Готовый перевод Настучать в бубен / Hit the tambourine: Глава 20-8

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Stepan used the spirits of the Solid for a reason. Not out of a desire to show off, but simply because the mass of spirits affected by direct orders belonged to the Solid, and it was easier not to dilute them with a separate air spirit or a pure sounder, but to take another colleague. The moment of attacking, giving the last command, and lowering the whole horde from the chains coincided with the end of his attempt to say a pathos phrase. It was still a bathos, but he had never been able to come up with cool phrases, and most of his witty answers usually came to him at about the third hour of the night, another day of the week, sometimes months or years after a significant event that left a trace in his memory. Now he didn't care at all about the phrases and how cool he sounded. He cared more about how cool he could bang.

Five strong and a dozen or three small spirits formed the barrier's core, literally forming a closed field with their bodies, piercing the demoness's barriers with it, using Stepan's vision's knowledge to bypass the entire structure's defenses. Their impact was not an attack as such, only an attempt to overcome the billet of the infernal creature and at the same time prevent the destruction from going further than the tavern. The striking force was an elder spirit, also of the Solid, of mountain peaks and rockfalls, carrying the unhurried and inevitable wrath of slowly shifting masses of rock that would overwhelm any army, any power, any blow would not even be repelled, but ignored. For what the fuck can you do to the mountains if they are fucking mountains. The shaman, being a man erudite magically and well-skilled technologically, had something to say about it, but he did not argue with the ‘only’ elder spirit, even if he could, in theory, call upon the higher spirits, which, if not the mountains would move, would smoke this braggart out of their stones and devour him.

Now the braggart strikes himself, practising the one blow a month he was paid for in eight summonses over eight years. An invisible wave passes through the rooms, the boards, the roof, and the demonic stench of the tavern air. It touches the demoness who sensed something and tried to reconfigure the defences, touches the still self-occupied bandit, touches the live bombs playing at strangling the one-eyed serpent, which could not be saved even if he had found compassion for the typical night fellows. Touching, configuring, and striking, only once, calibrated and deadly. No rockfalls or attempts to drop the tavern to the ground. The spirit could do that, but Laghan knew it could do that because Stepan had told her, in his haste to please his sister.

It's an attack that can't be done without prior preparation and auxiliary spirits, but that's why he's attacking in such a way, using an elder spirit in a way that's unexpected and not quite characteristic of an entity. The summoning of an entity of this calibre is very flexible, and to fully adjust to every attack with each of his summons is something that even a creature that knows exactly what his arsenal is about cannot do. So he thought, and so he was quite right, for she was quite genuinely surprised, having managed to cover herself with her shield and successfully fortified the defences of the tavern so it could not be pierced with spades of stone - and sharpened! - from cellar to roof. She was very surprised when there were no peaks, rocks, or dips in the ground, only a slight shuffling sound, as if two sharpening stones rustled against each other, and then a pop, as if the biggest champagne cork had popped out of the biggest bottle.

The creature's shield came in handy. She protected herself quite easily. However, the attack was not set against those with a good magical defense. The demoness hid a real closed field, which mixed classic magic and the same classic filth. It did not hurt sitting in the circle fondling herself bandit, because the circle was at the same time a protective line. But it knocked out her live batteries and bombs, which were insufficiently protected and combat-ready. Stepan was ready to bet his central totem that the wanking bandits were absolutely sure to be temporarily strengthened in the framework of survivability to the level that a pierced heart would not kill them immediately and would not greatly prevent them from finishing their handjob, spilling not at all harmless magic out of themselves in the very way one thinks of when dealing with the demons of lust.

But even their enhanced regeneration and resistance had clearly not prepared them for the strike. The slam was not just the impact, but the very concept of the mountains' presence, the heaviness of them, the sheer and ineffable mass. Physically, it expressed itself in something akin to a gravitational shock. Every body not covered by the barrier became as heavy as a rock, but only for itself. The building didn't collapse, falling in on itself, only the windows flew out and the roof cracked a little, the foundation itself sagged a little when the cellars with the icehouse crumbled, but the window frames, which had been blown out by the airflow and the strong pressure on the inside of the window frames, splashed red when the human bodies, soaked with demonic power, turned into meat balls. From behind the door, which had miraculously not been taken out, came a wild, piercing, piercingly evil shriek, and the demonic foulness rushed out of the tavern in such a torrent that every gifted person in the city could smell it, and even the ungifted in the vicinity were covered. The smell of berries and honey, soaked with bitterness and unbearably tantalizing nastiness, would have been nauseating if Stepan hadn't protected himself. A couple of passersby who were no longer affected by the distraction of the shaman or the tavern did. Though the burgundy mess of blood and entrails that splattered their clothes might have played a role.

