had fallen out of the focus of attention, before she would have noticed that her retinue, as well as the chief weaver and his apprentices were not paying attention to her mistress, the shaman revealed himself. He used the spiritual reflection of the mirror, partially taking possession of it, so that the reflection began to interfere with etheric ligatures, and then began to show a seething multicolored turbidity of high spheres, someone who is not a shaman, capable of driving into a trance or causing nausea with loss of consciousness, and in the middle of that void almost recognizable translucent face of Stepan. His interlocutor would recognize her colleague, they had seen each other before. And, seeing that the shamaness was in the clouds, he attracted her attention by tapping on the mirror from the other side, which became a physical sound, although in fact, he was not in the looking-glass, he simply persuaded the matter of the mirror to follow the images shown in it.

"Health to the daughter of the steppes and the harbinger of the death of my shaky psyche." He begins politely, quietly and without threat, but a little gloomily, looking at the interlocutor.

"Eee-ee-ick!" Singha squealed unworthy of the future great shamaness, jumping up and trying to cover her nakedness at the same time, because Stepan spoke almost at the moment when she pulled off the cloth, and also to call the retinue, the call to which he softly blocks. "Uk mas shah-man! Pann! Why are you!? Peeping!?"

At this reaction, he almost broke the connection with the mirror, almost choking at the same time, even though he couldn't physically choke. He-image in the mirror blinks perplexedly trying to realize what Singha said, then just made a facepalm. Or rather, he doesn't. But the image-mirror, which at the moment of his partial incorporation became almost a separate spirit-guardian of the mirror, correctly interprets the shaman's emotions, creating the right picture.

"Singha, I fucking understand, but you're a fucking shaman." Gently, like a child, he tells her, pointing the image-image at himself. "You're looking at an image, an illusion on a mirror. In fact, I am here outside the body, having thrown off the flesh and its fetters. In this state, I am, first of all, deprived of typical carnal reactions, and, secondly, I perceive the world through the prism of spheres. I don't give a damn whether you are dressed, undressed, or even skinned and skinless, I realize the picture that is independent of such trifles. And you, as a shamaness, must understand it, it's a fucking classic, you should know it."

She was embarrassed enough not only at being caught unprepared and nearly naked, but at how stupid she'd been, but she tightened the ties of her dress quickly anyway, then looked around at her companions in bewilderment. Since he hadn't blocked her perception and she was inside the cutoff dome, it wasn't hard for her to understand the effect it was having on other people's brains. She didn't even say anything, looked around and stared at the shaman demandingly and accusingly.

"It's nothing to them, just a distraction and a perception blocker for your entourage." Still, Stepan couldn't take the silent accusation. His image rolled its eyes. "Your mum is paranoid, my respect, seriously. I wouldn't go into your house, and you've decided to go shopping. We need to talk. It's vitally important. Can you guess why and what it's about?"

"Hai, I understand. But you could have come to my house, you wouldn't have been offended. My mother knows honour too. She knows gratitude." Under the sceptical gaze of the young man, three years younger, even if she did not know it, the shamaness became embarrassed and continued without reproach. "I know what you mean, Pann. I know what question you are asking."

“Then explain the answer to it to me, Singha, damned.” He said with more irritation, almost losing control when his spirits on the outer guard diverted the urge to visit the shop of yet another group of nobles. Good thing there was far less nobility and wealth there, and the amulets were simpler. “I, as a polite and kind boy, have given you well over a week to master your bounty from the system. And what am I witnessing? Not only did you leave those five points to one branch of knowledge untouched. You didn't even pick the elder spirits' contracts. So here it is. I'm politely wondering. Why the fuck not?”

She doesn't say anything, averts her gaze, and even blushes, noticeably more than she did when she thought he was peeping at her naked. And it's doubly funny. He's been sharing his mind with her. He knows for a fact that she treats nudity much easier as part of the shaman's job, and, for example, when she fought and ran around in one super-cloak on her naked body, flashing her tits and crotch at every step, it didn't bother her much. Or just a difference in the perception of peaceful and non-peaceful life, or some other steppe thing, which he wasn't going to delve into.

"I can't, Pann, I'm sorry." She bowed her head as if she'd seen too many samurai movies. "I'm already stronger, better. I can do a lot of things more easily. I know a lot of things. Things I didn't understand before. What my mother didn't teach me. Things I couldn't know or learn. Or only guessed. It became easy to connect one thing and the other, the third, and the hundredth, and khak maush anar lash! Mother was happy at first. Then she was even happier. She praises me. She praises my diligence, my talent. A worthy daughter of her blood. But she suspects, and I cannot put it all down to an oath, and she could hardly believe even in the goodness of the great spirit that gave me strength, that strengthened my anakhao-lash, my gift. But it is true, it is true, the gift of the supreme entity, your ilash-khao-tar, and I am not lying, and she sees it. But that mighty khao, that wind in his head.... it's hard, very hard for me to explain and not lie, it hurts me to lie to my mother and I'm scared of failing to lie and letting you down."

With each word, it was as if her emotions were ripening, whether it was shame, anger, rejection, or all of the above, and she raised her voice more and more. Anyway, the sounds muffled by his spirits. And the girl was getting more and more agitated, as if she were pouring out to him all the things that had been weighing on her mind and thoughts for the past weeks, almost choking on the flood of words she wanted to say, as if in a hurry to get them out as quickly as possible. She had no listeners, for she had no one to talk to but Stepan, who had sworn her oath.

“One mighty khao-panat, that became my servant, a priceless gift that my gift ignited even more. Your cloak... I've never seen my mother look at it like that before. It's already so much. So much. Too much.” And he can't say she's not making a point, because the logic in her words is hard to miss, yes. “I won't be able to explain how two more loyal khao aren't weaker than the first. I won't be able to explain why I can know what I can't. I asked the Tablet. I understand what five talents into one saeran branch is! I call the wind best, the native hao hear me best of all others listen to me! But even in this branch, there are only four talents! What will I say, how do I lie? How do I lie? How can I be silent if I learn a new saeran in a couple of nights!?”

He's silent. She breathes heavily and pulls the soft ottoman over to the mirror, sitting down on it and exhaling as if she'd run a marathon. Apparently, it was really weighing her down, pressing on her mind and will in an invisible, but very unpleasant way, and here she had an opportunity to say everything she had been holding back. In general, he understood her and even understood that she acted for his benefit, not her own, but now he would have to understand what to do with this understanding himself? With those who acted for their good against Stepan's good it was clear what to do with them. There was no doubt, he had already gained experience. But what to do with Singha. She seems to be trying to help sincerely, but at the same time it turns out to be one single problem.

"Take your gift back." With obvious reluctance, but seeing no other option, she offers, even asks. And he sees, without any jokes, with his spiritual perception the vibe surrounding her greed and unwillingness to give up such a gift. "Take the Tablet. I am already stronger, much stronger. I will become khao-seahar as it is, by my own strength. I would have become before. I'll become faster now. Much faster. Take it. Otherwise. It's like seeing water in the season of heat, seeing it, being able to quench your thirst at any moment, but not being able to take a sip. It was such a trial. Such an execution. When the mighty Khan wishes to punish someone by giving a chance not to him, but to his children and wives, his clan. He'd be left in the steppe in the heat of the day with full water jug. Left for a week, in the heat, alone, without horse or sword. The executioners waited. They came back afterwards. And they spared the children, spared the clan of the guilty if the water remained untouched. And the body of the one who passed the test was buried with honour. Only a few passed it. I feel like I'm at that trial myself. I don't want to. I don't want screw it up. One more time.’

