Готовый перевод Быть Гладу и Хладу / There will be Hunger and Cold: 11. Какая-то часть Ильи хотела удариться в стену лбом, лбом же проверяя крепость той стены, противопоставив ее твердости собственного черепа

11. Some part of Ilya wanted to bang his forehead against the wall, testing its strength with his forehead, contrasting its hardness with that of his own skull

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Sometimes it happens to a person that he instinctively realizes that enough has been said and there is no more room for words in this world. Now, in Ilya's opinion, such a moment has come. Everything that could be said, he has just successfully said, and he was not going to say more. Without shaking the air with empty words, the earthling uses the best martial art known to him and other earthlings - running. No, what he saw was not a priori a mortal threat, just as it was not invincible, but the last thing he needed was to arrange a massacre in the middle of the city, where belated passers-by were still walking. It was better to follow the desperately running victim, leading him away from the witnesses. These witnesses were equally unnecessary for both the "kid" and the "victim".

It is not difficult to hide from view. It is already late, the winter darkness has turned the unlit neighborhoods into the kingdom of night, and all sorts of thieves, here called good people. All who are not good, leave the house at such a time at their own peril and risk, if they have the opportunity to protect themselves and their property. It is very similar to the history of cities on earth, long before the invention of gunpowder. An old unwritten tradition - without a good reason, good people do not break into houses, but even at night, only those who can clearly answer the question of who they are in life and what they have forgotten here walk the streets.

Obviously, despite the quick and unambiguous reaction, the diver did not count on a successful escape at all, being sure that the "kid" would catch up with him. He would not be against running away, remaining within the framework of his mask, but he did not believe that it would work. In the same way, he was sure that they would play with him first. He would let him run away as far as possible, wear him out, and make fun of the man dying of fear. Of course, a properly assembled build and a sturdy Maniac would not be deceived by his escape for long, and he would be able to confuse and confuse the runner quite decently, despite all of Ilya's coolness. But if his sudden interlocutor with a lack of lollipops in his body was really smart and in his right mind, he would simply attack from behind, without a conversation.

Again, there is always a chance to make a mistake and perceive someone else's intelligence as stupidity. And the chance is not small. The Maniac has many, many ways to impose a long-lasting enhancement on himself, weakening the victim at the same time, if that victim is properly exhausted, frightened, worn out, brought to despair, and on the brink of madness. Oh, Maniacs know, love, and practice high-quality Madness no worse than the Warsaw orbital complex knows in the space program. Fear and Madness are not for nothing considered their main strength, fitting into the root talent of the class in the same way as Wendigo has Hungor and Cald. And yes, Ilya was absolutely sure that he met a natural Maniac - everything is too characteristic, from behavior and manners, to the talents used.

A human heart was beating under the disguise, big and adult, not a kid's, while a kid's heart did not beat, but was tightly clenched in a fist in time with the beating of a living heart, rhythmically and inexorably forcing someone else's life and shell to continue the semblance of life. This asshole really has a child's heart, like in the immortal and bearded joke from the section of extremely black humor! That heart is clenched in his hands, serving as the basis of "Taken Face" or another talent of the same group. But Ilya is ready to bet a year's salary on the face; it suits all the noticed details too well. The disguise of the Maniacs is generally considered the best among all the first-level classes, if we are talking about mimicry, and not pure secrecy in general. Which makes Ilya think that the "kid" either does not have an optimally assembled build, or that build is somewhat non-standard and focuses on something else.

"Uncle, uncle, where are you going?" A voice full of indescribable joy and tenderness, at the same time causing a latent horror and nausea, literally knocking you off your feet, making you curl up in a ball from the chorus of many children's voices in your head. "Uncle, let's play!"

Ilya falls, stumbles, and runs, urged on by the voice of the "boy" coming from different directions, looking around with a wild look and almost ruining his pants with an involuntary emptying. He believed him, despite the fact that he should have noticed several details - a certain coldness in the look with which Ilya looked under the disguise, the very fact that the "redneck" understood that he needed to run. Well, in order not to accuse the enemy of stupidity completely without any grounds, even an ungifted person would have found reasons to behave exactly like that. It was clearly not a boy who saw how carefully the redneck-hunter examined his legs and boot prints, and only then ran. It is quite possible to expect a sophisticated intuition, the ability to read tracks, and the mastery of quickly squeezing the acceleration pedal from dangerous places from a "redneck". There are such individuals, too.

Ilya didn't run for long, about a block and a half, pretending not to understand and not to notice how he was being led away from residential streets and houses, deeper into the slums, which seemed to have died out that night. Maniacs, they are like that, they work with space and areal effects at a literally insane level, like all other madmen, yes. The victim must run; such are the rules. The victim must not find help; such is their fate. No one will hear the screams of the victim, such is the story told. You can fully play the Maniac, with all the power of the class, only alone, even if you are in a community. You can fully reveal the class only after long and thoughtful preparation, preferably associated with a large number of victims.

But when it comes to direct combat, Maniacs are one of four - an alternative opinion says five - of the initial classes that have a chance, with a fair amount of luck, to destroy the holy seven gifted sent after his head. If the fight is on his territory, if the fight is going according to his rules, if everything is prepared correctly, and he strikes first, and, of course, if he manages to split these seven into at least three separate bundles. Fortunately, his opponent is definitely not one of those who are capable of such a thing; he is not yet in the right development, not yet in the right list of victims, and not quite in the right build. But this does not mean that Ilya, who clearly has either "Mark of the Slain" or "Right to Kill", and definitely something from the "Indifferent Pursuit" talent tree, is obliged to play by someone else's rules.

Many people believe that Maniacs are among the first to come close to working with that part of the Mechanism that is responsible for the work and functioning of the lacunas in the Broken World. And any, the very basis of their nature. A crazy and terrible nature, as crazy and terrible as the source of the Maniacs' power. The pursuit does not avert the eyes of others, or rather, it does not just avert, does not mentally affect, no. It seems to drag the victim and the Maniac to a slightly different plane of existence, displacing the pursuer and the escaping from reality. And that is why no one comes to help, no one hears screams, and even the murder happening very close by is so easy to miss. That is why the alleys are so empty, that is why they will not meet either a patrol of guards or bandits wandering about their night business.

A class that requires a very sick mind, but at the same time a cool and brilliantly clever head to fully take advantage of all its advantages. The Maniac's talents, despite all their seemingly imbalanced brokenness, are very whimsical to the conditions of application. An extra witness or even just attention directed at you? The distortion of reality will not work, and the victim will be kicked back into normal conditions, as well as the maniac himself. Squeeze too much? You will overexert yourself and burst, without even reaching the victim. Squeeze too little? You yourself will not hold the fragile and shaky constructs created from your own reserve, and therefore extremely gluttonous. Fail to take into account a bunch of secondary details? You will end up a fool and without another spare life, if they are still left. Not to mention the fact that outside large cities and very densely populated agglomerations, the Maniac becomes indecently vulnerable and useless.

As they joke on Earth, these are the socially-oriented classes in your Broken, each more fucked up than the other. The fucking Maniacs, the completely insane Storytellers in every sense, and all the other “social” archetypes according to the Ancient creators of the Broken. It gets to the point that even among earthlings, many develop the Maniac into a classic melee fighter with an emphasis on stealth and bleeding attacks, making a kind of sly version of the Assassin specialized for urban combat. Because a Maniac lacking the spark of madness and having at least some brakes in a direct conflict will lose to most of the other gifted ones, even if they are not oriented towards combat. And no one will sit to shit in the same sector of the Broken next to those who have no brakes and lit a spark into a fucking fire.