The shaman simply stepped forward, deceptively leisurely. Simultaneously trying to channel the spirits and cast his spells. Trying quite successfully. His body was covered by a blurred haze, blurring his height and facial features as if he were looking at someone through fogged glass. An illusion at once mental, optical, and auric, hiding all sorts of impressions. Given the Shroud and the Patchwork in the properties, he had every right not to worry about being recognized and remembered. He didn't care, though, given the demoness had screwed him over by revealing his incognito. He could pay off Dantrel, if he wanted to. Or he'd emigrate to the Steppe, herd horses and chase mares with lightning strikes, for fuck's sake! The thought of steppes and mares sent another wave of burning shame through him as he remembered how Singha had almost pulled him out of the trap, but not only had he stayed braided, but he'd also brainwashed her with a Token. And then he'd started to take steps to make her and her mother not his steppe whores. Shame and anger mixed into a thick paste, no worse than tomato dressing for borscht, fueling a motivating frenzy. He didn't even know what pissed him off more - the fact that he'd been fucked in the head, or the fact that he couldn't feel so sure of his superiority over the damn mare now?

The shaman, pondering about eternal things, had only three steps to go before an enraged infernal bastard literally flew out of the doorway, immediately assuming the activated path closure. After which it became clear that they had both successfully fucked each other over. The shaman, well aware that the creature knew about his crown attack, deliberately made a very non-standard configuration of the curse, which outwardly and when analyzed by sensorics seemed to be saturated with power to the full, for the entire available reserve, but in fact was barely saturated with that power, on the verge of disintegration. In fact, it was precisely because of the almost disintegrating structure of witchcraft that it poured so much power into reality that it seemed to be poured to the brim with that power. Usually, such things are easily distinguishable by magical perception and there is no way to confuse one with the other, but it was the shamanic cunning that was in disguise. Realizing perfectly well that the creature would definitely be good enough to overcome his witchcraft, especially knowing its nature, he decided to trick her into wasting her strength or even a prepared ritual. And in many ways he did, because Laghan had indeed prepared against this attack, so well that even he had not expected it.

The creature ran out onto the porch and scattered with yellowish foam and clumps of incomprehensible mass. It wasn't even an illusion, but a full-blown deceptive golem based on demonic filth. It couldn't pretend to be anything other than a demon, but it pretended to be a demon. The deception was just dying, losing its humanoid form, when the shaman was hit by a response. It wasn't just a backlash, but a combined attack. First came the mental pressure, habitually repelled even without much effort, just to keep control at the last moment and not get hooked. The compulsion hidden in the main influence was almost ingrained in Stepan, forcing his mind to give out contradictory and incorrect commands to the spirits. It relied on his multiplicity, which was precisely his strength, trump card, not his weakness and vulnerability. The creature had studied him very well indeed. Almost managed to turn strength into weakness.

He reacted in time, only to catch a clump of scarlet-white filth on the fourth step. In this mass he recognised both the bloody scraps left by the living bombs of the lustful cunt and the seed already squeezed out of this corpse stuffing. The disgusting mass was literally saturated with pure lust, and the shaman felt sick at the thought of what would happen to him if this touched him. The defences of the anteroom were so easily overcome. It was as if they didn't exist. A reliance on ritual and a properly tailored attack against his trump card existing in both realms at once. He did not risk throwing spirits to intercept the clod, fearing for the spirits and for himself, bound to those spirits. Witchcraft helped, both basic, but very dense and qualitatively executed spells on his clothes and in patterns on his body, and the ‘envolt energy mantle-twin’ he had created beforehand. The envolt picture of himself, made of pure energy and ether flows, was additionally strengthened by a material anchor, which he immersed in the world of spheres and kept near him.

When the lump hit him, the shaman just held his breath and spun on his toes, simply walking through the attack, not even trying to throw it out of reality, knowing he wouldn't be able to, seeing how firmly this stuff was anchored in reality. An invisible and colorless mantle was seen around the young man's body, worn over the same colorless and monochromatic figure of the shaman, who had taken all this stuff on himself. The mantle flew off him and went to the wall of some house, still wrapped in a lump of filth. It was as if the lump had actually hit him, knocked him down, carried him away, and covered him with this crap, only instead of a real Earthman, it was a trick image that had gotten him in trouble. The young man only smiled even wider, sharply waving his cloak and throwing a small clay figure of a schematic man in front of the second lump that flew after the first. It was duly fine-tuned to the lump's signature, which he read too good to be surprising at such close contact.

