Готовый перевод Быть Гладу и Хладу / There will be Hunger and Cold: 19. Я спою ему колыбельную, придумаю для него особую сказку. Сказку со счастливым концом

19. I will sing him a lullaby and make up a special fairy tale for him. A fairy tale with a happy ending

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To her credit, his opponent quickly realized that her mental influence on Ilya was not even knocking on a closed door or a brick wall, but rather into the cosmic void. And so, in less than ten minutes, she quickly stopped emphasizing the mental nature of her attacks, although she did not stop them completely. Madness and suggestion go hand in hand in the talents of Storytellers, often without distinguishing between their own and their opponents, affecting everyone's minds equally. Well, if the Storyteller is completely stupid, and the team is no smarter. If none of them have experience working in a group, which happens quite often, it's worth acknowledging. But no, his opponent is not one of those. She knew exactly what she was doing and what exactly not to do under any circumstances.

The impact on thinking was reduced to the minimum level, below which it simply could not go without destroying the basis of the fairy tale. But the flip side was that Madness, o-o-o-o, brought out this side of her power not in an afterburner, but a noticeable strengthening. In general, the lady quickly got her bearings. Much faster than Ilya would have liked. But he realized much later that he had reached zugzwang, and there was no way out of it, none at all. The Earthling obviously knew very well how to play against the Storyteller, but there, if you didn't have a specific counter-build or simply a convenient counter-class, such as the Traitor, the lion's share of tactics was based on finding other people's mistakes and vulnerabilities.

And there were none

None at all!

Ilya didn't realize this right away, or rather, he didn't believe it right away. He assessed his opponent's actions and tried to calculate her build so that he could then switch to the most productive tactic. At first, he thought she was somehow leading him on. That she was hiding some very unpleasant relics under her cloak, which, according to his calculations, should have been no less than those of his previous enemy, the extremely lucky Occultist. His mind habitually gravitated toward the most rational options rather than the fantastical ones, but his opponent, either deliberately or as part of her usual tactics, tried to present herself as less than she was capable of, creating a false impression of her abilities. Bravo, what else can I say? This is exactly how Storytellers should work and succeed — making you believe what they show you.

Ilya had already passed through the constantly shifting mansion three times, following the now clearly intentional signature of the other's heart. She didn't attack, aside from trying to put pressure on his brain. She was merely probing his defenses, and Ilya was trying to figure out how exactly she was evading him. With her feet, or some "Actress Behind the Scenes" talent, which allows her to close the distance between herself and the enemy until she's spotted with absolute certainty. A game with the principle of superposition, where the Storyteller's location doesn't change position in space, but exists in several points at once. Shimmering camouflage fits perfectly here. It's a rather risky tactic, but not without its undeniable and obvious advantages.

The sensor sees a fleeting signature and pinpoints the enemy's location. And the enemy is actually there. The signature is real, not a false one. But as soon as you see that spot with your own eyes and cover it with strike talents, it turns out the Storyteller isn't there and never was. Meanwhile, the sensor already sees a new breach in the camouflage, which briefly reveals the Storyteller, hidden several hundred or thousands of meters from the previous point. The main thing is to have somewhere to hide, so that all the hiding spots, all the "Backstage," can't be seen, collapsing the uncertainty principle into a beautiful zero. In today's arena, with its vast and constantly changing scope, talent is close to ultimate, even if you take its primitive version, the four-step "Actor" or "Actress," rather than the five-segment "Maestro" or "Matress."

Incidentally, these talents aren't gender-specific; despite the name, men can take the female version and vice versa. Among Earth Storytellers, incidentally, the "Actress" talent is more often chosen. There, the choice of aspects during development is more stable and more suitable for group work; individual details of the talents vary, despite their similar nature. The Earthman knew all this, but didn't show it, stoically enduring the gradually increasing impact on his Twin, trying to trick the girl into a few new tricks. Let her believe that he didn't understand how and why exactly she "pulls back the curtains" for him, and how exactly she manages to escape each time.