The problem is, where else can you see these Maniacs, especially those who know how to use their lot a little, and in a vulgar and understandable direct fight? In general, to take down a Maniac, you need to know how they fight, how they act, how they think... or be a Seeker, which is almost always a counter for Maniacs, yes. Ilya was not a Seeker, which he did not even regret much, but he still knew the theory of how to fight such assholes quite well. How to kill them. That is why he began to follow the "victim program", fitting into the story told by the maniac to the entire universe at once. That is why he did not play his role through to the end. If he had allowed himself to be driven into a lair on someone else's terms, he could have died even though they did not consider him a diver and did not expect a catch.

He chose the moment not quite ideally, but successfully, about another block away from the point where they persistently tried to drive him, swaggering and leading him in circles. If the Maniac had not been so absorbed in his superiority or simply more crazy, more closely related to his Lot, he would have noticed, for example, the almost zero supply of fear from the victim. But he did not notice, just as he did not expect that at one moment the victim would stop stumbling and breathing heavily, and then silently fall onto a relatively clean section of city dirt, pushing off the ground with all his limbs exactly to the point where the freak, who had put on the appearance of the child he had killed, was hiding. He was hiding, of course, in the opposite direction from the point from which the "boy's" voice was coming. Maniacs use all sorts of ventriloquism options so often that this choice is not even considered a "violin".

The boy raised his eyebrows in surprise when they noticed him and started to approach him, but his face became even more surprised when the first jump shifted into a de facto run on all fours. No, he tried to break the distance and would have done so if his pursuit skill, which allows you to catch up with a fleeing victim in one step, reducing the distance by ten or more of those steps, had been developed to at least the second or third level. Depending on whether it was "Relentless Pursuit" or "Step Behind the Back", different patterns of pumping and aspectization are used there. But under the direct and focused gaze of someone who was no longer a victim, and so suddenly, the boy with freckles could only squeak in surprise when the fist of an adult man, massive against the background of his face, cracked the teenage skull like a raw egg.

Alas, this is not an amateur Charmancer, but a full-fledged Maniac, who managed to get quite fat and start creating his own legend, history, myth, who has already linked himself with Lazy, who has clearly already managed to create a lair for himself. He couldn’t help but create it. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have launched indifference; he wouldn’t have managed to pull Ilya out of the fabric of the normal world. The mask he had put on burst, the child’s heart clenched in his fist dried up and rotted, and Ilya met the stranger’s fist with an open palm. He met it, took the blow, involuntarily stepping back due to the enemy’s advantage in mass, and then he clenched that fist tightly, looking his real enemy in the face.

A man, and not just a man, but a real man. A direct embodiment of ancient memes about beautiful males who should be only slightly more attractive than a monkey. Although, okay, you shouldn't humiliate monkeys too much with such comparisons. Tall and large, flabby, with crooked teeth battered by caries, a face covered in old pockmarks, an ugly bald spot on the crown of his head decorated with ulcers. He was so ugly that he almost wanted to puke. Literally. This ugliness is by no means natural, but a consequence of talent from the subtype of properties. "Disgusting Appearance", four divisions, and also an extreme enhancement of physical and energy characteristics at the cost of horrific ugliness, which in itself acts as an optical, mental-disorienting effect.

In principle, the bastard's logic is quite understandable. With the Maniac's ability to mimic, it wouldn't be so stupid to make yourself a real freak, because there will always be a victim whose appearance you can take. Maniacs generally love such tricks and can make the build more diverse. Thirteen base talent points. The second largest among standard first-level classes. However, a larger number of initial talent points is generally typical for classes with an emphasis on crazy tricks. In the case of a normal build, these extra points are used to take compensatory talents. In the case of idiocy and a clinical inability to think properly, they become another reason for desynchronization. It's not surprising that Ilya didn't choose this class, despite all its advantages. The disadvantages completely outweigh those advantages.

The freak smiled with all his toothless grin and clenched his fist tighter, yanking Ilya towards himself, trying to squeeze him in a bear hug. Ilya didn't fall for it, knowing full well that they wouldn't hug him, but most likely cut and torment him, and cut him so hard that even frozen flesh wouldn't save him. A shadow of irritated surprise flashed in his opponent's eyes that the victim hadn't given in to his jerk, but had managed to slip away. And then, as they say, it dawned on him. It dawned on him that the victim wasn't afraid at all, that said victim was too strong and agile for, well, a victim, that the running and almost shitting man simply couldn't know where to strike.

And then Ilya's mask of Lurking Evil finally flies off, and the uncanny valley effect begins to work at full power. His face has not changed, but it has become alien, evil, wrong, evoking associations with a predatory beast. Unlike Ilya, the enemy felt a pang of fear, an instinctive fear, which a cruel and insane person experiences when he sees something that has long ceased to be human. And then they struck, both at the same time, converging at an extremely close distance and diverging two heartbeats later.

Thick and viscous drops of black blood fall from Ilya's forearm and cheek, fall abundantly and unnaturally fast, as if a simple man were bleeding, as if the blood, despite its thickness, could not be retained in the frozen body, flowing out. In the enemy's right hand is a thin and repeatedly sharpened butcher's knife, thinned from constant sharpening, small and funny, but devilishly sharp. In the left hand is a rusty iron hook, on which they hang the carcasses of skinned cattle, allowing the released blood to flow. The good clothes on Ilya's side are torn and hopelessly ruined, but the hook only damaged the fabric. It did not have time to enter under the ribs and tear out that very rib.

The enemy also did not remain without return pleasantries. His blows to the nimble and diligently trying not to let himself be cut earthling did not remain unanswered. On his sagging belly, covered with a dirty apron with blood stains, a long, such cut gapes. Alas, but the intestines do not ask to come out, and there is little blood in the cut, only red veins are visible, and a dense layer of subcutaneous fat, elastic and strong, like rubber. Really strong, because the knife in Ilya's hands did not cope, almost cracking in the middle of the blade. A blow with a hand, a pinch with exposed nails, scratched the neck under the chin, but even all the strength of the frozen body was not enough to grab the throat, so as not to slip on the greasy skin of the Maniac.

"Possessed." The enemy said in a shrill and unnaturally squeaky voice, as if he were still unintentionally pretending to be a child. "Hungry."

"Maniac." Ilya answers in the same spirit, but his tone is dry, calm, and completely indifferent, merely a statement of fact. "Butcher."

A completely insane smile blossoms on the freak's face, full of malice and the desire to skin, kill, hang the body on hooks, and make it the source of his power. Yes, his opponent also has an in-depth starting class, just like the Wendigo is an in-depth version of the classic Possessed. Any class has its own in-depths, which in fact do not make that class fundamentally new, no. They simply open access to a number of talents characteristic of such classes, and also allow you to save a talent on taking the key foundation of the class.

If Ilya had not been Wendigo, but had simply become Possessed, he would have been able to assemble a build that was not identical, but very similar. Only, instead of "Hungor and Cald" as a basis, he would have had the classic "Obsession with Evil" with three steps. Which would have made the "Wendigo" build not so much weaker, although not without that, but simply irrational to choose, forcing him to assemble the classic "malicious" Possessed. So this bastard chose not just a Maniac, but his advanced version, which is sometimes considered not just the first step, but the first step plus another tenth of the step.

On average, with the right leveling, the deep ones are not stronger than their standard colleagues; they are just more specialized and effective within the framework of the specialization. And they are much more brainwashing, closer to desynchronization, which is why many divers, even having the opportunity, do not choose such classes. And this is taking into account the fact that almost any novice diver will have at least one deep class available among the proposed options. Just like Ilya himself had four branches of the Possessed and Sage available.

