Готовый перевод Быть Гладу и Хладу / There will be Hunger and Cold: 7. Расширяя стены своего сознания, нужно внимательно следить за тем, чтобы эти стены не оказались несущими

7. When expanding the walls of your consciousness, you need to ensure that these walls do not become load-bearing carefully.

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The memory of a Twin, like talent, is undoubtedly useful and can save lives more than once, protecting you from a lot of trouble in the vastness of the Broken, but at the same time, the information obtained from such memory cannot be considered absolutely reliable. Memory only gives you the knowledge possessed by the average inhabitant of a particular part of the Ecumene, so it should be treated with considerable caution and even skepticism. After all, when it comes to a single or even two divisions, what can an ordinary, untalented city dweller, peasant, vagrant, or even a hired blade know about life? Certainly less than those who consider themselves masters of life! So, the blissfully restless Iliy Khvat did not know quite a few important and even necessary things, and in some cases, he was either mistaken or, even worse, did not know everything.

For example, the “gate birds,” which Ilya the Diver mentally christened canaries. From his twin's memory, he knows about the phenomenon of using a unique species of non-creatures to control the flow of incoming people. Poor Ilya had a good friend whose brother worked as a gate guard—it was from him that the Twin learned that female non-canaries identify hidden non-humans, using loudness to indicate strength and melody to indicate the type of enemy trying to hide. However, this knowledge, though true, was categorically incomplete, for Ilya did not know and could not have known that the birds' trills not only detected all kinds of creatures, but also infuriated them.

Not strong enough to cause even the most ordinary diver with a chthonic or cannibalistic class, such as the Possessed, to lose control and rush to eat the canaries. But it is quite noticeable, causing an obvious reaction and nervousness that attentive guards may well notice. And the birds? What would happen to the birds if their small cages were hidden inside a large, iron-and-stone cage, carefully constructed and built specifically to protect the living radars? They sang constantly, softly, almost inaudibly, but Wendigo's inner ear creaked from this trill, and the creature inside grumbled discontentedly and demanded that everyone be killed, eaten, and shat out. To be honest, the huge crowd of people infuriated the creature inside even more than the canaries, but Ilya had already gotten used to its reaction to people.

The guards at the entrance didn't even check him. The mustachioed, stocky, broad-shouldered, but not fat commander of the entire patrol just glanced at him lazily and yawned heartily. It was a lucky coincidence. Ilya arrived on one of the fair days, on the third of the ninth of winter. Yes, yes, the cold he experienced at birth was late autumn for Ridge. Here, as in the agglomerations of Siberia, they heard and even saw the sun in summer, and the local varieties of grain and other cereals managed to produce a bountiful harvest in those couple of months, absorbing the magic of natural currents that had become softer and warmer.

Returning to the winter fair, it was not considered the most lavish, incomparable to the early autumn fair, when the harvest was gathered, but it was still held, mainly by craftsmen and fur traders. And even more so, this fair was extremely popular with innkeepers and inn owners, as it was held just before the onset of the snowy nines. During this time, the probability of another super blizzard, like the one that Ilya and his pursuers encountered, was at its highest. Hunters, craftsmen, herb growers, and, of course, merchants who came to sell their wares were forced to stay within the city walls and pay for lodging. If it weren't for the city governor's decree prohibiting price gouging during blizzards, the joy would have been complete.

However, the concessions and liberties did not only concern the rules of lodging and feeding; there were many nuances, including passage through the city gates. For example, during those days, the tax for entering the city was levied only on merchants with carts, while pedestrians and merchants with their bags passed through free of charge if they could carry their goods or simply their cargo by hand. This resulted in some rather amusing situations, such as entrepreneurs arriving at the gates in rented carts, then hoisting huge bags onto their backs and dragging them inside the city walls. Not for long, just long enough to enter, and then immediately hire a cab driver, trying to straighten their backs, which had suffered from the overload, and find their spine in their trousers. The guards only watched them with mocking and slightly condescending glances, but did not interfere too actively.

However, from those who literally put on a portable shop, a natural box with walls and only a hole for their feet, they took a small bribe, yes. Of course, no one prevented you from not paying this bribe, but then you would be interrogated and searched by hand, without relying on the mustachioed commander's amulets and the trills of birds. And according to the same fair rules, such a merchant must be able to stand on his feet and not drop his goods. Everything that was dropped was given to the glorious city of Upperstone in the person of its valiant gate guards as an exclusively voluntary donation. No one tripped him up or pushed him in the back, but if such a smart guy's back couldn't withstand the strain, he wouldn't be able to complain, and he would be legally robbed.

Ilya carried a fairly spacious bag, but it wasn't overloaded, and he looked like either a traveller or a tired wandering mercenary, or rather a bandit, only a decent one who hadn't yet been put on the wanted list. He expected to be questioned and tried to be extorted for some kind of bribe, but no, everything went smoothly, and no one bothered him. Everything was going so well that he involuntarily began to expect trouble, but no matter how much Ilya glanced around, no one was going to mess with him. Even the pickpockets, who were clearly working in such a crowd, seeing the sober and sullen gaze of his icy blue eyes, as well as his hand clenched on his belt pouch, while the other hand gripped the hilt of a combat dagger, decided not to mess with this dangerous type.

This time, Ilya did not try to play the role of a peaceful craftsman, but he did not create an overly tough image either. He was a moderately poor armed man – a mercenary, a bandit, a hunter, a worker, or anyone else, depending on the situation and how he presented himself in specific circumstances. Of course, it was a slightly greater risk than he would have liked, but starting the story again with a craftsman-carver seemed even more risky to him. No, he could do more than just carving; he was skilled in many medieval professions. He knew how to weave baskets, use a potter's wheel, and had a basic knowledge of weaving, which he had learned on Earth thanks to simulators.

From Gemini's memory, he inherited some decent shopkeeper skills and a rough understanding of how goods are delivered from one corner of the city to another. Before falling into the clutches of the non-bandits, Iliya was already an assistant shopkeeper with the prospect of marrying the not-so-pretty daughter of the shop owner and a distant relative of Iliya himself. Accordingly, he would also inherit the shop, yes. But while he was young and early, he worked hard as a courier, which was not only a job for a vagrant, but also a job for a man, suitable for an adult and moderately respected individual, where you needed a silver tongue and the ability to clearly explain to the tough guys from the neighbouring district why the hell you had come to their tough neighbourhood.

Then, however, the shop owner was seriously robbed, tried to borrow money and resume work at the shop, but was unable to pay off the accumulated interest and was forced to flee to a neighbouring town with his assistant and daughter, along with the rest of the migrants. The new mayor swept with a new broom, and so all those who were not with him became sad. The fact that the distant uncle of the Twin was guilty only of paying protection money to the wrong district supervisor did not change anything at all. In general, Ilya, who had taken over someone else's life, turned out to be quite savvy in the methods of earning money typical of the local part of Broken.

But what's the point of pretending to be a potter without a potter's wheel, a shopkeeper without a shop, or a weaver without any fabric? It's easier to pass yourself off as someone else, hang around town for a couple of days, and then quietly slip away. The walls here are not particularly well guarded, so he could slip through if everything went well. It is always easier to escape than to get in, because no one really tries to block such loopholes completely — there is smuggling, all sorts of other illegal activities, and the possibility of needing to use the means of escape yourself. So Ilya wasn't worried; he just looked around carefully and moved slowly along the guest quarters of the glorious city of Upperstone. It wasn't that he was thrilled with what he saw, but rather that he was even more upset.

There was hardly any pure white snow left here; it had long since turned into mud and slush, even on the roofs, because in such cold weather, every stove was lit. They did not burn wood, which was not particularly abundant in the Ridge, but coal, which produced a lot of smoke. A black column rose above the blacksmiths' settlement, and the fire was so intense that from a distance it could be mistaken for a fire. This was because a new and large order had come in to rearm the guard and the city's strike force, so new armour and blades were being forged continuously. And to forge a single pitiful sword, you need to burn a great deal of coal. People grumble, of course, that there is nothing to breathe, but try to argue with the blacksmiths. They and the masons were the two largest workshops in the city, the foundation of the economy. Along with coal mining and building stone, yes.

Ilya learned this interesting information in the first relatively decent tavern where he stopped for a bite to eat. He ordered a double portion of something resembling potatoes fried in oil with cracklings and onions, as well as a jug of strong wine. And it turned out to be even easier to strike up a conversation with someone who had come in for a bite to eat, especially if the wine was shared between two people. He tried to avoid the local drunkards, the kind who know all the rumours and eagerly report them to anyone who will listen. Then they talk about those who questioned them in order to earn another jug. In fact, Ilya sometimes wanted to desecrate the graves of the writers who had invented and popularised this cliché. That's why he didn't bother with drunken individuals of increased moral flexibility, striking up a conversation with a decently dressed man with a knife on his belt and high-quality quilted armour, who was also looking for someone to talk to.

He found him in Ilya, and very quickly, the conversation about the weather turned to the city, and the earthling began to memorize everything that interested him. And there was no sedition or anything suspicious, just city rumours about who pays better, where to find work, who cheats on payments, and so on. Like, someone who lives by the sword will better understand someone like himself. Ilya was not surprised when his interest was immediately dampened by the fact that his conversation partner's group was involved in protecting the market and the merchants of one of the wings of that market. And, my dear, they don't need new people, sorry, you're Wendigo hiding under the guise of a mercenary, look for work somewhere else. But when it became clear that the newcomer wasn't claiming such a lucrative position, everything went smoothly.

Ilya was recommended a couple of inns that rented beds cheaply, but without the risk of waking up in the morning with a second smile, robbed and fucked. Although judging by the careful choice of words, the guarantee was only for the second smile, and even then, not complete. He learned about the taverns where it was safe to go and those where it was not, about a couple of groups that were recruiting people for fun but not too reckless, yet dangerous, activities. In the end, when Ilya, taking advantage of his twin's knowledge, bought another jug in gratitude for the stories, the man even allowed him to refer to him in his recommendations.

The conversation with my ‘colleague’ turned out to be somewhat more useful than expected, which is not bad. Of course, the information obtained needs to be verified, and relying on it completely and without doubt could lead to very big disappointments, which may be the last ones.

But this conversation was not superfluous, especially for the person he was pretending to be, so Ilya seriously intended to look for a job, just so that random witnesses would remember him exactly as he wanted to be remembered. He did this more out of a desire to do everything as correctly and properly as possible, just as he had been taught. Because statistically, it was much more likely that people would notice and take an interest in a strange traveller who simply came to the tavern, spent two days in his room, and then mysteriously disappeared. Or simply vanished into thin air. Like, why did he come then? And in the case of the chosen diver, there are no oddities; everything fits into the usual patterns and therefore does not arouse interest.

In the pseudo-medieval world of Broken, historians will beat you up for trying to use the word ‘medieval’ without the prefix ‘pseudo,’ and they will do so in droves, because there were too many differences from the life of an ordinary earthling. But there were also commonalities, such as travel and movement between cities. Here, people don't come to the city just to relax and sit in a café; getting from one settlement to another easily becomes an adventure, full of mortal danger and very considerable investment. People don't just travel between cities for no reason; there has to be a reason, and that reason has to be given to those who might notice its absence. Ilya gave it, conscientiously going to the proposed inn and even renting a room there for a couple of days until he found a job. The gloomy and not particularly talkative man who ran the entire establishment just nodded to his assistant, who appeared to be his son, to help the guest check in.

At night, Ilya propped the door open with a chair and set up a primitive sound trap near the window. It was somewhat out of character for a simple and straightforward fortune seeker, but he had no other choice. Under normal circumstances, he would have easily woken up at the slightest sound, but today was his first day in Verkhnekamenny. And, naturally, the thread leading to the lacuna brought him to the right address, ending at the city walls. He had no specific talents, mainly from the Sage's arsenal, so the key story would reveal itself to him in a dream. Officially, it is believed that the images that come in dreams do not affect sensitivity, but all sorts of things have been said, even if the sources were not particularly reliable. What if he missed the moment, missed a second or two, and died a stupid death? He didn't want to check, so Ilya didn't bother to check.