He moved quickly. Not at full speed, still in his human form, but swiftly passing through two or three rooms in two breaths, racing through corridors, knocking over furniture and small interior objects. At the same time, he was becoming more familiar with everything his rival's Lot could do. He is learning and becoming more and more stunned with each passing moment. The lady pressed on, constantly and incessantly, irritating, unnecessary, and alien thoughts receding into the background, but her words, a whisper that pierced his bones and kidneys, constantly resonated at the edge of his perception. With every moment, with every second of this otherworldly beast's work, it was as if heavy weights were being placed upon the earthling.

At first, the fairy tale didn't cause any direct damage; it made him a little weaker, a little more vulnerable, a little slower, breaking Ilya's resistance with extreme reluctance. Even this would have turned another diver, or even someone simply gifted, into a mere character rather than a living person, and so transformed that you wouldn't even notice. Ilya hadn't even weakened significantly, but he could already sense this weakness creeping up on him, slowly catching up. The asshole acted as if by a textbook, conducting what the earthlings at the Forum called "softening" or, with particular cynicism, "casting." Selecting the role that would best affect a specific target.

Ilya is not the kind of actor who easily falls into a role, but he is not facing an ordinary Storyteller.

And it's okay if it was only pressure. He would endure that! Having prepared and partially activated the "Event Scene" properties, the Storyteller began more specific attacks. These were downright dangerous. Here was the diver running down a long, elongated corridor, reminiscent of a gut, and a very richly furnished one at that, with tapestries hanging all around, the walls adorned with silk wallpaper and what he initially mistook for windows into adjacent rooms. These weren't windows, but mirrors, to which Ilya reacted in passing, noted his reflection, and ran on. Only to stop ten meters later, digging his heels into the floor, leaving noticeable grooves in the expensive carpet and nearly falling in the process.

It's hard not to fall over when your pants are falling off, and your feet are flying out of your boots at the same time! Every mirror he passed seemed to take a few years off Ilya, off his Twin, not by aging him, but by rejuvenating him. Aging would have consumed by his defenses, but the Storyteller took the opposite approach and applied what could be considered a limited benefit. An actively applied "Mirror Trick," five steps, no less, and a highly developed one at that, not the second or even the third step, if it affected him so much. In most cases, this very specific curse either ages with each new mirror contact, or disfigures, or oppresses in the mental field, portraying one not as oneself, but as a character in a fairy tale.

Of course, if one escaped the Storyteller's control, a teenager like Ilya would have aged to the standard, or even noticeably more, in a matter of weeks, if not days. But in direct combat, suddenly turning from a grown man into a skinny kid is, let's say, very unpleasant, especially for the melee fighter. That's if you don't become a kindergartener or a baby. Or an old hunchback. Or a magical girl. Or a sheep. Ilya resisted too well to be affected that way, but he still aged, and he had to go back and smash each mirror with a blow, returning what he had stolen.

He could use Form, ripping away the influence. He could go into Trancendece and remove even traces of the influence. He could protect himself with Breath. He could try some of the specific pure rituals against the Storytellers or simply start "breaking the fourth wall," even though he's no Jester. But the earthling was still saving his trump cards for the decisive push. He already understood that victory here would only be possible with a sharp, decisive maneuver, like diarrhea, not a protracted battle. Such tactics work almost as poorly against Storytellers as they do against Druids.

He'd actually calmed down a bit at this point, having roughly calculated his opponent's build—five in "Behind the Scenes," another five in "Trickery," plus the mandatory "Event Scene" and "Narrative Construction", plus a corresponding number of compensators. Even if she had a couple of relics, extra talents, or other buffs, he'd roughly seen the core of her build and already knew how to deal with her. At that point, he saw the main problem as finding the woman, unlocking her backstage, and forcing her into combat. And then there's the classic: smashing and breaking every mirror, avoiding reflections on every surface, and immediately destroying her tricks before any creeps started crawling out from behind the mirrors.