So he is confronted by the Butcher.

It's a bad thing, but it could have been worse. It could have been the Collector, and one who had already started collecting.

On the other hand, the Cannibal could have been caught, after which it would have been the enemy who would have felt the worst, not Ilya.

"You're mine." The freak didn't pause longer than necessary, once again unfolding his madness, cutting off the place of their battle from possible witnesses. "All mine!"

Ilya would advise not to rush into such amateur performances too early, because there is still the question of who locked whom up with whom. The Butcher is not for nothing considered the most "physical" variety of the Maniac; his talent mechanics are relatively simple and straightforward, as for such a crazy archetype, but he is not up against a cotton-wool Charmancer or a Martyr deprived of mobility, but an extremely vicious, nimble, and agile beast in the person of Ilya. And he was not going to become meat for this creature in human form.

A dash to get closer is met with a cold Breath right in the face, and then a somersault, going straight into an icy cloud. There is no snow, only a bit of dirt and small debris raised by the Breath, but the enemy is still hidden from view for a moment. He is not at a loss, using the Maniacs' signature blink-type teleportation ability in the absence of direct visual contact. The hook whistled dangerously close to the earthling's back, but only cut through the air. The enemy involuntarily failed in the attack, taking half a step more than necessary. His dash is swift, but dangerous for him, because he entered the area of ​​the skill's action, which had weakened slightly after the first moment, but was still very cold.

Here, he would have struck with a Howl, but Ilya still did not inform the whole city about who had settled here, first of all, because of old Ryuk, who would not let him leave the city if a large-scale search began. And it is not a fact that it would have affected him; madmen are traditionally resistant to mental effects in the same way as "cold" and "dark" classes are to curses. Instead of howling, Ilya dodges and strikes again, this time with a cleaver, completely ignoring the instincts of a hunting animal, which require moving to a close distance, tearing, and tormenting. No, without an active appearance he will not embrace this woodpecker, he risks not surviving those embraces.

The classic, academic lunge is aimed strictly at the lower abdomen, under its sagging mass, trying to reach the groin and cause bleeding, combined with castration. This lunge was so successful that, probably, neither before nor after he will ever be able to make such a successful lunge; it only happens once in a lifetime. If the eternally grumpy and dissatisfied Figa were standing nearby, he would shed tears and, wiping his tears with a handkerchief, would admit that it was Ilya who was his best creation in the field of mentorship and fencing. Well, Ilya is probably exaggerating a little, but only a little.

Alas, but all the swordsman's talent was wasted when the opponent at the last moment turned his body and literally knocked down Ilya's blow with his own belly, simultaneously cutting the blade with a hook and pressing it to his body with his flat side. The earthling did not hold on to the cleaver, did not even try to pull it back, instead stepping to the side and letting the cutting swing of the skinner pass by, not allowing it to crash into him with all its mass. And he himself kicks, clearly and sharply, right under the fat ass of the freak..

It felt like he had hit a rubber dummy, but the power in Wendigo's body hadn't gone anywhere, and the enemy was forced to fly face-first, throwing aside the cleaver that had broken in the middle, unable to withstand the gifted one's grip. He flew and hit the wall of some half-abandoned shack, hitting it with his whole weight, damn it. He broke through that wall with his fat carcass, hiding behind the wall and casually stabbing a tramp sleeping there, who hadn't even had time to wake up. Ilya, who maintained special vision, didn't miss that moment, and when he jumped into the gap after the maniac, he didn't screw up. Overgrown, terribly thin, and painfully pale, like a consumptive, the beggar presses his bloody hand to his face, trying to find his left eye where it had recently been. His second palm points to the exit from the hut, and his lips, parched from the heat and coughing, squeeze out a barely audible:

"There..." Ilya ignores the mental effect of redirecting attention, which should have confused even the Wendigo for a moment, sending him on a false trail and leaving his back open to a blow. "Yhh!"

The blow to Ilya's back did not happen; Ilya delivered this blow himself, and not at all to the back, but precisely to the head, splitting the beggar's skull with a kick. Again, that same spatial effect of madness, thanks to which the Butcher's carcass fits into a tubercular beggar, then into a young boy, as if folding into itself. It is not for nothing that all madmen are compared to an extremely dark version of "Alice in Wonderland", because this magical element acts in extremely similar ways. So similar that one of the four of Earth obtained permission to exhume Lewis Carroll's grave to check whether he was a carrier of the magical element of the Broken long before the Seven. The exhumation, by the way, showed nothing, although several fours were attracted, who on Earth had scanning talents of their first level.

The Butcher jumps out of the discarded shell as if he had a spring under his ass, and Ilya is casually surprised by someone else's professionalism. He managed to slaughter, take out the heart, and activate the talent, simultaneously putting on the beggar's body, in that split second when he fell out of the direct gaze of the earthling. Here is a real respect hatching, as well as disgust mixed with apprehension. He is either incredibly cool or has simply completely surrendered to Madness, going completely out of sync. Ilya would consider the second option the only correct one, but no, you can't be overly proud and consider yourself the only smart person in the area. And the bastard copied his class and the subtype of that class too quickly; he uses his strengths too well, not allowing Ilya to reveal his own advantages.

It seems that he is confronted by an individual who is well-versed in theory and practice, but who gets too carried away, misses small details, and makes annoying mistakes. For example, this trick with quick camouflage and distraction seems to be practiced, hammered into the subcortex at least in theoretical terms, but has not become natural - otherwise he would remember that the earthling saw through his camouflage.

Ilya is almost certain that another diver jumped on him in a cloud of discarded body parts.

Ilya has an unpleasant suspicion that he is not the only earthling in this scene.

Ilya doesn't hesitate or slow down, blowing ice into his opponent's mug, immediately stepping away from the temporarily blinded freak, who is rapidly regenerating his burst eyes, simultaneously losing weight with his fat belly, and then kicks him under the knee. A crunch, wet and disgusting, showed that the fatty protective layer of his appearance did not protect him from the traumatic impact on his kneecap. A hoarse howl, turning into a howling squeal, full of malicious, active madness, and then Ilya himself hisses through clenched teeth, barely managing to turn his leg. He turned it, and the skinner's lunge did not cut off his entire calf, like a piece of meat for tenderloin, but only cut it to the stop, scratching the bone.

Black blood falls on the mud of the hut, the fat carcass rolls away with incredible grace, as such, giving Ilya a short pause for a couple of breaths. They look at each other, perfectly seeing their targets in complete darkness, although the Butcher's vision is probably still not so perfect in distinguishing objects in complete darkness. A second's pause, but they do not say a word to each other, rushing into battle, meeting close once more, each using his talent before this. Ilya exhales again, no longer holding back, not in a closed room, not where the enemy has nowhere to retreat. A stream of cold comes out of his lungs, hitting the Butcher's carcass, but he does something that Ilya does not fully understand, somehow distorting reality with madness not for himself or the victim, but for the exhaled cold. And the cold seems to go somewhere, flows through the enemy, not having time to cling to him.

The Earthling realizes, to his surprise, that he has no idea what aspect the enemy used, using the thrice-damned "Time for Games" in such a way. No, if he were already a second stage or a maximally pumped-up first stage, then it would be clear, but if he were that strong, then Ilya would have neither horns nor legs left. The Butcher's technique breaks. He cannot withstand the full power of Ilya's talent, albeit not pumped up, but also about five initial steps. And yet the enemy has some second. And the scum does not waste this second, hitting the lighter Earthling with his entire body, too large, too heavy, too fast, and agile. He hits and literally lifts Ilya into the air, throws him, and thus deprives him of the opportunity to maneuver, any chance to evade death.