The figure hit the lump of filth, which, however, was traumatic and clearly defiling, but not fatal, rather restraining, as if the creature still wanted to take him alive. It struck, fell into the depths, and after that, the pre-prepared “banishment from reality” worked on the figure, sending the still inertia-bearing mass, which could easily kill someone or worse, into the depths of the spheres. It went well, it was not in vain that I powered up that exorcism to the brim, and the spirit for vivisection and creation of the hook picked up a special, maximally suitable aspect of the sphere of space. The second figure intercepted the third lump with the same unquestioning efficiency, also disappearing it from reality, but the fourth attack was more interesting - this lump was much more white than red, and also had an elongated shape, like a giant snake, cuttlefish, or flying into the shaman dildo.

The shaman didn't even blink an eye, sending a new doll into the projectile. All he achieved was that the hovering prick flickered and twitched before disappearing. But it did disappear, it seemed! Only seemingly, because before it fell into the spheres, the demoness-soaked seed and blood had attuned itself to the shaman, to his envolt trickery. The bridge has two paths. Every puppet of the self, even the most schematic and faithfully prepared with all the safety nets against such foulness, is still very dangerous when misused by you and faithfully used by the enemy. The shaman's figure swayed on its feet, receiving a calibrated and powerful jab of lust, nakedness, and pleasure right into its slender body, but stayed on its feet despite its trembling knees. No stains on her pants, though the demoness was willing to bet that at least she'd made the little bastard spurt his seed. With a wave of his hand, the little bastard threw out from under his cloak, burning a pinkish flame, a puppet-delusion of a different kind, made of cloth and straw, not clay. It was meant to defend against attack through his envolt, not intercept it. If the creature had samples of his blood, and not just hers, she could create a curse for him personally, and if not herself, then through one of the souls she'd collected with the right knowledge.

Laghan obviously expected a slightly different result of her combined and equally powerful attacks, tailored to the victim. Therefore, no matter how ancient and fearsome she was, she was slightly taken aback by the ineffectiveness of her labours. But Stepan did not falter and did not slow down, taking a sixth step closer to the tavern and attacking with another spirit, at the same time supporting it with witchcraft. The strong entity, due to the specific reinforcement invested in it through the offerings fed to it during the ritual, as well as feeding it through totems, struck no weaker than the senior one, even stronger in many ways. Then there's the exoticism of the attack against the tree he had originally thought of summoning. This spirit was summoned to duel with a mage to take away a staff that could hardly be scratched by normal methods without breaking the mage's shields. The tavern was not a staff, its walls, even soaked with foulness and fortified with unholy signs, were not on a par with the protection of personal artefacts. Stepan's blow was truly terrible, though not for the demoness herself, but for her position, for everything she had prepared through that position, depriving her of a huge part of the arsenal of the hail fight.

The shriek, which was the sound of swearing in dozens of languages at once, showed better than anything else how much his efforts were appreciated. The tavern, whose walls had already swayed from the gravitational impact, sagged even more, and then collapsed as every log, board, and chip in it suddenly became the consistency of gelatin. Not a rot, not a necrotic lesion, but a neutral transmutation that changed the physical properties of matter without affecting magic or coming into conflict with that magic. All these signs, ritual circles, closed fields on separate rooms or vats with seed, they were not affected by the transmutation itself, but gravity did everything else, again, proving to everyone who was a truly evil and merciless bitch. The contours were torn to shreds, the signs crumpled into them, the blanks burst before they even had a chance to activate, and attempts to somehow save the prepared battlefield only resulted in additional wasted energy.

The magic and filth went into overdrive. Somewhere detonating, and somewhere even more strongly leaking into reality with new flashes on all possible sensors. And if the shaman understood anything about the functioning of the city, now in the Palace, in the Tower, in the Temples, in the houses of the nobles, and representative offices of Trading Houses, howled signal amulets or just owners of sufficiently developed sensitivity. The property of infernal energy consists in very good discernibility, which makes it extremely difficult to conceal if there is no direct control and a prepared ritual. In general, the alarm in the city is rising right now, and their battle has clearly attracted attention and caused panic in the neighborhood. And the shaman isn't done yet. He had just begun his series of attacks, perhaps not as calibrated, but certainly unexpected for his opponent.