No, no one tried to break into his room at night, unless you count the surprisingly vivid and colourful dream, literally a series of episodes merging into a perfectly decent film. The film, as is customary in Broken, is exclusively horror, but it seems as if it were waiting for something else. The images merged into chains of images of dark tunnels and twisted turns, a solid labyrinth of passages, bridges, and narrow passages, through which a warm and disgustingly musty wind blows. As if there, in the depths of those tunnels, at the very bottom of the underground labyrinth, something was breathing, something huge and evil, extremely, extremely evil.

The images shift slightly. The viewpoint rises, and now Гззукіещту is visible in all its smoke-filled, slush-covered glory. People live here, walking along the dirty, cold slush of the pavement, stomping their feet, unaware that they are on the border with something else. There were no extensive catacombs in the city, despite the predominantly stone foundations under many of the houses. There were a few tunnels, secret passages, or separate complexes under individual buildings or small settlements. Most of the mines and tunnels that could have formed the basis of true catacombs are located some distance from the city, in separate mining settlements or near quarries.

But what met his gaze was not a mine or catacombs; it was simply there, as if nearby, almost here, but behind an insurmountable wall. And only in a couple of places did this wall become so thin that it almost bent under its weight. One inconspicuous alley, where the bodies of those unlucky enough to encounter dangerous people at night are often found in the morning, became darker and darker with each passing week, seeming more and more abandoned. And today, if you wait until sunset, when the last rays of the Sun disappear, and walk forward to the very end of the alley, you can see that an old, rotten door has appeared in place of the wall. The door leads nowhere; behind it is only a stone wall, but the stone is different, not dark grey, but with a strange scarlet tinge. There, in the cracks of this stone, you need to place coins taken from the eyes of the hanged murderer on the second night after his hanging, or perform a specific ritual to open the passageway.

Ilya knew quite a few rituals, so the images merely suggested which ones would be suitable. They also suggested a couple more entrances to the underground labyrinth and how to open them. What these images did not suggest was the appearance of the creatures waiting there in the dark tunnels, as well as the nature of the axial creature and the axis itself. But he, who woke up in the morning feeling slightly broken, even despite the endurance of his body, did not need these explanations. The ‘corpse’ keys in the form of coins from the eyes of the hanged man, candles with wicks made of rope, on which the hanged man was hoisted, and other attributes related to a single theme, revealed themselves.

The corpse eaters sit there, and the basis for this is a gnawed-out slaughterhouse or corpse pit, in which either there was no sanctity of any of the Dead, or it was all devoured. And, judging by the sensations coming from the depths of the tunnels, the second option is correct. Yawning widely, Ilya recalls with slight irritation everything he knows about such keys and lacunae in general. The axial creature is not always one step stronger than the axis of the lacuna itself, but it can be, as in this case. The Gift received on the first step, which gives the key and beacon to the lacuna, could not lead Ilya to the ‘dungeon’, one step above the most gifted. But, by all the Dead, this place is very close to the second level, if he understands correctly. And, alas, he understands everything very, very correctly, and there are no two interpretations here; there cannot be.

The first-level lacuna is one step away from the second level, an axial creature of guaranteed second rank, just fucking perfect! Corpse eaters in a ‘labyrinth’ type location, with an emphasis on flesh and rotten blood. Based on the creatures' abilities, we can also expect curses, diseases, and constant manoeuvring by small groups of active scum of various kinds. Frankly speaking, they are not the most dangerous enemy. Only the lazy ones don't fight corpse eaters. They are ideal for terrorising distant villages and farms, for which a trio of Ghouls or Nahtserers can become a nightmare that cannot be overcome by the forces of the ungifted. A team of at least three gifted individuals, supported by fifty normal, well-trained fighters, is capable of defeating almost any reasonable number of lovers of dead meat.

The problem is that these creatures are not particularly eager to engage in combat, so they must be tracked down, requiring the expenditure of resources to hire trackers and hunters. Additionally, there is the issue of lacunae, those stone labyrinths with numerous passages or even simple tunnels, which transform the battlefield into a continuous nightmare for those who descend into them. Without a leader with the class of a Spellmancer or even a slightly non-classical Dreamer, Sage, or Hunter, trained to support communication and coordination between fighters in the same group, there is no point in going there. The picture of complete and utter destruction threatening the city is completed, of course, by the axial creature and the axis itself — a corpse pit, probably saturated with the bodies of priests of someone from the dead. Even if it were the Guide of the Lost, the setting is quite appropriate, as if the entire labyrinth were once a temple complex.

The bodies that formed the creature, saturated with devoured divine mercy, will play a cruel joke on the priests who ventured there, yes. Especially if you add to the bodies of humans the incarnated servant entity, which also ended up at the bottom of the pit. Corpse eaters were a very amusing case in this regard. Some of the most primitive and insignificant creatures all possessed the ability to eat even what other creatures or gifted ones were unable to touch and digest normally. Therefore, it would not be so incredible to find among a bunch of simple and stupid creatures a ghoul with a truncated, crippled, and completely malfunctioning ability that other creatures would not necessarily be able to replicate.

An axial creature resembling a devoured corpse pit?

Going there without your two commander and another two specializing in cleansing curses, poison, and disease, and on top of that, being able to apply buffs, let's be honest, is not worth trying. The losses and risks will not justify the possible trophies, even in a rough estimate. Funnily enough, his build will feel quite comfortable in this dump, being vulnerable or completely invulnerable to a large part of what can be thrown at him in the lacuna. If he were just another enthusiast with adventurous fantasies “based on” in his head, he could try stepping into the void and wandering around its edges, knocking out lone creatures.

Labyrinths are no problem with good spatial imagination. He knows the rituals for getting out and will choose the right one for himself, because he knows the key to the entrance, and that's already three-quarters of the work of finding the exit. Creatures are not particularly dangerous for a Wendigo accustomed to close combat. He does not care about corpse poison, disease, or induced nausea and disgust. Even narrow passages and confinement are not fatal for him, because he is also, if you think about it, a distant relative of such creatures, only a predator, not a scavenger. It is clear that he did not seriously consider a personal visit to a piece of enchanted and looped space, but simply assessed his chances. Not too great, but greater than, for example, those of a pure caster or the Executioner.

Again, the very act of entering the previously sealed lacuna will cause it to partially open, which, of course, will not be noticed at first, but over time will seriously harm the city and its inhabitants. It will start to leak, and some kind of deadly disease may escape from such a lacuna. It's not that he didn't give a shit about all the natives, but on Earth, it was considered bad form to unleash all kinds of cataclysms on the locals who hadn't done anything to you yet. It was considered bad manners, somewhere between “farting loudly at the table” and “tearing off the legs of ants.” It was okay to save your skin, but just like that, out of curiosity alone... what the hell for? And without the door ajar, this abscess would fester for at least another five years, five years until the first signs of the coming, expressed in nightmares, visions, and other attempts by the Mechanism to hint to the locals about the lacuna.

Before the first breakthroughs of creatures or space “trunks” hunting for local prey, dragging late passers-by into the depths of the labyrinth, there were still seven years, maybe even more. Let them figure it out themselves, because in Broken, such outbreaks are regular, including under cities. Sometimes cities die out or are abandoned because of this, and sometimes they flourish if the lacuna is successfully opened and something particularly valuable but non-transportable is extracted from it. Or cities turn into permanent testing grounds for extracting essence and rare reagents from deliberately maintained lacunae. But the latter is rare; for such matters, it is easier to use wide-open sinkholes than sealed “dageonsi.”

The earthling spent the second day of his stay in Upperstone trying to find a job, albeit without much enthusiasm. Oddly enough, there were a couple of offers, but one smelled of outright crime, and the other smelled even worse of an equally outright scam. Because the tactic of “first take care of the person who is getting in our way, and then we'll pay you, don't worry, we won't hurt you, every dog here knows that we're honest” can be nothing other than an outright scam. The second offer might have interested Ilya if it weren't for the fact that they paid pennies, and you had to pay for all your meals except breakfast. Usually, in hired labor, you choose either one or the other: either deal with your own problems, clothe yourself, and feed yourself, but get paid more, or get paid less, but have everything included.

They weren't rushing to offer anything more interesting to the man who had recently arrived in town, and he wasn't particularly eager to get involved. The city atmosphere and the crowd of people around him were gradually blurring his trail, his energetic projection. That was why he was here, and not for anything else. So now sit down, Gozhik, that's the name he gave himself in the city, not wanting to leave even the slightest clue, eat some pretty good meat broth, and watch the trio of card sharps, very skillfully fleecing some poor guy from the mining workshop for his money. The bastards are good at their job; you wouldn't even notice them unless you knew where to look. They regularly let their victim win small amounts, constantly losing, simply playing against each other, only occasionally picking a few leaves out of their victim's pockets.

Actually, Ilya himself was quite good at cheating at cards, dice, or chips, but he certainly wasn't going to make a living out of it. Even if the local criminal underworld didn't ask him to pay for “working without a license,” there was still the question of whether card sharps were too often killed or beaten up. A normal diver uses this method of earning money strictly when he desperately needs money and is willing to ignore the accompanying problems, but at the same time, he has no way of obtaining money through robbery alone. In other cases, with rare exceptions characteristic of certain builds, it is easier not to get involved in cheating in gambling, as it will be easier on the nerves.

"Are you looking for a job?" The man who sat down next to him was about the same age as Ilya, and looked exactly like him, dressing and moving in exactly the same way as his twin before Ilya appeared in Broken. “I need to go to a certain place. Everything seems to be fine there, yeah. But I need someone to stand by me with a weapon. It's a matter of safety, you understand.”

For a while, the earthling thinks about just sending the problematic footage, because even with a single FaFo unit, it's quite possible to get caught up in some local trouble. And the old man doesn't inspire confidence; there could well be a newcomer to the city waiting at the meeting place, wearing a collar or carrying a set of surgical instruments. The main fuel for the work of a considerable number of Alchemists was, is, and will be the entrails of innocently murdered people and, surprise, surprise, all kinds of criminals and other brothers sentenced to death, not enough to distribute to all comers, not enough for those who want it. On the other hand, the man did not seem to approach him intentionally; Ilya was simply the only man in the bar who was not busy drinking or talking, who was looking for work, armed, and with a grim face.

And the task they described to him didn't seem like a setup, because they weren't going to talk in some back alley in the slums, but in a very respectable tavern. The man who introduced himself as Yorick, which made Ilya, who had read the classics of English literature, barely suppress a smile, had a somewhat wayward brother who had done something serious to an important person and was now in hiding. He tearfully begged his older brother to go and talk on his behalf, saying that he had repented and was ready to work it off, but without any physical harm. And since the mistake was not really that big, and its price, as the wayward brother hoped, was not worth any deaths, he considered the chances of an amicable resolution of the conflict to be very high.

But the man didn't want to go to that tavern alone, so he needed someone to accompany him for appearances' sake. His colleagues could have been that someone, but Yorick was a full brother of Ilya, a shopkeeper, only a full-fledged one, not an assistant. Well, his shop was smaller, and his only personal assistants were his wife, daughter, and young nephew. And there was no point in asking his colleagues, they would send him to the senior member of the market wing. They would send him, and the senior would help in such cases, but the trouble was that Ilya's brother had messed up with that very senior. Little stories about other people's big problems did not distract Ilya from finishing his lunch-dinner. And when he was done, he calmly and businesslike expressed his opinion:

"Add another half of what was said, and no leaves, only petals." Seeing the desire to bargain and play the victim in front of others, he doesn't even let them start, interrupting their complaints before they begin. "If you don't like it, find someone else. I'm new here, I need the money badly, so I'll agree to less, but the others won't double it, they'll immediately ask for three times what you're offering. And I'll be fine if you decide quickly. Less? For less, it's easier for me to go to the workshops; they pay about the same, only without the extra risk."

Sighing and wringing his slightly calloused fingers, Yorick finally made up his mind and became a little poorer than he had been before. Ilya took half of the payment up front. Apparently, the employer himself understood that the price was really low, but his inner bargainer was tormented by the fact that he could try to hire a worn-out thug even cheaper. Well, that's how Ilya saw it, sometimes regretting that he hadn't chosen the Dreamwalker class and built a classic a-la Mesmerikl build. Now he would be lying on a bed under the protection of a couple of beautiful aborigines who adored their master, instead of all this. It was as if, instead of a pornographic story, he had decided to try his luck by becoming part of a typical dark fantasy plot.

But, okay, jokes aside, it's better to get down to business.