The sharpened skinner aims precisely at the very bottom of the belly to pierce the flesh and go up, opening up the almost useless now icy flesh like a fish, releasing the intestines and the life itself from another carcass. Surely he was already planning where exactly to hang that gutted and cut-open carcass in his lair. But it didn’t happen, it didn’t work out, it was no luck: as soon as the blade touched Ilya’s body, a transparent and ghostly bloody skin appeared around that body. And a mouth also appeared, opening right under the Butcher’s hand, who at that moment certainly regretted that his knife was so short. But Ilya mentally praised himself for holding the skin until the decisive moment, so that the enemy would definitely fall into the trap he had set. Although it was unpleasant with the caviar, he had taken a big risk when he allowed himself to be cut so deeply.

The hand sank into the maw up to the wrist and a little more, and the earthling grabbed Butcher's shoulders with both hands, not trying to hit him with a Breath while he was blocked by madness, but simply and unpretentiously smashing his forehead into the bridge of his nose. Everything as Pasha Lysy had bequeathed, Seryoga's big buddy and the main reason that young Ilya never went out for a walk with the company without a telescopic baton, because this shaved dick found adventures on their asses as if he had at least a two in FaFo right back on Earth. Under the memories of his friend who had long since settled down, started a family, and moved to the South Carolina agglomeration, as well as under the cracking of the nose bridge of the gasping freak, Ilya grabbed his opponent's shoulders with his fingers even tighter. The fat layer sagged and began to crackle unpleasantly, tearing under the touch of the unnaturally strong body of the Hunger-obsessed diver.

The enemy still managed to tear his hand out of the mav. Again, the crazy relationship with space played a role, allowing him to tear the meat out of Hungor's maw, although not all of it. Some of his fingers were missing, and the skin was flayed to the bone, but the hand was saved. The second hand hits with a hook, trying to stick it under the neck near the back of the head, but Ilya does not stand still. A jerk, an inhale, and then an academic throw over the shoulder, dropping the carcass of the scum onto the dirty earthen floor. He fell so that the trash from the roof fell, and only by a miracle did the roof itself not collapse after him.

The fight went into the close quarters into a rapid exchange of blows, during which Ilya literally tore off the ear of the hobbled freak, and also stuck his fingers into the cut on the belly and pushed his hand deeper, getting to the intestines and almost taking them out to breathe in the nowhere fresh winter air. Almost in time, but exactly almost, because the Butcher, squealing in pain, turned almost inside out, throwing Ilya to the side, bending his legs under himself, and then sharply straightening them. A classic application of knowledge about mechanics and levers, you can create an educational task for children in the primary school cycle. The lump of fat and skin torn from the belly remained in Ilya's hand, but Ilya did not remain; but shifted very much.

So, kids, how far will a strong but light Wendigo fly if it is launched with all the force of a not-so-talentless Butcher, right through the still-intact wall of a shack? The answer is incorrect, because this Wendigo, having broken through a flimsy, for its body, barrier, did not calmly fly wherever it had to, but twisted, clinging to a still-intact part of the building and stabilizing its flight, directing itself downwards and rolling on the ground for five meters, no more, somersaulting to its feet. Just in time to watch how the shack finally collapsed and fell on the Butcher's carcass. It would have collapsed if he had stayed there, yes. Because the freak clearly decided that his game had not worked out today, and it was time to look for a simpler victim, and not one as fucked up as this uncultured guy.

With a wheeze and a curse, the earthling got to his feet, and with two short exhalations, he burned with ice and thereby completely destroyed all traces of his blood that remained on the ground. Then he covered and froze the collapsed hut, picked up the remains of the broken cleaver, and then rushed forward, hiding in a narrow gap between two houses half a block from the battlefield. In a couple of movements honed by courses on medical aid in combat conditions of the Broken, he bandaged the wound on his leg that had begun to close; fortunately, without the Butcher's magic, the blood stopped on its own, and the edges of the cut froze together. He moved as if he were drunk, constantly stumbling and threatening to fall to the ground, which is not surprising, given the degree of overload of the diver's perception. The diver, who was almost entirely focused on not losing the signature of the Butcher's recognizable, nervously beating heart.

Gifted and most likely a colleague, he does not just run; he uses exactly the same talent with which he used to chase Ilya, covering an incomparably greater distance in one step than he should. A very popular talent, and not only among Maniacs of various kinds, many classes use "Path of the Madman" in one form or another, especially all sorts of messengers and couriers love it. Easy to use, eats very little reserve, and the effects of madness from this talent are relatively harmless and are easily balanced by appropriate counterpicks.

The Earthman smiles a very unpleasant, even sinister smile, watching the heart signature, ignoring the bull terrier-wendigo straining at the chain, as well as the unpleasant pressure from inside the eyes, as if freezing his brain. The Butcher deliberately led his victim closer to his lair, so he did not have to overexert himself. At some point, the Butcher's heart seemed to shimmer and began to blur, disappearing. And this was not the disguise that he had used before. No, this is something radically new, vaguely similar to an extremely primitive and very budget version of a personal lacuna. Well, about as similar as the museum punch cards of ancient programmers are similar to modern quantum computers based on essential technologies.

Ilya saw nothing but the heart and the distance to it, but what he saw was enough to find this place, the place where the wounded Butcher had fled, hoping that he would not be found there. Hide in the place of his strength, the greatest power, the greatest safety, where Ilya would not even go without an activated Wendigo Form. But in Form, covered in Hide, and against a calculated Maniac-Butcher who had lost his game... he would have enough strength, skill, and his own madness to knock down the door, to push through the defense that had become ephemeral due to the disclosure of the secret.

Enough intelligence and stupidity to enter someone else's lair.

* * *

Someone might think that going into a second battle immediately after the first, without having fully replenished the spent reserves, would be another ode to idiocy. But a knowledgeable person would also reproach Ilya for wasting time on recuperating and trying to clean up his clothes, hopelessly ruined by the battle. Because there is nothing more stupid than giving the wounded Butcher, who managed to wound you too, and who has tasted your pain, time to prepare and lick his wounds.

There were only two options.

Either leave Lazy right now. Maniacs of any type, tied to their habitats, really don't like to travel, and their marks and other methods of surveillance shrink with increasing distance. Or finish off the bastard before it recovers, moves its lair, or simply decides to make do with temporary lairs only, starting to hunt the individual who offended them. A victim who is too obstinate. It's a very unwise idea to play hide-and-seek with death against a Maniac in an urban area, and without the ability to normally use most of your talents, if you don't want to reveal yourself to the whole world.

Perhaps it would have been wiser to try to escape, but one specific and sweet argument prevented this... but this is more of an excuse. Yes, Ilya shouldn't have run away, but the truth is that right now, he didn't want to run away, didn't want to leave the child-cutting freak to live in Lazy. Even if he were to revive, being a diver, such scum still needed to be crushed. Especially since Maniacs, like most other static classes associated with terrain and territory, are tied to their lairs with their revival mechanics. Without a lair, the freak won't lose the ability to rise from oblivion, but will rise with great difficulty and expense.

Ilya was determined to help him lose as much and as painfully as possible.

In the end, it’s also a question of banal pride – he simply has to show his opponent who exactly is the most dangerous creature in the immediate area!