The mass of wood jelly still collapsed under its weight as he attacked again, throwing forward at once a handful of small pebbles, imbued with witch magic and bound together like not even parts of a whole, but complete and identical copies of each other. In spiritual and magical vision, this pebble looked like one and the same object, which for some reason occupied a dozen different points in the material world at once. It was a trick learned from three pigs, multiplied by rethought concepts and a lot of system currency, ruthlessly spent in the name of victory. The creature reacts obnoxiously fast, much faster than he'd like, but still within the range of expectation. A scarlet-white wall of semen and flesh rises towards the pebble, covering the demoness's figure with a spheroidal barrier or magical plate armor. It was more likely the former, and the tentacles and limbs sticking out of the sphere were attacking manipulators, at the same time helping to drag this mass.

They helped.

Pebbles hit the barrier and activated her main property, for the sake of which she had to summon a few interesting spirits with rare aspects and universal binding to the sphere of space to copy some of their shells with witchcraft. In one second, the world looked like a broken mosaic in which all the pieces of the puzzle were rearranged, but stuck together, without voids or lost pieces. A Picasso painting, only without Picasso. And without the painting, too, if you think about it. The chunks of space, the pebbles imbued with territorial presence, swapped places along with the reflections of the stones. The stone was the same, right? And if it is one and the same, then there should be no problem in swapping the pieces back and forth? The viscous and disgusting mass was not a classical weave, belonging to something resembling the work of priestly prayers, well, or demonic power, which was disgustingly similar to these prayers in its universality, but, fortunately, much more strongly rejected by the world and failed in case of opposition. But it was still a whole and integral structure, and here it was shaken like eggnog!

The demoness managed to leap out of the trap a moment before it was pierced by an unnatural light, as if the sun's rays had been filtered through the underground crystals. Stepan did not throw another grenade, but literally teleported it under the sphere's dome, taking advantage of its temporary vulnerability. It wasn't exactly his attack. It was the effect of a small relic of some deity bought at auction, probably not represented in this world at all, but it was so fiery against demons that it was frightening. Frankly speaking, some small and greedy part of him, which remembered the price of this disposable grenade, very much wanted to end the story there. Alas, it didn't. The creature had time to react, but only to jump out and almost get hit in the face by a stream of pearly pearly-white mass, not created by it, but directed by someone else's hostile will.

Stepan summoned his long-prepared contract with the Pearl Eight, as he called them. Mercuriously humming spheres about forty centimeters in diameter attacked coherently and skillfully. Their touch, the demoness feared only slightly less than that strange light. The entities coherent eight used to act. They had a lot of experience in fighting the demoness, and also their very touch was harmful and destructive to demons. He knew that the creature was aware of this call, as well as two other trapping packs, and therefore called them at the moment of maximum unpreparedness of the creature, so she did not have time to respond properly. The creature, nowhere near cute and innocent looking, resembling a rabid beast but still strikingly attractive and desirable to the point of nausea, reacts with lightning speed. She puts up barriers, reflecting clumps of nacre. She intercepts other clumps with clumps of white and scarlet masses that were still under her control and not damaged by the relic grenade. She dodges and twists as if she had no bones at all, but still misses a few touches with sharp whips and tentacles that leave lacerations on her body, which is covered in almost pure seed with scarlet threads of blood.

Wounds are fine. But it made her lose control, impairing her ability to balance and shuffle souls, slowing her reactions and ping, if you could call it that. It's not an ordinary creature, the interference isn't significant yet, but it's a start. The effect was already noticeable to both her and Stepan. Alas, the beginning turned out to be a temporary pause. The creature exhaled or even spat out vertically upward exactly eight small fires-beses, literally the simplest representatives of the Inferno, but which took the imprints of the essence of Laghan and therefore became a much higher priority target for the Eight. And on top of that, the most complex compulsion, specially designed for the spirits, which squeezed through Stepan's commands and forced the Eight to chase after the fleeing and very fast maneuvering visps as part of their contract. The visps don't give a shit about the power of the spirits. They maneuver and evade each of the pearls easily due to their size, while the pearls seem to have forgotten that they are a team, chasing their own targets and not helping each other.

The horned one's toothy grin seemed especially harmful. She was licking herself, looking him in the eye, and he realized too late that she was ready for the second trick. The summoning of spirit patterns invulnerable to the demoness, which would have to shackle the creature, weaken, mutilate, and suppress it. Stepan felt, with nausea and migraine, how the world shuddered from its actions simultaneously with his call, how the unheard and long-lost souls screamed in ecstasy and agony, dying forever. They were the souls of artists, either very talented or gifted, or all of these together. Such came his understanding from his own spiritual body and banal logic. The world around the tavern, its ruins, as if faded, became like the eyes of a colorblind person, and all the lines blurred, became as if invisible, from which reality takes on gray and monotonous features. And the spirit-lines are simply unable to manifest their patterns, not in this place and not at this moment! Well, okay, not a moment, but a minute for sure. Half a minute, even.

