Готовый перевод Настучать в бубен / Hit the tambourine: Глава 20-12

* * *

The blessing bestowed by the Greatest of the Great, which had plucked her from the flow of time with frightening ease, placing her above time for her convenience and escape, ended abruptly. She had managed to travel a considerable distance, completely shutting down and shielding her nature. Her body, previously too young and unable to withstand all of her power, was now at the peak of its capabilities, allowing her so much of what she had never dared to use in the past battle. A stupid, unnecessary, and so ridiculous battle, where she had lost everything she could lose, only to gain more than she had ever dreamed of at the last moment, if not everything she had ever wanted, then almost everything.

The relaxed subtle body and the cluster of golden lights of her treasures no longer concealed her feelings, no longer betrayed one for the other, and she saw no need to pretend. The face of the lovely maiden with soft pink skin, dark red, almost scarlet hair, neat horns, long and thin tail, and cross-shaped pupils in her eyes, expressed an undisguised triumph. Oh, how she played, how she was afraid, how she did not believe to the last that everything would go so smoothly, but no, she managed. Really handled it, which made her want to do something stupid, but she didn't let herself do anything stupid anyway. What was it to lose control of oneself in a moment of triumph, jeopardizing the accomplished triumph? A petty imp who didn't even deserve her first name, no less.

And still! She didn't believe it! She played and did not believe that everything was going according to her hastily devised plan! She had studied the boy well, but he was completely cleared of her influence, and she could use only his learned habits, his understanding of how her favorite victim, beloved brother, and most desirable prize used to think. She'd calculated his reactions and, with the flames of Inferno ready to swear oaths to assure, she'd miscalculated him nonetheless and gotten exactly what she wanted. Well, not exactly what she wanted, ideally, of course, it was to get an obedient and sweet brother, and not a master of spirits and witchcraft, angry at her, but that was just a small thing. She could work with that. She was used to adapting herself, changing, and rearranging paradigms of behavior to get a path to the heart of the next difficult target. This boy wouldn't even be that difficult, though he certainly wouldn't be easy, if only it weren't for that vow.... that she dare not break, not even to test its strength. No way. Never, no way, better to die forever.

Startled, she reminds herself that she doesn't need that vow, that deal, that contract to probe and loosen its shackles. She already has everything she's settled for. There's just no way to get more. Not against what she stands for. Demoness, rightfully bearing the title-title-recognition-recognition-charm Vicious, knew Her name, heard from Stepan, while asking him, then still a brother, herself being in the form of a harmful sister. But she did not pay much attention until she saw Her herself, until she felt Her ... not even strength, not power, not majesty, no, just presence, a shadow of a tiny shadow, a fingernail of what She was. That was why every mention, ironic and slightly irritated, that the boy had dared to utter made her hot and cold. If it hadn't been for that oath, that bargain, he would have jerked his insolence right out of him on the ground at her feet, begging for forgiveness. Not to the demoness herself, but to the one he'd dared to insult with such a patronizing attitude.

He is, however, Her recognized Chosen One. She is free to choose the extent of which the boy is allowed. But the demoness remembered the sight when she was offered the terms of the contract, when she agreed, but afterwards, obeying her nature.... no, she did not try to betray or deceive, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, please, no! She just thought about the very possibility of such a thing. Demons can't help but betray. It's their nature, always looking for a way up, always looking for an opportunity to push the one next to them, always being in a constant simmering conflict of vices. She only thought for a moment that this deal was very loose, leaving her a lot of room to maneuver. And then it dawned on her... something. And she knew not the pathetic and maimed lust she had been serving, but the true and all-powerful Passion and Power.

A thirst to possess and to enchant, to change and to caress, to braid and to seduce, to forge and to reassemble, to burn to ashes and to revive. The infernal creature experienced not even an orgasm, but something incomparably greater, as if to cum - cum, cum, cum, cum, cum, cum, cum, cum, cum, cum, cum, cum, cum, cum, cum, cum, cum, cum, cum, cum, cum, cum, cum, cum, cum, cum, cum, cum, cum, cum, cum, cum! - was her very soul, all her souls at once, to death, to complete disintegration and resurrection from nothingness. She died there, died, died, died, twitching in orgasmic vibes, crumbling into nothingness, died hundreds, thousands, millions of times in a row, as many times and reborn, reborn one more time.

No, she's not opposed to that.

Will never be an antagonist.

Even if she were on par with the greedy bitch she had called Mistress earlier, even if she were to surpass her many times over, become so powerful that she could pulverize a hundred hundred gods into nothingness with a single blow, she would not be worthy of the dust at her feet. It wasn't seduction or mind distortion, not intentional certainly. The demoness was skilled enough to realize the needlessness of such a thing. The Greatest merely played on the demon's nature, the nature to strive to climb upward, to strive to fall into the very depths of the infernal abyss. Played, showing the foolish and worthless creature something to which it is unrealistic to rise by any means. Something so much more. more than anything the demoness knew, more than she could imagine. It simply broke her there, forged her into not a servant, not even a slave, but something unimaginably petty, insignificant, and unnecessary in any way, because She has no use for anything that could offer the creature, even if she gave all of herself in a single impulse.

