Готовый перевод Настучать в бубен / Hit the tambourine: Глава 20-9

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Miller de Martire, an academically recognised Master of the classical school of elemental magic with an advanced specialisation in the element of fire, significant knowledge of water magic, and a confirmed additional qualification as an artefactor with a focus on making stationary systems, looked at the mouse. The mouse was looking at Miller and, he thought, would mock him. If a perfectly ordinary mouse had any brains at all to realise the concept of mockery. Standing next to the Magister was his former student, now quite often referred to in thought as a rival. If not in the magical, then in the political sense of the word. He, too, was looking at the same mouse. Gregory de Masse's eyes were filled with an almost undisguised hatred as he stared at the beast's carcass held at eye level by telekinesis. Behind them stood silent and afraid to breathe, both the apprentices and the owners of the ill-fated courtyard, who seemed ready to be either eternally proud or horrified by the visit of the lord of the City Tower. The latter prevailed. They had already regretted a hundred times that they had asked the mages' guild to help with the problem of small pests, but now, no, now no one present could back down.

This understanding did not improve Miller's mood, nor did it improve his opinion of the disgusting faggot, who was disgusting to him not because of his predilections in bed, but only because he had put him and the whole organization in an extremely awkward position, albeit unwittingly. After staring at the mouse for a few more seconds, the magister burns the animal to the ground with one willful effort and control of the elements, and then turns to Gregory slowly and calmly. The former student looks not even firm nor frightened, but infinitely tired and irritated. The three adepts standing behind his back, at the sight of the magister unfolding with the grace of an artifactual thrower of over-the-horizon charms, got cold feet, and there was a reason for it.

"So. Did I understand correctly that all your skill, which, I will note, I have always admitted, despite our disagreements, was not enough to understand where these mice, infinity times be damned, come from?" The question was almost rhetorical, since the answer was already clear, but Miller really wanted to calm down and not say too much, not in public or in front of bystanders. "Despite all the expenses in reagents, as well as a fully functioning closed star Rusthalt-Eretilareel, which you drew on one of the warehouses and poured alchemical silver on the contour?"

"Silver only on the inner spiral. I am not that rich after all. The outer circuit is bronze dust and additives on the druidic mixture I took from my stocks." He answered and did not even try to be sarcastic in response, which not only knocked Miller out of the rut, but caused him a bout of the slightest shame for his rudeness to the interlocutor. "I don't know what the fuck this is, Mill, I just don't fucking know. Take away my diploma right here if you think I'm trying to fuck you up with this failure, but I don't fucking understand where the fuck they're coming from. So yeah, I'm serious, totally serious. I have authorized a request to print out and bring the sensory obelisks of your work here, because this is not normal. They're coming from somewhere, and we can't figure out where, we don't give a shit about this winery, no offense intended, honorable Trabius, we need to understand the principle. Otherwise I'm going to go fucking crazy, shave myself into a Damocar paladin and fuck here yourself, Mill. I'm tired."

In another situation, he would not have failed to take advantage of such a great opportunity. He would have squeezed more out of his weak opponent, who compensated for his lack of magical power with the support of his family and trading partners, who supplied the Tower with at least a third of the reagents on the blue and scarlet lists, and the gray list even overlapped with his own. But now, looking at his face, he was embarrassed and stepped back, figuratively speaking, not to press even harder. He would really leave, Miller thought. And then he would have to fill the vacuum, look for new contractors and find a new ritualist, since there was no one to replace Gregory, and inviting an outsider to the Tower, even if it was Roderick from Morgrave, was not easy for the same political reasons. The outsider would be eaten, and the one who tried to invite him would be disliked for some time.

“Well, all right, it's a very curious, albeit annoying, mystery, and I'll personally activate the obelisks since we're all here.” Reconciliatory, surprised that he was, in fact, comforting Gregory, the magister said. "True, we all have moments of failure, high magic does not tolerate constant success. Here, I remember, I always brag about the patent on the pulse-resident method of building stationary networks, yes. But if those who listen to me knew how many failures awaited me before I realized this method and sold it so successfully to Neirat!"

Really successfully. He collected the necessary knowledge, reagents, and payment for the tutors, and became a full-fledged master of magic twelve years later. Of course, he had to forget about a career as an artifactor. Being an Adept, he successfully divided his development into two directions, elemental and artifactual, and had time to master both. The honorable de Neirat told him honestly and without euphemisms that they would not tolerate a competitor in such a monetary direction, but would not nurture him themselves. But elemental magic was opened to him much more widely, both by removing bans from separate shelves in the library, and by personal lessons from the honorable Clementine, who was already a master then. Now, like him, she wore the mantle of magister, only she had mastered three elements at once, not just Flame. And the technique of perfect balance of auric zones, which allowed her to combine the elements so effectively at the level, except for the Claners de Neirat, available only to elves, she never revealed to him above the very basics.

"I'm well aware, Mill... ahem, honorable Miller, I know it well, for the story has been known for a long time." Gregory, who had regained a little self-control, sharply remembered self-control and witnesses, who were not happy to witness this scene. "I've already prepared all the settings, the only thing missing is you. My control of the obelisks outside the tower's enchantment array is not enough."