There were still plenty of risks, but it was almost routine, almost too simple. So he waited for a few trump cards, hidden among the classic eleven talents for the first tier of Storyteller. Subconsciously, he was still afraid, disbelieving, unable to believe that she had reached the ninth duel unbeaten, with a somewhat standard, albeit incredibly powerful, build, but lacking some highly toxic, unfair tricks. And he was obviously right. Although he really, really, really wanted to make that mistake in his excessive paranoia.

They almost missed the next attack, simply because Ilya was too focused on searching for mirrors. He expected an attack from there. And that's exactly what they gave him—a reflection in the floor, beginning to cut itself raw, leaving a couple of shallow scratches on its frozen skin, as if it had played a mean game with a cat. An Earthling, of course. A glimpse of the mutilated face of an Earthling, his eyes torn out, caught in a full-length mirror hidden behind a curtain, and Ilya himself lost sight of his left eye for a few seconds. Reflected in a sheet of polished steel, a small boy tried to jump out of the mirror, as if blowing a soap bubble in the shape of his body. The diver tore off the creature's head with some satisfaction, nearly splattering himself with mercurial mirror blood.

In short, the lady diligently showed him all the possible uses of "Mirror Trick," leveling it up to at least three out of five. She even highlighted "Reification of the Story," which had four levels, or even "Past Fiction," which had all five. Two additional talents, each requiring at least one, preferably a full, package of balancers. This was already quite a serious advantage. Ilya thought so, although he didn't deny the possibility of something else in the wide sleeves of her cloak. But he was still quite stunned when, running through one of the doors, he suddenly found himself in the middle of a richly furnished dining room.

"Oh, young man, close the door and get to work, please," said the typical, textbook, rich, good-natured, fat aristocrat, looking up from his lobster or something similar, while Ilya's mind was hit with a pressure that intensified to the point of giving him a migraine. "We're almost done with the aperitif, and we've been waiting quite a while."

Ilya's clothes were already beginning to change into a servant's livery, and his facial features were blurring, incidentally also reflected in the mirror that instantly appeared on the wall. They were blurred because they were reflected. Extraneous thoughts and convictions were already forming in his head, fortunately, easily discernible. Ilya had no intention of accepting the role of loyal lackey, moving on to the main course, which was supposed to be the lackey himself, voluntarily lying down on the table until his breastbone was slit open and eaten out. Instead of lobster, yeah. And if only the mentally insane shit that forcing him into the role, imposing it as naturally as breathing was natural!

A common diver would have struck up a conversation, involuntarily slowing down, trying to sort out his own thoughts, and simply not paying attention to the fact that he was voluntarily stepping onto someone else's plate. And this despite the fact that the mental blow was by no means the main point of the attack, but rather an inevitable side effect, one that the woman hadn't really planned for. No-o-o-o-o! Ilya felt terrible because his Status, his Lot, seemed to flicker, began to recede. Some of the talents he sensed in his mind seemed blocked, as if painted over, obscured by layers of theatrical fabric, makeup, and props. His body spasmed. A servile smile began to creep onto his face. His legs took the first two steps, his back bowed in a deep, obsequious bow.

Until Ilya reached his Breath, blanketing the entire dining room in an icy drizzle. The paint peeled from the walls, the beauty peeled from faces that weren't really faces at all, but mannequins, motionless dolls, expendable materials, those damned "Theater Props!" The room itself trembled and collapsed, the abnormally high ceiling snapped back into place, the walls drew closer, mirrors and reflective surfaces that weren't there to begin with burst. All six members of the typical aristocratic family and three more footmen, that damned mixture of summoned and artisanal minions, suddenly and swiftly lunged at the one who had allowed himself to fall out of character, starting a fight for which the earthling, despite all his forethought, was unprepared.

Fuck! This is... Start with "Theatre-Goer's Props," five steps already pumped up, continue with "Genre Choice" at four steps or its equivalent, supplement with "Roleplay Necessity" at another five, polish it off with "Sinister Makeup" and "Lady's Powder Compact" at three steps each, and finish with "Tale of Colors," also at five! No, he doesn't deny that, in terms of synergy, it's an extremely powerful combination, not at all like that of some randomly killed crazy Hunter. But where the fuck did she get the talent for all this?! Even if she forgot about balance talents, even if she herself, like the Earthling, might not take them at all, it still somehow turned out pretty damn good! If we count the balancers, then even with the most favorable calculation for Ilya, she already has almost two dozen demonstrated talents.