Betray?

To deceive?

Outwit?

Distort the boundaries of the contract?

Against Her?

No, it wasn't even funny. That was why Iurlad Lahgan Akal wouldn't even think about getting rid of the boy or somehow circumventing the terms of her Most Important Deal. Yes, she would have loved to fuck the wretch into a stupor so that he could dream of coitus with her and spurt his seed out of his cock, showering her with the Tablet's rewards time after time. But, alas, she would not do that. Not for long at most, and with the possibility of full recovery without any, even the smallest of consequences, except that the boy might like it. She will follow orders. She will serve the one who, by the greatest of injustices known to the demoness, has become Her Chosen One. Well, it happens that lowlifes are lucky, everything happens, and this is what happened.

More importantly, the lowlife never realized the most important thing: the deal that bound the two of them more securely than a mithril chain was different for the two of them. Or rather, as she realized, his Tablet had simply under-told the boy the truth, a favorite trick of the higher demons, the ones who specialize in contracts and deception, leading his thoughts in the wrong direction. He could, and still could, refuse her help at any moment. And at that instant, the deal would be broken, terminated, as soon as he was firmly convinced of his choice. He wouldn't have time to prepare countermeasures, he wouldn't have time to prepare himself for a battle with her, he wouldn't have time for anything. Only he doesn't have to. For her to break the bargain is death, instantaneous and absolute destruction, in which she will die in the radiance of the Absolute one more time than she has been resurrected. The thought of such nothingness was almost appealing, and she had to consciously control herself not to dream of that doom, not to lust for it more than she had lusted for anything else before.

She played on his weaknesses, on what he expected from her, on the fact that he obviously knew how demons were used to behaving. Apparently, one of the Tablet's gifts was received at a completely bad time for a demoness. It didn't matter. What mattered was that he had been calculated by her, that she had outsmarted him, immediately forcing him to look for workarounds, ways to break her plans as part of the deal rather than break it. What would she care for his orders and restrictions if she had with her two of her Gifts, which were worth more than anything in the world, more than anything she had? For either of those gifts, the dumb bitch left with nothing, now tearing her flesh in frustration in the depths of Inferno, would give her whole domain, her whole self, even almost all the lights of her cluster that she could give without risking complete regression. A partial regression she would certainly have accepted, just as Iurlade Lahgan Akal herself would have accepted it.

The first gift was a property that distorted her aura, a subtle body that replaced the demon's soul, the basis of her bunch, called the 'Gift of Eternal Shine', being a 'complex modification of essence'. This gift... it solved the most basic problem of any demon at all. It allowed the lights in the bunch to replenish their integrity and restore their brightness constantly, always, without the threat of disintegration that would inevitably befall every prisoner of the bunch, without exception. As long as the light was still there, as long as it had a modicum of integrity, she could simply wait, days and weeks, years and decades, for great lights, not centuries and ages, and those lights would be restored to perfection as if she had just taken them. With this Gift, she stopped losing souls. That is where the incredible miracle lies, more marvelous than all the dust and decay that the celestials throw in the eyes of mortals! In a way, she could not even be considered a full-fledged demon now, not something else, more whole and lofty, because even the strongest of the Lords were not free from the weakness sewn into their very essence.

It is in the nature of a demon to lose what he has taken, for vice burns with fire, vice feeds them, vice gives them strength, and the fires in the bunches are only lenses for its refraction, only walls for the cauldron in which their sweet and poisonous essence boils and boils. Strong souls have been brewing in her Lust for centuries, very strong for millennia, one of the most ancient ones, not taken by her, but received as a reward and exchange even before she received her second name, has been burning for ages. However, she was just given to Iurlad because the ancient and powerful mage ruler was only a pitiful hulk. Formally, she was rewarded as infinitely generous, in fact, gave only useless ballast and empty slag, but demons always do that, and she was not her current self at that time and dared not challenge the gift. Now... If she didn't burn out her fires for good, whether it was during a deadly battle or for some other important reason, she would never be weaker.

That alone would pay for any sacrifice, risk, or cost, pay for anything she could imagine other than death, but there was a second gift related to what the Tablet called meta-skills: “access to the System Soul Store II”. Why would she need to select victims, why search for those who would be worthy lights in her bunch, when she could simply acquire those lights at the grace of the Tablet? Yes, not all of them, yes, with reservations, yes, it will be necessary to earn the Tablet's favor carefully, but the fact, the very fact! She wouldn't even think of cheating on the terms of the deal, also because she doesn't need to! The boy can think what he likes about staying in Dantmark, but in reality, he has achieved nothing with his orders and prohibitions. He hadn't even forbidden her to just play with mortals, if she didn't drink more than a certain limit or drink to the bottom. That was enough to fuel the excitement and hone her skills, to keep them from rusting.

The rest?