The tavern turned out to be quite decent, but not overly pretentious, and the two who entered were immediately shown into a separate room. There, in that room, sat a very corpulent and colourful man with Mongoloid features and a strange hairstyle in the form of an almost shaved head, leaving only a narrow strip in the centre, which turned into a ponytail at the back of his head. Next to him sat two more thugs with faces that would have scored negatively on the ‘Intelligence’ characteristic, if such a thing existed in the Broken Mechanism at all. A pretty girl stood quietly in the corner with a glass bottle of something alcoholic blended in with her surroundings like a piece of furniture.

"Well, you showed up, so you came yourself." The Mongolian's speech was strange, slightly slurred, and it wasn't the accent, but rather the individual characteristics of his throat. "And not just one. You, dear, go for a walk, have a beer, and we'll talk here. I didn't invite you."

Ilya just silently looked at the slightly pale merchant, but Yorick shook his head imploringly, as if to say, don't leave me here. Apparently, he had been expecting someone else entirely at the negotiations, someone easier to talk to, rather than this colourful character. Assessing the prospects of actually having to fight, Ilya decided not to give up without a fight. It wasn't that he was so proud; he just didn't see any reason to be a coward when a typical individual, the role he was playing, would not give in without even symbolic pressure.

"I'd better stand in the corner like your girl." Nodding towards the girl, who didn't even glance in his direction, Ilya, without waiting for an invitation or permission, stood in the opposite corner, folding his arms across his stomach, but not directly touching his weapon sheath. "I'll be quiet, I won't bother anyone."

The Mongol's gaze was unpleasant, piercing to the bone, but he said nothing more, only grunted suggestively, then nodded graciously and allowed him to stand in the corner. It seemed like he had insulted him, put him in his place, and even acknowledged a certain boldness, the right to be here and now. Yorik was not invited to the table. There was not even a chair for him, so the man sweated and stood, stood and sweated, listening to the bandit's quite polite and businesslike statement. Without unnecessary words or details, he clearly and concisely explained that Yozhik, Yorik's brother, had already gotten on the nerves of important people. They forgave him the first time, let him off the hook the second time, but if this idiot didn't fix things now, the whole family would have to pay, so that he wouldn't be tempted to do it again.

Judging by the caveats, either counterfeit expensive alcohol is involved, or narcotic herbs, the sale of which, although not entirely criminalised, is traditionally controlled by the watchmen. Here, the watchmen are local bosses who got their start in gambling dens, and the word itself refers to someone who makes sure the game is fair, so that no one gets ripped off and no one wins by accident. It wasn't the most pleasant conversation, but the sweating and mumbling merchant still managed to convince everyone that his brother would pay. And that next time he wouldn't ask for him. The Mongol, it seems, did not doubt that the next time would happen, and, strangely enough, he simply gave someone who was not involved in other people's mistakes a chance to get out of trouble.

This is a very rare situation for this type of crowd, but who knows, maybe this guy is just in a good mood, or maybe his girlfriend gave him an unforgettable night. Or maybe he's just praying to the One Who Takes into the Bag, and it seems like it's considered a virtue not to punish those who haven't messed up themselves, if they've renounced the one who messed up according to all the rules. However, the theurgical mystery of renunciation in the doctrine of this Dead One is such that punishing everyone at once and together is often many times more humane.

In general, they agreed. It didn't even come to the need to intervene, and they didn't even ask the earthling to stay and talk, letting him go silently. Yorick, breathing a huge sigh of relief, counted out the rest of the sum without looking and added a petal on top, which was quite surprising, because shopkeepers are not usually generous. Well, or maybe he was on edge and, after the adrenaline rush, he simply miscounted his money. Until the very end, Ilya waited for some kind of stupid turn of events, but to his considerable surprise, FaFo, in his previous dive, seemed to have reached the limit of what he could do to annoy Ilya, and the latter managed to remain uneventful.

He didn't breathe out easily, but his buttocks relaxed a little, just a little bit.

To be honest, he was almost certain that this minor incident involving a one-time side job in the style of “showing his face” would come back to haunt him. He understood that the probability was low, but during his brief career as a diver, he had seen these unlikely outcomes so many times that he involuntarily projected and extrapolated. He understood that this opinion was mistaken, but he couldn't help himself, and, by and large, he didn't want to. The truth, carved in blood a hundred times over, that it is better to be a living paranoid than a dead reckless skeptic, had long since become not just a cliché for the earthlings in Broken, but literally an action guide.

In general, Ilya was involuntarily surprised that the story with the Mongol and the two degenerate brothers ended in nothing, and he spent the entire third day of his stay in the city in complete idleness, as befits a mercenary after completing a contract, even if it was not the most valuable one. He drank a little, chatted a little with Mark and a couple of his friends, who, in their drunken stupor, were clearly trying to test the newcomer for weaknesses of character. Scilfully left before the alcohol led to a fight or even a knife fight, the diver, pretending to be slightly drunk, disappeared into his room. He had to pretend to be so drunk that he didn't even notice the hints from the rather promiscuous, but still somewhat pretty girls, of not too heavy behavior.

The girls seemed to be seriously disappointed because the bonus had passed them by, and it did not even require any work. Such a drunk individual might not even be able to find his own dick in his pants, let alone use it for its intended purpose. Entering the room and propping the door behind him, he stopped pretending to be drunk and allowed himself to fall into a deep sleep. No, he wasn't tired; he was just a little annoyed by the need to keep up the act, and he didn't need sleep, but if there was an opportunity to sleep, it was better to take advantage of it. Another piece of wisdom written in blood by the divers of Earth, for the alien power of the Mechanism, coming into your soul, first takes away the need to sleep.

It is very easy to give up sleep, even at the first stage, or at worst at the second stage, and then the need for food and drink can be eliminated by the third stage. To give up satisfying natural needs, desires, aspirations, to give up everything, to become only a function, the embodiment of Fate, which has taken over the body of someone who has given the Mechanism too much power over themselves. Hello, desynchronization, hello, madness, what a strange realization when you wake up in the real world and realize that you are no longer quite yourself. Although, it's still hard to understand which of the worlds is more real than the other.

The earthling never saw the Mongol or the criminal punks; no one broke into his house at night with obscure or even vulgar intentions, but adventure found him in a slightly different way. It found him in his sleep, so to speak, and it was by no means a recurring vision, the key to the lacuna hidden beneath Upperstone. In his dream, he saw a fairly large settlement, even larger than Tooth, already quite a small town. Ironically, it was a mining town because most of its buildings were built around several exhausted mines, and new tunnels had long since been dug in the distance. In principle, this was not surprising because there were simply tons of quarries and coal deposits on the Ridge, so it was even stranger that Tooth did not have similar sources of income.

However, the village left behind with the dead miller still lived off the mill and the herbs grown there. Night Miller and prayers did not particularly help with mining, so the practical peasants did what they knew best. Moreover, the area around the village seemed to lack direct access to coal deposits on the surface, and deep mines cannot be managed without talented stone mages, who replace mining equipment in Broken. Sometimes they literally replace it, yes.

The settlement seen in the dream resembles three separate outposts/hamlets/villages that have gradually merged into a single settlement. The buildings are not very dense. There is a lot of space inside, but the defenses are good; every house is made of stone and has fences, and all three “centers” are surrounded by a separate wall, also made of stone. The settlement does not look prosperous, but it is quite wealthy, and certainly not poor. The images of the village shift a little closer to its farthest part, almost to the outskirts. There is a rather abandoned barn and a partially dismantled hut belonging to one of the deceased peasants. It seems that they died as a whole family, which is why the house was simply dismantled instead of being occupied by someone else.

However, the barn attracts much more attention because there, in that barn, a short, male figure is kneeling and meditatively casting spells. Ritual lines are drawn in blood, and next to him lies the corpse of some vagrant convict, judging by the mark on his forehead and the missing fingers on his hand. His blood and the life that left him with his last breath saturate the ritual pattern, which glows crimson from the power invested in the lines. The characteristic features of the use of magic are visible, not even blood, but pure abyss, which literally screams about the presence of the Occultist class in this individual. A very good class, I must say, builds for it are only slightly less popular than for the Warlock. Impact magic, rituals, curses, and summons form a fairly wide arsenal of builds that can be flexibly customized with talents.

Next to the corpse lie wooden tablets carved with symbols of a language that does not exist on Earth, but does not belong to the Broken One either. The letters are somewhat similar to Old Slavonic, but they do not form any familiar words, which is not surprising. Still, in addition to the words, the tablets are carved with a fiery firebird spreading its wings. Ilya recognizes this emblem, unlike the language, because he has studied those worlds quite thoroughly, the divers from which are most often thrown to the earthlings by their neighbors.

To be honest, he would have preferred to see a schematic “Da Vinci man” on these plaques, acknowledging that he was not very intelligent, since he had revealed himself with a fan-shaped ritual marker, but still a fellow diver. It wouldn't be so bad to see a clock mechanism at the top of the tower. After all, with the Albi-Avignon Pact, Earthlings have normal relations on average, although not without occasional conflicts. A heavy chainmail glove clenched into a fist would also be appropriate, as it is the emblem of the planet Iron, named by analogy with Earth. Its inhabitants, although problematic, are fairly straightforward and try to honor agreements; they will not attack without reason, and even then, they need a reason that is at least somewhat substantial.

On the other hand, it's good that at least it's not a moon cut crosswise, otherwise his honor as a diver would not allow him to fail to nail the shit that came out of Sarsakh-Nere, otherwise known as the Pure World or the World of the Pure. These guys have had a blood feud with the earthlings since the very beginning, because the evil earthlings irrevocably destroyed the expedition of the ruling prince of the main dynasty of a world stuck in the Middle Ages, and they did so strictly for the sake of it, painfully, humiliatingly, and demonstratively. There was no point in having fun with Earth girls and boys, to be very persistent in their courtship. After reciprocal courtship from the still-existing community, which also captured the heart of the destroyed community and transferred it to its own, greatly strengthened, in the expanses of the Pure, they declared anathema on Earth, a holy war, and complete death to the infidels. More often, however, it was the Sarshaks who died, whom the earthlings had long since prevented from settling anywhere where there were, well, earthlings.

The Firebird was the emblem of Boretsaria, the personal heir to two of the foreign Seven who managed to kill the other five pioneers and build an empire that took over almost their entire planet and carved out a couple of continents the size of Australia because they refused to bow their heads. In fact, this was a very common situation in the places where the Mechanism arrived. Much more common than the emergence of several separate states. Especially when it comes to “spherical vacuums in the Middle Ages,” where, after the victory of one of the Seven over the rest, there are simply no opponents left. Often, these very first ones do not even reach higher than three, killing each other as soon as the third level allows them to sense the approximate location of their colleagues.

Most often, it all boiled down to one victorious faction, or two or three at most, but sometimes there were cases where the local Seven killed each other off or the victor did not want to get involved in state affairs. Then, instead of peace, there was clan anarchy and fragmentation, where even the essence was not extracted, because no one could accumulate enough of it to achieve anything serious by earthly standards. They were more interested in climbing the ladder to become superhuman and dominate everyone around them, but due to a lack of knowledge and the regular deaths of the bearers of the latest “great secrets,” even third levels were rare, and fourth levels were few and far between.

However, there are rules there, and they manifest themselves slightly differently in different worlds, and it is difficult to gather reliable information from eyewitnesses. Meanwhile, gathering that information through the Forum, paying for the opportunity to briefly enter others' domains on that Forum, is also very expensive. You also need to know the exact code identifier of the players' planet, either by receiving a guest invitation or by trying to use a random transition in the style of the unforgettable “I'll get lucky” from the equally unforgettable Google.

Returning to Boretsaria, it is a typical feudal clan-based society, where the Mechanism arrived more than five hundred years ago, which is why the world has not developed much. Everything is ruled by royal blood, the heirs of the victorious Two, who are currently believed in as gods, and their descendants are considered their representatives on earth. Even their world, originally called a lexeme comparable to the earthly word “firmament,” was renamed Boretsaria — the kingdom of the Two. Unlike the pure ones, they did not deliberately wage war against the earthlings, but if there was a chance to capture, kill, rob, or simply deceive, they would definitely take advantage of it. At the same time, any attempt to respond in kind is perceived as appalling treachery and insolence by the dishonorable rabble.