The fight was short and brutal to the extreme. The Earthling struck immediately after the role that prevented him from using his own abilities was removed. An Icy Breath engulfed the hall, which had returned to its normal, standard size for this cube-like house, weakening the reanimated characters, stripping away their buffs and defenses. A regular, run-of-the-mill Storyteller would never create such constructs quickly, and even if they did, no amount of force would make them strong. In most cases, fresh characters can be defeated by a sufficiently bold old woman with a broom instead of a mace. Their main strength is brainwashing, a highly insidious and difficult-to-control method of drawing the victim into the scenario's concept.

Well, of course, these particular opponents weren't exactly fresh. They fought and moved no worse than any newly minted gifted one! The Lord of the House, whose hands had become fused with cutlery, began hurling them at Ilya, who was swinging like a pendulum, multiplying and multiplying their number, firing a fork-and-knife machine gun so fast he thought he was a military-issue needle-shooter. He managed to fire a long burst that pierced the walls and floor, only managing to scratch the Earthling a couple of times, who had been practicing maneuvering against needle-shooters, even though he was more counting on countering the Mechanists.

Then the character started to stand, causing the fucking table to rise with him! Because it turned out the Lord was the table, and his body was just a decoy. The massive creature, surprisingly agile for its size, nearly crushed the diver beneath it, but he managed to gain speed and push off the wall. And then the Cald played its part: the spider-like legs of the dining table finally gave way beneath them, depriving the main creature of maneuverability, so the character was of no help to the rest of the family and his servants. Although they had a good chance, they certainly moved faster than ungifted humans and actively used cutlery. In the cloud of Ice Breath, they became dull and seemingly blind, even though their painted eyes, blurred with color, turned out to be not needed for orientation.

A step forward, a kick to the chest, almost piercing it, a twisting motion with the entire body, and a lunge with the cleaver, another, cutting off the legs of a third, severing an arm, and multiplying the wooden-wax head of a fourth, a short breath in the face, another at his own feet. The Storyteller's narrative voice struggled to penetrate the cloud of cold and could neither help the characters nor hinder Ilya, not so quickly. Give her time, and she would have crafted a plot in which a valiantly fighting, loving family and their loyal servants would have managed to overcome the hungry monster that had treacherously attacked them. Give her even more time, and this story might even have become reality. But the earthling didn't give her time, acting, if not at his limit, then very quickly, destroying his freezing and crumbling opponents.

The last one to fall was the human table. It simply collapsed under its own weight. Ilya could name several aspect options that would allow for such rapid character growth, albeit at the cost of short-livedness. He could, yes. But what he couldn't comprehend was the limits of his counterpart's power. She had already demonstrated, in effect, two full builds, two and a half even. Stealth and quantum undetectability, polished with mental pressure. The mirror theme, quite developed at that, and dangerous even for Ilya. And now, character creation and high-quality makeup, honing into the summoner-minion class tree. All of this simply couldn't fit into a single step I diver; it practically required a coven of Storytellers!

Or he'd have to admit the obvious. His opponent had far more initial talents than the average diver. Or perhaps she could acquire new ones much more easily as she developed. Both, or a combination of both, were only possible if the Storyteller had won her own Lottery. Which, of course, wasn't surprising, but, damn it all, it was incredibly frustrating to have to corner this wretch somehow and defeat her. The arena was literally perfect for her, almost better suited than that rural pastoral had been for the lucky Occultist.

If the fight had been on the same terrain as the battle with the Pure One or the first Occultist, everything would have been much easier. The Storyteller, unprepared and unable to keep her distance, would have been over in a few beats. Yeah. And even better if the tournament mechanics had bound her tightly. Then Ilya would have had a blast. But jokes aside, the situation grew more and more unpleasant with each beat of the fight. He had to suppress a rather obvious thought, accompanied by the calm and measured chant of the narrative resounding beyond his perception. The thought that, unless his opponent made a glaring mistake or committed an obvious folly, he would definitely lose this fight.