I don't care if she jerks off to her “victory.” She doesn't mind. She's all for it. She wanted, of course, to forget about the boy, who was so unlucky to get off her hook, just so as not to risk getting involved with him, but she couldn't, if she didn't go near him even in a small way, there was a high risk that the boy would suspect something. She wanted to take revenge, to humiliate him with mockery and power, to get back at him for not giving himself to her even though he was completely braided! The only thing to do was to take away his soul directly, to bind him with a contract no worse than a collar! And still he slipped out, the son of a bitch, slipped off the hook like a huge sea catfish caught instead of a coastal fry, almost tearing the rod away, along with his hands and the fisherman's life. No, she'd wait. She'd find the keys to him, she already had, she just had to use them. Making him completely her own would not work, she was sure it wouldn't please Her, so she wasn't going to try very hard.

But ahead of the boy, his beloved brother, many sweet and tender adventures await, and she, oh, she will give him these adventures.

System assignment received (medium; imperative; non-rejectable): travel to the free city of Mor...

But first, she would have to deal with her own adventures, which were no less sweet and pleasant. She smiled involuntarily as she read the images of the inescapable command she had been given, almost blurring into sweet tenderness. She liked this assignment, it was almost the same as what she was used to doing, only with less Vice and without the possibility of taking lives and lights. Then again, she'd have to get at least a few of the Tablet's gifts before she could feel free enough. She'd already chosen the ones that would suit her best, the ones that would reduce the threat of detection, allow her to hide better from searches or strikes by divine power. She had many unpaid debts in this world, and she would be happy to collect them.

The demoness slowly made her way through the thicket, smiling with a satisfied grin and not feeling the invisible threads of fate that would bind her, the boy, and many others. Men and gods, demons and spirits, monsters and heroes - all of them would find a place in this web, and all of them, without knowing it, were already part of a vast plan, a comprehensive plan of entities whose power was comparable only to their inscrutability.

* * *

After returning to the normal time, the young man wanted to just take and turn off, lying in bed and not move for eight hundred minutes, or better, a thousand. But what he wanted in the conditions of time pressure rarely intersects with reality, even less often than a good mood and Rodislav Gastoldovich Yanin. Desperately yawning, the shaman quickly drank not the cheapest cocktail, which looked like a real fruit cocktail with sodas, even though it was made of very magical fruits and berries, and it was a real potion. Lime, lemon, orange, something bitter, but not grapefruit. What this cocktail lacked was the sourness of cherry, but there was nothing to be done; it was impossible to change the recipe. And after taking a tasty and useful drug, he had to start working. Not personally, personally he didn't strain his aura at all, using billets, totems, spirits, as well as alchemy and other consumables purchased from the System.

He'd cleaned the vampires' filth anyway. They were far less tainted by it than he was, which made it relatively easy to work. Soon enough, all four women, not quite alive but very active, left the dungeon and went to their mansion, which was now under siege, as was the entire city. Everyone who had any opportunity to lay siege had done so. Unless, of course, they'd run off in a fecal puddle earlier. The city portal was said to have been nearly burnt out from overexertion, and the guards and personal guards of the de Dantrelles had to restrain fugitives at the risk of blows from battle wands and enchanted steel. Sylvia's actions didn't stand out at all, and no one could recognise her, thank Milfeyes' tits, only a vague, illusion-covered figure that couldn't even be mistaken for a vampire.

Instead of the bloodsuckers, who would still need to be examined more closely for the gifts they had all received from the system and the Autogoddess, and at the same time consider how to hide their twelve-unit increase in attributes, Malter's servants and employees descended into the dungeon. Tentatively bewitched by her gaze, they were also dragging the very lady through whom the demonic creature had tried to speak. The woman was still in a witchcraft-induced coma, the oil on her tits dried, but no one seemed to have thought to cover her nakedness. Fortunately, the shaman was no longer switched off from the ranks of sane and thinking individuals by the sight of the woman's large breasts, so it didn't interfere with his work, but he still ordered one of the spirits to cover her naked body with a piece of cloth picked up by phantom tentacles.

The servants were both harder and easier to deal with. Aside from the one who had fallen into a coma and nearly died from too much constriction in several parts of her aura, no one was seriously injured. Even the woman would be quite alive and well, with at most a noticeably tighter mind, but she got off easy enough. There were many servants, all of whom had been treated by both the shaman and Sylvia, long before Sylvia and Stepan had met. He had to search among the bookmarks of the ‘right’ and sections of the wiped memory for everything the demoness had left behind, but there was an underlying realisation that he could easily miss something. He cleaned out only the most visible traces of corruption, so that they wouldn't get nailed with the next check, and he believed with all his heart that there would be many checks and they would be regular for at least a year. His-not his-experience said that this was how they would look for traces, and the system didn't teach bullshit.

It was only after sending back the men and women examined and treated, after watching the bloodsuckers carefully masking their auras through the dolls, and after listening to Sylvia's dialogue with the representative of the secret guard, who had personally contacted her to warn her to stay out of sight, that he crawled to the bed and turned off.

It wasn't that he didn't dream, but most of his dreams were unremembered, even though he had the help of the spirits summoned and assigned to guard his dreams anew. Someone was running somewhere, someone was shooting at someone, some man was being chased by a spider-like thing, from which he fought back with the highest flame magic, blazing fire from his ass to the envy of dragons and rocket engines, some half elf with maids in the team of a bearded man and his wife were fighting off the invading strange strange guys with cut faces over the faces of real ones, which smelled of vague but sinister power. He also remembered the scene with a huge space cruiser, firing against another one, only older and as if chthonic and creepy, circling around a black hole gradually sucking them both into the event horizon. He carefully didn't even try to look into these images, preferring to meditate and gradually sink into a deep phase, without dreams or worries.