Like, we came here innocently and nobly to kill and rob these black-footed degenerates, but they were treacherously and inhumanely ready for this, killed the expeditionary forces, and even robbed us ourselves. Dishonest, dirty, lying animals, satanic Luciferians, chimeras, molded from pure Evil, damn them. One of the main advantages of such worlds over Earthlings is that, if you look closely, they are not particularly different from the vast majority of aborigines. They are just as hypocritical, feudal, accustomed to climbing to the top at any cost, and ostentatiously despising the rabble, bastards. Earthlings are often quite something, but against the backdrop of such a crowd, they almost always seem like lambs of God, and not ones dedicated to someone from the Dead, but from the original earthly proverb.

Not a particularly great achievement, but rather a sad one, given the realization of the fierce and soul-chilling chaos that reigns in the Broken World and the worlds connected to it. And yet another reason to praise the Seven, who managed to come to an agreement with each other and not destroy Earth's civilization, allowing it to take root in the Broken and achieve something very remotely resembling prosperity. Remotely, on an astronomical scale.

To sum up, if you have to deal with not just one “bird,” but a couple or three at once, you'll have to knock them out somehow before they manage to settle down or, God forbid, start a community. The chances of that are not high, as the tsar's foster children are not particularly successful at diving, compared to the earthlings, although almost anyone would get lost against this backdrop. But it is better to kill the dangerous element in advance than to run and hide in the hills from raiding groups of divers and locals. Such people usually find it much quicker and easier to enter into a symbiosis with the local authorities, simply because for them, all kinds of oaths of allegiance, service until death, and any baseness required of them is no different from what awaits them at home.

Constant monitoring of all potential divers, strict training and requirements, controlled information, and forced dispatch to Broken. Moreover, the rabble and other unworthy individuals, as well as criminals or anyone deemed unreliable, are forced to create analogues of defective builds so that they do not become dangerous and gain power. And the rest do not have it much easier, except for the highest aristocracy with holy blood. Checks, all kinds of truth potions, the use of the few remaining fours, or the remaining oath-binding and subjugating constructs, amulets, and all that stuff left behind by the long-gone Two. For this, their earthlings love them especially, because the Seven did not leave such gifts behind, deliberately destroying most of the amulets, ritual complexes, and all that they had created.

"My neighbors are terrible." That was all he said, opening his eyes and beginning to feel unpleasant sensations. "I almost believed that I would be able to enjoy myself in proud solitude."

The dream he had that night was the result of yet another “pure” ritual, one of the most common, on a par with all kinds of “assessment” rituals, which also have a whole range of variations to suit the situation, circumstances, or resources. When generalized, such rituals are called “markers,” “signals,” or “calling marks,” because that is precisely their role. Even in its most minimal form, such a ritual indicates the direction and approximate distance to the target. It highlights one diver for all the others within a certain radius, which is quite large, no less than a couple of hundred kilometers.

In the case of the unknown Occultist, there could be as many as a thousand kilometers, and not only was a vague feeling transmitted, but also a visual image, with the possibility of sending a message. And Ilya was sure that this ritual was well protected, aimed at ensuring that mainly divers could see the vision. The standard marker beeps so loudly that it is often called a “decoy” because it is detected by any sufficiently strong creature or someone gifted with the appropriate abilities. As a result, you will be attacked either by creatures or by locals, and it is still unclear which is better and which is worse. Obviously, for the colleague who drew the firebird, it was much more important not to get questions upon returning from the dive, because the divers of Boretsaria have official instructions and responsibilities.

Woe to those who fail to comply or deliberately violate them.

No, Earthlings also used markers of various kinds, especially if they were drawn to a community but not completely, and instead of being born right next to the Heart, they found themselves in the middle of wild or inhabited territories. Then, yes, a correctly calculated marker, strictly tuned to the community that recruited you, will allow you to be quickly found and taken under their wing. But just like that, in a random birth mode, no one in their right mind would demand to have a marker placed on themselves. Because the victims from this would be many times more than the benefit, even by orders of magnitude. Ilya won't be surprised if the exposed foreigner ends this cycle with departure for rebirth. If a strong creature detects the ritual, then the settlement will be destroyed as well, and if it is very strong, then there will be no need for rebirth, as it will die forever.

Listening to himself, Ilya realized that the direction pointed roughly to where he had come from, quite possibly even very close to that forgotten mountain outpost where he had fought the non-bandits. If he had moved in a different direction, they might have met each other, so he felt a slight regret. Not strong, but still present. Such issues should be resolved early on, and it is not difficult to deal with a novice Occultist who has not had time to prepare appeals, sacrifices, and rituals. It is another matter if he is prepared, but why think about sad things when he is already late? He cannot go back now, especially with the probable pursuit of the natives on his tail.

In general, the morning of the fourth day in Upperstone was met by the diver with a gloomy, dissatisfied mood, and once again, expecting something bad. How much easier it would be if his neighbors were primitive and harmless. Preferably, some clueless individuals who would die in the first three or four cycles and never even meet him in their dreams. Yeah, and on top of that, two thousand free drops of Essence, a set of synergistic relics for his class and build, fifth level, no less, as well as a large Big Mac, a Coke, and three sets of tubes of top-quality fruit paste. The Coke must be with ice, otherwise it doesn't count.

The morning continued to delight him, for as soon as he stepped out of the inn to splash himself with ice-cold water “to sober up,” his gaze fell on a wall on the horizon. A huge, black, approaching wall, which from a distance looked like another snowstorm, similar to the one he had managed to get caught in while running from the trio pursuing him. As the innkeeper told him, such nonsense happens all the time on the Ridge, three or four times every winter. Fortunately, without direct damage from the wind, the snow falling from above quickly covers the valuable greenhouses and lowlands with grass, so that their roots and seeds are not in danger of freezing. The fields have long been cleared for winter, and the top layer of the already very poor soil that is blown away is compensated for by active magical pumping of the plants.

The big storm that hit was just what the guy needed, because it would let him disappear without raising any unnecessary suspicion. So, after talking to the innkeeper, Ilya sadly complained that the snowstorm would last a long time and started drinking. The ability to pretend to be drunk so that sober people believe you is not so easy to master, but Ilya knew what he was doing, and the local drunks turned out to be an undemanding crowd. Diligently drinking away his savings, Ilya pretended to be getting more and more drunk, while inwardly grimacing at the taste of the low-quality alcohol. Not a trace of intoxication in his eyes, only the curse of Hunger gnawing inside him, which could not be quenched by any amount of alcohol. But it couldn't be quenched, satisfied, or appeased anyway, so it made no difference.

"Come to your senses, you fool! You'll freeze to death, you drunken idiot, you won't make it!" To his credit, the owner of the inn had the conscience to try to save the life of a man who had decided to go to the other end of town to another tavern, where Mark is now drinking. "Even the locals don't leave their homes, and you want to go where? Ah! Fuck you, get lost, I'm clean before the Drunken Lord, go fuck yourself!"

Ilya remained sober enough that no one would try to stop him by force, lest they grab the knife on his belt, but at the same time, he was clearly drunk enough that no one would be surprised if he disappeared in the snow. From conversations with Mark, the earthling knew that people unaccustomed to the Ridge regularly froze in such storms, so he wouldn't even spoil the statistics. If the hall had been full, the crowd could have started to restrain him by force — one would have distracted him, another would have hit him over the head with a chair, and a third would have picked his pockets so that he wouldn't drink with strangers. But it was too late, everyone had left, and Ilya deliberately drank until nightfall. A couple of individuals who had stayed behind just followed him with their eyes, but did not intervene, either out of natural malice, or because they did not like the “drunk” Gozhik, or because they simply did not care about another dead body.

After about three minutes, stepping out into the snowstorm and pushing his way through the snow that was above his knees and in some places up to his waist, he almost gave himself a mental slap on the wrist. He seemed sober, but he had relaxed criminally and failed to understand the obvious! The couple did not respond to the silent request of Annt, the owner of the inn, to help and calm the degenerate drunkard, possessed by the spirit of a suicidal lemming, with a very specific purpose. Now they had come out and followed him, following his tracks, precisely so that the lemming would definitely disappear without a trace, but his belongings would not be lost. They probably needed them more than he did, since he was already dead anyway.

The earthling, carrying a thin bag on his shoulder, silently quickened his pace, keeping an eye on the hearts of the couple behind. They also quickened their pace, probably cursing the two-legged vagrant with good boots under their breath, but they couldn't catch up with him, and then they began to run out of strength, gave up, and went back. Part of him, not just the Wendigo part, wanted to follow the pair and make sure they never returned anywhere. But he suppressed that part, because many corpses lead to many suspicions, and his own “corpse” was enough for him. Or rather, his mysterious disappearance in the snow. Robbed, fallen into a ditch, lost, fallen asleep in a snowdrift, and all that, and when it dawns on them — if it ever does, because they will quickly forget about him — that his body is nowhere to be found, even after the snow has melted... well, Ilya will already be far away. And his pursuers will lose track of him and will not be able to organize a proper pursuit.

And it doesn't matter anymore whether these pursuers exist or not.

Ilya moved towards the city walls, walking through the snow, sometimes stepping on it without crushing it with his weight, and his heart felt a little lighter.

* * *

Climbing over the wall proved to be quite easy. It was no more than five metres high, even in its strongest sections, and there were no guards on duty at that moment. There was always the possibility of some kind of protective ritual or enchantment on the stone, but Upperstone was not the capital or a particularly important place to warrant powerful defences and scanners. To be honest, it was not certain that there was any magic in the stones at all. If there was anything embedded there, it would be standard examples of local magical fortifications, and such examples would poorly detect attempts to enter, but would not prevent exit. A vicious circle and the main feature, so to speak, of the concept of rituals simplifies the prevention of entry or exit, but not both at once.

The circle for summoning some kind of creature will not let you leave, but at the same time, it is very easy to enter, especially if you are lured there or stumble into it. Yeah, I can't tell you how many young Demonologists and Occultists built a summoning build, choosing Gehenna for their contracts to summon a lustful demoness, or even a full-fledged succubus. Somehow forgetting that their skills of manipulation and deception are not completely blocked by the protective circle, especially if you summon such a ‘monster wife’ right away, without levelling up the accompanying talents. An eternal problem for all summoners without exception. Summoning another creature is often much easier than controlling it. And while combat summons of mindless creatures, carried out in a ‘set them loose and forget about them’ style, are relatively simple, advanced and intelligent creatures have killed summoners almost as often as those they were originally summoned to fight.

Of course, protective contours and signal networks on walls work differently, but the principle is still similar. In prisons, they are used to prevent escape, while in cities, they are used to prevent entry. It is possible to block both directions at once with equal quality, but it will cost so much that everyone except the Citadel will go bankrupt. But the Citadel, its top officials, will simply twirl their fingers at their temples and not bother with nonsense; they mainly use a block system, enchanting individual houses, streets, neighbourhoods, and so on. As a result, Ilya crossed the wall without any adventures, without even encountering a guard, a random passer-by, or the holy seven liquidators waiting specifically for him. All those who could have noticed him were now hiding in their homes, warming themselves by the stove, and not thinking of going out into the angry, magical blizzard.

After climbing over the wall, the earthling first returned to the prominent rock, which was difficult to find even with his eyesight in such a blizzard, but he managed. After repacking his bags and checking that all his trophies were there, he moved forward again, now bypassing the city and heading towards the central and most inhabited part of the Ridge. He would not enter the next town or village, and in general, there was no point in going into villages and settlements, since his camouflage was already at its maximum. The Diver moved quickly and smoothly, sometimes crouching lower and switching to four points of support when the wind once again threatened to teach the strange little man how to fly.

The wind whipped up streams of snow and blew icy gusts into his eyes, but Ilya didn't care. The weather seemed uncomfortable to him, but considering the clothes he was wearing, he didn't even feel the moderate cold. It was not like waking up naked at the bottom of a rocky crevice, and even more so, freezing to the bone. Ilya was sincerely glad that he had managed to leave Upperstone normally and calmly, without getting into another five-minute adventure. Apparently, the universe, Broken himself, and the Mechanism that ruled over it sensed his joy and satisfaction, because literally half an hour later, the signatures of other people's hearts appeared ahead. Five, ten, fifteen, and finally twenty-seven hearts beating in their chests.