The world flickers. It becomes normal again, but here the summoned anti-demon horde is still thrashing about in a small grey cage, and the creature, aware of their resistance to any blows, isn't even in a hurry to attack them. It seeks to finish off the summoner while the pearls fly for the demons, while the patterns are caged, before the shaman calls for someone else. Stepan rocks a grin. He steps to meet her, throwing up an arm entangled to the elbow with a strange glove of frequent cords tied in many knots. The attack causes the creature that rushed at him to slow down, to begin to confuse its thoughts with those of others, when a very clever anti-Demon witchcraft breaks the barrier between the mind of the demon and its golden cluster, when it ceases to distinguish for a moment between its thoughts and those of its assembled souls, its enslaved puppets. The creature is strong and truly ancient, she copes almost instantly, but that unpleasant word almost...

A set of knots erupts, emanating acrid smoke and the screams of artifact-enhancing spirits of rare specialisations. Of the full five, only two manage to retreat. And the shaman is about to finish activating another path lock, only now it's fully combat. He's putting more than a third of his reserve into it, having set it up for the devil and knowing she won't have time to defend herself with the trick she's prepared for such an eventuality. He even felt a moment's resentment at the fact that he hadn't spent most of it. And, probably, having heard these thoughts, the creature decided not to upset Stepan with such a waste of resources. It gave out another unexpected billet. It ducked to the ground, opening its mouth wide, sticking out its tongue, and rolling its eyes, giving out that famous expression from Japanese animation. Only thickly mixed in the genre of ‘horror’. No, she had tried to strengthen her aura and shift her energy deeper, covering herself with the imprint of one of the souls, but it wouldn't help her. The young man was seriously focused on her subtle body, guaranteed to pierce her defences.

Except that instead of striking a blow that would have knocked her down, he felt the locking of the paths dissolve. At least it didn't backfire on him. It did, but that rollback, which was probably lethal in itself, was taken by another cloth and straw doll sewn to the cloak, which smoked and shrank as all the threads and grasses inside it coalesced into one monolithic lump. Yes, it would be deadly, literally mirroring its locking effect. Even a healer wouldn't have been able to cure it. Stepan was still trying to understand the reason why he had made such a mess of things by letting go of control, and his hand reached into his pocket, pulling out.... pulling out nothing. He stared at the empty palm with the same mild bewilderment as the hell creature, but that stupor was over much faster than Stepan's, and she struck again, fast, hard, and angry.

The first blow was like a thick dart of white mass residue and bright, poison-pink energy, smashing through the anteroom with the same contemptuous ease. The shaman roughly understood exactly how she was doing it. By deepening and distributing the attack simultaneously in the Reality and deep layers of the Spheres, while in the layers of the upper spheres there is no attack, which is why the anteroom does not react, does not perceive the blow as a blow. The level of magic creation is far beyond his skills. He could do something like that with a lot of training. She struck with minimal preparation and not much weakening. It felt good that her gingerbread house had collapsed with all its contours, or he would have been hurt much sooner. It wasn't easy for him, though. The second and last anchor of the etheric mantle had been used to repel this attack. The image of her had just fallen with sparks of pink flame and drops of whitish abomination flying through her invulnerable and intangible body when he tried to strike again, one hand searching his pockets for something and the other throwing a common iron knife without a handle at the demoness. It was also a small relic, also disposable and anti-Demon, but his throw wasn't accurate enough, and his concentration wasn't enough to correct its flight.

But her adversary became even more serious. She struck again with a distinctly readable regret, closing in, disembodied the guardian spirits that had been summoned to meet her, expelled a more powerful spirit, prevented the Lizard from appearing with a pink cloud exhalation, and then attacked him in the solar plexus with a palm folded in a pinch. It was as if she intended to test how heartless he was. At the same time, stealing his heart with the striking literalness of that phrase. Panicking Stepan could have tried to break the distance, to escape through the spheres with a prearranged dive to the anchor, the spirit-carrier was waiting for him on the other side, but too much attention was taken away by the search for something in the pockets of his cloak. An unsuccessful search made his attempt to defend himself unsuccessful. With grim triumph, the grinning demoness pierced his chest, and Stepan heard a dry crunch before the demonic magic embedded through the contact eclipsed and extinguished consciousness.

Darkness comes.

So sweet.

So full of tender agony.

So eternal.