He felt good.

And when he woke up, no longer suffering from the effects of exhaustion, he felt even better. His knowledge of the healer demanded a couple more days of no calls and doing magick, though. Mentally preparing himself for this good mood to go downhill, he called the system to account, wanting to get what rewards he had left. In his mind, he was grateful that he had survived, that he had been rescued, but the small and sneaky part of every gamer was screaming with greed and demanding that he be given all the proper rewards and double, no, triple, quadruple, and have it all on his desk before dinner! Self-irony was one of his favourite ways of releasing the tension and anger of his foolish actions, and it helped now. When he pictured this picture, he was hardly upset at all, and even a little pleased. Why shouldn't he be glad? Is he alive? Alive! Is he sane? Sane! Did he kill any demons? You bet! He fought off the creature that almost enslaved him, to be honest, even without almost, and spoiled the flavour of victory with a successful idea. Here he was rejoicing, convincing himself not to weep tears of an Odessa merchant at the Privoz(*) forced to give away goods for free.
T.N.

A significant achievement has been achieved!

Demons often desire mortals, desire them whole, for in the soul and vice is hidden their power, their very essence. Demons desired you too, from several sides, in several ways at once. Except that you were against, tearing networks of feelings, finding back the mind, converging in an uncompromising battle, and winning it! And for all of this, you are rewarded according to the accomplishment, even if you had help.

Gained: free characteristic points [REDUCED]; free talent points [REDUCED]; random knowledge development [REDUCED]; elite traits and meta-skills [REDUCED]; two random elite or rare tokens.

Additional rewards from Liarat si Merrinal, Lady of Gifts and Giver of Gifts, loyal servant of Innelas Innelay: characterization points [REDUCED]; random knowledge development [REDUCED]; elite properties and meta-skills [REDUCED]; one elite token; one super-elite class artifact to choose from available options.

Well, it wasn't so bad, they could leave only the dick and butter, or even take away the butter, but he would get three more valuable Tokens and an Artefact, and not randomly, but available from several options. It was disconcerting that these options would be offered by the Autodivine MILF, but to keep an open mind, she had often given out quite normal rewards before, it was just that it was rare. At least one of the neutral options he could well expect to see on that list... although he doesn't even know the number of options available yet.

"Okay, what did I get as a reward for my outstanding idiocy multiplied by equally outstanding stupidity?" Stepan wasn't exactly angry, he'd gotten over it, but how could he not be angry at himself when shit like this happened. "If they gave money for stupidity, I could be an oligarch right now....."

Alas, no one gave him money for his stupidity, and what would he do with earthly money here, where it could only be sold as beautiful pictures? Well, or as a particularly splendid magic stove with the property of bringing good luck: to light a cigarette from a hundred-dollar bill to attract Fortune - an ancient and working foreign custom! Get your hands on it and hurry while there's still painting left, yep.

So, Tokens.

The first one told him right off the bat that this was a pretty big reward. Even with the rest of them being squeezed. This Token was called ‘a one-time endowment of an ally with an elite system property’, had five charges, and could only be applied to someone who was in the same group as him. Regardless of gender or whether that person had intimate contact with Stepan. It didn't work on him, which was a shame. This was the first time it was possible to pump with a Token without the usual Milf brainwashing perversion. Well, even so, it's great. Sylvia would be thrilled, and with Singha and her family, if he did happen to contact them, he'd have something to press for in negotiations. Then again, the mere realisation that the demonic scum is completely and utterly blown away by this award, even though there's nothing stopping her from getting one... it's a salve to the wounds. it's a salve on the wounds, a balm on the soul, a cooling spray on the arse. Of course, it was better not to tell her about it, because the terms of their connection did not prevent the creature from seducing the shaman so that he would bestow it on her, so let her not know further, or else he wasn't even sure that he would be able to repel an attack through Gelda.

He liked the second token even better than the first because it was intended for the shaman. It's clearly something he had needed yesterday. Literally yesterday, just before the battle with the demons right before it would come in very handy. The Token had only three charges and was called ‘medium complex rank amplification of non-material summoned essence’. It worked only on those spirits or other creatures, the call and contract he had specified in the minor knowledge. The effect of the token was extremely simple. It raised the rank of the spirit one rank up, proportionally increasing its power and exotic properties. From small, to strong, to strong, to senior, to senior.... nowhere, because this token does not increase above the senior one. And not in vain is the complexity in the name of the token, not in vain at all. If a strong spirit is extremely strong and has unique tricks that put him at the top of the rank, then when he is promoted, he will also be at the top of the next rank. His unique tricks will deepen and expand accordingly, as if two or three epochs have passed, during which the entity developed properly.