Involuntarily, Miller experienced an attack of even worse mood. There used to be two people in town who could use the obelisks to their full potential, but Sedric was clearly out of shape right now. And it's unclear if he'll be able to get back into it later. Too extensive were those injuries, and losing that mean bastard was not something he wanted to do. Though he often staked his position against Miller's opinion, he was a very important part of the functioning of their guild. And all the de Lonniers in the cluster wouldn't lift a finger on Miller's orders. They didn't raise Sedric to be a master and let him and themselves be pushed aside, cut off from supplies and the market for magical services.

His gloomy thoughts did not prevent the magister from walking, not formally, but being respectfully escorted by the owners of the courtyard to a set stone block of very dark basalt, covered with rune signs and steel tablets melted into the artifact material. Five more stood along the lines of a primitive ritual figure at the edges of the courtyard and under appropriate guard from a trio of guild mercenaries and another five guards. These obelisks can be used to search for magical springs in the wilderness, to scour the river bottom for caches or hiding places, to find ore veins or amber deposits, and, of course, to keep them closer to the top of the tower so that they can scour the city with a frequent comb, finding any little thing of interest. Well, or not. Like with de Fell's last major request, which she had relayed on Herbert's behalf. And it was not customary to refuse the old man, especially if you had recently upset him. It was better not to aggravate him, but not to let his appetite run wild. If you give him a bone, he will swallow the whole ram.

"Hopefully, we'll be done with this today," Miller spoke up, placing his hands on the stone and blasting it with tentative pulses of magical energy. "And I'm still pretty sure it was a natural wormhole with a wandering signature, just in a low range, which is why your ritual missed it."

"I could argue, honourable Miller, and I have so many refutations that a standard scroll would not contain enough space, but, by my honour, I'm ready to admit anything as long as I can get it over with and find out the answer." Gregory melancholically parried, unobtrusively hinting that he knew as much about ritualism as Miller himself, which confirmed the fact that he was already a little bit back to normal, thus pleasing his old teacher. "Let's find the place of their appearance, and then let them go to the demons with all their mouse kingdom."

The Magister glanced disapprovingly at his interlocutor. But such statements were fraught with danger. Especially in public, especially after the events of not so long ago, during which the mention of demons in cursing rants became even more reprehensible than just the usual mention of Inferno in general. But he didn't say a word. Let him ruin his reputation. He wouldn't get in the way. So he remained silent, and began cautiously, sector by sector, to probe the space of the farmstead with a multi-component magical field of the closed type. But when from somewhere in the south of the city the rotten-sweet flavour of the power familiar to every gifted person, as adepts were introduced to it in a separate lecture of the Academy programme, and he stood near the almost discharged cursed artefacts tainted with various Vices, so that they would recognise the background if they had to, he looked seriously at the pale Gregory, equally serious in appearance and only partly in jest.

"You should be tested for the latent gift of the seer, my apprentice." He says, already reaching for the tower's base and preparing to put it into siege mode, going beyond the usual alarm, while extinguishing the obelisks and putting them back into sleep mode. "Now call in the guards and prepare something exorcising. The palace sensed the same thing, otherwise, I don't know Enyo at all. Now let's scan, wait for the priests, and work. Gods, what a day we've had today."

They were indeed preparing. In a couple of minutes they had time to give commands to the guards, yell into the amulets and get answers from several authorised persons at once, prepare and start filling the weaves of several charms-eyes to observe the dangerous point, and then, in a moment, the gradually growing presence of the abomination, as well as the echo of the battle passing not so far away. They still hadn't managed to figure out who had managed to attack the cultists there first, bypassing all orders and waiting for no one. Master Miller, an experienced martial artist and a recognised expert in the combat aspects of classical elemental magic, felt a pang in his chest and a stabbing in his heart. A mage of his qualifications could not help but recognise this tremor in reality, this highly characteristic change in etheric currents. He couldn't help but notice the fucking, fuck him in the arse, demonic breakthrough of a high category, through which something of that class began to enter the world, which involuntarily recalled the Greedy Bitch glorified by the gloomy annals of the fall of the ancient hegemon. Somehow, he wanted to be somewhere else, for example, on a guest trip to Neurath on a business visit, to say hello to the honourable Clementine, perhaps to be invited to an evening dinner.

"No, we won't be testing you for prophet abilities, Gregory." He joked dully, covering himself with a full battlefield barrier rather than a resident shield and remembering familiar prayers. "Straight to Maleficar, and a wild and definitely superior one at that."

To the credit of the former student, he found the strength to produce a strained laugh.

* * *.

The first thing Stepan did, before he had even finished speaking his pathos phrase, was to open his cloak and activate an extremely successful preparation. He said it only to distract from his actions. He had prepared it in case the demoness decided to call for help from Hell itself. True, he had expected that she would try to call herself, and the scale of the help he had imagined was quite different, much lower. It turned out the way it did, and now the young man was not sorry for the time he had spent, nor for the talent points he had invested in his little witch knowledge, nor for the extra token he had used to renew his temporal fixation so that he could finish the preparation. Without that preparation, the only thing left would be a hopeless escape, because the Spheres were now shaken so badly that even with the help of the prepared spirit-carriers, he was guaranteed to come out of the jump in pieces, if he came out at all.