And a liar, too. A moment later, the shaman opens his eyes, pulling the mask off his face and rolling out of the protective circle, trying not to vomit up his cave from the experience. His body is both light, as provided by the alchemy he took before the fight, and energized by the totems and the good effects of a bunch of spirits, but there is also room for weakness from the broken contact and the demonic curse that almost got him. Still, he could not have avoided the possibility of revealing so good eyes if he had not occupied his vessel as fully as possible, literally moving into it with his entire spiritual body, at the same time ordering himself not to remember that he was not in a real body. He only left a powerful binding-hook, which immediately evacuated him when the integrity of the protection on the dummy doll stopped working.

The light fabric pants clearly showed the stains of his semen. That blow through his envolt had touched him a little, even here, under all the protection, having provoked a shameful eruption. The thought of what would have happened to him if he'd been fully exposed to it made him shiver. Consciousness, dispersed in a bunch of ways, allows him to act very quickly. He watches with slight satisfaction through the eyes of the spirits as the furious devil continues the battle against the summoned pearls, which have already managed to throw off the morass and jointly destroy all eight beads of deception, as well as escaped from the colorless blot-cell of the abstractionist's drawn nightmares. And that's not to say she's outright defeated. It's hard for her to hold on to them, hard both for her body, which is working hard and can't withstand her full power, and for her demonic nature, which all spirits actively suppress.

Alas, she still wins. If not a crushing victory, then she will definitely be able to get away, and he is not going to let her go. So he can't afford to attack from afar. He has no opportunity to do it with those trump cards, which she does not know and will not be able to pick up the answer. Forcing her to retreat is easy, but destroying her with a guarantee, completely, not just by disembodiment and returning her to her native habitat, is not. He lets himself watch for a few seconds as she tears the pearlescent nets that torment her, trying to burn out the many lines and geometric shapes that crush her nature and try to shackle her with demonological barriers on a spiritual basis. And then she rises, throws on another cloak with a set of billets tied to it, but, instead of reaching for her belt with the same billets, pulls out of her trouser pocket the neatly folded, delicate violet panties previously worn by Artemia. He had, after all, put them there himself, having previously ordered Artemia to take them right off and not wear new ones.

With a sigh he kneels, through the images of spirits giving orders to the doll of Artemia lying on a special bed, which made the bloodsucker sitting at the wall lose her indifferent catatonia, smiling cheekily and mockingly, and then turns her face to the wall, pulls down her tight hunting trousers, jutting out her buttocks and pussy, rests her hands on the wall and starts methodically and rhythmically pumping her butt, literally mesmerising the shaman. So he, standing on his knees, tries to pull down his trousers in order to wrap the delicate fabric on his cock and cum in it, to come down looking at her pussy and immediately fall asleep, to sleep for a short time, at least a couple of hours. But his spirits prevented this scenario from coming true, insidiously stabbing his temples with icy needles, squeezing his head with a steel hoop, and forcing him in every possible way to reflexively begin to throw off their influence, at the same time snagging the bookmark of Laghan. He overcame it and blocked it almost instantly, not ten seconds later, blocking the compulsion just as he'd blocked the ones he'd used a couple of minutes earlier when he'd invoked the Silent White.

"Such a bitch, huh!" He grumbles as he finishes cleansing his body and mind and girds himself with his belt. "I was sure she'd run out of them. And no, she fucking got another one. It's how much I'll have to clean myself from all this shit in my head, I want to cry! Well, at least I'll pump up my mental resistance, but fuck that kind of pumping!"

He grunted, forcing himself to fight his fear and apprehension, forcing anger to cover his insecurities. Still, he feared a face-to-face battle. This is not a proxy in the form of a doll-totem to do miracles on the turns; here really face-to-face to fight. And he's had experience, too much experience. It's a lot to get used to. You'd have to be a total badass bastard with mithril for balls. The shaman looks through the eyes of the spirits, but finds only confirmation of his deductions. Even though it had lost half of its hand, one horn, despite having its tail cut off by one of the pearlescent blades, the creature was still moving away, retreating and pushing through the barriers that prevented it from leaving. It was not going to run with its legs, but some version of spatial displacement, and only the work of the painted figures prevented it from succeeding.

Not yet.

Stepan came out of a breach in the cellar of the nearest house, passing unconsciousness out of some man who was raping a huge veal ham, as well as preventing his unconscious son from drowning in his vomit, at the same time putting his mother to sleep, who might well have been unfaithful to her husband with her son. A moment later he burst out of the window of the cottage in the halo of a slightly altered anteroom, which allowed him to squeeze through the narrow window like a camel through the eye of a needle, surrounded by the spirits of the last horde of three, which would have to calculate the creature and help it to catch up, and also covered with witchcraft' fields from top to toe. He braked his jump with ghostly limbs, catching the creature's hateful yet frightened gaze.