Roughly speaking, if he upgraded Squidward Plus.... he will not just be a strong spirit capable of tearing up an average senior in direct combat, but a senior capable of devouring a higher one, and his darkness will not just become thicker and more impenetrable, no, it will gain some additional aspects that come from the original nature of the spirit. It is difficult to predict these properties, but approximately their direction can be guessed. It is not difficult if there is an understanding of how spirits in general think and exist. He had such an understanding, and that's why he was lying on the bed, staring at the unnatural lights dancing under the ceiling of the cave and smiling like a complete degenerate. Yes, the task is interesting. You have to choose those who will receive such a gift. You can transfer three strong contracts to the senior spirits, and it is contracts, not separate entities: it will work on all three pigs and both jellyfish, not just on one of the group. Or you can take some very exotic small essence, with those abilities, which the strong or senior spirits will be for him simply not affordable to call such rubbish. Contacts with spirits below the level of the strong one are not indicated in the system, but they are there. If the corresponding images are pressed, the section of small knowledge will show all those crowds of entities on an eternal contract, which he subdued or hired, even the most insignificant.

Another pleasant fact will be that the contract will not change from this. You will continue to give as many offerings as you agreed to give to the same Lizard. The Token clearly prescribes this factor in the consciousness of the spirit, and the spirit, of course, does not mind, because for him it is a winning option in all respects. Even the dark entity, evil and treacherous, will not try to challenge the shaman and try to devour him, as if the system would become a counterpart. He didn't want to raise his spirits right now. That was a task for a fresh mind and good thinking. Ideally, first, come up with a way to strengthen contracts with the best of your strong spirits as much as possible. For example, the deal with the Lizard was concluded for five years, and then the ritual was repeated and sacrifices were made, but the possibility of concluding a more solid agreement that does not require renewal is also there, and now it is within his power. Yes, and with Squidward there is exactly the same story, but the ritual is much more problematic, there will need to be several such rituals and in different places.... or buy some ‘bottled rays of sunlight and moonlight taken during the solstices and equinoxes’ from the System Shop, if they have such goods. Or, as previously contemplated, to use methods of reducing the ceremonial from ‘developed skills of fast calls’, compensating with reserves and offerings for the lack of too specific conditions.

In general, it’s a reason to think and only then act. So he’ll think.

The shaman returned to the mansion with a slight shudder. But everything had been cleaned up long ago. A check, which met only the servants, for ‘the gentlemen of the house are out of town at the moment,’ successfully checked the servants. The vampires were also checked, but more privately, calling for the help of priest Damokar, who was tied to the Dantrell spies, but even with him, everything was very nervous there, and at any moment, it could slip into a massacre. No matter what they say, the Keeper of Oaths concludes and assures the words of everyone and everything with his relics. Even demons, in theory, can use them, and often do, if the rumours that Sylvia knew were to be believed. One consequence of this tolerance was that the energy of its relics and priests did not harm anyone, not even vampires, not even demons, not even the followers of the Lord of the Depths, who played the role of persecuted and reviled Сtulhu zealots. No one was harmed by that power unless you broke your oath, but if you did.... let's just say that fending off such retribution was little easier than breaking Gaia's curse with equal force and expenditure of divine energy. It was still possible, there were still ways to cheat and undermine such oaths, but it was almost always easier, cheaper, and safer to simply honour the terms of even a very unfair bargain.

After assessing the recent events and realising that the storm in the glass called Dantmark was not going to abate anytime soon, the shaman stretched his legs a little, getting the blood pumping through his veins, and then began to sort through the options for gift artefacts. The first thing he realised as he studied all four samples on offer was that each of the wunderwaffe provided was stronger and more complex than anything he had seen before, including the super-lots from the shop. More complex than even the twice-reinforced mask, though not by much, more dangerous than even the systemically reinforced armour stockings, though not dramatically so either. And all four of them were something that would not only be killed for, but would start a war that would turn into genocide, if only he could get his hands on such a treasure. He could see how such a gift could be the basis for the power of an entire dynasty, even if not the only one, but one of those bases for sure.

The first on the list was a very strange and very Autodegenerate potion-elixir, which was a very strange sight. It was like a small glass ball, covered with engravings of birds, if he understood correctly, cuckoos, with a candied cherry covered with scarlet syrup, just without the tail, hanging inside it in complete weightlessness. This substance, if taken, could instantly increase the Control, Power, and Source of anyone, making the uninjured almost a master by the standards of this world. Even to him, with his characteristics, this fruit would add five to seven points to each of these characteristics, and maybe one point each to Constitution and Resistance as well, but that wasn't certain. If the fruit had only this effect, the shaman would have chosen it almost without a second thought, but it was a gift of the Autogoddess, so it was impossible to do without perversions.

A man who eats a cherry, if he is a man, will very quickly begin to acquire the features of a woman - bigger tits, bigger butt, chubbier lips, more elastic orifices, longer dick.... but for this term Stepan Namesake would anathematise the shaman, for it is correct to say ‘futanari’. Well, the questions of the culture of the country of the Rising Sun touched the earthman little, unlike the description of the properties of the fruit. A woman from such transformation would also become a bearer of the grown cock, also beautiful, desirable and literally carrying the aura of passion and fertility, something reminiscent of the divine aspects of the same Gaia. In time, a woman will learn to retract an extra organ into the spiritual reflection, acquiring the past appearance, that a man will be able to take the past appearance, only maximally, as the same namesake would say, ‘femboic’. But at least a couple of years in such a state would have to walk, not less, and even more, especially if you do not follow the instincts embedded in the changed body. And those instincts are very simple - to impregnate and fuck, fuck and impregnate.