The shaman was silent, and so was the sullen Singha. What to do with such a one? She seemed to be saying the right thing, but it would be a bit dirty for him to take her reward and not let her receive it. She fought with fucking Uck together with him, didn't whine, didn't panic and believed in him to the last, even when the mutant platypus offered to change her life for a free pass. And now she was afraid not of him, not of his possible punishment, but of setting him up again, of showing herself to be an incompetent fool again, and for that she was giving up the System, voluntarily, for fuck's sake. Something told him that neither her mother nor anyone else would have allowed such foolishness. They'd rather try to capture the shaman and cut the system out of him for themselves.

"All right. Uh-huh. Okay. Got it. Fuck." He issues a profound philosophical maxim, soaring upward on wings of wisdom. "Your arguments are clear and obvious. But to take your reward away from you would be shitty of me. I didn't give it to you, I don't have to take it back. Here's how it works. I'll keep the group active, give you some time. While you're being looked after like this, you wait and take your time. I can see you're growing in experience. Grow, develop, level up. What to do about your mother, we'll see. Sooner or later, I'll get tired of sitting under a rock, and sooner or later, that asshole who almost fucked a god in his temple will be caught too. Then we'll think about it. In the meantime, look at your gifts, save them, and unless absolutely necessary, don't use them. I'll be in touch. I guess so."

She stood up and bowed, seriously, without subservience, but with sincere gratitude and relief. She didn't want to give up the treasure, but she was ready, though she hoped Stepan-Pann would help her find a way around it. Then again, she was not at all opposed to her clan, including her mother, gaining the kind of power access to the Tablet gave. Likewise, she doesn't mind paying for such power. She is a shaman and bargaining, giving something up for something useful, is imprinted in her demeanor. It was also worth considering that being able to communicate everything to her mother and father in a straightforward manner would make her life extremely easy. The shaman understood her thoughts perfectly well and, in principle, was not completely opposed to their realization, if only to be sure that such a decision would not complicate his life. Yes, it would be necessary to actively check both parents of his acquaintance so as not to get into trouble. He wouldn't hesitate to cast a particularly perverse spell on Maega. In the sense of perverted, that without any lust, but with the desire to talk and be very sincere, the mark of Great Milf will work, but without humiliation, meanness and setting horns to the legitimate husband.

After all, sooner or later, he would have to go out into the world. He should not always rely on his subordinate vampires, though he should not forget about the possibility of brainwashing those who would try to brainwash him. Especially if these owners of brainwashed brains will be pretty peasants with sweet juicy greased slippery peasant tits.....

"Pann, are you, um, okay?" His thoughts about the important thing, i.e. tits, were interrupted by Singhi's question, who was staring intently at the mirror in front of her. "It's like you've lost your footing on your appeal, the whole mirror, what your anachao-lash is showing in it, is like it's blured."

"Oh, right, sorry, I was thinking." He shrugged, restoring the image and checking that his compulsion hadn't sagged on the oblivious people. "Anyway, it's time to end our dialog. Don't go anywhere, I'm going to remove the compulsion from your entourage. Both human and spiritual."

"Hai. I'm ready. Just... don't hurt them, Pann." She asks, shrugging her shoulders and complying with the request not to move. "I know you. I trust you to do no harm. But the thoughts... Khao that distort them are very unpleasant. Dangerous. You know that as well as I do."

"Uh-huh, you told me." He makes an excuse, preparing to remove the impact and trying not to leave any traces. "Your grand grand grandmother's messed up."

"The risk was worth it... I guess." Singha objected, a little resentfully for her grandmother, but without fanaticism, realizing that she'd really messed up. "My father, after he got to know about my obedient khao-panat, now he can't decide how to use it. And mother, too. there are families in the steppe that also bred skillful Khao-serans. They have a lot of knowledge. Mother tried to buy it. She's tried bartering. She even tried stealing, they say. They say, and she won't answer my questions. So I guess she must have really tried."

And here was an opportunity to blow the right thoughts straight into their heads without suspicion, especially if they were not forced to do something unnatural, like exchanging all the family contracts for a couple of coppers, but just to persuade them to make an exchange that might not be completely unfavourable. Stepan knew as well as Singha and Maega what temptations a man with similar abilities could face. If you like some pretty peasant girl with sweet, juicy, lubricated, slippery peasant tits, you will bewitch her. And you fuck her sweet, juicy, lubricated, slippery, peasant tits.

"Are you thinking about something again, Pann?" asks Singha after a moment's silence, when he is just thinking of great things, mentally marvelling at himself, for a spiritual body cannot have such desires, he does not even feel lust, but his thoughts are straightforward. "If you are tormented by a thought, say it. I'm here to help you with anything. Whatever you need. Especially if your thoughts are related to the way you shared your Tablet with me."

"No, he just had other things on his mind." He had not yet come to his senses, trying to catch some irregularity in his stream of consciousness, trying to realise what it was that was troubling him to think of juicy sweet lubricated slippery peasant tits, when he was out of his body and seemed almost able to catch some weightless web of something vague that seemed to hang on him and not on him, in him and not in him. "About the juicy sweet lubricated slippery slimy peasant tits."

He did not realise at once that he had spoken his thought aloud, as if it had been knocked out of his head by a blow from a golden sandal, right onto his bad tongue! When he did, he quickly forgot his clearly false thoughts and was glad he was out of his body, or he would have turned as scarlet as Singha herself at the best of times. His thoughts were mostly profane, but directed solely at himself, because he had to be so embarrassed. On the one hand, what was the big deal? But on the other hand, he wanted to pretend that he was dead and reborn in another dimension, or to wipe the memory of his last words from Singha's head. And here she also didn't hear his silent prayers to pretend nothing had happened and she hadn't heard him. True, she had not said what he had expected: not embarrassment or a fraction of apprehension at the pervert, but bewilderment replaced by conjecture and anxiety.

"Pa-a-a-a-an... pierce your anakhao-lash with your will. Light a fire in the source. Let the power flow through your anat... through the aura like the wind drives the waves on a sea of grass." She's all poised and looking at him strangely, he can't identify that look. "I ... my mother taught me and showed me... these words, they just kind of stick in your head? From the inside, right? Don't get distracted. Don't let go. Just don't lose it."

Shaman silences her with a gesture, mentally trying to figure out exactly what she means. Since he has no body to distract him with the desire to go and cum on Sylvia's slippery, lubricated tits, his thoughts are even clearer. But he's out of body, and so any influence that works through the spirit and aura in this state is also amplified, if not concentrated enough to pick it out. The knowledge and agent training gained in training with the bloodsucker allows him, after Singha's pointer, to notice quickly, to grasp the discrepancy, to try to catch the slipping slippery thought, as if oiled and therefore slipping from his grasp, while he tried to drive a juicy wave of power through his spiritual flesh, feeling as if a bucket of sweet slurry had been poured into his head, making him feel like a city boy in a country disco, staring at tits, tits, tits. ..