About five hours later, already in the dead of night, he stands with his back pressed against the wall of some barracks where low-income citizens sleep side by side. The place where the enemy disappeared is quite far away, but Ilya is in no hurry to go there; he may let himself be noticed. The enemy, quite possibly, senses his victim. Maniacs of all types have talents for marking victims everywhere, and if not talents, then simply aspects of individual improvements. This is what confuses Ilya, those very aspects. If the enemy is a diver, then he got here at the same time as Ilya and simply could not develop himself too much; there would not have been enough Essence. Even a single increase should be beyond the means of the meat cutter, but there were improved skills. He could not earn so much without arranging a massacre of such a scale that it would not have been possible to miss.

Both the disguise of the "Taken Face" and the way he blocked the Breath attack, and even the combat skill with which the enemy fought on equal terms with the pumped-up Wendigo. All this required at least the second division of the corresponding talent, which means that the enemy either had relics that these talents enhance, or he somehow managed to receive Essence not too slowly than Ilya. In fact, this is a very real option, because the Broken One loves to play with human destinies; he could well give birth to two Twins with powerful blessings on the speed of collecting drops next to each other.

And may the fittest survive, yeah.

Okay, he would have to check that later, if he managed not only to kill the enemy, but also to interrogate the bastard, which was unlikely. They were not equal. Ilya should still be stronger. Especially with an active Form, but now the fight was in the place where the Butcher's forces were concentrated, and therefore it was better to first rip off his head and rip out his heart, and only then ask questions. If he had access to the products of a good Alchemist or Mechanist with an emphasis on explosives, then Lady Grenade and Lord Explosives would be the first to enter the scum's lair. But what is not, is not, Ilya doubted that even if he went right now to wake Chif, he would be able to find such extraordinary consumables in his supplies. It was not a fact that even the Chif would sell such things for his own use, let alone for sale to someone else. Not the kind of goods that ordinary criminal tycoons of his level would push off their hands.

The enemy wounded Ilya, but his wounds have already healed, sealed, and will seal even more when he goes into the Form. The Butcher does not yet have a corresponding aspect, which not only suppresses the body's strength and regeneration during the fight, but permanently curses the wound, making it unhealable. At the same time, Butchers do not often have enhanced regeneration, especially for wounds like the one he managed to get. In a place of power, and with hanging carcasses, he will be able, for example, to transfer wounds to one of the carcasses if the ritual talent is chosen. But this is all the time, not minutes, but hours and days, which Ilya is not going to give him, not going to give him the opportunity to replenish reserves.

The Maniac's strength, like that of most "social" classes, is replenished sadly slowly, despite the considerable volumes of that reserve. That is why they are not against protracted battles, but do not like marathon battles, when you have to fight constantly, for at least a day, without having the opportunity to recover. The Butcher can squeeze the enemy in a single fight, simply by exhausting the opponent at the expense of the reserve, but having spent himself, he will prefer to retreat and lie low. For quite obvious reasons, he will not succeed.

Ilya is motionless and calm. He meditates and recovers as if he had fallen asleep right there, under the wall, but this is only until the reserve is filled sufficiently. And only when he considered himself sufficiently ready, he took a deep breath, threw off his clothes, and turned his gaze inward. For the first time in his entire stay in the Broken, he managed to transform into the Wendigo form without letting out a soul-rending scream. The handle of the already cracked knife simply burst in the mouth that became a maw, the crunch of the bones of the changing body could clearly wake up even the dead, not to mention the instinctive desire of any normal person to stay away from the transforming one.

At these moments, the very essence of the Wendigo is revealed to the world, allowing those nearby to sense something wrong for a moment. The people sleeping behind the wall began to wake up in a nightmarish delirium, or simply their sleep became restless, but Ilya, quickly grabbing his clothes, broke into a jerk. His body is like a taut string; each step is given off by a wave of magic flowing through the muscles, as well as tight flashes of pain in his cut leg. The thin, tall, long, whitish figure of the Wendigo rushes forward, its eyes keenly looking out for late passers-by, idly wandering kind and not-so-kind people, as well as possible observers. He did not encounter either a patrol of guards or a group of killers returning from a night's hunt.

And so, at the decisive moment, he ran out onto the next street, immediately finding with his eyes the very house he needed. It turned out to be not so difficult to compare the coordinates of the Butcher's disappeared heart seen from a distance and, in fact, the building. And this place was the only one in the area that did not have a single backlight from the heart inside, as if it were completely empty. And that does not happen. Good houses and shops are not left here overnight without at least a guard. Otherwise, they will be robbed that same night. And the building itself ... a massive and firmly built wooden house with stone foundation elements and a shop attached to it, standing with one wall to a long warehouse building, literally united with that warehouse into one. This house stood out not only for its well-groomed appearance, the quality of its construction, and the half-erased protective sign of the Purifying Deed, indicating that the place is a little cursed and therefore abandoned.

No, there was a strange and unpleasant coolness coming from the building, as if something deep in the soul was asking, begging, even pleading, not to look. Something that made you pass by, quickening your pace, that did not allow tramps to set up a shelter there, and good people to hide their stolen goods. Most likely, something like that was there from the beginning, but the Butcher, although not a pure Maniac, knows how to instill Fear, especially if ritually, on land prepared in advance, which already had its own dark reputation, already caused a latent fear in people.

This disguise is good. It works on the right principles, repelling weak and insignificant townspeople, causing a subconscious desire not to get involved in the guards and thieves, and for the gifted, its effect is almost unnoticeable and does not attract attention. Ilya identified this place for two reasons: he saw the approximate location of the house with his own eyes and knew exactly what to look for. The camouflage canopy turned out to be too correct, too good, as if made according to textbooks and patterns. It will help perfectly against townspeople who do not know about the Butcher next door, but in the case of a truly professional search...

Well, what can I say?

Ilya is here, isn't he?

He runs, gaining speed and throwing his clothes onto the roof of a random building, preparing to break through the wall with the entire mass of his transformed body, baring his teeth in a slightly malicious grin, which on Wendigo's face does not seem like a grin at all. He is not a fool to enter the door, is he? This far from minor gaffe is even comforting, because it greatly reduces the likelihood that he will have to send an earthling to respawn. Too amateurish a mistake for someone who was seriously preparing for the dive, too strange. If there is one thing, it is that there are so many rulebooks for Maniac on the Internet and on the Forum that it is not even funny. Ilya involuntarily studied them in search of paths for Wendigo, so he knows what he is talking about. And a lot of time was spent on creating a lair there, hammering into the heads of all the morons who wanted to cosplay Jack the Ripper the truism of how to hide first and foremost from gifted, and not powerless, victims.

His opponent knew how to fight, had a certain erudition, but at the same time made extremely strange mistakes, which an earthling, who had spent a lot of effort on preparation, most likely would not have made. He would have made others, but not such. Probably. Ilya was not sure and did not seek that confidence, preferring to do the job and not to think about what he could not change or know for sure. The carcass of the transformed creature, accelerating to full power, made a sharp leap forward, putting all the power of its body. Some part of Ilya wanted to hit the wall with his forehead, testing the strength of that wall with his forehead, opposing it to the hardness of his own skull, but this desire did not go beyond a stupid thought.

He struck with his whole body at once, turning slightly to the side and applying the main impulse over his shoulder. Something crunched, but despite the power of the blow, it was not Wendigo's bones that crunched. In an instant, he found himself inside, flying into the room surrounded by a whirlwind of splinters and small debris, immediately beginning to act. In some other universe, where reality worked according to the rules of pathos and coolness, he would have entered through the door, initially in human form and showing off, giving the Butcher time to prepare and start the game. In that parallel-dream universe, the Butcher would not have attacked right away, would have given him time for a pompous appearance, an exchange of meaningful phrases, and all that. Alas, but they both lived in a more mundane, simple, and pragmatic universe, so there was no time for pathos.