The desire is instinctive, quite controllable, but the longer you don't satisfy it, the less control you have, the more you will be attracted to any girl nearby. Oh yes, a couple of days or three days a season will be covered by a wave of uncontrollable desire, when the will is switched off and you only want to release your seed into tight and hot holes, anyone, on any terms, as long as only a beautiful woman and with an accessible pussy. This in itself would not be the type of artefact that could become a national virtue, though the power is considerable, just as the consequences of that power of acceptance are considerable. But no, the trickiest part of the gift is revealed later, when your multiple descendants mature, always girls and always gifted, and in combination with Stepan's pumped-up property, VERY gifted, always connected to their mother-father by something even deeper than a mere blood bond.

Firstly, it will be impossible or almost impossible to curse a parent through children, even if you let them all be used for sacrificial rituals, but the parent-parent can look through the eyes of her offspring at any moment, transfer some of her powers to her, take partial or full control over her, speak through her lips or dictate in her ear what needs to be said. And also, if the parent happens to die, receive a mortal wound, or simply get tired of life, and he-she can be reborn in any of her daughters by choice or in a granddaughter, but there already with complications. Moreover, the gift, the very one that the parent has, all experience, knowledge, and skills, they will pass together with the soul into a new body. And a simple gifted girl, not even an adept, not only grows her dick, but also jumps to the masters at once, gaining all the power of her ancestor in a couple of months, as well as a little bit on top. You can also move into a master, or even magister, if there are any such descendants, but the effect will be the same. The transferring gift is not summed up with what it was originally - you won't become weaker, but you won't jump higher either.

You can, if you are a bastard and a scum, absorb the personality of your child, replacing it with yourself completely. You can, if you are tired of life and want someone else to fuck with your problems, voluntarily dissolve into someone else's self, so that all the memory and skills will go to your daughter, her character and personality will become the basis of the new being. It is possible, if everything is agreed in advance, to voluntarily merge into something in the middle, creating a new personality on the basis of the old one. There are a lot of variants, but the main thing is that the strongest mage-gifted of the whole dynasty does not die practically in any way, even if you try to kill the soul itself by cutting it on the demonic altar, it will still slip out, it will still escape, the descendant will still get everything due, the nature of the potion-cherry will snatch even from the maw of an archidemon! It's just that in the event of such a death, the descendant's personality will prevail, for there will be no one and nothing to replace it. Again - a hint to the descendants themselves, how, if something happens, to cope with the father/mother, who lost his marbles, if they want to live, and to live themselves, and not as a billet for the vessel.

And all this with a constant growth of power, with each migration, even until the ruler's ass sits on the throne, which yesterday was just an apprentice, and today has already become an archmage, possessing all those schools and skills that mastered the past iterations of the super-cherry-eater! All in all, one had to admit that this stuff right here was perhaps the strongest of all the gifts. Not initially, but by potential and the possibility of development. Literally a dynasty of very lustful queens with a catch, which could well take over the world by the thirtieth or fortieth iteration, even without a system. The System, as the reference separately suggested, will pass for Stepan together with rebirth.

"Ha-ha, no, thanks, but no." The Earthman was all he could think of, pushing away the images of what would have happened to him if he'd been greedier and less choosy. "I'd rather pretend I didn't see it at all."

The second of the artefacts was a strange checkerboard, like a chessboard, but with more squares, about the size of a small table. It looked like some kind of board game, the kind where you could paint grey knights and argue about whether Magnus had betrayed. Forty-four figures of mechano-magical moving men, four or eight of each type. They were indeed golems, combat golems of the highest order, ranging from not particularly large, but deadly and undetectable infiltrator-assassins, to enormous turrets and immobile turrets capable of matching the firepower of the city tower of Dantmark. The board served as a stationary portal and a very powerful spatial repository.

Within a very significant radius of a few kilometres, the owner of the board could move a figurine from that board to the real world, only in the real world it took normal size, because the board was imposed a powerful distortion of spatial coordinates, so that every single figurine became small and light, but only while they were on the board. That's why they couldn't be taken off the board by hand. Once it was lifted and carried too far away, it would be transferred back to the board. Forty-four combat units, each with a bunch of special wands and amulets built into the golem's structure, each of which was at least as strong as a very strong adept, by the standards of the System, and by the standards of the world, a master of combat magick. To be fair, the golems themselves were practically useless except for combat use - at most, they could be adapted for carrying heavy loads.