He pushed this thought away. He pushed away the urge to let his arms hang limply, yet he couldn't even blame his opponent for mental influence. These depressing thoughts belonged to him, and him alone. However, what distinguishes a well-trained diver from a talented amateur is precisely the skill and willingness to fight to the end where there is no possibility of either victory or retreat. Because always, always, absolutely always, you must squeeze as much out of the Twin and the next dive as possible. Never count on your opponent making a mistake, that's true. But always be prepared for the fact that they will make one. There are countless instances where a logically hopeless situation has turned around completely because the stronger one believed in their own victory.

Believed it too early.

The problem was that Ilya believed in his own defeat too much, and the most grievous grief was that he had every reason for it.

After the battle with the characters, he had even more potential problems. Now he had to watch not only the mirrors but also scratch every random surface, hoping to remove a layer of makeup and trigger a trap. Progress slowed even more, but Ilya understood that his opponent was also working close to the limit. A constant narrative, a ton of traps, and creating characters, even if using templates rather than from scratch? No matter the number of talents, the energy itself can't handle it! If she were a Warlock like Irina, Ilya would be much calmer, but Storytellers aren't bottomless either. Let their talents be self-sustaining and, with the right acceleration and the right methodology, gradually unfold, taking root in reality.

All he had to do was press so hard and sharply, so frequently and continuously, that the Kingdom within the location simply couldn't manifest itself, losing piece after piece. Easy to say, hard to do. But he tried. He destroyed several more mirror traps. He destroyed a closet full of mannequins dressed as noble guards. He did it even before they started to crawl out. It was then, looking at the nearly two dozen rather simple but combat-ready characters created in such a short time, that the earthling felt truly sad. And yet, for the battle, he had had to use Form, simultaneously using "Trancendence" to break through the talent blockade.

He was practically forced into the role of a rebel fugitive. Some of his talents seemed to have been covered in a layer of makeup, not even blocked, but rather transformed, more suited to some Assassin, with a crappy build at that. That's another call for a completely different build, yeah. Storytellers aren't Mimes, which are a subspecies of Jester. They can't copy other talents so completely, but in their Kingdom, their will is strong enough that the role was forced upon them even within the Domain. A combination of the "Reification of the Story" and "Unlocking Potential" also of five steps. He could somehow work with the block, but talent swapping? The only thing he can count on here is extreme resistance in combat form, and "Trancendence."

The latter proved itself beyond all praise, literally tearing away the shackles of someone else's Fairy Tale, allowing him to destroy the guards in the closet almost without a fight, quickly overcoming the damn block. He also seemed to understand how she so quickly developed her characters. It couldn't have been done without "Myth Embodiment" and "Fictional Lies" in four and three steps. Or their equivalents, which allowed for the embodiment of stories. In her Broken sector, there was clearly some legend, or even legends, about a gluttonous aristocrat who ate so abundantly that he grew into his own table and didn't disdain the servants' meat, since they hadn't managed to bring a new portion of lobsters. There were stories about a squad of cutthroats in someone's closet, along with hundreds of other jokes, fables, legends, and myths.

And it relies on them, amplifying the characters' effects, accelerating their maturation, and turning them into enclosed mini-stories. The tournament arena is unimaginably far from her sector, yet at the same time absolutely close to it, which is why the legendary characters are exactly as strong as they would be in the place where these rumors originated. Ilya would have sworn profanities of the utmost unprintability if he hadn't been in the guise of Wendigo, if he hadn't been busy tearing a new batch of characters to pieces. They themselves ran in from the next room, straight from the door on the wall, an extra door, simply painted, and the constructs themselves were also painted. They fell apart at the slightest touch, but only stopped pushing as a crowd after the drawing of the door was frozen.