The earthling uses Ice Breath immediately, without even having time to touch the floor, quite widely, even wider than it should be, given the dimensions of the building, the warehouse. He exhales far from at full strength, but over the area, checking for the presence of that same strange-insane protection that had neutralized his attack earlier. There was no protection, despite the fact that the enemy had saturated the entire space with his magic, his Madness, and the grown sprouts of someone else's Fear. The haze of frosty air immediately lowered the temperature inside even lower than now outside, although that temperature had previously been like in a refrigerator. The eyes, activated at full power, having found themselves inside the lair, again illuminated the heart of the target, which was inside the house-shop.

Well, we can cross out all the variants of marks from the list of talents and aspects of the butcher. It is unlikely that he was following Ilya or even suspected that he was going for the partially severed head. He was not met by the power of fear, nor the prepared protective veil of madness, only the general density of someone else's strength and power over the space inside pressed a little. A moment, and the exhalation is filled with its full power, cooling the space, freezing the mad power over it, depriving it of nourishment and support. An unexpected effect, Ilya, of course, knew that cold talents can freeze madness; they can freeze everything in general. Or did the synergy of the Ice Breath, the root talent of the class, and the bonuses from knowing the curse play a role here, even if all three are not pumped up?

Most likely that's exactly it, yes.

It will be necessary to check the compatibility tables and talent synergies for the specific conditions of the altered space, with an emphasis on Madness.

Later.

Whatever it was, the walls even cracked, became slightly agitated, moving in interference and waves, like ripples on water. The cooled and skinned carcasses hanging on hooks swayed, some of which were indeed pigs, and some could be confused with pigs if you didn’t know exactly what a gutted human looks like. The storage of carcasses, the main fuel tank, and the center of the reactor of any butcher’s lair, capable of becoming a place of death for many uninvited guests. It’s not for nothing that maniacs, and many other places of power, often prefer to demolish from a distance, burning to the ground along with the horror hidden inside. Here, all these blanks didn’t have time to show themselves; Ilya appeared too abruptly, and not through the normal entrance, but through the wall, disrupting the stability of the protective contours.

A multitude of hearts inside the carcasses flickered in the Eye's spectrum, creating false signatures, or even raising the meat offspring to their feet. Ilya would not have been surprised by anything that night. But the earthling appeared too quickly, struck too sharply, filled the space with too much cold for this blank to work. The hearts flickered, twitched a couple of times, but that was all. Maybe the blank would have started up, like a rare gasoline car after a kick, but Ilya himself is quite a machine. In terms of processing those around him into gnawed bones, yeah.

Without waiting for further reaction, his altered form rushes forward, gliding along the floor, not even touching the carcass, as it rushes towards the only real signature. A moment, and the space tries to close in a circle, to slow down and hold Ilya, but he only gives another, more economical exhalation, knocking down the blank. A moment, and from the opposite side of the warehouse, where the passage to the shop-house is located, a dozen butcher's tools fly right off the wall. Knives, hatchets, a hammer for beating, and all of them are larger than a skinning knife, even if not so saturated with other people's suffering and death.

Ilya can pass through, covering himself with his Hide, sacrificing one of the two layers of protection, but he just jumps, in an instant, finding himself next to the nearest carcass, hugging it and pushing it towards the knives. The sounds of wet blows have not yet died down, the air is still filled with splinters from the broken wall, and the earthling in one jerk climbs up to the very ceiling, along the chains and hooks, where did he find so much iron and how did he even reforge what he found in the chain with hooks, clinging to the old, fat-soaked wood. For three "steps," he continues to identify himself as a gecko, clinging to the ceiling with all his limbs at once, and then jumps first into the wall, almost making a new breach in it, and then, much more softly, again into the wall, but now the one that separates the warehouse from the shop.

The second time, he failed to push through the barrier, and he hadn't expected to. He initially acted differently, hanging upside down over the doorway, like some kind of spider or a monster from a child's nightmare. However, what can you do? He is a monster, and from the nightmares of adults, not children! For the first time, he paused, slowed down a little, and for good reason - the door swung open and Madness itself burst out. A stream of space distorted in all possible ways, of reality itself, which flowed like a wax candle in a microwave oven. Again, a blank, probably, or maybe some talent from the direct ones, reinforced by the lair, Ilya did not immediately recognize, and there was no time to think.

Acting in the best traditions of nightmares, he hangs down a little, showing a smiling fanged maw, looking into the doorway. Having met eye to eye with the very surprised by this fact Butcher, who took a run and ran to the attack, intending to finish off the enemy while he was recovering from the blow. The asshole managed to understand the depth of his problem, but was no longer able to stop the massive, flabby body, having run past Ilya. No, he showed incredible maneuverability, turning on his toes on the go, like a ballerina, raising both the hook and the skinning knife, but he was too late. For one moment, no more. For one moment, during which Ilya managed to push off and rush into a dash, grabbing the enemy in the deathly grip of icy fingers.

The Butcher grunted and almost croaked, bending under the blow of the less massive, but not so small mass of the Wendigo. He tensed his whole body, even to the point of splitting the seam on his belly, which he had simply pulled together with wide stitches of harsh thread. The hand that was clutching the knife crunched, the same hand that had already been skinned and partially gnawed, and therefore had lost its strength. The blade, knocked out of his fingers, began to fall slowly, slowly to the ground. He wondered if it was the same one or a new one, because they looked the same, but it felt a little weaker. Then everything accelerated. Each of them gave two or three blows, and it was unclear who was faster and who was slower. The fingers of Ilya's paw cut through the skin on the collarbones, hooked under the very bone, and tore a huge piece of skin, fat and meat from the body of the butcher.

He growled, madly and angrily, and thrust the hook under the earthling's ribs, but only activated the Hide. However, now it worked not so effectively. It only bit the hook, and not very much; he did not cripple his hand again. The Butcher would have struck again, taking advantage of the temporary fleetingness of the Hide's protection, but their fight was happening too quickly. A blow, a jerk, the Wendigo's sharp teeth snapping right next to the enemy's face, the hook almost buried in his cheek, grabbed by these teeth in time, blows with claws, and the crack of bending metal, with which the possessed's teeth break an instrument hardened by a bunch of murders.

And then Ilya flew.

Like a wild ferret from a nature reserve - strong, bloodthirsty, deadly, but, damn, light.

The enemy pulled the same trick as before, bending his legs and throwing away the less massive opponent, but this time the thrown Ilya doesn't fly far, and lands right on his feet. And then he closes in again, putting his whole body into one blow with the flat side of his palm, and even spinning like a top in the process to gain momentum. Too beautiful, too long, but the instincts of a hunting animal sensed, with an animal sense, the force swirling around. And so his blow managed to break through the defense that appeared for a moment around the enemy, like a thick bloody delirium, not blood, but a mirage of such, a mantle of fear and pain accumulated by the enemy, which the lair perishing in battle gave to its master. The final blow was not particularly strong, barely knocking down the Butcher's pressure. His response was much stronger, but Ilya took the attack with his fist on the block, again hitting the already striped carcass with his claws, from which fat and blood literally flowed.

Even the Martyr is not recommended to fight the Wendigo hand-to-hand, not to mention the Butcher, who lacks weapons, maneuvers, and the element of surprise. However, he is still in the place of his power, still dangerous, still deadly, so it is too early to relax; you can yawn and not even understand how it killed you so intricately. Again, the convergence, the intoxicating smell of blood and flesh, the enticing carcasses of animals and the dead, swinging around and literally beckoning. Pressing on hunger, tearing apart perceptions, which is why each of the carcasses becomes a copy of the Butcher in the victim's perception. Or is it the enemy himself who has become another piece of desired flesh? In any case, Ilya is forced to take off his missing hat, because the bastard, as they say, "assembled the frame" and struck the way you need to crush the Wendigo.