First, Ilya began to panic a little, fearing that they had caught up with him after all and now had a large reserve of people. Then, a second later, his brain kicked in, gently hinting that if these nearly three dozen unknown faces were the team sent after him, the three holy nines consisting exclusively of gifted individuals, he would already have been spotted, captured, beaten up, humiliated, and possibly even killed. Because three nines of liquidators would require at least three clean and a couple of spare hybrid sensors, which could only miss his approach, even in a blizzard, if they tried very hard and deliberately.

Realising this truth, the diver moved around the strange crowd, which had somehow forgotten itself in the middle of the snowy wasteland, carefully checking the snowdrifts in front of him and constantly fearing traps. In the end, he managed to find only the most ordinary signal thread, which had lost its invisibility in the blizzard and was trembling in the wind. Well, it was already more than could be expected from townspeople who had gone on a picnic, so there was no point in giving up, as the situation was too strange. And ‘strange’ in Broken is one of the synonyms for ‘dangerous,’ it should be noted! And when it became clear that a ‘ritual darkener’ was being used, that is, a device that prevented the light from the bonfires from leaving the ritual area, the tension tripled.

The camp, which was a fully-fledged and long-established camp with tents and insulated burrows dug directly into the snow, was hidden in a separate hollow, and without the eye that illuminated the heart's desires, Ilya would have missed this place. Well, if only he hadn't passed by so close as to see the light muffled by the ritual, because hearing and smell were useless in such conditions. Hiding behind a boulder that stood right on the edge of the hollow-lowland-crater, the earthling began to observe, and it quickly became clear to him what exactly he was observing. It was almost a classic example of the workings of Fate and Fortune, which increase the likelihood of encounters like this. Earthlings often jokingly referred to this mechanism as “dynamic generation of quests of mom's friend's son,” because it really did resemble humanity's attempts to create virtual simulations of the highest order.

The Ancients, bless them, made sure that the savages playing their games would not get bored, which is why it is so easy to find adventure here. Countless words of gratitude have been spoken to those very Ancients for their kindness in sending FaFo to Earthlings.

Ilya saw a scene straight out of a fantasy novel, a classic bandit camp. Not the kind of bandits his twin had turned into in Wendigo, but real ones, just like they should be. They were dressed in whatever they could find, their clothes rich and expensive, but categorically unkempt, their faces branded, their noses cut off, each one uglier than the next, their weapons diverse and their discipline lacking. Or rather, not so much lacking as... Normal bandits, when in action, can show a great deal of restraint, but now they are no longer in action, and it shows. There are no sentries; everyone has gathered in the middle of the camp, where even the wind does not blow strongly, and no one is looking around.

The main focus of attention for all twenty-one bandits was six tightly bound people who looked around with eyes full of horror, disbelief, and wild anger. These captives were clearly one family, and Ilya's keen eyesight easily discerned the family resemblance to the head of the family. He was a short, even small man, but almost square in build, with a clean-shaven chin and the remains of a powdered wig on his almost bald head. An aristocrat, Ilya knew this from the Twin's memory. It was among them that baldness was considered a peasant's disease, and only they were allowed to wear wigs; plebs or mere servants were forbidden such ‘adornment’ under threat of flogging for the former and a fine for the latter.

The man was dressed in a warm and elegant fur coat, as were his wife, his eldest son, his younger son, and his young daughter, who was barely twelve years old. The man's family is genuinely frightened, while the head of the family seems unable to believe that he has found himself in such a situation. He cannot comprehend that this situation is very real and fraught with many, many troubles for them. The last one is not a robber, but seems to be a personal servant or assistant, for he is dressed like a footman and lies next to the captives, gradually giving his soul to the Dead Gods, for he has been beaten worse than a chop, and the wounds may not be superficial if he was really beaten badly. The dialogue, which Ilya listened to attentively, was already coming to an end, but it was easy to piece together the parts that the earthling had not heard.

"Think again, you fool! I'm not some plebs, people will avenge me and pay with their lives! The whole of Ridge will be looking for you, the whole thing! Why would you want that, seriously? Ransom is an old tradition. Why break with it? For all my..." A blow to the stomach causes the square-shaped nobleman, who is not of the lowest rank, judging by the price of his clothes, to bend over double, vomiting undigested food directly onto his coat with a coat of arms, surprisingly similar to the one depicted on the city gates and the magistrate's building. "Ugh!!!"

The man who struck him is undoubtedly one of the plebs, unlike the captive. His face is pockmarked, his ears and nostrils torn, as is the punishment for poachers, and his overall appearance is simple. But unlike his interlocutor, who is trying to start breathing again, he is not simple, but quite gifted. This can be seen in his movements, in his unnaturally rapid heartbeat, in the force of his blows, as well as in his twitching fingers, feverishly darting eyes, and, of course, in the tone of his voice and his choice of words. Ilya sees, so to speak, ‘in reality,’ the phase of active psychosis, which is usually accompanied by the almost complete process of breaking synchronisation with the Twin.

Only this individual does not appear to be a diver, but rather a gifted local. One of those who managed to touch the Mechanism, either accidentally or intentionally. A chance blessing, a found artefact, an altar or ruins where the echoes of ancient power remain — there are countless ways. Usually, such boys and girls, who have no idea how to build builds, at best create a flawed class for themselves. In a much more common and worse case, they deliberately take as many skills with as many steps as possible, turning into a very dangerous and deadly creature that sprouts in place of the recent scoundrel. In place of someone who had reason to hate, to seek revenge, and to wish all possible torments, suffering, and torment upon them.

The picture is sad, but quite understandable and routine for Broken, even if it doesn't happen very often. Often or not, the result is the same, always and everywhere. The words coming from the throat of the nervously twitching gifted man only confirm Ilya's thoughts. Because anyone can talk, but not a normal or at least stable individual.

"You don't understand, do you, meat?" It's not quite the effect of some talent from the voice and acoustic effects branch, but something close to it. "I don't give a shit. Very much. Very much. I can't express how much. I don't give a shit. I don't give a shit about you, I don't give a shit about your house, I don't give a shit about your whole family. I don't give a shit about any of you. I have power now. I'm no worse than you. No weaker. You. All of you. You wanted to rot me. You shit on me. Break my fingers, break my nose, tear my ears. I went to the lord's lands. Big deal, I went? I hunted animals without permission. I killed them. To eat. And now. Now. Now you're my animal. My meat. You. Your wife. Your daughter. Your sons. All of you. All of you are my meat, understand!?"

Even Ilya's head buzzed a little from the speech, and all the captives were immediately stunned; even the robbers standing nearby sat down on their asses. It was a classic scene, and when the gifted man entered into a debate with another bandit who vaguely resembled him, like a distant relative, the clarity became obvious. Well, perhaps Ilya was mistaken in some details, but only in details; the main outline of events seemed obvious and, most likely, was so.

There was a gang. Not too big, not too large, but still quite successful, because it still existed. Some came, some left, some died, and some simply disappeared one day, but for such organisations, such staff turnover was the norm. And one day, a certain free-range shooter became not just a bandit, but a truly gifted one. Ilya was willing to bet that the former poacher would not become a Marauder or a Slayer, but a Hunter, one of the most psychologically unpleasant classes, on par with the Possessed, if not worse. The only thing worse was the Druid, but they were completely finished, and there were few Druids left with their brains intact, even on Earth.

Very soon, the gang changed its leader and his assistant, because the previous ones ‘became meat,’ and the gifted one and his uncle, with whom they joined the gang, began to rule the gang. It was the older relative who became the de facto leader, because his nephew's mental faculties deteriorated with each passing day, and he became less and less interested in the world around him. The gang's business, especially at first, went up; there was nowhere to spend gold and trinkets, they spoiled the best girls, and drank only the finest wine. They sensed their power and, driven by a desire for senseless and merciless violence, began to engage in what the Forum called ‘fierce revelry and debauchery.’ Of course, the guards, nobles, aristocrats, and other individuals who drank the blood of the common people were particularly hard hit.

Such charming revolutionaries, only with magic and without any attempts to hide behind ideology – take everything away, kill everyone, share it among themselves, and then we'll live happily ever after. Power went to their heads, as did luck, and the constantly changing bandits and robbers began to grow arrogant. So insolent that they were taken seriously. One ambush, then another, then another. They responded to all these ambushes and raids with their own, but their numbers were dwindling. One gifted person couldn't cover everyone, and he didn't try, but people believed in their lucky star, especially after the Hunter killed the enemy's gifted person and then took out the second one. They didn't scatter and lie low, but decided to hunt down those who had made them their prey!

As soon as they learned through torture and rumours that one of the noblemen of Upperstone had offered a reward for their heads, not even in petals, but in whole blossoms, they decided to teach this nobleman a lesson. So what if they killed some distant relative of his and boiled his wife in a huge cauldron, though they never tasted the dish, fearing that the bitch might turn out to be very poisonous? Yes, yes, they boasted about this to the beaten man's face, while arguing about who would take his daughter and wife after the chiefs had finished playing with them.

Their plan was stupid and brazen, but effective and successful. They managed to take advantage of the blizzard, cut down the guard patrol at the entrance to the Copper Gate, quickly enter the city, pass through the blizzard, catching the nobleman and his entourage just as he was returning home from a dinner party, and just as quickly retreat with their captives, leaving through the same gate. With a gifted Hunter who seems to have already levelled up a bit, as well as a build that was originally put together without regard for psychology? It's a difficult task that requires either professionalism and composure or, more likely, simple luck, because these idiots didn't seem like professionals. And so, the prisoners are here, and the drooling Hunter will soon turn them into meat, prey, slaughtered animals.

To be honest, Ilya couldn't care less about this family. He understood perfectly well that the bandit's hatred was entirely justified, because everyone here had reasons to hate each other. Such is Broken in all his cruel glory. If anyone was to be pitied, it was the little girl, but not enough to sign up for a dangerous fight with uncertain consequences for her sake. He would have left and not gotten involved, simply because when choosing between helping a native at risk to himself and no risk at all, it is never worth taking a risk. This is what future divers are taught and drilled into their heads from the very beginning. And yet, many will only learn this lesson through death, and if they are lucky, one death will be enough.

But there was another factor in this whole story that meant much more to Ilya than helping an uninvolved girl who would die a very bad death for the sins of her parents and all their ancestors. This whole crowd of bandits, bloodthirsty beasts led by a fully gifted individual, did not work for anyone else. They probably had people who bought their loot or tipped them off about raids, but they simply could not have a patron at the highest level, like the memorable non-bandits. Before the gifted one appeared in their ranks, they were just an ordinary crowd of riffraff, running from the guards and large caravans, capable only of bullying peasants and small traders, and even then, only until they gathered into a larger crowd.

No one will ask about their deaths, seek revenge, or search for the killer, because they are already outside the law. A classic ‘outburst of violence’ occurs when a lone gifted individual outside the usual factions starts a war with the whole world and then dies when others take him seriously. No, sometimes there are exceptions when such a fighter against the system becomes part of the system as one of its cogs or even large gears, if he manages, for example, to establish some kind of independent barony, simply by killing all those who were after him, avoiding attempts to eliminate him outside of direct combat or the banal betrayal of yesterday's allies.

But this is not the case, because the bandit gifted with the Mechanism, who chose the fate of the Hunter, is already almost a creature, and the thieves themselves have lost all fear and restraint, not even trying to steal as much as possible. They just kill because it's fun, yeah. And you can't even argue with that, because for them, who have never seen the gifted in battle, or even seen them at all, having their leader with such powers makes them simply invincible. In their dreams, of course, because they can hardly even imagine what it is like to be blessed with a third-level Mechanism in direct or indirect combat. Not everyone on Earth can imagine this, even though everyone has access to recordings, photos from the Forum, and reproductions of famous battles by all kinds of film, holographic, and other ‘arts.’

In front of Ilya, laughing and preparing to play the order of the ‘noble holes’ in the draw with a short stick, were the most genuine free drops of Essence. No one would look for them, because everyone would think that these rabid beasts had been killed by someone they had crossed paths with. There was a storm around them, sweeping away their tracks almost as fast as they appeared, and their enemies were numerous but mostly harmless. Even the lone Hunter, though an unpleasant enemy for the Wendigo, was one of those classes that would be an inconvenient opponent for the Possessed, but not deadly. If the diver were a Shapeshifter or a Possessed Beast, one might think twice, but here and now, Ilya is confident of victory with a probability that suits him very well.