Damn, he embarrass and frame himself so badly that even Singha thought he had been bewitched, eh? It was so incredibly stupid that she found it hard to believe he had just blurted it out without thinking! There was no way to avoid embarrassment, and if he started to prove to her that she was wrong, it would be even more embarrassing, firstly, and secondly, it would prove to her that she was right. Any victim of an experienced brainiac or brainiac will look to rationalise their actions, it's basic re-assurance against disruption of bookmarks, wouldn't he know? Hadn't he himself observed the paths Sylvia's thoughts took while she sucked him off or jerked off with her pale greased slippery tits? Shit, there were no other options, she wouldn't leave him alone, she'd take the initiative in trying to save him, attracting more attention.

Accelerating his thoughts by activating his meta-skill, he suddenly finds a logical solution, albeit a bit immoral. On the other hand, he wouldn't even have to brainwash her using classical methods, he'd just pay her back the same trick she'd used on him. He would just pay her back, only with the difference that she had activated the token under the influence of someone else's control, and he was now completely free and definitely not bewitched by some smarmy village bitch with juicy sweet lubricated slippery village tits! He, who was in a spiritual body, heard a strange image, as if someone immeasurably powerful somewhere far and near at the same time soundly slapped her face with the palm of her hand, stomped his golden sandal-clad foot, bowed his head in doom and grumbled something about not very clever people. It seemed as he activated his newest of the tokens, not without interest as he looked at the fully assembled and seemingly ready to do something stupid, Singha.

She blinked, looked around again, nodded to herself, and then started pacing back and forth in front of the mirror as if deciding on something. When she did, she turned back to him, looking at her ironically and frankly amused by the sight before him:

"If so, if you've been charmed, Pann." She left the ottoman and dragged a heavy, high-backed chair before the mirror, herself, without addressing the motionless bodyguards. "If, if.... hai. If so, a sneaky and lustful influence. Must be banished. Replace it with something else. I'll show you and you watch, Pann."

The girl in one movement pulls off her dress, leaving only bracelets, necklaces, and other jewelry, and then sits on a chair, and, showing considerable flexibility, throwing both legs behind her head, almost without strain, taking a very erotic pose. Tight slightly swarthy breasts with already tense dark pink nipples, neat line of hair, not shaved at all, but well-groomed, left in a minimum amount, tight ass, long legs, athletic build. Indeed, it was obvious that even without her position and giftedness, she would have had no shortage of suitors. In the shaman's mind there is even a considerable regret that he cannot fully experience attraction and desire now, cannot enjoy this sight as Singha undoubtedly deserves. She stares at him, reflected in the mirror and looking back at her, biting her lip at the sudden flash of arousal.

"Don't think I'm... that this is something vulgar, Pann. I'm just helping. Helping you. To get you off the drugs. Yes. Hai. Hai!" She shifts her gaze from the mirror to her own forward-pointing pussy, watching with a kind of disbelief and wonder as it rapidly becomes wet, as the lips and pea of her clitoris swell, as the muscles of her abdomen and the lips themselves begin to twitch, barely perceptible but growing, as if subtly pulsing with her breathing and heartbeat. - It feels good. It feels good! Pleasure! It feels good to help you, Pannngmmm! Ha-ah, ha-ah, ha-ah-ah-ah-ah!"

She stares at her pussy until the last moment, with shame, surprise, indignation and, above all, pleasure. Until the moment when the twitching of the muscles in her lower abdomen made her belly go round and her already wet pussy convulsively contract once, twice, a third time.... Then the shaman realized that squirting orgasms do not exist only in porn, unless you consider his second life under the auspices of the blessing of That-What-Milf as one continuous pornographic plot. Singha literally spurts, her pussy squirting squirt in a solid, transparent stream to the ecstatic screaming of the shaman, splattering the mirror, chair, floor, a couple of dresses that haven't been tried on, and the convulsively twitching shaman herself, The shamaness, who until the last, was watching the hydrant beating out of her, how she was cumming and cumming, unable to stop, cumming without even touching herself, only clutching her calves tighter with her hands, not allowing herself to change her position.

Her face was one of tremendous surprise and equally tremendous pleasure, and there was a hazy shroud of calm with a hint of embarrassment. Stepan wondered if he'd looked exactly the same when she'd used the Sweet Feet token on him. Was it the same smile he had when he cummed in the tub of water from the feet placed on his face? There was something ironic in that sight and those thoughts, something ironic, even fair at the same time, and it was enough to quell the timid sprouts of conscience and suspicion of vague things, because what he suspected but had forgotten could not be, and so everything was all right.

"Singha?" He asks, not entirely sure she can hear him now.

" Ha-a-a-a-ai?" She asks lazily and absent-mindedly, taking her gaze away from her pussy and looking confusedly into the mirror that has become her point of contact.

"Forget about what I said, forget about the suspicion that I was bewitched by a pretty peasant bitch with sweet, juicy, lubricated, slippery peasant tits." He orders, seeing how she immediately accepts the order and does not even think of refusing, without any resistance. "Don't suspect anything like that about me at all."

"Ha-a-a-a-a-ai..." She agrees, blushing sweetly and starting to get dressed while trying to somehow clean up the traces of her bodily fluids, blushing with each passing second. "I've never felt like this before. Sorry, Pann. It's. It just... it just made me feel good. The way you're looking at me. At me. My khanaal. The way I'm like a stream. Rain poured down. So embarrassing. But it feels good."

He helped her to clean up, removing any traces, odors, stains or other compromising details with a special spirits. Singha obediently forgot all the things she had been asked to forget, bid him a polite farewell, checked on her entourage, passed attention-images to the spirits accompanying her, and was gone. Stepan, who had already left the mirror but was still watching her, folowed her through his focus of attention, still hiding from her entourage, and then began to clean up. The spirit bas-relief went away, and the stone of the sidewalk took its former form, the spirits from the weathervane left without damaging the weave on it, the hammock-cocoon-lacuna began to dissolve, and other small traces also disappeared.

It was a good trip, actually. He talked to Singha, looked at the prospects of their co-operation again, and tested the token. The girl, by the way, got the meta-skill ‘lecherous development’, which was not surprising. He knew exactly who was issuing these skills, since they were derived from such a token. In fact, nothing had changed at all so far. Singha is just developing little by little, but if it comes to the point that he needs full-fledged allies in relatively high and, more importantly, legal echelons, not bloodsuckers always walking under the threat of another raid of hunters, then the family of Angry Tits is not a bad option. Although it will be necessary to check them extremely well, so a profitable alliance will not become a cage and transfer of Stepan tied with a bow to the same Duke August. He would have to think it over when he returned home, or even consult with Sylvia, though he could foresee her advice. Brainwash the daughter and mother, fake an accident with her father and husband, gain the trust of the rest of the family, seize power and rule from the shadows with minimal interference, occasionally fucking beautiful steppe girls.

After a couple more hours, the shaman left Morgrave and activated the system of calling himself back to the totems, returning to his body. It was as if the frames had changed. Hop, and he was in a body without any special effects. Nothing hurt or even got stiff, it was the result of his greatly increased skill, which allowed his body to stay without a master for more than a fortnight. Vomiting alchemical foam and restarting the gastrointestinal tract, however, was still unpleasant and disgusting. Maybe he was doing something wrong, despite the awesomeness of the system's knowledge? Somehow the shamans probably got by without such methods.... Or they just didn't leave the body for such a long time, and if they did, they left their relatives, servants and disciples to look after it instead of just spirits. Or, even more likely, they suffer the same way., just he did not communicate with normal shamans on this topic. He thought he should have asked Singha about it, but he couldn't go back now, could he? Having finished with tidying himself up, packing the trophies he had collected during his wanderings into storages or sacrificing them to the appropriate spirits at once, or simply by strengthening totems, he tentatively evaluated the System's gifts. He was in no hurry to find out what it was, but he preferred to sleep in the soft bed of the vampire's mansion.