Another fifty rooms, another ambush, as if she could already move the rooms themselves, with their prepared stories, prepare them in advance, and drag them closer to the earthling. This time, it was another mirror, which itself shattered into pieces, and from these fragments emerged seven of Ilya's twins. A mental effect, intended to make the earthling himself doubt which of them was the real one, literally stretching his personality across all the decoys en masse, so that they would then tear each other apart, was included. A flash of migraine made them stagger, but all seven instantly lost their human form, not, however, turning into Wendigos, but rather into a hybrid between form and human.

Once again, the ability to transcend limits came to the rescue, a brief transformation and a new incarnation that broke the block on other people's stories, making the Twin truly a Twin. If anything surprised her, it was this trick, literally perfect for fighting the Storyteller. Well, not just against this class, but against him as well. The creatures, the active combination of "Mirror Trick" and "Reflected Enemy," coupled with the previously demonstrated "character" combination, having lost their attunement, became simply quick and fragile piles of glass shards that crumbled with a few jabs from a well-worn cleaver.

It was at that moment, assessing the speed of the new trap's preparation, calculating the ever-decreasing pause between attacks and the growing power of the new mini-scenarios, that Ilya realized a simple truth. He wouldn't lose. He wasn't even losing. He'd already lost, lost in a battle of attrition, which had seemed highly unlikely to him. Either she had another gift from the Lottery, enhancing her recovery and magic reserves, or simply additional power-building talent bundles. The kind they call "turret" talents on Earth, designed for prolonged defense and accumulation of power within a controlled area. Those same Druids, especially the cinematic ones, only play like that, and the Mechanism itself commanded the Storytellers to create Fairytale Kingdoms.

Where for them the fairy tale always has a happy ending, but for the enemy, not so much.

And simply for everyone who turned up and who was dragged into that Kingdom.

How many talents does she have in that combination? Five more, or all seven, if you count the compensators? Or can they be ignored? Whatever the case, Ilya couldn't see a way to claw out a victory, and it wasn't just the constant narrative cluttering his ears. He'd done everything right, he'd made no mistakes from the start, but his opponent was simply too strong, too good; she'd taken advantage of the most important parts of her already-demonstrated talents. He'd defeated the catwoman by provoking her into error, correctly exploiting her desire to play with her prey, which had become too strong due to her blood. He'd taken advantage of the mistakes of the Occultist. Fortunately, he made them in abundance.

But now his enemy isn't making mistakes and isn't willing to play, no matter how much she tries to show the opposite. All these games of narratives, the mental pressure is simply part of her Lot. The Storyteller hasn't lost her mind; she's incredibly, surprisingly, pragmatic in her actions. A key and a lock. Try one thing, and if it doesn't work, try another and a third, or even a combination. Choose the means that will achieve the stated goal — Ilya's, uncompromising defeat. Frankly, she acted much as Ilya himself would have acted if he were the Storyteller and not the Wendigo. If he were facing himself.

Look as much as you like, but you won’t find any mistakes in her actions.

And without mistakes, fighting build against build, strength against strength, she's simply stronger. She was always stronger. It's just that now it's become clear to him that he can't turn the tide. There's no way. Ilya simply freezes over the destroyed mirror images, realizing everything that could have been but never happened, the weight of his mistakes, his glory, and his shame, pushing the narrative that was once again trying to erupt deeper and deeper in thought. It took him about thirty seconds to weigh his remaining options, calculate the cost of his reserves and the speed at which they would replenish, and then finally make the inevitable decision. He didn't have the strength for a long game of tag. Even for a short one.

Yes, so far, he's taken out all the attacking groups of characters without any trouble. He has only received minor scratches that have already healed, and no blood at all. But he's using up his reserves. On Breath, on the shapeshift and transcendence to clear debuffs. Yes, his reserves are fine now, yes, they recover quickly, but not that fast, not that normal. A quarter of his reserves are already gone, and there won't be any more. Three, five, ten battles, and he'll simply lie on the floor, and the Storyteller will beat him to death with a handy poker.