This is a situation where you don't need a reason to commit carnage, just the opportunity. But there was a reason here, and a valid one at that! Ilya, you know, following in the footsteps of his twin, has for some time now taken a strong dislike to all kinds of bandits and other dangerous scum. He can't even eat, honestly! The image of the curse of Hunger still reminds him of a small dog chained up in a bank's super-safe at the bottom of a multi-storey bunker. Even after his talent for disguise was maximised, this dog grew from the size of a Pomeranian to a small but very vicious and well-fed pug. Even though his Hunger still sought to kill, torment, and devour, the diver still had no intention of succumbing to Hunger.

The part about ‘killing’ is another matter.

One can even ‘kill with particular cruelty and cynicism.’

Here, Ilya and his essence of Wendigo unexpectedly came to a complete mutual understanding.

One could even call it a compromise.

* * *

First, the Diver moved away to leave his bulky bags and hide them properly under the snow, then he took off his clothes and began to transform his body. This time, he deliberately suppressed the scream that was bursting out of him, almost crushing his teeth from the overwhelming sensations. However, experience was on his side, and after the transformation under the curse of torment, the usual change of appearance seemed like a light tickle. He takes on the appearance of a Wendigo not only for the sake of pathos or a natural love of exhibitionism, but also because this appearance enhances all his talents. Now, with the winter blizzard raging around him, his breath is already deadly, and in his altered form, he can take out most of the gathered gang with a single blow and immediately deprive the gifted one of the support of ordinary fighters. With luck, he will also take down the most gifted one, but the Hunters have enough ways to sense danger and methods to block damage.

They're unpleasant guys. One of those classes that is equally inconvenient for anyone, with no clearly defined weaknesses, especially if you build without regard for psychology. However, there are also working and normal builds in this class, but they are very difficult to put together. In the early cycles, an adequate Hunter will be too frail and useful only as a tracker and trap master. Only communities, and not the smallest ones, can afford to level up their main talents and gain a worthy ally with a flexible hybrid specialisation. But not particularly large ones either, it should be noted.

The Hunter is pumped up by groups of about nine to fifteen divers who have Heart, but not too pumped up. A good and skilled Hunter should not slaughter indigenous villages or skin random passers-by, but rather calculate the lairs of creatures, analyse gaps, provide support, lead strike teams to their targets, and increase the flow of essence from any hunt for dangerous game, and if trained correctly, increase it for the whole group. It is very difficult to compare anyone to a Hunter in this regard, which is why they are regularly trained, despite the difficulties. It takes about three years to level up a newbie to the minimum useful level, and then a year and a half to recoup the investment in that newbie and start making a profit.

Alas, he is now facing not a support and surveillance specialist, but a fully combat-ready and aggressive Hunter with an insane build. The only consolation is that the commoner probably chose the most powerful talents, but not those that complement each other, enhancing the overall power of the build. Ilya probably wouldn't dare to touch the cinematic build created by the Earthling, as it could easily lead to deadly adventures. The only thing more stupid would be to catch a Druid who has gone out of sync in a forest that has already been explored, and alone at that, but you'd have to search hard to find someone that stupid, and it's not a given that you'd find them. They're gone.

The return journey was faster due to longer strides and the weather's even less impact on manoeuvrability. Wendigo's thin, tall figure crept slowly, checking everything in front of him and afraid of accidentally catching anyone's eye. He didn't have to try hard because the company of polite lovers of subtraction and division paid no attention to their surroundings. They were very diligently and animatedly deciding the order of entertainment, while the two youngest were busy taking the prisoners to the deepest dugout, a veritable cave at the bottom of a small depression. Apparently, no one wanted to torture or rape their victims in such weather. Ilya once again tracked every heartbeat, counted everyone present, and then began to move along the edge of their field of vision, trying not to even look in the direction of the Hunter.

These guys are known for their keen senses, intuition, and premonitions of danger, though only when it comes to themselves. It's like a last-second warning, often useless if you know how to strike correctly. But even the bearers of earthly builds could often sense a direct and prolonged gaze, and no one wanted to check on this madman, let alone him. The Wendigo crawls, almost touching the snow with its fallen belly, sometimes allowing itself to sink into it if there is a danger of someone else's gaze. The darkness of the night was dispelled only by burning campfires and torches stuck directly into the snow, on which alchemically impregnated tow burned. The argument engulfed all the participants except the Hunter and his relative, who were arguing about something, or rather, the less gifted one was trying to prove something even to the Hunter, who was not listening to him.

" Where are you going, young man, you shit under your skirt!" Shouts a large, beast-like man, pressing down on a more slender and smaller robber. "I've been here for a whole winter, what are you doing in front of me? I'll give you a punch!"

“Was there a draw?” “Yes, there was!” He asked and answered himself without the slightest embarrassment, a skinny man who looked even more dangerous than the bruiser, keeping his hand not on the blade of his belt, but close by, with a hint of menace. “Did I win? I won! What the hell are you talking about?”

It was clear that it wouldn't be long before fists started flying, and then knives would come out, because there weren't enough women to entertain everyone, and everyone present wanted to be first. The aristocrat, who was resisting and trying to bite the guards, was dragged into the darkness of the inner room, and Ilya was already practically in striking position. He found himself right behind the sentry, who was lazily drinking from a small silver or silver-plated flask with a coat of arms engraved on it, watching everyone argue and not particularly worried about his turn. Probably because he realized the sad truth — he would be among the last, purely because of his youth. He was still just a boy, sixteen years old, which, given the hard life of the local peasants, could easily have been fourteen, although that was unlikely.

The little devil was drunk, but he acted like an adult, sniffing his sleeve so naturally that you could see he had experience. The junior league, so to speak. Assessing the situation again, the earthling realized that he would not get a better moment, even if a couple of guards had not yet come out into the piercing wind, where he could cover them all with one blow. But waiting too long next to the inadequate gifted one was already becoming dangerous. Ilya rose from a nearly sprawled position to a crouch in one smooth motion, without any sudden or awkward jerks, and then cautiously poked the observer's shoulder with his index finger, who was guarding in the wrong direction.

And, you know, he actually turned around, without even flinching or moving, smiling broadly with a crooked smile, which was missing a significant number of yellow and crooked teeth. Back home, the poor guy would have definitely gotten braces, and that's only if he didn't have money for a decent dentist, but Broken wasn't known for its quality dentistry. Wendigo's embrace is like the grip of ice-cold steel; his palms are wide and his fingers are long, so convenient for wrapping around a still-chicken-like throat. The body of the young thief, who had not even had time to be surprised, had not yet begun to settle on the ground when Ilya, who had begun to inhale only as he crouched down, began to exhale directly over the guard's body.

This time, the skill finally shows itself exactly as it was originally intended to be used by Ilya, who is gathering his build. It is the ultimate weapon against a crowd of lightly armoured and magically unprotected enemies who also lack particular survivability. A cloud of snowflakes rises, almost black in the darkness of night, torches go out, and only a few flickering embers remain from the fires, also disappearing one by one. A wide cone of breath covers the noisy crowd at once; they don't even have time to scream, because the cry freezes on their lips along with the frostbite of their lungs, faces, eyes, and all exposed parts of their bodies.

And the cold, not even cold, but Cald, shows no sign of abating. It creeps under your clothes, crawls through your veins, bites your flesh and bones, and your once steady legs begin to waver, blindly flailing your arms in complete darkness, which for many who have lost their eyesight has become eternal. They are already corpses, no longer capable of fighting any battle, supporting their gifted one, and driving away the lonely Wendigo with a crowd. Those loners, whom the earthling, having spent a third of his strength in one breath, has only touched with the edge of his blade, will not be a problem for him; they will not have time to organise themselves. They, too, are corpses, having caught the curse of the Cald upon themselves, but they will be able to twitch a little longer. But even before the exhalation hit the crowd, before the lights went out and the robbers were doomed, the main cause of the earthling's concern reacted.

He looked straight at him, seeing clearly the pale, thin figure that had just broken the neck of one of his comrades. He saw the wide-open mouth, which seemed bottomless to him, as if behind the wall of teeth there was only a black abyss, a window into endless Cald. He saw, realised, and managed to react, and react unpleasantly quickly, which was the problem! The gifted man only grunted loudly when his relative jerked him sharply towards himself, shifting his heavy and bulky body in space without regard for the body's opinion.

And no, he didn't push him out of the way; on the contrary, he threw him right into the epicentre, but strictly in front of him, while he jumped backwards, pushing off from his relative. The manoeuvre was effective and cruel in equal measure, but in the Hunter's eyes, which had become empty, like two pieces of glass, there were no feelings of kinship, nor even any particular thoughts. Only reflexes, only emotions and the thirst to catch worthy prey, to catch it and take it for himself entirely. Hunters rarely become cannibals, even if they fall into psychosis, but they always engage in taxidermy, even more often than Maniacs, and that, you must agree, is telling!

The enemy, who had retreated and taken cover behind the tents, froze for a moment and then began to move sharply between the tents, without hiding his heart or disguising himself at all. It was suspicious, so suspicious that Ilya himself moved forward, but not towards the Hunter coming towards him, but in his breath, slightly intensifying it, exhaling a new portion of coldness under his feet. The snow is getting heavier, and Ilya, seeing through it, glances at the heart's signature, which is just passing through the section of space visible from his position.

But there is no one there. The snow does not bend underfoot, no one is visible, even snowflakes fly right through the heart, visible only to a special gaze. Who would doubt it, for fuck's sake! Grabbing the nearest body, already fallen to its knees and letting freezing streams of blood flow from its mouth, unable to breathe, Ilya spins on his toes, throwing the foreign body like a bag of shit. Roughly where it would be most convenient to attack a tactically savvy and experienced hunter with a talent for deceiving ‘animal’ and ‘wild’ sensory abilities.

Ilya was very surprised when the corpse simply flew in a parabolic arc, knocking down some kind of tent, but he didn't lose his composure, immediately jumping back and slightly to the side. The hunter either miscalculated the earthling from the start or didn't bother choosing an attack vector at all, simply lunging straight ahead. He appeared in front of him almost suddenly, covered in a scarlet haze of active defence, as if flowing from an animal skin thrown over his shoulders. Some version of a wolf that had become a creature, and not a weak one at that, but large and very dangerous. Many Hunters have this talent, one of the most common, allowing them to strengthen themselves with properly made trophies from their hunts.

The enemy had two daggers in his hands, both made of bone, not just knucklebones, but huge ivory-coloured fangs with scarlet streaks left behind by absorbed blood. Another carver sent by fate, or what? Ilya did not engage in close combat, exhaling a stream of concentrated cold into the smiling, insane grin, but abruptly cut it off, not wanting to waste his reserves. And not in vain, because the opponent who had moved slightly shifted, immediately giving off a short blink, letting the stream of cold pass by his face, and immediately broke the distance, ‘hiding’ in the snowstorm.

Once again, his heart-signature moved in one direction, while he moved in another, becoming partially invisible, transparent like glass or the Predator from the recently released twenty-ninth film in the franchise after the second reboot. The only things that gave him away were the snowflakes flying around his body and the faded scarlet haze coming from his skin, which had not disappeared anywhere. He could see him easily; he wasn't even hiding, as if he didn't understand that a creature marked by Cald could see him in this blizzard.

Well, it's worse for him.

Leaning down to the snow again, casually striking the temple of the blindly crawling individual, the earthling picked up someone's axe and simply threw it at the Hunter, then threw his shield and a second axe, following the trajectory of the retreat, because the Hunter simply had to dodge. Simply because, coming out of the snowstorm, where he believes he is ‘invisible,’ he must immediately go into the roly-poly and change position. He forgave himself for all his obligations to Ilya, did not dodge, and was hit squarely in the back with an axe, which finally finished him off and threw him face down in the snow. He went into the backwash with a muffled growl, but was unharmed, because Ilya did not rely on this throw and threw quickly, not strongly.

It's unpleasant, even pitiful, because he could have ended the fight in one move if he had stabbed his opponent in the back. Ilya closes in again, catches up, but the enemy uses the flicker again, raising even more snow with a burst of energy. Again, a false signature, again, Ilya tries to figure out where he actually jumped, and then one after another, the three signatures of the hearts of simple robbers who happened to be near the ‘deception’ fade away. His keen hearing caught the cry for help that the dying man, who was freezing before his eyes and had been actively cursed by the Cold from contact with his breath, croaked in the ataman's face. The chieftain only said ‘fuckoff,’ first cutting off his comrade's hands and then part of his head, killing two more in passing and reloading his Haze.