He lazily glanced at the System Shop, where the superloot was a little-needed reagent that could add about two units to his Spirit and two more to his Power, given his current characteristics. Yes, a very good thing. To a complete neophyte will add even more, up to five points in each stat... But the only problem is that this pill of a hundred powders of various plants, drastically cuts the ability to any kind of classical magic, except for alchemy and runes. Yes, it increases affinity with wild magic, especially druidism, but shamanism and witchcraft will also increase. But honestly, why? The fact that he does not seek to work with high magic now does not mean that in the future, having reached the level of a hundred, when the native classes develop very reluctantly, he will not want to develop previously unfamiliar areas of magic. Therefore, he categorically did not want to cut any paths. And he had no one to feed such a preciousness. And there was hardly enough currency, so it was better to buy simpler reagents or wait for another superlot that suited him.

It took some time to bring himself back to normal, to check his aura for any damage that might have been sustained during his wanderings, and to direction-find totem signatures with an even greater emphasis on territory control. He was not being searched for, but still there were some suspicious attempts by spiritual groups sleeping in totems to check him with methods of classical magic. It seemed that they were not directly looking for him, but something suspicious, as if one or two groups moving around the city were actively charming him. And they make checks for stealthy observers of the shamanic type quite regularly and cautiously. A reason to think about adding a little more paranoia, as well as readjusting the underground hall's defences... would be a reason, because in this scenario the actions of the unknown searchers are doomed to failure.

No, he understood their thought process, a very classic one for finding a lair or den, quite competently prepared countering enemy agents of the shamanic type. Constant and cautious bearing, searching for vulnerabilities and, most importantly, the moment of error, because an actively used rookery should not only be encapsulated, the shaman in it will sooner or later begin to call his spirits. But even in a terrible dream of experts who are now catching ghosts would not dream of the degree of protection of the shaman's lair as well as the ability to blur the spatial coordinates of the lair. Now it is possible to find him only if they catch him at the moment of not just a call, but the call of a couple of Senior Spirits, because the call of one Senior he will hide with almost complete guarantee. Well, or to follow even more powerful disturbances, like the summoning of a Higher Spirit, which Stepan does not plan to do in the near future.

With one last look at his stone chambers, he silently crosses through the darkness, coming out half a block from Sylvia's mansion, suppressing the illogical and stupid desire to go for a walk through the city alleys, quickly taking cover with the right canopies and averting his eyes, returning back to the almost home. Though, okay, for home there were too many evil things living here, albeit subordinate ones. The place met him with comparative silence and calmness, with the absence of Lemira and Rowena, who had temporarily left Dantmark on important and monetary business. Sylvia had boasted during their first conversation that vampires were often commissioned to hunt monsters of the type that threatened humans, but not them. Now they had just such an order. It was a surprisingly large one, threatening to add a little more to Malter's coffers, because Jasper could always find a place to invest the money.

Lemira usually went to such a task either alone or, if there were a lot of creatures, in the company of a now deceased lover of bloody guro eaten by a black dog. Since Riksar was long gone, and Lemira's pretty face could take a month to work on, Rowena went with her. Much to the displeasure of the latter. However, the situation in the city did not require her direct control, but her help to her sister was on the contrary. They had been gone for about three and a half weeks, half of which were spent on the road. The vampires could get there faster on foot, through the forests, cutting through wherever they could and not saving blood, but they didn't need the work that badly. They'll have to deal with nests of special hornets, which are more properly called an attempt to create a biological weapon. They are poisonous, aggressive, and used to attack first of all, not so much people as more saturated auras of the corresponding spectrum.

The only thing that saved this kind of magical beast from becoming Zerg-like and taking over the world was their magical nature. They bred and nested mostly within a couple of kilometers of magical sources, the power of which limited their population and fertility. Regular guardian beasts were of no interest to such flying bio-machines of Satan, they would only attack them if they went straight into the nest itself, but people would get attacked right away. The venom in one unit is enough to kill a grown man with three to five bites, and it has just three to five bite charges. Goblins or orcs can be killed much more effectively, turning them off with a single bite and causing a rapidly progressing anaphylactic shock, which is much more deadly for the green ones. In general, a real bioweapon which attacks even the elves, generally accepted as their creators. For them, even in extremely large doses, the venom causes weakness, numbness and loss of consciousness. And in small doses it is in the category of ordinary bee stings - unpleasant but not murderous.

In their time, the elves used these hornets to poison the green menace raiding their Forest. They also contaminated the sources and call places near the Forest, forcing the greens to either spend their forces cleaning up and guarding against new sabotage of a similar nature, or migrate closer to their native lands, where it would be easier to resist such an attack. Hornets had a nasty tendency to scatter around the area and start a new nest. Any individual could go from male to female and become a new queen - hermaphrodites, damn it. And they lived around the source, not at the source itself, which made it harder to find a nest. Any passerby could take one bite to go to his ancestors. That's why it's hard to beat this stuff out. You need special amulets, search charms, hiding your aura and searching for every lurking crap, so that not a single specimen is gone. Or be undead, which insects don't react to and which may well be able to smell those insects. The sense of blood, with a minimum of erudition and training, is easily tuned to the sense of vitality that these insects are full of. The high generation of venom required that very life force in abundance, much more than pure magic, in terms of which the bugs did not differ much from ordinary hornets.

In fact, one of his competitors had planted the hornets on the customer to make his life easier. Sylvia named names, but they didn't tell Stepan anything. It was ironic, but today the tactic of planting a nest to a sworn friend was mostly used by humans, because orcs had long ago learned to fight this thing, and every self-respecting shaman's apprentice had a specialized spirit to deal with this threat. Ordinary insect hunters, by the way, either could not see the hornets-astartes or could not drink them by the leech method because of the same richness of life and invisibility. The creatures were raised so they could not be killed by any shamanic spirit, as fleas in sled warthogs are removed. But there was no task for which there was no suitable spirit in the spheres, and for many hundreds of years the demand generated enough offers, so today either shamans or vampires were called to clean the territory around the sources from nests. The owner of a couple of special flax plantations, which, growing in the center of a group of small, but densely located near each other small sources, acquiring certain magical properties, it was easier for him to call the recommended bloodsuckers, because they were cheaper. And, as Lemira and Sylvia had hoped, they could also be tasked with retaliating against their competitors.

A nastiness in a form of special potion that would be poured into the system of canals that fed several partially artificial lakes with special fish, some varieties of which were not food but reagent, left with the chicks. Sylvia, who had brewed the stuff, was almost certain that the order for additional harm would be given to her. And no, there was no mass poisoning or anything like that, just like there was no mass extinction of fish. Though, she would have brewed such crap for a proper fee, especially if it couldn't be tied specifically to the vampire-makers. But the shaman forbade engaging in outright terrorism or endangering people's lives. Just the fish that swam in the solution of this composition will spoil the taste and lose the properties of the alchemical reagent, and not immediately. When the time of sales comes, instead of delicacy pikeperch the victim will have tasteless and bitter fish, and instead of rare rainbow perch just colorful fish. In the past, Sylvia could only make a limited number of such potions, as it took too much energy and blood, which had to be run through herself, her aura and body, distilled into water-soluble pollen. Now she could brew this recipe, though not in a constant mode, but quite regularly, and she could restore blood with meta-skill. At the same time, there would be no traces of blood alchemy, as Sylvia's current mastery of root skills could filter out traces of blood magic.