The mental pressure based on madness is not as clear and direct as that of the same Charmancers, but it is more difficult to defend against, and with the addition of pure horror, it was a real thing. The earthling even felt a slight ache in his temples, and two images appeared in his head - the suggested one and the real one, which the madman is trying to hide. Smiling, or rather, stretching his grin even wider, he jerks closer to the Butcher, trying to get behind him, delivering a classic combination of blows in the style of the no less classic universal fighting style that they taught in London AU. For the first time, Ilya sees on his opponent's face not even surprise, but genuine resentment, combined with shock.

Well, how could it be? He sees and knows that his attack not only worked, but also fell on the brains of the cannibalistic monster who burst into someone else's house like a glove. And here the monster completely unfairly ignores the attack. To be objective, even if Ilya did not have his trait, the freak would still not have a chance of winning. The most he could have done would have been to run away, exposing Ilya to those who would come to the noise of the battle, but he could no longer pull off a direct fight, having lost most of his prepared forces and received a bunch of wounds. Again, he added a bunch of flares, but did not hide himself, so Wendigo would have defeated the crippled enemy. But it did not happen, the madness had no effect, the fear did not take hold, and the earthling's blows hit exactly where they were aimed.

"Tlean’rscht!" That’s all the freak breathed out before a punch landed squarely on his bald spot covered in ulcers and lichen spots, crushing his skull and splashing grey liquid across the surrounding area. "Blh..."

The wheeze turned into a short spasm of agony, after which the earthling who had turned into a beast tore the freak's chest apart just in case, took out and threw away his heart, and then also removed his head from his shoulders. The cliché that a maniac killer can never be finished off, and then he comes back, is actually known on Earth from times long before the Seven, not to mention the Treaty. Either the Mechanism was waiting for this very moment, or the scum really had a talent of the "possum" subtype, but the vision of an icy lake and a bloody bowl came only after this procedure. It came and gifted the earthling for a serious and dangerous fight with, perhaps, the most difficult opponent of those with whom he had ever fought. The three liquidators, of course, are in the lead by a margin, but that is because there were three of them, and this one had a chance to cope.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

Scarlet gold fell to the bottom of the bowl, measuring out the proper measure of things, which seemed a little unfair to Ilya. The same Charmancer was valued only twice as valuable, although the degree of her danger and this asshole were completely different values. Well, on the other hand, their saturation with essence could be approximately the same, even with the Charmancer's advantage. And still, it was two drops of difference, given that the Butcher worked alone and did not drag a support group along with him. Again, a new ten was accumulated, so it was already good, he can think about developing either Transformation, or Breath, or even make a knight's move and improve your combat skill. Still, the first stage of the Hunting Beast in this fight was sorely lacking in dominance; most of the success came from using more human tactics.

At the same moment as the last drop fell to the bottom of the bowl carved out of the rock, Ilya fell to his knees and began the reverse transformation, becoming human again a minute and a half later. His mouth was filled with blood from the bitten cheek, and the mood was the kind that only happens when you want to kill. Oh yeah, he had already reached his limit, and there was no one to kill! Life is unfair, there is no happiness, and the Sun is a fucking lantern. With difficulty restraining himself from spitting on the corpse or even pissing on it in the best traditions of petty criminals, the earthling limited himself to giving a short response. Perhaps the diver-colleague, observing the "after-kill seconds", was even able to hear this answer.

"Tlean’rschet allet." And, after thinking for a moment, he added a classic, eloquent addition in the dialect common to the Broken. "Bitch."

By the way, in his homeland of this asshole, for such rudeness, a decent person would be challenged to a duel, often to the death. And a commoner without nobility would be stabbed or flogged on the spot, as it happens. Actually, the insult he heard literally meant "a bastard, not born of a father, but fucked by a father", if verbatim. An untranslatable play on words, so to speak. Ilya's answer sounded like the classic "you yourself are that very word, bitch."

And no, you shouldn't even ask Ilya why he knows the most common swear words of most human worlds, which also turned out to be drawn to the Broken One next to earthlings. Let's just say that everyone needs an outlet, especially if you study the decoding of theurgic texts day after day for most of your life. It seemed to Ilya then that if guests from another world who received an invitation to that Forum cursed him at the Forum, he would, all cool, take and respond with the same swear words. Of course, having sobered up, Ilya remembered that the Forum still has a common understanding of languages, both earthly and alien, but the textbook had already been downloaded and paid for. The greed does not allow retreat.

Yeah, because he got scammed while drunk by some slick salesman blessed by all the Dead Gods at once, having bought a textbook downloaded from the Forum for a third of his monthly salary. And the fact that he later found out the identity of this asshole and leaked the fact of someone else's adultery with a busty colleague to his wife and her father. The father, by the way, was the asshole's immediate boss and quickly found a reason to fire him. In general, the revenge turned out to be a success, and the costs of hacking the accounts in Pilgrim and Signal, where the asshole kept photos and videos of his adventures, cost a fifth of the amount that drunk Ilya was scammed for. Ilya learned his lesson, never got drunk to the point of unconsciousness again, and did not make any purchases while drunk, even the smallest ones. Well, and at the same time, he learned the swear words of the peoples of other worlds.

Maybe somewhere in the ranks of those same Boretzars there is a loser who is fluent in the swear language of the earthly Interlingua or even in English, Spanish, Hindi, and Chinese separately.

Ilya theoretically understood that this baggage of knowledge was not completely useless, it could have come in handy someday, but he consoled himself with this more than he actually believed. And somehow it was even awkward because the faith was justified, and the consolation became a harsh reality. A very typical curse word in the main dialect of the Pact. The Albion-Avignon Pact, to be more precise. One of the few worlds that do not grab weapons and do not activate combat talents when meeting earthlings. And this is even mutual, to the point that there are quite large, albeit frankly secondary communities that are governed by the joint leadership of AAP and earthlings.

Well, for the earth, they may be "secondary", but the AAP, or as they are sometimes affectionately called, "Bread", considers those communities to be almost their best achievement. They are called "Bread" not because of their low IQ, but because the name of their world literally translates as "bread", since in their central language earth, wheat, and bread are cognate words that sound literally identical.

A world where, like in Boretsaria, a pair of sevens allied with each other won, and they won relatively bloodlessly and successfully stitched together the local Europe into a single state, arranging natural colonialism for the rest of the world. Everything would have rolled into another Boretsaria, but they still had their own version of the Treaty for the poor, a kind of royal regalia that, by accepting a worthy ruler and endowing him with considerable power, as well as access to vassal clan oaths on blood, forbade being a bad ruler. Roughly speaking, if there is no factual confidence that your actions will bring more benefit than harm, then there is a rollback, deterioration in health, and general morbidity.

And if the Pact flourishes, the peasants don't rebel, and everything is always quiet in the colonies, and they don't chop off hands for failing to meet the rubber production quota, then you live longer, become more handsome, and generally feel handsome and lucky. Earthlings joke that Avilia and Albus got their descendants hooked on a magical analogue of political drugs, and this is only partially a joke. In any case, the world is not the most rotten even against the background of Earth, not to mention the obscurantism of the pure, the anarchy of the many islands, or the shtiks of Boretsars. Earth lovers of sweetly masturbating to the aristocracy, the imperial form of government, and the boot of an honest and caring dictator in the depths of their own ass use the image of the Pact as their main argument that, supposedly, an absolute monarchy with the slightest taste of a constitutional monarchy can work quite well and even somehow bypass the problem of genetic roulette.