So he didn't run. Instead, he attacked himself. Ordinary-looking cloth bags of earth flew up from beneath the floor of his cloak, open, like flares. And they flew not to the demons, but simply upwards, vertically. Like fireworks, they just exploded without a pop and without a sound, releasing a finely ground mixture of herbs, earth, stone, and magically active charged crystals. A basis for his small knowledge, allowing full measure to unfold and making it an even stronger trick worthy of being a prepared and fortified specialised master level attack of both witchcraft and envolt at once. The demons were not so surprised, but underestimated the threat, because there was no special power in the land itself, only the will of the presence of the shaman, who took the land under his power, and all the charge issued from his reserve.

He poured the rest of the source, more than two-thirds of it, in a single spurt, which, even though he had a trumped-up reward property tailored for this situation, was a bit risky. Any other mage in his place would be guaranteed to damage something, if not weakened right in the battle, then to be in for a long rehabilitation after it. Stepan only cringed at the sensation of the reserve being emptied and immediately filled by the activation of the meta-skill, while the demons still standing near the breach and finishing the formation of their bodies wrinkled in a different way. Reality seemed to shake slightly, imperceptibly, barely perceptible, completely harmless to Stepan or his spirits. But the demons, imbued with the power of another dimension, the native children of Inferno, once felt how they felt badly, how the outflow of power increases, how the connection with the portal weakens, how the portal, as well as still howling with hatred and pain Laghan, which became its basis, loses stability and begins to tremble.

The knowledge was called “manifestation of the right of kinship and ashes.” It appeared in the list of available talents just after acquiring specific anti-demonic knowledge. It was intended specifically to make demons sad. The trick was a complex one. It could well be used without material support and cultivation of the earth, but fully disclosed only in conjunction with a long and very complex ritual. The earth ground into ashes, stones from the graves of those who had laid their bones in this earth, herbs that had grown on that land century after century, and, of course, the power that supported it all. The more control you have over this mixture, the more power you have over the earth, the more powerful the final result. Stepan wasn't greedy, realizing that he didn't have time to bind himself to the earth, realizing that he should have started this ritual at least a couple of months ago.

But he had one interesting vial with a green slurry, which he got after using a token that gave him a set of expensive reagents. A vial, quite worthy of being called a super-lot in itself, capable of speeding up and simplifying the process of consolidating authority by times, by orders of magnitude, by several orders of magnitude. That vial, which he poured over a dozen handfuls of earth, accelerating the rooting into it so that at the moment of activation, these bags were impregnated with proper magic for at least a dozen years. And the attack with a specific anti-Demonic ritual, which in its execution and taking into account a bunch of reinforcing tricks could pull on the level of “hit a magister with the support of the ritual”, jumped to the level of “hit a strong archimagister, also with the support of the ritual”, because of which so much effort had to be invested in one leap, revealing the power of the anchoring reagent, not letting this power go to waste.

The manifested right played on the most primitive laws of power. The fact that they are the demons, not the spirits who were always nearby, albeit in another dimension, had just come to this world, and therefore had no right to be here. And if they do, if their Mistress has seized this right for them by her power and will, then still this right is insignificant in comparison with the will of the world itself, the earth itself. The earth that was here eons ago, that is here now, and will be here when the bones of those who walk on it will become new earth. Yes, the will of an extremely strong demonic creature, even if only by the edge of its will into reality, was immeasurably stronger than the will of Stepan and all that he could oppose it. But the essence of this small knowledge was that a warlock or a witch does not try to deny the demons themselves, does not beat them with their will and authority, which is the basis of witchcraft. The essence is that they open the way, and then just step aside, giving the retards who have risen on the rails of the universe to meet with the fucking locomotive of the will of the world itself. And then you are a Demon Lord or not, but you still get sad, hurt, and, if you try to play force against force, it also hurts.

Demons quivered all at once, both the six strongest and fifty of the called masses. And of that fifty, no less than a sixth of them quivered so violently that they were either banished or smashed by the millstones of reality. The breach itself faded, twisted, and lost for a moment the shape of the breach in the form of the crucified body of a howling Laghan, who howled even more fiercely because of this metamorphosis. The level of support and power, which made each of the six no weaker than the magister in terms of pure reserves of strength and power of the flow, sharply decreased as soon as the Mistress on the other side began to patch up the damage, at the same time ordering her servants not to stall and play around, but to take the sweet mortal right fucking now.

The mortal was obviously categorically against it.

Equally obviously, no one cared about this ‘against’ thing.

All six had finished their shaping prematurely. The young man could be sure that they had to sacrifice not only their efficiency, but also the souls so valuable to the demons for the sake of it. Their leader, the same one who had offered Stepan to leave with them willingly, looked like a classic demon from a female love fantasy. It was as if this cosplayer of Dennitsa had fallen from the heavens yesterday and was only a little dusty. Even the feathers on the wings were there, just not material, but ghostly and apparently a shootable defeat element. Tall, more than two meters, athletic, beautiful to the point that even a heterosexual man could be penetrated, painfully perfect, and at the same time causing some underlying threat and disgust even without the Inferno's foulness. There was just something about his look, image, and presence that made it clear there was something deeply wrong with this abomination, even by the standards of the same Laghan. The strongest of all, harmoniously developed, capable of combat, magic, and mind games, but gravitating towards the former, sharpened in close combat with the ability to diversify his tactics with a clever trick or two.