The funniest thing in this story seemed to him that the two noble landowners were not competitors to each other. Fish and flax occupied different parts of the market. And they didn't even need each other's lands as well as sources of magic on those lands because the specifics were very different. Light-natural for the flax fields and water-neutral for the fish pens. Just one of the ancestors of one asshole seduced the sister of the ancestor of the second asshole, and did not want to marry, which resulted in several conflicts and small private wars, as well as a sluggish gnawing, now and then bringing human and not only sacrifices. Which lasted for the third fucking century. The fact that both families were originally poor as church mice, and that both had mortgaged most of their land to moneylenders, added to the spice. And here was the feud, the need to look for money, for the enemy was not slumbering, the need to take and prove that you and your clan were cooler. As a result, mutually trying to suck up to the enemy and take a little for themselves, they grew from two poor families into two prosperous baronies, standing firmly on their feet and not looking at their neighbours only because they were afraid of a blow in the back from their sworn enemy.

"Roughly that's the story, Pann." Sylvia finished her story, throwing her legs over the table and pulling up her dress. "A rare example of how malice and pettiness lead not to decline and collapse, but to prosperity. I would call this coincidence completely counterintuitive, for I was accustomed to seeing only the opposite. However, the Baronet de Flexy, who rules on behalf of his father, who has not gotten out of bed for a long time, and the Dowager Baroness de Lamel, who successfully poisoned her husband, who was not a noble, but a merchant of a small house, by the way, with my poison, are no less rare examples of competence. However, that is not what interests me now, Pann, but that you should look at my rose, at my thirsty slit... look and didn’t even dare to touch, just looked, look, look-e-e-e, look at how I am now, m-m-m-g, even without you, now, now by myself-e-e-e-e-e-ah!... "

The shaman had suspected to the last that Sylvia would be able to keep her face even when she cummed, because her self-control was quite good. Without direct influence through the doll or the use of tantric magic, she might well be able to orgasm without showing any sign of it at all, he'd checked. But the effects of the token seemed to be always just strong enough to overwhelm any self-control. Sylvia, frozen in an extremely vulgar pose, with her legs spread wide on the table and her eyes fixed on Stepan's gaze fixed on her pale pussy, almost went into vampiric immobility just to keep control. But she didn't, and she didn't move, shuddering and moaning longingly as she stared at the pulsing and opening lips oozing with love juices. Unlike Sing... from the last time she'd used the token, she didn't squirt, but it didn't make her ecstasy any less violent.

"Thanks for the story, Sylvia." The smiling young man thanked, taking his eyes off his ‘mistress's’ crotch, issuing a command-order on behalf of the token. "Don't rush back to work just yet, sit in this position, fondle yourself for a couple of hours, enjoy the evening."

"Mmmm, okay, there's something enticing in what you say, pet." She immediately began rubbing the pea of her clit with gentle touches of the pad of her index finger, rolling her eyes a little and realising the appearance of her ‘lecherous development I’ meta-skill. "I've never allowed myself to waste time so foolishly before, but this time does allow for some relaxation. Unless you have any other reason to distract me, you're free to go. I have ordered the servants to bring dinner and my underwear to your room, and so I order you to rest and sleep only after finishing onto the sheets while the silk of my robes covers your face. Come, come, don't delay, for I know how you want to hurry....."

With those cheerful and mocking words, the shaman got up and went to his room, which was not the guest's room, but his. He even thought about moving to Riksar's room, which was more decently furnished and comfortable, but he didn't, because he wasn't looking for comfort. Sylvia accompanied his departure with a satisfied laugh, for her mind immediately pictured it as if he had not ignored her words, leaving in the middle of her tirade, but had not withstood the temptation and immediately run to jerk off with her panties on his face. Not only did these jokes not bore him, but they also served the important function of reminding him of exactly what would happen to him if Sylvia were still the controller in their couple. Even so, he unwittingly noticed that his earlier predilection for watching her unawareness of what was happening had recently flared up more and more. He was amused and aroused by the way the beautiful, strong and powerful lady obeyed without realising that she was being subjugated. He wanted so badly to stop and jerk-off with thoughts of that haughty look of Sylvia's, of her chicks, of unfamiliar and never seen smarmy peasant bitches with sweet juicy lubricated slippery peasant tits....

Having already cleaned up the stains, come to his room and eaten dinner, he glanced at the black lace panties lying on the pillow and did not go to bed, but decided to check one more thing. The work of less advanced dolls in transferring information from consciousness to consciousness. He'd never had the chance to play with Malter's chicks over a long distance before, at most they'd left the city a few days' travel away. The furthest Rowena had traveled was a full seven days of not particularly slow travel, when she'd gone to talk to a reclusive alchemist about buying some equipment from him in exchange for some literature and contacts. He was already one foot in the grave, his body battered by time and not particularly restrained lifestyle, and even potions couldn't save him. The man liked to eat well and get laid with a couple of expensive girls under a cheerful powder, and didn't mind living a little longer, not quite alive.

Alas for him, even if Malter had agreed to administer the Scarlet Baptism, the man's condition was very bad, and Rowena's counselling only confirmed what was already known. The probability of success was minimal, almost a guarantee of turning into a ghoul, even a strong ghoul. He didn't want such a fate and decided to look in other directions, though he didn't say it out loud. Sylvia, after a little thought, still denounced him to de Fell, because a magician who wants to delay the inevitable end, who has not found help even from the undead, is likely to look into the complete blackness. Sylvia didn't care about ritual sacrifices for life pumping, but the threat of a demonic cult germ she didn't want even in her nightmare, despite the fact that vampires don't dream. The denunciation was gone, but so far there was silence, though the bloodsucker had the situation under control.

However, Rowena-Reshka and Lemira were not on a dangerous mission. The task, though time-consuming and involving the corpses of those caught in the sting of hornet wasps, was practically harmless for the two of them. At most, they'd get dirty in all sorts of shit, but that still wouldn't kill even an inferior ghoul, let alone two vampires with a lot of knowledge and experience. Sticking his hand into the darkness under the bed, Stepan pulled out two dolls. He placed them on his chest and laid back on the bed, covering his eyes. The contact was instantaneous. It was as if the distance didn't exist at all, and a couple of minutes later the Earthman was remembering, together with Lemira and Reshka, how their almost finished business trip had gone. They had already received a payment. Most of it was financial, but a couple of unburdensome favours had also been charged. They were preparing to go home that evening. Both ladies knew how to protect themselves from the sun and the day, especially if in a closed carriage with proper enchantments, but they still didn't like travelling during the day. If they were ambushed in such conditions, they wouldn't be able to put up much resistance.... against a normal enemy, of course, not a random band of brigands. Again, they took three armed servants, two maids and a coachman with them, not only for status, but also to avoid the impression of easy prey.

Even so, they had to stop once and cut out a bandit outpost on the sly. They're just unlucky, and it's a woe from wit. They had thought of making a very good quality rookery in the style of a crow's nest, which you would not expect from yesterday's peasants. The place was very convenient, on an elevated position, allowing them to keep under control a very unpleasant and convenient for ambush bend in the road, which aroused the suspicion of the bloodsuckers who noticed this point. They were surprised to find a trio of ragamuffins in that nest, rather than part of a coherent fighting force. Well, at least, they saved on blood and didn't have to drink from their escorts. Stepan was uncomfortable with that attitude, but he had already given all of Sylvia's fledglings the indoctrination they needed. If they even thought of opening the bastards' throats and decanting the blood into glasses and flasks, it meant that the interrogation showed that the guys more than deserved their end.