Since he cannot win, there is always the option of depriving his opponent of victory. He has done something similar once before and is not averse to repeating it. Unfortunately, he has no chance of winning the “who will survive longer” game if they both fall outside the mega-cube. Not because he believes in his opponent's willpower and personality, but because there, beyond the fragile walls of the house, he will be destroyed and crushed instantly. Physically, morally, mentally, energetically, and on a dozen other levels of perception that are currently inaccessible to him. He had little doubt that this arena was located in the middle of the type of terrain that the Broken called, with a strange combination of words, the “Eaten Star.” Either super-lacunae or separate pieces of the Broken, fixated on themselves and deprived of everything.

Only thirteen confirmed cases of Earthlings ending up in this place have been recorded. Another fifty or so cases have been documented by the records of the natives. The only person who managed to return from this place was Simon White himself. But even he was there for only a minute and three seconds, already a five-step. And he flew back ahead of his own scream of pain, literally slipping out of the portal at supersonic speed, turning into a beam of light. Ilya had no idea what their arena was, why it still existed, but he knew that outside these walls, he would face the complete destruction of the Twin, not just the temporary devastation or destruction of the Vessel.

A place that devours time, space, logic, and common sense. Some consider the creation of such a structure to be the highest manifestation of the essence of Hungor in the material layers of the Broken in general. Ilya, who had read all these calculations, was inclined to agree with this interpretation. In any case, he was absolutely certain that the destruction of the arena would instantly lead to a draw, if such a thing was provided for by the mechanics of the Tournament. And yet, as he wanted to believe, in this house, gigantic and constantly moving, rearranging rooms, there had to be a center, an axial structure similar to that of a lacuna. And he may well try to damage it. To release all the cold he has and amplify it with the “Source” to the maximum limit that not his psyche, but his body can withstand.

Still, the arena is designed for first-step opponents, and his tricks sometimes go a little beyond the norm for his step. And so he smiled, conveying sadness and humility, and contempt for the enemy who had become more loyal than a friend, for the friend who had not happened to become an enemy... He just smiled, like a not-so-law-abiding teenager who had come up with another brilliant idea, after which something was bound to explode somewhere, and young Ilya would be given away only by his clean clothes and very imperturbable appearance.

In an instant, he is once again a monster, tearing through the low ceiling with his horns, ripping apart interior partitions and walls.

A moment later, he uses his Howl for the first time, not really expecting the Storyteller to hear him, but considering it a good help if the Echo somehow manages to hit her. In any case, even if it does, it's no use; she'll still hide behind the scenes as many times as she needs. No, he's had enough; he won't try to outshine the Storyteller on the stage she's practically created. He'll simply burn the theater down.

* * *

She didn't understand right away, likely dismissing his actions as a simple attack by a doomed being, the rage of a beast finally losing control, desperately gnawing at the steel of a trap with crumbling teeth, unable to reach or even see the hunter. And the Earthling wasn't showing her anything; he'd simply stopped conserving his reserves, even ceasing to restrain the Howl escaping his throat, and had stopped being careful. He wasn't opening doors anymore; he was literally tearing them down, along with parts of the wall, falling through the ceilings onto the floor of the cube's lower layer, driven mad by the gravitational vectors bouncing around, but moving, moving closer to the center of the location. At first, his opponent didn't even bother him much, merely pressing on his head, trying to further provoke the Wendigo into unnecessary moves.

Those moves that will only bring her victory closer.

This was probably where she discovered him. He couldn't allow himself to give in to his emotions, his hungry instincts, remaining the same dull, dismal, and intensely focused diver he had always been. If she'd been dumber, she would have thought it was a terribly stupid and desperate trap. He wanted to lure her out with his completely unguarded self, so she could finish him off personally. Alas, she was smarter and began to suspect something when Ilya began breathing out a thin veil of Cald in the rooms and halls closest to the center of the location. Closer to the center because he seemed to be repeatedly displaced, unable to break through to that very center, and once even turned back.

If not for his high attributes, his own sensitivity, and his heightened intuition, he would have been unable to navigate this labyrinth at all, but he remained gifted. He couldn't help but sense the flow of magical power coursing along the edges of the mega-cube. He couldn't miss the hum, barely noticeable at first, but increasingly palpable with each room he passed, of a magical heart hidden somewhere in the structure's center. It didn't beat, but creaked, wept with hundreds of thousands of inscribed runes, a myriad of tiny copper gears. Perhaps these images, arising from listening to the surrounding background, weren't the most accurate, but the earthling reassured himself that the weeping of this core would soon subside.