The second was just a mountain of muscle covered in bone armor, looking like a three-meter gorilla with huge arms and no head. Instead of a head, the creature had a bone shield on its chest, on which was a lovely female face, smiling enigmatically and mysteriously, attracting the eye and trying to get into its head. But just barely, at the bare minimum. This stuff was pure militancy, designed not for seducing the innocent or introducing cults into the society of the inhabitants of Yav, but for fighting and reaping, gathering mortal fat and wheat while it scatters or tries to hide. The enormous resistance and survivability, which, even when shaken by Stepan's witchcraft, made him an extremely hard-to-kill individual, were intended for physical restraint and general suppression. To spirits, this abomination is almost completely invulnerable. Even the Elders can do little to him as long as his bone armor is intact, and the small he-she-is-not is able to suck in spirits like a vacuum cleaner, right into the joints between the bone plates. Strong spirits will not get into this vacuum cleaner, but they will also be weakened, and will also be attracted to the gorilla, angry and forced to attack only her, despite the orders of the shaman, if those orders are not supported properly by the will, and this is an unnecessary waste of reserve and concentration.

The third was the complete opposite, a very tall woman, the tallest of the six, four meters tall, but no thicker than a normal human woman. The androgynous features, the elongated shape, the overly long body did not detract from a kind of frightening attractiveness, irregular and yet attractive, like that of a venomous snake with bright coloring. Her coloring was really quite good. The shaman didn't know the names of half of the colors, and another quarter of them probably didn't exist in reality. The coloring was constantly moving, changing, and shimmering in a hypnotic rhythm. If the shaman had not worn his mask, he would have had to protect his eyes from such a hypnolaser. She was clearly an expert in mental, as well as in foul magic, and she, too, the shaman was sure of it, would be perfectly able to bypass the typical shaman's defenses through a partial merging of consciousness with spirits. What's more, she would also turn that advantage into a vulnerability. Her patterns seem to be adaptive, adjusting little by little to the mask's defenses and in a minute or two turning him into a jerking and drooling catatonic vegetable even through the current defenses. If she's given those minutes, of course.

The fourth was not just a fourth, but four separate parts, as if fused, except that its aura and spirit were not separate, but symbiotic, with each of the four parts clearly visible. It looked like a multi-armed and multi-legged humanoid with features subtly spider-like, even though all its body parts were exclusively human or borrowed from other humanoid races. And also his numerous hands, thin and almost childish, or rather teenage, despite the length and number of extra joints, were full of etheric threads, almost transparent even in magical vision, thin and sticky even in perception. If one stared at them for long enough, it was as if they would be imprinted on the retina and then drawn to the eye sockets through all the protection. Yes, and without looking, this nasty thing is very dangerous, and most of them are hidden in the world of spheres, already weaving multidimensional networks that demon-grupovuhuha will confront his, Stepan, spirits from the other side, so that they dare not swim too close to reality, if they do not want to try on the role of a fly in the web. And very successfully to resist, these threads he wove clearly not by himself, not alone certainly, having taken with him a huge “ammunition”, what the hell to spend for nothing, which he will obviously use without regret.

The fifth was an almost perfect humanoid, outwardly almost indistinguishable from a mixture of human and elf, only not even pale, but snow-white, dressed in a scarlet outfit of pure and bubbling blood, constantly changing the shape and style of this garment. The only one of all dressed in something other than a manifestation of his shame. Everyone else is naked. The shame is not there and is not planned. He rocks a fanged grin very reminiscent of a vampire's and was much like a vampire himself. His presence here was also understandable. Judging by the way his bloody robes obeyed, this freak specialized in confronting blood mages or creatures of that blood. If the shaman called on his loyal group of vampires to help him, they'd find the perfect counterpart to take them down. There was no doubt that Larkhan knew he had such allies, and now this demonic company did, because it was so obvious.

The last of the six had no body at all. It was, as one familiar master of poking his fingers into the keyboard would say, not a bug, but a feature. The demonic entity was a cloud of blue-pink smoke and clearly intended to compete with the shaman for the right to control his body, since it specialized in possession and interception of spiritual bodies. It was a very unpleasant opponent, perfectly able to fight both incorporeal and partially real opponents, to which Stepan could be referred in the symbiosis-population mode. This cloud will hit this sub-settlement, disrupting synchronization and preventing normal functioning. Can the Earthman do anything to counteract this approach? Yes, he can, but it's harder to do it without losing momentum and getting into a very unpleasant situation. The best option would be not to make contact at all, to keep a distance and not allow the enemy to get closer, attacking with energy manifestations and witchcraft, to which the creature had any weakness. The problem was that the intangible enemy was not native to the world of spheres and was rejected by it no worse than reality, but he could jump through the underside, and it would not be difficult for him to catch up with the shaman, especially with the support of the rest of the group.