A wooden mannequin with a torn sternum, expensive and beyond repair, was lying to the side, broken into pieces. It had cost him even more than the mask had once cost him. Yes, even though the mannequin-totem-envolt was a weak elite lot, in many ways inferior to the maskю However, Stepan bought it not as a super-lot, but on a general basis, at his own expense and in parts. The frame itself, separately, witch's amulets separately, totems-billets, which lay inside the torso, also separately. Well, he'd done his job, saved his life and soul, but still, it was a shame! The mannequin's face, decorated with two charcoal circles in place of eyes and a smile all over his face, only as if stitched, crossed out with short lines, looked at him with a slight condemnation.

"Let me go, Stepan!" Howls the creature, feeling the imminent if not the end, then a ticket to Inferno, realizing that it is too weak to survive the resulting carnage, too strong exactly anti-Demon packs, tormenting it more effectively than the full five elders' spirits. "Let me go, and I'll hold the puppets back, I won't pawn you off!"

He doesn't dignify her with an answer, knowing full well that he can't control her. She's deadly even now, and even more so when she's grown stronger and mastered the experience she's already had. Her body, strengthened by system gifts, barely draws out her true power, hopelessly deteriorating and breaking, but if given the opportunity to get a full-fledged incarnation of the combat type, not honed in secrecy and attachment to the material world, she would tear up both his packs and the shaman himself. Or, at the very least, would have forced the call of the remaining trumps. He would have called them anyway, but for now it was the wrong tactical move, it was better to press with quick and numerous attacks, not giving even a fraction of a second's respite.

A pack of wolf-seekers, albeit without the body-images of wolves, blending into the background, becoming invisible to the demon.... no, they don't. The creature's eyes are too good, even through such an exotic disguise, they can see without any problems. But there's no way to stop them from marking it. To another hateful howl from the demoness, she realized she couldn't even hide. She's still screaming, demanding his right to leave. She offers to negotiate. She promises to be honest and to honor the deal, but the shaman methodically and calmly kills her with lightning strikes, flashes of flame, and, most importantly, shields the remaining five pearly ones. It tears to shreds its attempts to recreate a cage-claw for the drawn, shaking space, preventing it from teleporting away. And the creature trembles, retreats, tries to retreat on foot, tries to subdue the will of random passersby, which causes the young man to pass out a man armed with a butcher's axe, and also imposes purification on the five guards who came too close, because it hasn't even been three minutes since the fight started.

The guards saw what was happening and ran back, nearly dropping their feces. The demoness's aura was very strong. The masked and cloaked shaman, surrounded by ghostly claws and tentacles visible, looked very gloomy. He never loses his focus for a moment, never forgets one simple truth. His opponent is now weakened by her own body, which has not yet grown to its full power, not even after the blessings of the System, if that blessing went into the body, and not into the real essence of the creature. But, as soon as it smells the real nothingness, the scum will stop holding back and will hit him with such power, which it dare not use now. It will begin to burn the body, and its stock of souls, which any demon takes care of like life itself, because the same stock is the life. And then comes the moment of the last of his trump cards, the heaviest and most powerful. The shaman is not ready to trade his anonymity and all his weaknesses, which will become public knowledge, for the mere discharge of this creature home. He dreams of wanting to destroy the creature forever, without a remnant and a chance of incarnation sometime later.

And even so, he doesn't keep up. Even so, she's ahead of him. She reads the tacts of battle better than he does. She thinks faster than he does. She has more experience, skills, more tricks up her sleeve, and most importantly, she loves life very much and doesn't want to die. It's hard to stop someone stronger and smarter than you from escaping, especially if you're not in a death spiral yourself. If Stepan had decided to strike without regard for defense, he would have succeeded, but he did not dare and did not intend to. This universe had not pissed him off enough to decide to “leave beautifully”. And the infernal scum knocked out a huge piece of paving stone, turning it into a constantly bubbling dust, on which it would not be possible to draw lines, covered himself with additional barriers, threw a few bright purple arrows at the shaman, making him distracted by the defense. Then she broke the distance, literally burning her body and imbuing it with power, breaking through Stepan's blockade and expelling some of the spirits of space that held the blockade.

"Goodbye, sweetie!" She sang mockingly, obviously intending to wish him a soon meeting, but something happened. It's interrupted her mockery. However the shaman was not happy about it, despite the panic-stricken face of the creature. "Bi-i-i-itch!!! No-o-o-o-o!!! I didn't break the dh-a-a-a-o-o-o-o-0-1-0-OOO!!!