Bitch! Ilya understands everything, but why the hell did he choose the bloody talents branch for defence, investing in, most likely, Drained Blood with five levels and Flaying Prey also with five, but for the blink he took Hunter's Somersault instead of Scarlet Mark? No, it's logical that there are five levels there, not four, as in the Mark, but the Mechanism's reference itself talks about the synergy of blood talents, it's not even secret knowledge, damn it? God, not every pro will make you as crazy as a cocky amateur! Ilya, here, is a little blown away, but in a good way, because if the enemy knew how to fuel the talent of manoeuvre from spilled blood, it would be very sad.

Once again, he approaches the Hunter, who points at Ilya with his finger, and a barely audible bell begins to ring in his head, like a flag on a wolf, a decoy for a bird, a deception that forces him to move in the right direction, seeing something that is not really there, frightened by something that is not worth fearing. Hunter's Mark, five levels, a section of mental effects, in its basic form, forcing one to perceive the mark itself as a danger and not to move in the direction where it blocks the path. It is very effective against creatures, and this talent is often used as a crown, driving prey towards the combat group. It also has a pumped-up form, but for some reason, the Straightforwardness aspect has been chosen, allowing the marker to be placed directly on the target itself, influencing it through that marker.

Not the best choice, but an interesting one. Before diving into this cycle, Ilya was reading about a similar build on a forum. But then, why the hell are there blood talents? If you're going to tie blood to something, it should be nature or direct combat, like with Somersaults. But here, he just grabbed everything at random, without the accompanying abilities that would provide synergy with the base. As a result, it turned out to be neither one thing nor the other. Even a regular Wendigo wouldn't be too affected by this attack, and the resistance of the Great Trait completely negated the Mark. But it became clear how they so easily passed through the gate, cutting down the guards. The Mark confused them and prevented them from raising the alarm, there's no two ways about it.

Ilya prepares to block the dagger strike, but his opponent surprises him again, throwing two vials of greenish smoke at him, which have already begun to crackle in midair. These are alchemical bombs, gas-type, possibly with an acid additive, and guaranteed to cause a large explosion; otherwise, there would be no point in using them in such a situation. Already jumping away, he realises that he has been outplayed. The fog in explosive gas bombs would be orange. But these particular bottles are transparent and not deliberately coloured to disorientate a potential enemy. Both bottles burst with a barely audible crack, almost indistinguishable in the howling wind and the fading moans of the frostbitten.

The cloud of poison was carried away by the wind, which had picked up and blown it sideways and upwards. This was to be expected, but what was surprising was that the enemy did not rush straight through the cloud, taking advantage of his initiative, as if he knew in advance that the bombs were safe. The Hunter looks at his throw with the expression of someone who was sold the latest video card, only to find that it's crap — you can't even hammer nails with it. No, seriously, why the fuck use gas bombs in a fucking blizzard? They're perfect for surprise attacks indoors, even killing an entire guard barracks, but outdoors, even without wind, their use is extremely limited.

Wendigo and the Hunter stare at each other for a few seconds, as if both are trying to understand what just happened, and then they rush back into close combat. The human and nimble figure moves quickly and deftly. Combat skills, similar to those of Ilya, are definitely present, and they work perfectly against Ilya's, because the Hunter and the Beast, so to speak. And, sadly, they are even more advanced than those of the Diver. The second level is definitely there! The enemy moved annoyingly accurately and concisely, giving full rein to his instincts, making no mistakes or unnecessary movements. Ilya was saved in those three seconds of combat by his completely cool head, which did not succumb to the predictable instincts of the beast, as well as the same exhalation with which he had driven the enemy away.

He managed to save his Hide and not waste his energy, although he had to bend over backwards to avoid a bone blade that flew towards his groin. He would have liked to get the daggers as trophies, but he soaks the material with his power so thoroughly that the knives would hardly work properly in Ilya's hands. They would probably break immediately, without even lasting a minute. But in the hands of their creator, they still work! A vein or throat cut open with these picks would cause even a Wendigo to bleed, its almost black blood simply unable to stay in its veins, despite its vitality and resistance. The cursed flesh would repel the harmful attack, but not immediately, which in battle would be fatal or at least very problematic.

At about the thirteenth second of their incredibly fast-paced fight, Ilya jumped back, exhaling a stream of cold air that was more symbolic than threatening, looked at his opponent's smiling face, which stared at him with a completely blank gaze, then jumped back again, breaking the distance and running, swinging like a pendulum, into the snowy darkness. The plan came together instantly, and he liked it much better than having to butt heads with the Hunter over and over again. Part of his consciousness even distracted itself to reproach him a little for being a little too proud of Ilya. He had written off his opponent too soon, considering him not particularly dangerous, relying solely on the experience of the Forum and his training, without having personally encountered the psychotic natives.

He could still win, easily, he was sure of that, but he was equally sure that if they went toe-to-toe in close quarters, this brute would rip him apart. And regenerating would be difficult, painful, and downright humiliating. And to use up all his reserves in one blow, trying to break through the bloody mist of defence by force, was even more foolish, because there was always a chance that he would not finish the job and would be left with empty reserves. In general, the risk is too high, whereas Ilya was willing to take a small risk, simply gathering the essence that came his way, rather than engaging in a serious confrontation. The Hunter was pure instinct, completely lacking in brains, but he seemed to consider himself incredibly smart, constantly acting against his instincts, as much as he could in his condition. The problem was that most of his tactical victories were classic ‘fool's style,’ completely unexpected and illogical, wrong bullshit that couldn't be of any use.

Ilya knew how to fight like a pro. He knew how to stand up to creatures that fight on instinct, but not to individuals who can switch from refined but predictable instincts to cunning// stupid tactics.. On the other hand, if it's stupid but it works, then maybe it's not so stupid after all? In the end, Ilya is running away, and the unnamed Hunter is chasing and catching up with him. Ilya is running at full speed, not seeing his pursuer's signature behind him, but not doubting that the Invisible Lie has simply been switched to full stealth mode. A very amusing ability, which created a phantom and completely invisible double of a subtle body, which is why Ilya saw a heart suspended in the air without a real body.

The earthling runs, and behind him rushes, creeping along the ground, the almost invisible figure of the Hunter, again using camouflage, but leaving tracks in the snow. Damn, why take a skill in camouflage and not bother to hide your tracks or get a suitable amulet, since you have the money? He could have skipped Mark and taken the Hunter's main skill, which is automatically granted, and even two of the three, to get one of the variations of leaving no trace. But no, he needs more cool abilities with a bunch of steps, how can he not take them and level them up? And a moment later, when he finished thinking this thought, the earthling had a full-blown hysterical fit, a fierce ass-kicking, almost comparable to the Martyr's curse mark.

The Hunter spoke.

"Skinny. Sweet. Delicious." His voice was hysterically excited, on the verge of and beyond what could be called mental stability. This voice could scare even a very brave person to death, even though in its initial form, the talent Word of the Hunter is not intended to scare. "I'll take it off, take it off, take it off, take it off, take it all off you! I'll take it all off. Everything. Smoke it. Salt it. Pickle it. I'll take it all, skinny. Sweetie. Delicious."

The Word was not a combat skill at all; it was used for coordination and communication with the group, and no one in their right mind would invest the Essence to create a budget analogue of the executioner's whisper. At the fifth step, the talent allowed you to create an entire operational network for small group tactics, for which it was respected by Earthlings. And this shit not only further unbalanced its build, adding an acoustic branch to the combat, bloody, and dark branches. It also ruined one of the best communication talents at five divisions with a completely unnecessary and even harmful aspect that deprives this talent of its main benefit. And then he started ‘playing with his prey,’ trying to scare Ilya with his words and cruel communication.

And this even though, in its basic state, the talent allowed one to know exactly where the hunter had uttered his phrase, and only the person to whom the word was addressed could know! This... He, the bastard, revealed his own position and negated his camouflage just to show off in front of his fleeing prey! Accustomed to encountering the harsh professionalism of earthlings everywhere and always, this circus with its stupid clowns made his fifth point burn wildly. This guy infuriated him more than Baldie and the trio of liquidators combined, even though the fight with him was only slightly more dangerous than the battle with the Warlock.

//The Broken had spoiled me with competent and experienced opponents, which is why the encounter with an aggressive and completely insane degenerate was so unpleasant.’ These were the thoughts running through Ilya's head as he set the first trap, like a beast trying to outsmart a hunter. ‘I certainly won't be proud of this fight, no. There's little honour in being chased around in circles by such an individual.’

When he saw the first loop, the Hunter chuckled nastily and began to shame the ‘skinny one’ for running and stumbling over stones. He reacted even more joyfully to the second one and laughed again, each time going exactly where it was faster, ignoring the loop, moving strictly behind the running beast. He finally became predictable and understandable, but he was incredibly annoying with his attempts to either bite into his head with words or put a Mark on him. Ilya did not break away, although he could have, simply because of the length of his stride, constantly remaining on the edge of the Hunter's perception, sometimes appearing in the snowstorm, then disappearing again. And the latter kept talking and talking, pouring buckets of incoherent nonsense on Ilya, who was carefully monitoring the state of the reserve and wanted to finish as soon as possible.

Of course, his head is a complete mess, but the miracle is that he managed to hold out for so long without lashing out at those around him. Either the great teacher died in his uncle, or the raid in Uppersone brought him a little essence, which he immediately decided to invest in another talent and completely lost his mind, with no way back. Now there is no one to ask, and no desire to ask either. Just another proof that when expanding the walls of your consciousness, you need to carefully monitor that these walls do not turn out to be load-bearing.

The third loop caught one of those he had made a little earlier, and the earthling did not continue on his way, stepping out onto his trail and calmly approaching the Hunter, who was still invisible, walking clearly behind his prey. It had been about forty minutes since the fight began and about an hour since the transformation. Even though he spent most of the time not fighting, but simply manoeuvring on the snow, his gift was strained, and his appearance was gradually draining his strength, both magical and physical. It would have drained his morale as well, but the growing and growing painful hunger-hunger-hunger hardly affected him, remaining simply a dry fact on the edge of his consciousness.

Feeling the proximity of his prey and aware of its danger, the Hunter stops muttering to himself, but it doesn't help him when Ilya comes up behind him, following Ilya's trail, moving along his trail. It turned out very beautifully, but there is no one to boast to, and the Hunter is unlikely to appreciate how beautifully his unlucky prey did it. And again, he had to be surprised, because the latter managed to react, falling into the snow and letting out a breath over his head at the very last moment. At least Ilya managed to stop the spell, not putting too much into it. They clashed again, and again the damn combat talent forced an uncomfortable battle, only now Ilya lost his Hide before he managed to knock down the scarlet mist of protection.

And he didn't just knock him down, he grabbed the overly wide hood of his wolfskin cloak, pulling his opponent towards him. The opponent didn't want to be pulled, literally slipping out of his clothes, breaking the distance, and then he realised that he had been outsmarted by the ‘skinny meat’. Howling with rage, the Hunter immediately lunged forward and tried to take the fight to close quarters. Ilya proved in practice that his body, despite its size, remained incredibly manoeuvrable, managing to avoid his blows to the stomach and groin, and in the end, ignoring another attempt at deception, he caught the thrown blade with his palm.

Alas, he caught it in his palm because that palm was pierced through, drawing blood for the first time since the battle began. Howling, which did little to slow down his opponent, who had fallen into a frenzied rage, Ilya stepped back, pulling the blade out of the wound with his free hand and throwing it onto the snow, simultaneously exhaling a stream of cold air and raising another white veil. The aboriginal growled nastily and shrilly, immediately pulling a spare blade from his belt, now iron instead of bone, and then rushed to finish off his target, renewing the scarlet protection around him. Only now were black notes visible in that protection, for it was Wendigo's blood he had spilled, gaining additional protection from his attacks.

The Hunter, sensing victory, broke through the snow, stepping on Ilya as he backed away, and then looked down with resentment and surprise at his own neck, from which protruded the very knife that had previously protruded from the earthling's palm. Ilya didn't quite drop it, but simply dropped it, exhaling and hiding behind the snow, only to immediately pick it up and throw it with his intact hand. From such a distance, and with his body in such a state of agitation, he simply could not miss, just as he could not forget that bloody defences always allow the power of the one who cast them to pass through. And that knife was overflowing with that power. He had to strain very hard to force his cold-soaked body to suppress the effect of bleeding.