This is the company, just a little bit proud of how high he, or rather, the opportunity to suckle from the System and its gifts, appreciated the unknown creature. And also a little bit calmed down. Although the demons are very well chosen, the team is still not perfect, and they also do not have a way to attack through an envolt or a body part, otherwise it would have been over by now. Taking a full aura and spirit cast could be done by Laghan. She had gotten to know him very intimately and had braided him very tightly. She had samples of hair, blood, and seed, especially the latter. But the creatures sent by his failed sister's superiors had far less information. It was more limited, indicating that the demoness's actions were being watched discreetly by the demoness herself and very carefully. Otherwise, again, everything would have ended without starting, and the earthling would have already settled in a new dimension, without thinking about escape.

They had no aura and spirit casts, thanks to the Patchwork Echo. No body particles, because it was impossible to get them from the creature howling in hatred, adoration, ecstasy and agony at the same time, without disturbing it with the fact of its intervention, which it was so afraid of that it was in no hurry to shake his soul out of him, having had the opportunity to do so in their first meeting in the real world. And it also became clear why the infernal sister had started this farce with the sister and a lot of small influences, not directly enslaving, but only opening the way to the shaman's consciousness, instead of decisively capturing and gutting Stepan. So that the native superiors would not come to the rescue! And from this, from this understanding and the intuitive realization that came under the influence of the shaken spirit and intensity of intuitive realization, it became much calmer. If his enemies made a mistake once, they will do it again. He, who had accelerated his consciousness with meta-skills, spiritual control, and energy thinking, would find a way to help them make mistakes without difficulty.

The first beat of their attack is thwarted by the work of the ashes. They are forced to slow down, hastily finishing their bodies and preparing to attack or hinder Stepan, temporarily unable to get too far away from the breach-portal, the young man is standing a good hundred meters away from it. They are confident that he cannot escape, that they will hinder him, and they are quite capable of simply attacking from a distance, which they have done. The shaman begins the call, already prepared, calling to the waiting and properly prepared spirit, which will appear in full readiness and without the window of vulnerability characteristic of hasty calls. At the same time, the shaman orders the stone spirits to tear a huge chunk out of the paving stones and cover it with a piece the size of a barn, intercepting the magic.

All three attacks, which are classic demonic power, were quite capable of auto-targeting, readily bypassing the obstacle on the sides, and released by the long lady singsong call-orders, making the knees tremble and mentally roll back to the age of a little six-year-old boy wishing for his mother, does not notice the purely material obstacle at all. But the call is shattered by the will and partially absorbed by one of the straw dolls, dragged on the effect and smoke, and in the stone and earth block are already instilled several spirits of sacrifice, which literally forcefully draw in the demonic attacks, with the pleasure of dying, to be born again, centuries so five or six centuries later and already with greater strength. Stone and earth explodes around the frequent rubble, like a shot from the world's largest double-barrelled shotgun, wrapping around the shaman who activated the vestibule, evaporating in the defense raised by the demons.

And through this rain, diving into the spirit world, hiding from the attack and the shaman's gaze, the multi-armed spider flew, falling out of the jump just a few metres from the shaman. He was the fastest to overcome the effects of the ashes. Primarily because his armament depended little on the state of his body. He could use all of his reserves of thread equally effectively whether he was full of strength or on the verge of exhaustion. A few spirits covering the young man from the spiritual world, the demon managed to tie and confuse, shut down by direct control-persuasion, transmitting orders through the very threads stuck in their bodies, and so quickly that they did not even have time to give an alarm signal. A moment, and the threads obeying the movements of innumerable hands burst the bubble of the anteroom as easily as if it were a soap bubble, immediately braiding Stepan's spiritual limbs, rapidly breaking through the defences and getting inside the body, aura, spirit, despising attempts to resist and seeking to turn off, to put him to sleep, to excite him, to deprive him of will, to inspire obedience to fate, and, strangely enough, simply to induce a good mood.

"Hello there, darling, how are you doing?" It speaks in four voices, a rattling rattle of an old woman, a murmuring male bass, a boyish childish tenor, and a hoarse female contralto, addressing the shaman who has not interrupted the call. "What interesting things can you tell me?"

Stepan was partly affected by these suggestions. He experienced a very real and irresistible attack of cheerfulness and good humour, reflexively defending himself against those threads that forced him to relax his bowels and those that tied defecation to the thought process. Instead of obediently shitting his brains in his trousers, he smiles under the mask and speaks aloud an order which, in principle, he was going to give silently, only in a spiritual way.

"Thu'Zee'Kh, get it!" He bellowed along with the summoned spirits, spitting the words out through the resistance-induced pain, pushing the enemy's threads out of key parts of his spiritual body with his last strength and ready to kiss Sylvia willingly on any part of her cool body for teaching him how to resist.

And yes, Thu'Zee'Kh gets it.

The older entity, a remarkably strange and extremely specialised diet, a true demon-eating spirit, came into reality instantly, managing to slip unnoticed between the threads of the spider's web stretched out in a section of the world of spheres close to this piece of phenomena. He found himself right next to the demon quite suddenly. It was not surprising. For all this time, since the beginning of the battle, the spirit had been in a spiritual ambush pocket, based on a couple of totems made from expensive billets. Both totems, originally stone and now looking like spongy chocolate that had melted, fell out with the spirit, slapping against the paving stones like lumps of jelly or fat. For the demon, however, it was over even sooner than the spent totems touched the ground, almost instantly. The suddenness and the remaining instability of the embodied form had taken its toll.