The demoness's body just burst with power. It was so filled with it that it was blinding both ordinary and magical vision. All spectrums. She was literally hidden in a cocoon of pure power. There was so much power that it seemed as if in place of the maimed body of Laghan opened a gap into another dimension, which had the shape of the body. A very distinctive background stinking dimension, it must be said. But wait, what did it seem like? It didn't seem like shit! And in the place where the creature's torso was, blazing with scarlet fire on a multicolored and nauseating rainbow, shimmered the unbearably eye-sickening seal, will, order, and the presence of the power of that, next to which even the full power of his personal nemesis is not considered so serious. Right in the middle of the city burned a bright star of change, a breach-portal to Inferno, built on the body of a demoness still shrieking from the power pumping through her and still alive, but still regretting it a little. And from there, beyond that side, something whose attention he had attracted was looking at him. It was now, at that very second, that the shaman became truly scared.

"Time is short, and the heavens are awake." A voice sounds, from which the shaman got a clear association with the streams of honey and bitter mold getting into the ears, eyes, nose and just under the skin, consisting in equal proportion of unearthly bliss and inordinate agony, agony and ecstasy, alpha and omega, cola and Pepsi. "But that's enough for us."

She. It was a woman's voice, as far as the concept of gender applied to something so non-human. She was speaking to him, addressing him, seeking him, and she found him. If the shaman had been scared before, now, it was time to learn what true terror was. From the breach struck a stream of raw power, which for a moment formed into some supreme and mind-blowing by its complexity form of binding exile. It simply washed the remaining five pearly ones to ashes from the very fabric of reality. Simultaneously with this blow, the part of the space that housed the not-so-hurt ++drawlings twisted into a mixture of a bagel and a Mebius strip, heading for the depths of the spheres. One more expression of will and he lost control over the third of the swarms, which flew into the breach like moths to a flame, going to their doom, and the Earthman barely had time to break the contract with them, because the bitterness of honey molasses reached him even through such an ephemeral connection.

In bad news. All his currently called and previously prepared trump cards simply disappeared without a trace, all at once, together and united, leaving him almost naked. The good news. The presence of the one who had controlled the breach became much less active, as if she had stepped back, and six very powerful fire-auras-entities poured out of the breach, gaining short-lived but very powerful and full-fledged bodies along the way. All six were, to be fair, weaker than Laghan, but still ranged from very weak master to medium-weak magister in pure power. And they incarnated almost instantly. Following them into the breach were over fifty smaller lights, barely the power of an adept. They scattered to the sides, as if forming some kind of barrier-field, distorting the space, preventing him from escaping into the underground vault and facilitating demonic support.

"Our sweet sister has found such a treasure." One of the lights speaks, taking on flesh, and though its voice may belong to both a man and a woman, Stepan is sure that the one speaking is a man. "You'll be better off with us. Come on. Willingly. Otherwise, it will be worse. It'll be bad."

Less than five seconds later, their bodies covered by shields woven with impossible power, were already formed. They were incarnated by six of true monsters, each in their way terrible and beautiful in equal measures and proportions. And the shaman strongly suspected that they knew almost everything about him that Laghan knew as well. Only they had far more resources to prepare the perfect team against him. And they do not doubt that they'll be able to twist him up and shove him into a working portal before the temples and the heavens react. Even if they only have about five minutes, ten minutes at most, but hardly more than that. And it would be worth it to stall for time, trying to win at least a few seconds, but Stepan didn't even think of doing that. Bargaining with demons, you're already losing. And he risked getting some crap in his brain. Deep down, the part of him that understood the humor of the situation was hysterical. He was so afraid that he, as a player with the System, would be interested in the powers that be, and he did not put aside the divine threat, but he certainly did not expect that they would knock from below, offering to learn new facets of the concept of “moral bottom”. Somehow he did not doubt that if he went with them willingly, he would retain some freedom, some semblance of it. They will leave it to him, fearing that the Autogoddess will help him to get off the hook again. But they will not hesitate to put the hook so deep that no help will be able to pull it out if he starts to fight.

Stepan tilts his head to the side under the mask and, feeling the despair of a suicide bomber deep inside him, smiles cheerfully, as if he were a thirteen-year-old boy again, whose parents had given him a complete discography of all Heroes of Might and Magic, a new computer, and then told him they were going on holiday for a month. He smiled and answered, surprised that his voice wasn't shaking at all:

"Oh, yeah, bitches, you're gonna get hurt."

* * *

Внимание! Этот перевод, возможно, ещё не готов.
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Переведено на Нотабеноиде
http://notabenoid.org/book/86785/585339

Переводчики: Camrad_RIP