Rape, murder, robbery and even cannibalism. A well-fed traveller was caught. They were all drunk, and one bragged about how well he could cook.... They were all sick in the morning, not only from the hangover. Specific material, how could the girls not be disgusted to consume such blood? Stepan knew, of course, that a normal vampire with experience would sink his teeth into flesh only if there were no other options, for it was uncultured and beastly, and vampires were afraid of slipping into beastly primitivism. He knew, yes, but he still wouldn't drink liquid decanted from the veins of a person with such odours and physical condition. To be fair, they were probably shitting themselves because they'd met two bloodsuckers, not naturally walking around with shit in their trousers.

He also scanned through the general memories of how the job of finding and destroying all the insects modified with elven mind and remodeled by human mind had gone. The original design seemed to have attacked only green-skinned, less likely humans, and the elves were not touched at all, it was the later selection in an attempt to save the species that led to mutations in the behavioral program. He was extremely impressed at how boring and monotonous it was. The two ladies simply walked, winding circles through the night fields, occasionally activating a flair enhancement in the form of prana analysis, occasionally casting a faint scarlet mist over the little nest. The queen of the super-nest is one for all several hundred individuals, but the individuals themselves live not in a single nest, but in a network of separated, ten to twenty units. Both of them are exhausted, but not tired or bleeding. The scans were not very expensive, and simple walks would not waste the scarlet drop.

For them it was really just money, but the Earthman were flaming their asses off. No one mourned the corpses of those who had been caught in the middle of this little internecine war, except their relatives. And what was more offensive was that the workers' artels had been given amulets to protect them from the Insect, and most of the dead were just random individuals who'd taken a shortcut past the flax fields. Stepan would have loved and adored Baronet Eustace de Flexy as much as the honorable Baroness Ella de Lamel, if he hadn't known from the memory of the vampires who had gathered rumors purely on automatic that the Baroness was no worse than the Baronet. For example, not long ago, as the Baronet's guardsman, enchanted by the glint of Rowena's eyes, boasted over a cup of wine, considering both ladies to be hired magicians and not undead, the people hired by de Lamel had successfully planted the remains of a deer infected with some intestinal infection in a stream near one of the large settlements on the rival's land, which was already a full-fledged town.

That is, nobody could prove anything. Even the investigation of the specialists called from Dantmark found nothing. It all looked like an accident: the predator had killed the deer, the teeth marks on the bones and flesh, and the deer was contagious. No one can prove anything, but it was very characteristic, to the satisfaction of the Baroness, who undermined the harvest and autumn trade, causing damage to the enemy's pocket. The fact that before the priestesses of Gaia managed to quell an epidemic of something resembling a mixture of cholera and diphtheria, no less than fourteen people had died, not counting those not counted.... well, you chop the wood, the chips fall. Taxes will go less into the pocket of the blood enemy, again! Very well, victory, success, hurrah, rejoice, but then we give funeral funerals to the wives of four of our workers from those who work with flax, as well as much more modest funerals to simple villeins, bitten to death. Vagrants or casual travellers can be omitted, obviously, for they are useless anyway.

And so about every two or three years, not counting the equally frequent attempts to kill each other. That's why both sides and their close retinue did not skimp on protection, poison detection amulets, and good guards. And so these two houses, these two baronies, are fighting. Though, if they were united, they would be equal in power to another county. They are so rich and successful, so densely populated and prosperous. Yeah, well, you have to be progressive about labor practices, don't get squeezed by taxes and dues, or the peasants will leave you and you'll be impoverished, unable to maintain guards and pay for hiring hand troops, and then you'll get run over by your arch rival. Really atypical. Usually both sides of a conflict, as in Earth's history, act strictly the other way around - squeeze out everything they can with taxes, drive men into recruits, take four hides, and, in the end, both opponents are either left with nothing, conquered by their rival, or one of them wins, partially recovering what they lost through bloody booty and brutal plunder.

Stepan hadn't made a decision yet, and hadn't even worked out the idea that had flashed on the edge of his consciousness when the System alert caught up with him, almost asleep. He blinked, moved both dolls back to the underground hall to the right pedestal shelves, and read the images, twitching his eyebrow more and more and suppressing a giggle. Yes, it was exactly like that. Her Autodivine Milfness had given him a quest. Not just a simple quest but a full-fledged task of a rank above average considered ‘difficult’! Yes, its difficulty was at the lower end of the difficulty scale, but the fact itself meant a lot, as did the reward for completing it. At the same time, the task itself, which was quite unusual, did not contradict Stepan's morals too much, in many ways being very close to what he could have done himself, wanting to do something like this on his own. Just with less perversions and sexual deviations, but for free and for his resources, whereas the assignment offered to get these resources as part of the assignment.

What amuses and angers in equal measure is that in the list of meta-skills available for pumping, there is a ‘issue of resources tied to the system assignment’, which allows you to get some material or not-so-material supplies that can be spent on the system assignment and only on it. Good meta-skill, might even be something to pick up in the near future if the opportunity arises. Then, geez, why do Her Milfiness' quests very often have this type of option already built in, and clearly not for the first rank of that meta-skill or even the fourth! Thank you, of course, but it's still a shame that he has to spend his savings on normal and really interesting assignments! And also choosing, choking on metaphorical tears - to save money and take a simpler reagent, or not to risk and buy normal, but with the risk of not recouping costs even by perfect performance of the assignment? Another small pearls and madness of fat, clearly. The shaman was aware of that. He also realised what the normal local gifted people would do to him if they learnt about such thoughts and the system at his disposal in general. He would probably be hunted by the whole world, too, though he didn't try to агсл the deity within the walls of his Primal Temple.
T.N.

And he doesn’t intend to do this in the future, which is even more important!

System assignment ( difficult): to process the consciousnesses and personalities of Baronet Eustace de Flexy and Baroness Ella de Lamel, distorting their consciousnesses in accordance with the stated specifications and achieving the cessation of bloodshed between their baronies; to transfer the conflict between the stated victims into the paradigm of lecherous confrontation using the methods of spell and mental magic; to achieve a stable alliance between the two baronies.

Required processing specifications: [UNFOLD].

The terms of the assignment prohibit physical proximity to the victims and their region of residence; the main work must be done without leaving Dantmark or any other equidistant point.

Satisfactory execution requires achieving distortion of the desired cognitive circuits and thought streams in both victims by suppressing aggression, inducing sympathy and lust, and translating competition and lust for dominance into a framework of intimacy and depravity.

For complete fulfillment, it is necessary to carry out all the effects unnoticed by others and without arousing suspicion.

For perfect execution, the near entourages of both victims must also be treated, additionally ensuring their non-interference and lack of suspicion.

It is permissible, approved and desired to use the gifts of Liarat si Merrinal, Lady of Gifts and Giver of Gifts, loyal servant of Innelas Innelay.

Reward: closure of the current level; three points available for distribution to the meta-skills section only; one elite small knowledge of the envolt branch; a significant increase in the effectiveness of suggestive and charming influences, a significant increase in the probability of appearance of talents of the branch of agent missions, expansion of the available set of summons of the corresponding direction.