The smallest of them, only two metres and twenty centimetres tall, were those very same killer-lurkers, resembling faceless mannequins, remotely similar to Slenderman, only mechanical, with completely smooth polished surfaces, but between the individual body segments were stretched chains, on which those segments, including the head, hung. It seemed like the sort of thing that would fall apart with a single kick, and they could actually fall apart to drag themselves piece by piece through the narrowest hole, climbing out of the latrine and giving penetration to whoever was sitting on it. The largest were the siege towers, all slightly different, differently configured, with weapons and combat algorithms. Each is at least fifteen metres high and three metres in diameter. There were warriors, defence warriors, throwers of enchanted all-metal spears, mages, support mages, control mages with loads of curses, throwers of smoke bombs and explosive amulets with loads of effects. Only the attacking fighters with the two-handed blade and the defence fighters with the rostral shield and mace had eight identical representatives. The rest were four samples each, creating quite a flexible tactical picture - whether attacking, defending, assaulting, or repelling, these golems could fit every role. The algorithms in them were very advanced, no worse than their combat equipment and materials spent on them.

The board itself still serves as the basis for the control circuit, but it is not necessary. After binding on the blood, each golem will obey the commands or image-mental-commands of the one who bleeds the board or his descendant. If you add that descendant to the list of those who have the right to command. Also built into the board is the function of repairing damaged machines and recharging spent consumables, so that even destroyed and damaged golems will gradually renew themselves, some in weeks, some in years. If you smash the golem too hard, it will no longer be recognised by the board, so it will be knocked out for good. To do this, you need to really shred the fighting machine. After knocking out more than two-thirds of the figures, the board stops working, and these figures will not get inside the spatial distortion anymore. The owner will have to repair them on his own.

It's also quite a weapon for an entire dynasty. For if such an iron horde were to storm Dantmark, it would not have a chance of success, but a guarantee of it, unless one took into account the portal, from which all sorts of help would surely pour in. Or if the portal and its guards were taken out beforehand by the same assassin-hiders, their camouflage and disguise being truly on the level of a master of a specific magical school. A thing in direct contrast to the previous gift, honed into direct combat power in the here and now. If the shaman had already been deanonymised, he would surely have considered this option to knock out the teeth of those who would reach out to him. Only it wouldn't help, there would be too many hands and teeth pulled.

The third option was a Rubik's Cube, which was impossible to put together in a normal way. A lot of colours, variants of their combinations, twelve moving rows each, and also the base material was partially transparent multicoloured glass, which made the swirls of the constantly changing colour scheme of the mist inside clearly visible. It was this artefact that immediately won the heart of the shaman, because it was an ideal, incredibly powerful, extremely complex generator of interference for searching by magical methods, whether it was direct scanning, reading the information field or even ritual clairvoyance. As long as this Сube is in effect, as long as the owner and those several individuals, no more than eleven, according to the number of facets, do not move further away from it than a couple of kilometres, as long as the artefact itself does not move from its place, then it is possible to search for those protected by its facets until the old age of those who are looking for them.

The Сube erased the personalities enclosed in its facets from the energy background, from the world memory, the spiritual plane, erased from everywhere. As long as they are looking for you, they do not find you or find only rubbish deceptions. As soon as they stop looking for you, the Cube calms down and goes into the waiting mode. By the way, it is quite possible to call while it is working. After all, you are looking for spirits, and the Cube erase and hide the sought, only for those who are looking for you. This is already excellent in itself, but here the Autogoddess added a little from herself, supplemented, so to speak, the already very full functionality of the artefact. She added so much that the shaman didn't know whether to weep, laugh, or kill himself with facepalm. Probably, the right option would be something in between, combining all available options.

In addition, the Cube didn't just monitor the defences, it also memorised those who attempted to seek out the protected, be it a blood search ritual, a mass scanning enchantment sifting the ground for his hideout, a psychic trance in order to gain a prophetic vision, something altogether unimaginable. Each of those who are not just searching, but searching hard enough, will be imprinted in one of the squares of the glass mosaic. The degree of sensitivity can be adjusted. Will the Cube catch only the most powerful search impulses or any, even the lightest? The main thing to remember is that the mosaic is still limited by the number of squares and, if you get too many of them, there will be no space left. You will have to clean up, bringing a segment of the mosaic to a long rollback.

Having received the imprint of the seeker, the shaman also gets the ability to spy on him, scan his or her subtle bodies, gradually calculate the location of this person, which will allow him to select a team of spirits, create an envolt, or cast a curse specifically for this target. This would also be great, but it was not for nothing that the artifact created these excellent quality imprints, which were also dynamically updated, changing after the “photographed” target, it was not for nothing that this “photo hunt function” was so all-pervasive, using the ethereal-information search channel created by the seeker, thereby bypassing almost any protection from reciprocal interest.

Each facet, at the moment of imprinting, acquired a random transmission-resonance function, which worked like suggestion, gradually pushing the victim-seeker towards a particular thought, idea, scenario, or predilection. It is not difficult to guess what kind of suggestion was provided there - some kind of fetish, a gradually increasing tendency to voyeurism or exhibitionism, a manifesting compulsive masturbation, an increase in excitability or a decrease in the ability to concentrate, a drop in intelligence quotient.... Many variations, all of them weak at first, little by little ingrowing into the target's defences and mind, little by little getting that target to succumb to the suggestion. The shaman wanted to wash his eyes, if not his perception, then his mind, wash it with soap, because, damn, the Autogoddess was herself, and that was enough to cause cognitive dissonance in any normal person who encountered her tricks. And an abnormal one, for that matter.