The spirit looked... it's hard to describe right off the bat. The image-appearance of him was quite clear, but at the same time unusual and even curious. In general, you have to imagine a dachshund, the most ordinary thoroughbred dachshund. Long body, short legs, even shorter hair. Instead of the face of a dachshund, there is a long and elongated muzzle of another breed, like a Russian greyhound or an anteater's muzzle. And there is no mouth on the place of the head, only a long and ridiculously twitching nose. Then take this dachshund and stretch it, multiplying pieces of the body with good old Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V, resulting in this fluffy millipede, with a lot of short legs, something like a very strange Chinese dragon. And there, on the place where a normal doggie would have a bellybutton, stretches a long, wriggling together with snake-like flexible body, fanged and bottomless mouth, framed by funny twitching short legs.

That's the kind of dog, that's the kind of scary bastard. The entity was able to move very quickly to the target through the Spheres. It passed through or penetrated like a drill through any barriers on the demonic basis. It, by its mere presence, weakened the devil and caused the destabilisation of the channel of demonic forces. It was also completely invulnerable to all forms of demonic-based control. No matter how much it did not eat them, no matter how many tried to instil some demonic parasite in it, no matter how sophisticatedly beat on a fairly simple spirit mind, it did not care. It wanted to eat demons, and everything else was bullshit. You can kill it, you can burn out its energy, tear it to shreds, even though it's very difficult, but you can't force it to retreat or change its plans. An absolute predator, the doom of the Inferno, yet absolutely harmless to anyone else. That is, it can attack ordinary targets as well as any other elder spirit, but he doesn't want to and won't. Unless you directly seize control through suggestive dialogue. Non-demonic methods of controlling entities work on the same general grounds.

The multi-legged dachshund appears immediately around the enemy, and the latter only manages to twitch his arms frantically, trying to protect himself with a web which literally melts in the presence of the spirit and almost catches fire at the touch of its ghostly flesh. At the last moment, the demon tries to split into its four bases, but it is too late. The maw of Thu'Zi'Kh has already opened, literally gnawing a piece of reality out of reality, and only arms and legs remain of the mighty creature of the level of a master of magic. The entire torso and head are devoured without a trace. A moment later, these fragments also disappear. Numerous and multidimensional threads are retracted by the dog-dragon-snake like long, long pasta. The death is instantaneous and without any alternatives. This creature will no longer be reborn in its native Inferno, even if weakened in the process. It disappeared forever behind the jaws of the demon-hungry elder spirit, which was gushing with pleasure, not even satiety, but a form of pleasure derived from the snack.

//‘Monsterkill, fuck you!’ - The shaman's mind raced, as he worked to rid himself of the remnants of the threads and the attempts at suggestion through them.

Stepan burns out all the particles that have gotten into him. Now that no one is trying to shove them deeper into him or protect them from disembodiment, this task does not seem to be difficult. Still, the thread schools, for all their advantages, have a very serious vulnerability against direct aggressive attacks with classical elemental magic. Spiderwebs are excellent at burning on an almost conceptual level. Even before the last pasta disappears in the brazen mouth of the summoned spirit, the shaman becomes completely free and turns his gaze to the remaining five, already leading a new call.

The five, of course, had lost their enthusiasm, but they were not going to give up. Nor was it going to resist the will of its Mistress. And this very Mistress demanded a new toy. So the older toys had to fulfil it. The ghostly creature rushed upwards, towards the place where the earth bags had burst. It sought, apparently, to damage the barrier, weakening it. Shaman only inwardly wished it would try harder. Once the witchcraft has been activated, it is no longer useful to destroy the material anchor or loosen the base of the spell. The world has become the anchor of the spell, and the world is hard to move without dropping the whole city into Inferno. And the creatures can't do it, not here, not now, and not in the time they have to operate. The gorilla-like carcass in bone armour rushed forward with a surprisingly melodious roar, deafening and confusing to the mind, making the occasional passerby both pleased and disgusted, but was intercepted by Thu'Zi'Kh, who had hitherto circled around the shaman as if covering him with his body.

This time there is no instant victory, as the demon is, firstly, much better protected and, secondly, noticeably more armoured. But both fighters are temporarily out of the ranks, leaving the shaman uncovered. The shaman continues his call and simultaneously orders the now unbound spirits to attack, defending and attacking in equal measure. A dozen leech spirits are literally vaporised by a wave of pinkish flame. Another strong one is destroyed by a direct jab of a bloody blade, the summoned Squidward Plus barely manages to get back up when he is blindly and purely experienced, pierced by an attack from the leader of the remaining four. The Lizard emerges from the spheres at the very edge of the battlefield and destroys several smaller creatures with a sharp flash of smoke and steel, disrupting the stability of the portal even further. A trio of pigs, reinforced with silver Leaf-in-Motion petals, rush in from the rear, also attacking only the weaker creatures.