At full execution: two free talent points; two elite or super-elite meta-action tokens; boost two random meta-skills to the current development maximum (if there are no meta-skills unlocked to the development limit, random meta-skills of common rarity boosted to the maximum will be given).

At perfect: two free characteristic points; one random elite property; three tangible rewards from the system store's special item list, one elite or super-elite minor knowledge; closing one branch of knowledge up to the current characteristic limitation limit of your choice.

Note: all consumables to complete the task according to the specification will be provided for free, but with the necessity to use all materials to complete the assignment; all excess or unused materials will be withdrawn upon completion of the assignment; an attempt to use the issued materials other than to fulfill the objectives of the assignmen will result in automatic failure of the assignment.

After reading and rereading all the images, the shaman accepted the assignment without question, immediately moving it to the waiting list. The task itself gave three months to complete and was really difficult. First of all, the scale, distance, and the number of targets that would need to be affected. Without an anchor and a presence in the territory of two neighboring baronies, it would take the shaman quite some time just to gain access to that territory. And getting it... Chasing spirits blindly would be a path of failure, because in the world of the Spheres, even with his control, they would be more likely to lose their way than to get there. He had no clear sense of place, no auric imprints, only the faces of both victims taken from the vampiresses' memories, and in the case of the Baronet, only a portrait.

Add to this the scale and the number of people who will have to be affected in one way or another so that they do not notice the changes taking place. This is several centuries of blood feuds, and here he has to turn this feud into a non-blood feud with a lot of debauchery. You don't have to be very smart to suspect some nasty shit in the outbreak of sympathy and cease fire. At first, of course, will think on the enemy, say bewitched, bewitched, but with active checks and to the truth about the participation of a third party to reach the truth is not long. The whole county, including the Count's couple, under whom both barons are, are closely watching this old fight and even indulging in it in every possible way. It was obvious, not only to Sylvia, but also to Stepan, that no one would want to allow the union of the two strongest baronies with powerful squads and trained mages, which could jointly give a shit to the count's detachments.

So the Counts need to be reassured, too. He needs to help them ensure the couple, even if they stop gnawing at each other, will be busy with each other. He needs to help their neighbors not to unite out of terror of being overrun or economically devoured by the coordinated work of former enemies. Much, very much will have to be done. That's why the assignment being billed as difficult rather than medium becomes really clear. Even being personally present in one of the baronies, being able to teleport from one to another every day, he would be tired of doing so much work, albeit with a set of all sorts of useful gifts for a particular task. Working from Dantmark? One can't even dream of completing the task in time for a perfect score, he just won't have time.

He will have to look for some scumbag murderers, turn them into walking totems and markers to influence the territory, then send them in the right direction, through fields and forests to reach the target, then use beacons to start influencing, and only then work. Here it will be necessary to create a full-fledged preliminary plan of the operation, right along the patterns of agency work. At the same time, he understands why for the completion of the assignment will increase the likelihood of getting knowledge and talents of this branch. Even without performing the assignment itself, with only preparation, he could do a lot of things and save a lot of time. And these specifications are something and not at all because of Alpha Milfa's creativity.

The basis of processing is that both victims decided to “temporarily” forget about the feud and try their opponent is not to kill, but to seduce. It is beautiful and profitable, and it is nice to see a cursed bitch or an insolent asshole in a collar and muzzle. So, it is necessary to act by methods of charming and mentalism. And this opinion should be mutual. Both sides must believe the other party is either unaware of their plans, or doomed to lose in advance. All their mutual hatred should not disappear, but be replaced by harmless forms, a lust to dominate in and out of bed. Along with a set of consumables will be given a one-time token of “accentuated probabilistic control”, which will help both targets more effectively find more and more exotic ways to fuck their opponent in the brains before just fuck them. This token will allow each of them to be released from the mental collar about three to four months after submission, either to suddenly switch roles with the former master, or to restart their strange and passionate feud.

The only thing is that normalization was not added to the token, and Stepan will have to add it from himself. Because even an idiot would realize that it is somehow suspicious they time after time find themselves in a collar or under the heel, but time after time they get free and start again. And it's not just this sweet couple that will need to have their perceptions corrected, everyone else will too. And all this without contradiction, and also completely unnoticeable, which is especially important in the context of only a little slowed down search for the Fat Maestro. But the reward is truly royal. And also people's lives will stop burning in a conflict that is unnecessary and even economically unprofitable for both sides, which continues only because of the irrepressible pride of the sweet couple.

Stepan looked at the portraits of his targets, pulled out of someone else's memory and embodied by the spirit of mirages and illusions: a pretty short and lush-breasted brown woman with curly hair and warm brown eyes, under which one would not suspect a true scum with a long history, and a tall and slender brunet with slightly Nordic features, a little bit of brownish skin, which could easily be mistaken for a light tan and dark green eyes. Two equally disgusting individuals, two children of the local society, who saw nothing wrong in their actions. He would, of course, check them out, make sure he was right and, if he was wrong about them in any way, he would voluntarily fail the task, refusing to overstep his convictions. But he was completely sure he would not be wrong and would not refuse.

"I sat down to meditate and absorb the knowledge. Damn. I've gotten to know the world around me and the personalities that inhabit it." He grumbles, turning from side to side and not finding the strength to focus on anything else, even the System, seeing his emotional state, did not activate the assimilation of knowledge. "Why the fuck are they all such assholes? And they're smart assholes, they understand the benefits of a proper work ethic, they see all the advantages of a more human attitude towards their subjects. But, damn, only in order to conflict more effectively with the hated asshole. Yoo-hoo, bitch! I'm angry."

It took him a long time to calm down. Even the servant came to him to clarify why the honored guest had been exploding with multi-storeyed and complex swearing for half an hour, but he calmed down nevertheless. He sat down on the bed, closed his eyes and ordered the System to give him what he deserved. And then he fell onto his back, exhaling relaxedly, sinking into a trance.

Received: “advanced spiritual conflict skills outside the physical body”; “advanced developed methods of spiritual wandering”; increased affinity with higher spheres; facilitated retention of cognitive awareness during spiritual wandering; increased likelihood of acquiring the knowledge and properties of the spirit warrior, spiritual wanderer, and creative sage branches.

Acquired talents are added to the Player's overall status.

Stepan floated on the waves of his consciousness, accepting the new knowledge and mentally feeling how closer and closer he was getting to becoming a shaman, not a Senior, but a Higher one. This boundary, from the system's point of view for sure, is still infinitely far away, but much closer than one might think. The essence of both skills had changed little, but had been greatly expanded and augmented with new synergies, new understandings of old tricks, new connections, and new prospects for elevation. First of all, it was Spiritual Wandering that attracted his attention. In many ways, it was the basis of the method of classic shaman pumping, at least one of the basics of that pumping. If Dialogue and Calls are the tools of shamanism itself, then Wandering and Re-shaping of one's essence for a new environment is a sharpening stone, which is necessary to shape the tools to give them proper sharpness and strength, flexibility and hardness.

The Wandering had not changed that much, at first glance for sure. Not too many secrets had been added to it, but what had been added was worth paying attention to. At the advanced developed skill the shaman could not only confidently wander-swim through the spirit worlds, but also adjust the degree to which the spirit left the body. The exit is partial, just a very edge, only to look out and immediately back, or vice versa, the exit is so complete that almost escape, when the body remains not just without soul and spirit, but without everything at all. This is a risky trick, dangerous for the body, which will slowly begin to die without proper support, but even with it will not stop degrading altogether. The advantage in a more complete control of the spiritual form and increasing the effectiveness of calls in such a state is not so obvious, because the essence of the technique is primarily aimed at escape, salvation by the spirit where the body is threatened to perish.