The Hunter was still standing and even reached for the flasks on his belt, but Ilya didn't want to check whether he had any really powerful alchemy in his reserves, capable of bringing a dead man back to life. No longer holding back, feeling a wave of weakness coming over him, he exhaled a thick column of cold air directly into the aboriginal's face. The face immediately began to lose its frozen skin and flesh, and the eyes burst like glass exposed to the cold. The blow of a huge palm, flat as if you were giving the most powerful blow in all worlds at once, turned out to be, by and large, unnecessary overkill, from which the gifted body broke into pieces of frozen and very fragile flesh.

A moment of hesitation, and then the silent Mechanism comes to life, a vision of an icy lake and an altar appears, precious drops flow down the bones of the skull, one after another.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

And, after a brief pause, another solitary...

Tap.

Well, at least he didn't risk in vain. Although, as he reluctantly admits to himself, this guy surprised him quite a bit, and Ilya overestimated his strength and underestimated that of others. Another moment, and the earthling allows himself to growl through his teeth, clenched again until they crack, and begins to take on human form. An entire epic could be written about how he made his way to his belongings naked, trying to find his bearings in unfamiliar territory, and it would consist of forty percent choice swear words and another thirty percent complaints about life. If he had the chance to do it all over again, he would still attack, but now he would act a little differently, of course. But complaining to the universe about an inconvenient opponent or his stupidity is simply useless, and it turned out pretty well anyway.

He returned to the unattended camp already changed back into his clothes and having replenished his reserves a little. By that time, he expected to see the murdered family of captured nobles, as well as traces of the lucky couple who had escaped into the sunset and had not been hit. To be fair, one fugitive was found, not yet frozen, though on the verge of it, but it turned out to be a wounded bandit, whose skin had peeled off his face and whose eyes were frozen. Breaking the wounded man's neck so he wouldn't suffer, Ilya left the corpse in the snow and began to thoughtfully study the camp and what was happening there. And what was happening there was a heated dialogue, combined with the escape and murder of the guards.

Apparently, realising that something had gone wrong with their plan, the nobleman and his servant joined forces and managed to kill the bandits who had not had time to react. Ilya never saw the hearts of the couple who had gone with them, which meant they had already stopped beating. The happy family, having successfully freed themselves from their bonds and lit new torches from the bandit's supplies, argued heatedly about what to do next. The wife and the beaten servant quite reasonably pointed out that it was better not to go to the city now, because there was a storm around them, they were tired and had been beaten several times, and they could simply get lost and not reach the walls. The nobleman himself gently hinted that some kind of icy spirit or even something more terrible was at work here. And even if he was hardly interested in the flesh of the living, he could well return to freeze the rest.

It's a logical assumption, because Ilya chose his method of attack carefully – pure frost, without any obvious signs of a fight, and the guard's broken neck was probably attributed to the Hunter. In fact, it could only have been attributed to him, as could the characteristic knife wounds, which scattered bone fragments along with the wolf skin that had rotted away in minutes, imbued with the Hunter's spiritual powers. The Hunter, by the way, was so frozen through that even his bones had become brittle, like matches, unsuitable for carving. Ilya would not have hesitated to take such a trophy, but he had overdone it with that breath. On the other hand, it's better to overdo it than to underdo it and get a knife in the face, isn't it?

The wounds that the nobleman had poked with the tip of his knife were different from ordinary ones in that they had blackened edges and an unnaturally abundant amount of blood flowing from them. In fact, it was into these wounds that Square Man, having thrown off his wig, poked his servant, explaining his truth. Because the angry pleb, enraged by the death of their comrades and the attack of the icy phantom, which really existed here and was sometimes encountered in the winter blizzard, was not observed among the corpses. And the venerable Liroyd Wallicoz, to put it mildly, did not want to wait for his probable return.

Ilya had mixed feelings as he watched the people, dressed in several layers of clothing taken from corpses and tied together with rope, disappear into the snowstorm. He really needed to slap them, not for the drop of Essence that the Mechanism wouldn't give for such a simple fight, but for the sake of secrecy. Of course, no one suspected a Wendigo attack, because the corpses were intact and not eaten, nor did they suspect the help of any bounty hunters, because the camp had not been looted, where there were certainly enough valuables for a couple of mansions within the city limits. The bandits carried everything on them, including gold, silver, and stones.

The storm covered up the tracks. He didn't leave any blood at the camp, and the blood left at the site of the gifted one's last hunt won't be found; even Ilya himself would have a hard time finding it. The blizzard will last another five days, and it's magically active, so it will also cover up all traces of energy and subtle bodies. But it would be absolutely correct and completely reliable not to leave any way to reach this very location in the near future. They will find the camp only by the end of winter, and even then, it is not a fact, they may find it much later. By that time, Ilya will no longer care about the traces he left behind, as he will be very far from Verkhnekamenny. But the nobles remembered the place and will describe the situation itself. Who knows, maybe the unknown pursuers will compare one thing with another?

If it were just the aristocrat with his wife and sons, Ilya wouldn't even think twice, but to kill a little girl, whom her older brother is now carrying through the blizzard? Somehow, it's, well, too much. The Assembly won't approve, so to speak. And let everyone not care about that Assembly, as well as the highest degrees of extreme concern that it can express at any sneeze. Harder not to care about that Assembly, the one in your head, the one that will know and remember what you personally, with these hands, did or did not do. If he had left traces, if he had been seen, even briefly, if he had needed trophies after the battle... he would probably have stepped over himself, or maybe not.

As Odie Sitt said in his famous blog on the Forum, all divers have the opportunity to trade morality or humanity for certain benefits. Sometimes it is very difficult to refuse, because every morality has its price. The main thing, said the wise diver, is to set such a price for your principles and morals that even the Broken would get tired of paying for violating them. And at the end, he always added ‘oh-way.’ Ilya, of course, did not take his humorous stories seriously, reading more serious studies and articles by the same author, but now he understood something about old Odi. In his case, the Broken One had not yet offered a suitable price for this particular principle.

Yawning widely, Ilya headed in the opposite direction. He would not help the family reach the city walls. They had taken enough supplies with them and given the servant some potions they had found to keep him going. They had every chance of making it, and whether they did or not was not his concern. And it wasn't his fault if they got lost, strayed, or even encountered the snow ghost they had mentioned. Ilya finished with Upperstone and walked away, leaving behind the city, which was saturated with coal smoke from the pile of smithies.

* * *

Surprisingly, the rest of the journey passed without incident. Ilya took full advantage of the opportunity to walk along a large, regularly used road, so he didn't even encounter any creatures. He only drove away a few more packs of wolves, which were there even without the creatures, and the Wendigos ran away at a speed that almost matched their howls. Once, he came across three bandits waiting for something unknown, who were forced to let all the large caravans pass and waited in vain for a lone traveller or a couple, because it was too scary to attack the rest. The men were very emaciated and sick, evoking not fear but rather pity, so Ilya showed uncharacteristic kindness, spending a little of his precious time.

He stepped back, walked out onto the road, and moved forward, as if unaware of their ambush. If they had at least attempted a ‘decent’ robbery in the style of ‘hand over your wallet and bag if you want to live,’ he would have spared them... But who was he kidding? He was just bored and wanted to practise using his howl on a live target. His faith in humanity remained intact because people behaved exactly as he had expected. The first thing he heard from the trio was not an order to stand still and hand over his bag, but the dry ‘twang’ of a very poor crossbow string. He dodged only for the sake of propriety; the shot would have missed anyway, and the diver caught the dart in mid-flight.

The Howl at point-blank range, with an attempt to concentrate on the target, and three corpses. He was even shocked. That is, it is quite understandable that the unhealthy and long-starving, who were not even peasants who went to the road, but rather the remnants of a gang that had been wiped out by someone, could not resist the evil spells very effectively. Ilya was sure that at least one of them would break his heart, but no, all three were finished. And he still had to drag their bodies away from the bed, lest someone notice them. Ilya caught himself thinking that he, and not his Hunger, had developed an extreme dislike for all robbers in general. Not exactly psychological trauma or mania, but precisely the kind of dislike that he did not hesitate to express physically in Broken.

That's probably how they catch unregistered divers red-handed, when they can't take it anymore and start transferring some of their behavioural patterns to Earth. It's not even madness, no, it's just that there you could respond to any attack with force, and force was on your side. But here, the boss is arrogant, the neighbour is rude, the social welfare scum are crazy, and so on. How can you not respond? How can you not punch them in the face, regardless of the consequences? Well, all that was left was to trust in his self-control, which, objectively speaking, was quite good. Noticeably better than that of a million other Earthlings, as the Mechanism itself will confirm!

He didn't go into towns and villages, but moved on, feeding only on hunting and the supplies of the liquidators, whose rations turned out to be surprisingly tasty and, if he weren't a Wendigo, filling too. But they were just tasty. He shot several deer and killed an unlucky hare with his new crossbow, which pierced it through and through with a solid magic bolt and then flew far, far away. He searched for that bolt for about as long as it took to gut the hare. The hare turned out to be horribly tasteless to human perception, like chewing burnt rubber.

He tried carving out of bones obtained in battle, successfully making all sorts of trinkets, which he had to destroy anyway. In the end, these crafting sessions, along with hunting, paid off, and on the next non-yake that got its neck broken, Ilya finally got the coveted drop that added to his cup. The small puddle kept growing, and soon he would be able to think again about which of his existing talents to improve. He already had rough plans for one scenario or another, but it was still nice to think about such things; it was almost like spending money.

Tap.

He chose a town called Lazy, named after its founder, a distinguished lover of napping in bed. Ilya immediately suspected that the founder was Dreamwalker, but there was no one to ask, and guessing was useless. The founder's descendants still rule this city, and even a recent rebellion did not shake their power, for they remained neutral and got off with only a warning not to openly provoke the neutral parties in the future. His twin had heard about this city with a population of almost eighty thousand in the city itself, and Ilya even asked some people about it. It was here that the late Razza, the very bandit who was not a bandit, whom he had interrogated on his first day in the new world, had lived for five years, burning through his youth.

Not particularly useful information, but even that was enough to choose this particular spot for a long stay. Far from the places of past diving glory, no connection with Twin, lots of people, and quite a few creatures of various kinds in the area that could be hunted and turned into drops. A good place for a very experienced but untalented hunter to find himself. There were plenty of animals here, even the most common ones, attracted by magical currents, so it was impossible to kill all the creatures and beasts here for a long time, and the undead would sometimes crawl out of all sorts of holes, because a couple of large-scale battles during the duke's uprising had taken place here. And not everything dead remains so in the Broken World.

That's where Ilya was going.

That's exactly where he didn't get to.

On the thirty-seventh day of the current cycle, about three and a half days' journey from the city, when he was already thinking of joining a caravan so as not to appear completely out of nowhere, right in the middle of his stride, the world froze familiarly, as did Ilya himself. It took him less than a moment to realise what had happened to him, and then he was delighted by such familiar sensations, as if he had been hooked and pulled out of the Broken One again, leaving him in complete oblivion for a moment. Once again, images of the Mechanism flashed before his absent eyes, welcoming its adept after another difficult gaming session.

The Cycle in the Broken World is complete, and the Diver has been returned to his native world!

Deserved drops of Essence: 7

Essence drops brought: 7

The Mechanism has noted the outstanding effectiveness of the Diver among his peers on the Steps!

An additional reward has been received: a small one-time Gift of the Great Mechanism!

The gift will become available to the Diver when they dive into the next Cycle!

Awaken, Diver, for you are home again!

This time it turned out to be more modest, but objectively speaking, it did not involve any large-scale battles, and the only serious clashes were nothing compared to the adventures of the previous Cycle. However, it still made it into the percentage of the most successful ones, which was excellent news. The main thing is that the new Gift is not as ‘useful’ as the previous two.

"Friday again." He said to his beloved ceiling as he got out of bed and headed for the shower. "Work again..."

Well, at least something in his life remains unchanged, and that's good too. He has had enough adventures in Broken, and let Earth delight him with its stable and boring routine; he's used to it.
* * *

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Переведено на Нотабеноиде
http://notabenoid.org/book/88055/589631

Переводчики: Camrad_RIP