All the spirits, working in unison, retreated in time, but they all got hit, especially the pigs. They nearly lost one of their own when some form of pleasure-disguised attack almost fooled their clever distribution of damage. Flame flashes, lightning strikes, rock-crushing gravity, energy body attacks. The shaman does not spare the contracts, and they clearly know it is necessary to strike only one blow and hit not strong and scary demons, but smaller demons. Mentally, the shaman pats himself on the head because his actions allow him to gain time. He has correctly miscalculated his enemies. He correctly realised that they would cherish the portal and therefore would not hit him full force. They also realised that he wouldn't be able to do it for so long, he wouldn't have enough contracts. Yes, the most valuable ones, even in the system marked as minor knowledge, he saved and covered, but the rest of the retinue, including many strong ones, were again thinned out terribly. The only thing to hope for was the token of the summoning book renewal.

He had to defend himself, too, against both mental compulsions and targeted blows, and at one point he jumped through the spirit world, barely coming out of it in one piece. He had to use the token to heal his battered insides and collapsed lungs like a mixer. It seemed the demons were more scared for him and his life than he was, because it was hard to imagine what they would be threatened with if they brought Mistress not a new toy, but only Lego-style fragments of her body. You'll have to put it together yourself, sweetheart. At the place where he was standing a moment before, some crap shone with all the colours of the rainbow, resembling a living jelly poured out on the ground, which was supposed to embrace him, turn him off, preserve him, put him into a coma and help him survive the journey through the Inferno. The shaman had retreated just in time.

The spirits were running out. It wasn't even so much the contracts. He still had a lot of work to do in the totems under the ground. They were just running out of those he had summoned in advance, and it was pointless to just pull the call. Such hastily summoned ones would be killed at the moment of manifestation. What pissed him off was how fast everything was happening. Not even half a minute later, he'd already wasted weeks of labor on summoning and subduing a bunch of contracts, and he couldn't even interrupt a call in progress. He could control a lot of entities thanks to that same multiplicity, but sending a call.... it's more complicated than that. The elder spirits let him win another thirteen seconds, even hitting the demons chasing him a couple of times. Longswoman tried to help the gorilla overpower Thu'Zi'Kha, but even in a two-on-one fight, he was not much worse and managed to counterattack the gorilla, gnawing away pieces of bone armor and shielding himself from powerful demonic magic attacks.

The dachshund from St. Howard's kennel was torn and her spirit flesh was wounded, but so far she was holding on and would have to hold on for a while longer. More worrying was the fact that they were gradually moving through the city. The number of casualties was increasing, for the spirit was saving itself with considerable difficulty, and didn't care about people unless they were its shaman. The shaman could not help anyone, because he was solely and completely occupied with the dilemma of his survival. He'd sent one of the senior strikers to help Thu'Zi'Kh, and the latter had made the ground around the long one swell with tentacles and tried to make it tentacle porn. He came away battered and barely got away at all when the scum flooded everything underneath him with streams of battle-damage, but it gave the dachshund a break. The shaman was attacked by the bloody degenerate, who was constantly trying to stop the blood in his material body with sharp and powerful attacks, at the same time stealthily and with enviable success reducing the blood flow to the brain, which would have caused the shaman to pass out, if he needed a brain for thinking now.

A huge drill-shaped lightning bolt, made up of dozens of smaller lightning bolts that could fry a bloody one, was intercepted by the leader, taking it on his wing and not even getting smoked, only losing one of his large ghostly feathers. The energy strike, even delivered by the elder spirit, was simply ignored by both. They were a form of energy and could defend themselves against such damage, as well as any other intangible shit, perfectly well. The attempted attack of the spirit of light and sun, also an elder, they didn't even let it begin. They synchronously and coherently pulled his attention, almost swaddled him in a bloody net, and almost paralyzed his spiritual body with a cunning suggestion. When he was distracted by a maneuver of retreat, they caught only the manifesting spirit at a vulnerable moment and tore it apart without a chance. He didn't even have time to scream, figuratively speaking.

And yet, and yet, by some miracle and prayers to all the gods, including Milfeisha of Milf, he managed to hold on for another dozen seconds, mercilessly trading the lives of contracted spirits for the tacts of battle, noting with cold indifference those who would not come to his call and chose to betray. Ironically, there were almost none. And not just from the shaman's skill and authority and the proximity of his underground totems, no. It was just that he sent everyone he wasn't sure about to hit the small bastards supporting the breach gates, and they attacked quite confidently, though they were often killed as well. The turning point came when his call became obvious and the creatures realized that it was suspiciously strong and unusual. And they realized that their unconditional victory, to which everything was going by leaps and bounds, could tell them bye-bye. The situation was even more complicated by the appearance of an immaterial freak, who had been distracted by attempts to break the area witchcraft, and who almost fell on Stepan's head, covering him with himself and depriving him of his will.

Here, the last trump card was in play, and that trump card was Sylvia Malter. She flew out of an inconspicuous and partially collapsed alleyway, accelerated by a Blood Rage, covered with Scarlet Armor and Scarlet Mist, which made her appear to be a blood cloud rushing along the ground. Some of the more ancient vampires could actually turn into something like that, but Sylvia lacked the characteristics, depth of knowledge, and development of racial talents and traits. She knew the theory and could become partially immaterial, gaining even greater speed and becoming almost pure scarlet drop herself. It's not a mist transformation yet, but something close to that. But the technique was hard, and would be deadly to her in a fight against a bloody freak.