But that's nonsense, because it's so easy to lose the forest behind the trees! Stepan did not understand at once, but when he did, he smiled through the trance. This knowledge and techniques are preparation to deprive the body of materiality, to drag it with him through the spheres without harming himself and the body. Without covering oneself with a spirit-protector, without shackling oneself in the armour of active witchcraft, without creating one's puppet, which will play the role of an anchor and take on itself the damage from impossible conditions for existence. To leave as a true shaman, who became not a guest, but a child of the high spheres. To leave in his own body. Yes, the distance from those techniques which allow only partially leaving the body, partially dragging the body behind, to a full step over the edge is great. Great, not in astronomical values of the level ‘from here to the moon’, but rather ‘from here to the neighbouring continent’: long, difficult and dangerous, especially in swimming and only in proud solitude, but nevertheless foreseeably possible, realistic and feasible in the long run.

Against this background, the increase in the effectiveness of out-of-body calls, new approaches to the incorporation of a non-material entity into one's spirit, with active symbiosis without the involvement of a physical flesh jumper, paled in comparison. The types of contracts, which were originally intended to help and insure during the training on spiritual rewiring, paled in comparison too. Paled in comparison ways to set up defences of arrays and totems against the lover to walk out of body. Even witchcraft spells that would allow one to create insurance for the duration of the journey, closing one's body off from the spheres for just long enough to escape. That, too, paled in comparison. All of the suggestions were details, while the essence did not change. Upon reaching the spiritual wandering level that follows advanced mastery, he would know exactly how to step into that wandering entirely. Of course, he would have to acquire some other property, or even more than one, to use such a trick as effectively as possible, but he would be able to reproduce the base even so, simply relying on the Shroud and Transformation, on his spirit and will.

As a separate aspect, there were ways to twist someone's mind by stealthily getting close to them out of the body, the same ways stealthily kill your target or just spy on them. You don't have to be alone. An entourage of spirits and hiding yourself and your entourage with witchcraft is only welcome. A far more valuable aspect is methods to protect oneself from such masters, especially within the confines of mind defense. He should definitely add them, because too often this world tends to fuck him. It would not take long to run into some cute, smoky, slippery peasant girl with sweet, juicy, lubricated, slippery peasant tits, which ... which will definitely not brainwash him, because such a thing can't happen to a mighty senior shaman. More advanced techniques of creating totems literally in the spirit world from materials dragged to this very world of Spheres aroused considerable interest. Such an assembling is fraught with risks, dangers and increased probability of screwing up the workpiece, but the output in percentage ratio will give almost threefold.

He would not be able to concentrate enough on all totems to do his work and not to drift into that state, after which he would be interested only in creating identical totems for another ten years while his body slowly mummified nearby. Spirits for cover will have to be summoned many times more. He will not be able to defend himself, nor will he be able to observe his surroundings. Material details and totem blanks will attract the unhealthy attention of the surrounding wildlife, which will have to be defended against not personally, but by contracted packs. Again, not every billet in a closed and isolated circle can be assembled and brought to perfection. In some cases, it will be necessary to fly higher into the Sky, fall deeper into the Depths, and cover will not be multidimensional defense arrays and a bunch of totems, but only packs of defenders, which at any moment can try to escape or simply fail to cope with the task. Especially if a passing Higher One attacks.

Territory also benefited from the new methods: both in terms of the ability to subjugate the territory, and to penetrate other people's spells, reconfigure them to suit themselves or simply push themselves out of their perception. Not the simplest approaches, not the brightest thoughts about their use are laid down, but what is there, that can not be taken away. Especially given the coupling of this particular line of synergy with yet another heightened knowledge at this point. Spiritual conflict from strong witchcraft does indeed gain a lot, as if these branches of knowledge were made for each other, like Romeo and Juliet, like Ruslan and Ludmila, like Beavis and Butthead, like the bridge of the nose and maxillary sinusitis.... okay, he's getting a little carried away here.

So, spiritual conflict.

The cornerstone of this reinforcement, which the Earthman thought he had received for beating that sleeping evil spirit in the ruins of a long-abandoned village, was a combination of the approaches of witchcraft and spiritual wandering in general. In fact, it's even obvious. If one of the two main facets of witchcraft is the control of ether flows, then wouldn't witchcraft be quite applicable if you are completely immersed in the ether? Yes, it will. Yes, not without certain factors, both positive, such as greater saturation of the surrounding reality and easier control of these flows due to proximity to them, and negative, for the fact that you are in a spiritual state and therefore it is more difficult to take a support for influence, it is more difficult to rely on reality and territory, if there is no territory or even reality nearby. However, even now, combining territorial magic and shamanism, Stepan was already able to seize the real world and parts of the spirit world. Slowly, sadly, often linking what he had appropriated to the corresponding piece of reality, but he could. His pockets, he hid himself in Morgrave, were a vivid example of that.

Here he was perfectly capable of both attacking with witchcraft and combining it with typical spiritual tricks-attacks, as well as manoeuvring, dodging, putting up shields and reducing the damage to, say, disposable envolts created right in the spiritual world. Well, he hadn't tried most of them, but now he knew exactly what he could do and could use if needed. Ways of breaking into defence arrays, as well as methods of fighting in the spiritual body both with those who hid behind the array, and hiding in those arrays. Confronting someone else's territory, breaking into it and then hijacking it, using someone else's communications to attack or stealthily influence brains, being able to dissect such control and levelling it for a brief and decisive moment of impact. Tricks more suited to assassination or elimination, to bewitchment or brainwashing, than to direct combat with an equal opponent. However, his mastery of the art of the martial caller insisted that when fighting an equal enemy warlock/witch in a land they had possessed, the best tactic was to retreat quickly and swiftly under a hail of covering attacks and swarms of spirits released for slaughter.

Well, if the opponent is really equal not only in characteristics, but also in the general baggage of skills. However, fighting with warlocks on their land, and if they have time to prepare for the confrontation, is a bloody nightmare. You'd sooner die of bloody diarrhea from exertion than to squeeze through such a monolith, even with the most cunning attacks and combinations. Only hope that you will be able to catch your opponent in a mistake, and he has to make a mistake. And make not a small blunder or acceptable concession, but make a really stupid mistake and not react in time. It also happens with advanced masters of several schools of gift application, it is enough to remember how a young isekai was screwed by a much weaker and generally initially restrained Sylvia, but more often they do not make mistakes and knock out the teeth of those who naively expect it.

The shaman lay on the bed for some time, staring at the ceiling with unseeing eyes and reevaluating some combat and not so combat tactics for the new realities. Only when he had finished thinking, or rather when he had run out of energy for complex thoughts, did he pour himself a still-warm broth with bits of thoroughly cooked meat, and then close his eyes as if for a brief moment before falling into a dream. It seemed to him, as if there was an intrusive thought on the edge of his consciousness, heavy as a gold bar in the shape of a woman's shoe, that he had forgotten something, had not done something that he was accustomed to do before dreams, but sleep had already fallen over his tired mind, covering it with a string of images for which he could see no end, nor did he want to look for it.

* * *

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Переведено на Нотабеноиде
http://notabenoid.org/book/86785/581530

Переводчики: Camrad_RIP