On average, the Pact resembles a mixture of Victorian France and England, only expanded to cover the entire world, gobbled up competitors, and really retouched so that the greed of monsieur and gentlemen does not cross very strict boundaries. Yes, aristocracy and all that, but at the same time, they have not only rights, but also a clear list of duties, prohibitions, and punishments for violating them, so that it will not work to screw up a commoner who has misbehaved without reason; you will have to at least pay a fine. And not the smallest. Yes, the colonies are openly used as resource sources and are in no hurry to give them even a shadow of independence or social elevators. But at the same time, there has been no famine or mass epidemic for six decades, and a talented illegal diver from the colonial aborigines, who illegally gained access to the drawing of the Star and dived into the Broken, can still be granted a title and an inheritance.

If he is really talented and hasn't had time to do any bad things.

Fortunately, they perceived typical earthlings, erudite, educated, and generally enlightened, very positively, considering them a kind of aristocrats, just very strange and, at times, slightly blissful. So what? They use a knife and fork, read, write, can sing serenades, although the latter not always, have a rich speech, and are not used to bowing their heads. Why not nobles? Well, or rather, they are not nobles, they do not see many social markers "for their own", but this does not mean that they will risk saying this out loud. Earthlings are still very strong and dangerous divers, whom it is easier to respect and consider brothers in nobility from a far-far-away world than to honestly admit that they were bypassed, like standing people, by a bunch of commoners, for whom the nobility has long been a relic of the past.

There were conflicts, sometimes quite bloody and offensive; there were set-ups and brutality on both sides, but in general, both sides were more often in close alliance than in enmity.

In general, contradictory guys, who, by the way, have significantly raised the level of social security over more than thirty years of close cooperation with Earth. Rumor has it that one of the earthlings has pretty much twisted the brains of Leon Adieu, not in a magical sense, but in the ordinary sense.. He is the only Pact diver of the five-level who is alive and actively operating in the real world. By the way, the guy was born a commoner, the son of a baker, and is one of the first wave who passed through the Star of Dreams. And now he has become a de facto prince consort, having married a beautiful princess and not sitting on the throne only because he has thrown all his strength and aspirations into Broken. In fact, he was the head of the largest community of Pact members and the aliens who joined them, where there was a very large layer of earthlings in the positions of instructors, archivists, and just officers.

Having heard a lot about human rights and the effectiveness of observing them, he began to implement what he heard quite successfully. Well, implement it in a peculiar way - no cancellation of labor service and privileges of the aristocracy, no freedom and self-government for the colonies, no power of Parliament. But a significant improvement in the standard of living, free medicine and quality education, even if the latter is not for everyone, the construction of ordinary and railway roads, and a smooth and gradual transition to industrialization, so as not to cause another crisis. In general, given that the current ruling queen is flourishing and thriving, and not rotting and withering, then the world, or rather the state, has really benefited.

"Well, there's always a black sheep in every family." That's all Ilya said, casually jumping onto the roof of the building where he had thrown his clothes, quickly putting his pants back on, throwing on his jacket, and, with boots in his hands, jumping back down, disappearing into the narrow streets. "There are plenty of black sheep among our people, too, even many more. Because there are more of us, too. Well, that's for the best. Otherwise, if this scum had run into that troublesome one, it would have hurt me."

He speaks under his breath, but in the common language, so that no one accidentally hears, but the one who is watching him not accidentally, but quite intentionally, could at least read his lips. You never know. Suddenly, his oaths will require Ryuk to find a possible threat to "that troublesome one" and preventively eliminate it right at the respawn point. The diver plays with fire, as it is with fire, but it was beyond his strength to remain silent. Moreover, the Butcher probably started with all sorts of poverty before he went up the chain and angered thieves. So some of Ryuk's orphans would have been drawn into the meat-cutter's games sooner or later, if they had returned home through quiet alleys.

"Yo, what happened to you? Were you drinking?" This question was filled with an outright insulted "without me, or what?", as the sleepy Limp looked at him when he met him. "Were you robbed or something? Or just beaten up?"

"No, I fought him off." An honest answer is interrupted by an equally honest yawn, with which the earthling wanted to fall asleep right there, standing up. The shepeshift into Form and back takes too much strength, not even physical and magical, but will.

The trouble is that his opponent saw Ilya! And the fact that they saw each other's faces means little against the background of the fact that the Butcher freely changes appearances and masks, and his real mug itself is not intended for public meetings. Whereas Ilya, for the first time since the creation of the Twin, regretted that he did not choose the same "Eaten Hide" as his talent, considering it an analogue of the talent used by the bastard in terms of functionality, albeit somewhat not up to the same level. Yeah, and it's useless to search until the new cycle begins, and when it does, it will revive the freak within the city limits, where he will quickly hide his fat ass.

Avignon shit.

If he is from the Pact at all, and didn’t swear in their dialect on purpose to give Ilya a false clue.

He's still shit.

"Well, I'm going to sleep." He states the obvious, heading to his little room. "Tomorrow I'll have to, behind the wall."

Limp immediately nodded and began to fuss, even offering him a tonic or something strong. After all, he has some kind of reverence for the local adventurers-hunters. Maybe he dreamed of becoming one as a child, but only had enough courage to injure his knee in a drunken brawl, never having set foot on the road of adventure? Without thinking about psychology, Ilya casts a sorrowful glance at the remains of his knife and cleaver, for which he will now have to officially buy a replacement, and go to bed.

* * *

He bought a new cleaver. He bought it from some drunkard and a degenerate hunter, who sadly looked at his comrade-in-arms when Ilya fastened the new thing on his own belt; fortunately, the new thing matched the scabbard. But sadness is sadness, but he wanted more money for a drink, and the former captain, with a determination worthy of a better use, made this sacrifice. Ilya, having calmed down by the fact that he now had an official weapon, also bought a simple combat knife in a blacksmith's shop, where he also sold the blade of an old knife, the handle of which he chewed during the transformation, and the fragments of the cleaver. And only after finishing with this, and also having personally patched up his hitherto hole-free clothes where the fucking hook had ripped them, he went out the gate, heading into the wasteland.

This time, he planned to first increase one of the talents, then find herbs from the orders taken from Chif, and then... then he intended to use a legal - because who would stop him? - cheat in the form of improving Eye, to find several creatures noticed on the way back from the last exit. Find them and turn them into guts and drops of Essence. Not all of them, of course, and not the strongest, but those that he can kill without risk. With his bonuses to pumping, you can rise even if you pump on rats, like in virtual simulators of the fantasy genre.

These were the thoughts that were going through his head when he reached another crevice and sat down next to it, pulling off his bag and outer clothing to make his cold bones more comfortable in that crevice. And only his outstanding willpower allowed him not to jump up on the spot, pushing off the ground only with the muscles of his buttocks, which were strained by the sharply contracted anus. It's hard not to contract it if a familiar and scary voice from behind suddenly spoke to you in the middle of the icy wasteland, and the owner of the voice crept up on you unnoticed and quietly, like a bat of a particularly lethal breed.

"We need to talk, Stranger." Ryuk does not put on his mask. His words are calm, his tone is not angry, but even somehow unctuous, but the power in this tone makes the heart miss a breath, makes you instinctively understand that the real Ryuk-or-whatever-his-name is used to speaking exactly like this. "I finally figured out what to do with you."

//“Fuck...” Ilya didn’t say it out loud, even though he really wanted to, how he wanted to complement this “fuck” with a desperate request sounding into the void. “Help...”

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Переведено на Нотабеноиде
http://notabenoid.org/book/88055/590829

Переводчики: Camrad_RIP