The last of the four artifacts was a special chthonic quill that required no ink to write. The artifact could probably be considered even more powerful than the Cherry, but it had too many side effects for the shaman to even consider choosing and purchasing it. This Quil wrote in endless scarlet ink, wrote on any surface, and wrote the fucking truth. Or rather, it didn't. What this quill wrote touched on aspects of probability control, which in itself was a level that Stepan could only poke gently with a long stick through some senior and higher spirits or particularly powerful spells, and always within narrow and very limited limits. Yes, there was a spirit that granted luck when playing dice, almost undetectable luck, not some material help in the form of dice rolling. But only at dice, only at dice, only in inns or other common type establishments, not in someone's house, only, only, only....

The Quil, on the other hand, pushed reality to make what was written real, even if only to a certain extent. You can't just write something like ‘Today, about noon, the Duke Herbert de Dantrelle drowned in his latrine’, you just waste the ink and get a painful backlash. But if you start well in advance, months in advance, gathering all the necessary information, pushing individuals to do certain things..... And then it will be written that the workers repairing the wall in the room next to the sorting room, screwed up the repair by weakening the material and forgetting to charge it the amulet to be embedded in the wall to strengthen it. One of the court magicians will vomit an active toxic compound into the latrine after experimenting with potions. Someone will forget to renew the household enchantments on the entire floor. Someone will accidentally damage the signalling spells. A magician making a new set of protective amulets for the Duke will not put in those amulets protection from drowning, and on the orders of the Duke himself, who decided to strengthen the protection from poisons and curses. The wife of the duke's eldest son will anger him during a family quarrel, such often happens, nothing unusual, but he, with anger, will kick a heavy gnomish toilet-tron with his foot, slightly displacing it. The Duke will have a good drink of expensive island rum in company with an old friend.

And so, after dozens of pages of text, Duke Herbert will walk into the latrine, sit on the throne, and the throne will break beneath him. Household amulets will be broken and accidentally activate the sound suppression function. The signaling threads in that very spot will go thin, and the guards will not get the call. The amulets won't protect against a lack of oxygen. The drunken duke will not reach the alarm amulet he needs, he will not be able to realize in time what is going on and what to do, and that mage with specialization in domestic druidism, who cleans the sewers, has been sick for two weeks, after the magical duel and the shit in the drains is too much. In the end, yes, the duke of the free city, powerful and influential, will really drown in the toilet, in his own shit, and all because of a series of amazing coincidences, none of which alone would not have alarmed even the extremely paranoid head of security. In the hands of that very head of the security service is the instrument for which they would sell their souls, preferably the past owner of this feather. For some reason at that moment in my head there was an extremely clear image of a strange elf with the face of an infinitely fucked up man-worker under fifty, who ran after Stepan, in whose hand the feather was clenched, demanding to give it back, or it would be worse. The shaman was running, and his face was like that running girl from the memes. He did not immediately manage to get this scene out of his head, returning to the problem of choice.

So, the Quik is cool as hell. Even he has a lot of opportunities to use it to his advantage, literally doing absolutely any kind of agent work without leaving his dungeon, just ordering paper. Alas, there was a price to pay for such brazen manipulation of reality. And the payment was, to put it mildly, not what one would like to pay. The pressure on his brain, which was growing with each written word and very reluctantly falling to zero during the rollback time, he could endure. He's a shaman. He's got a lot of pressure on his brain as it is. Just not usually by something this crazy. He would also overcome part of the addictive desire to use the Quill again and again; it was not that dangerous, if the help was to be believed, with his Spirit, he could quite easily crush it with willpower. But the fact that every thousand words took a drop of blood from his body was a problem, and a very dangerous one.

Because this Quil takes blood forever. You will always have one less drop of blood than you should have. That drop of blood won't regenerate. No blood-boosting potions or healing will help, even if you pour blood into yourself, little by little, it will become scarce again, exactly the number of drops less than the number of drops you have written with the Quil. You can play on the fact that you start pumping alchemical blood substitutes into your veins, like the stuff they pour into biomagical homunculi, but you can't spend that kind of non-blood for writing. And it's only necessary to write to the point where there is no blood left in the body at all, as the Quil at once, by a leap, will increase its influence on you hundreds of times, and here even a shaman of his rank, even a stronger shaman, will begin to lose his marble, because just to put the Quil aside will not help, as will not help and the destruction of the Quil. Oh yes, one more thing! If you try to make someone else write, to whom the Quil is not attached, then the effect of their inscriptions will be, but along with it the victim will go crazy, if not instantly, then for a couple of minutes, even a couple of minutes will last only the owner of a strong will and a developed aura. And the reference vowed that Stepan would not want to read what they would write in madness, nor would he want what they wrote to come true.

"Well, fuck it!" Stepan squeaked calmly and deliberately, and discarded this option even faster than he managed to comprehend the images the System was producing. "Give me my hypercube, not this fucking shit."

* * *

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Переводчики: Camrad_RIP