Dressed in a lush scarlet garment that became a woman's ball gown for a few seconds, he was distracted only for a few moments, waving away the expected help. At that time Stepan was literally squeezing out the last drops of his billets, having already managed to renew his reserve with meta-skill once again, so even a couple of seconds during which two, not three opponents of such level were trying to fuck him was a true feast for him. He slowed the aether around the blue cloud with his witchcraft, threw doll-like grenades with curses embedded in them, which caused the cloud to choke when it tried to curse him through the doll, but was met with entropic bubbling of the aether in response. The envolts on his belt, in the form of straw puppets with sad or cheerful smiley faces stitched in place of faces, flared up one after another when he was hit by a tentacle of blue smoke, or by the touch of a dropped feather of not-fucking-Herald, or by a missed suggestion that pressed too hard on his consciousness.

Bloody One sincerely thought that now he would deal with Sylvia quickly, a prepared attack, a stream of filth, a couple of souls clearly burned in overexertion, the shaman clearly distinguished their cries, the class had its effect, and then one verified blow, depriving Malter of control over the blood. A cloud of scarlet spattered with scarlet drops, Bloody Claws fell to the ground, blasted by their battle, the now useless Armor fell off her body, staining her clothes with uncontrollable blood. Only the Bloody Rage, the pulse of dripping blood inside her body and aura, not coming out, did not leave Sylvia yet, giving her the chance to hold on, not to collapse without thought or feeling in a continuous orgasm, very strange, as if Thirst had suddenly replaced torment with pleasure.

The blood demon was surprised, and with good reason. According to his calculations, according to his and not only his but the Mistress' plan, after such an attack, Malter could be taken warm and wet. But she stood, and even without much faltering, tried to strike with a sword covered in the remnants of Scarlet Haze. The demon eyed her with bewilderment. He probed the strange amulet covering her body with his attention and the spectra of magic vision available to him, seeing in it typical light motifs “against everything unclean” and not understanding how the vampiress herself was not burning to shit under that amulet. He lazily took the blow of the sword on the bloody blade, for Sylvia was not very good at fencing, or rather just good, but no more, and he was a virtuoso of artistic massacre with the use of stabbing and cutting weapons. And after that he was not lazily shrieking only a little less loudly than the still howling Laghan in the epicenter of the breach, when the blow of the blade shrank both the sword grown from his clothes and his hand, and left a rotting and oozing wound on his side, full of light grace, from which he was forced to break the distance and fell out of the triangle of doom pressing on Stepan.

The Intangible Cloud and the Leader-winged one allowed just a fraction of a moment's delay trying to figure out what the fuck it was and what to do with Sylvia, who, having regained some of her speed from the acceleration, rushed after the bloody one, preventing him from breaking the distance and vaporizing with a swing of her sword several bloody ribbons, stakes and screens that had been thrown in front of her. They came to their senses very quickly. Much faster than the shaman would have liked, they didn't chase after Sylvia, though Stepan hoped they would, focusing their energies on their main target. Another doll had burned out two heartbeats ago, still smoking on his belt and crumbling into ash; the remaining two would repel well if only two blows, which he was in danger of missing by a dozen in a second. All of his ghostly limbs were tucked back under his flesh so they wouldn't be torn off. The witchcraft he'd put on his cloak and clothes was no longer witchcraft, but a joke. And at that moment, the graceful palm of the winged creature slaps the chest of Stepan, who is frozen and frantically completing the call; the creature is in no hurry, clearly seeing the situation. The mortal calls the spirit inside himself, but the demon knows his stroke, and weakened by the touch of blue smoke, the man will not be able to stay conscious, even if he manages to call the spirit.

But the Winged One was a little, just a little, less than a heartbeat too late, because he was surprised by Sylvia's performance and how effective her sword was against his kind, because he could not recognize it as an artifact until the very last moment. And so his palm touched not a human rib cage, but the chest of a strange hybrid of a human and a goat, covered with snow-white wool and spreading as wide as the tear of his shirt, which fell into the definition of the ominous valley almost more than the demon itself. And the impulsive resonating blow, which should deprive him of control over his aura and plunge his thoughts into the chaos of madness, was like water off a goose, leaving not even a trace. Stepan bounced off with incredible ease, his head crowned with long, straight, perfectly black horns, and landed with a clatter of his hooves.

And somehow the demon had no doubt that this particular call was not good news for him. There wasn't much power in the auras of the allied mortal spirits, and some of the attackers, especially the long and ugly freak still holding out against his two brethren, looked much stronger. But that's the reserve, the source and its volume, but the other characteristics... it was hard to read the aura of this symbiosis, it's not like he's a sweet Iurlad, now finding her greatest prize but not holding it herself. He doesn't see that deep. But the very fact of ignoring the seemingly irresistible blow was enough to realize that it would be difficult, and if it would be difficult, it was time to ask for help.

//‘Give me the voice of your passion, Mistress.’ - He called mentally, mentally bidding farewell to the chance to take the prize himself, to try it out for himself, to touch its power just a little, to take everything he could take away.

And, after a brief pause, She answered the call.

* * *

Внимание! Этот перевод, возможно, ещё не готов.
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Переведено на Нотабеноиде
http://notabenoid.org/book/86785/585340

Переводчики: Camrad_RIP