The light veil of cold began to feel heavy, and then even he began to feel miserable, despite the accelerated replenishment of his reserves. The cold began to ache in his bones, fangs in his mouth, and horns on his head. It seemed that in a little while, even his skin would begin to peel off. His! From the cold! The walls around him, the ceilings, beams, floors, various utensils under his feet, furniture, and decorative items creaked and crumbled under their own weight, and very strange cracks appeared in the wall to Ilya's left. Not only matter was freezing there, but something else as well.

All his tricks, even in small measure, could not compare to the supreme magic that nourished the foundation of the cubic arena. But he didn't need to be more skillful; he just needed to break things. A stone axe dropped onto the microchips of a brand new chip soldering machine would completely destroy the latter, despite the hundreds of thousands of years of technological gap between them. Ilya smiled again at the moment when several doors opened at once, and a multitude of characters rushed at him, ignoring the cold that would almost instantly destroy them.

He didn't know if this heretic could read his thoughts, but he assumed she couldn't. His class traits were too alien and foreign. A Storyteller isn't exactly a Dreamwalker, after all. But the woman could definitely sense his mood and clearly understood that he was planning to kill himself, but to ensure that both of them died. A purely empathic scan. He'd be tired of calculating the talents and aspects of his opponent. And if at first she hadn't cared, because she couldn't see how exactly the cornered victim could harm her, now that she did, she had to quickly find a way to prevent the already defeated chess player from turning the board.

And smash that board over the winner's head.

Someone more naive might have believed that luck had smiled on him again, that he would manage to snatch victory from defeat, but Ilya was under no illusions. There were too many telltale signs that his opponent had succeeded. And, alas, he was not mistaken. A bell rang in his head, its sound both melodious and nauseating, and then it began to snow. The cold shroud held by Ilya did not contain ice, only cold. Yes, something had frozen on all surfaces, a little ice had come with the Cold, and the moisture in the air had also frozen, but these were quite natural manifestations of cold, as far as that word can be applied in such circumstances.

And when “The Opening of the Act” sounded, snow really began to fall, covering the floor with heavy flakes and at the same time taking away the Cold itself, as if the abomination that had manifested itself was being replaced by another abomination. Coldness against Madness, but the Storyteller had all the power of a well-constructed scenario, an unnatural amount of talent and scale. Her Kingdom covered the entire arena from edge to edge. And Ilya was left with only four rooms-halls, flooded with Coldness and blurred by the “Source.” His talent was deeper, but the Storyteller had more tools and a solid foothold; the entire arena was playing in her favor. And a moment later, Cold yielded, though not completely, not entirely. But the wall-that-was-not-a-wall, leading to the heart of the location, stopped breaking and even began to repair itself.

A moment later, two short men in sheepskin coats and fur hats with earflaps leaped out onto the snow like jack-in-the-boxes. They weren't dwarfs, but they were clearly of abnormal height. Ilya would have called them "dwarf blood," but he was confronted by characters, not some gifted. Both men grinned cheerfully, pointing at Ilya, and then began to speak.

"Brother, look at that moose!" Well, admittedly, that was a little offensive, but not as much as the second part of the sentence. "We'll make so many pies!"

"We'll make, brother!" the second one agreed, and although they seemed to be speaking leisurely, they somehow managed to exchange words in the split second it took Ilya to dash. "But that's not a moose, it's just a huge deer!"

The "deer"'s blow literally kicked away one of the men, who managed to pull a sharp knife from under his sheepskin coat, practically smashing the man he'd kicked into the wall. But the Storyteller clearly chose a certain myth or legend, tailoring this pair specifically for it, without even sending a single other character. The crowd that burst through all the doors at the start of the assault had played its role, buying time and weakening the Cald's effect. Now, only these two stood against him. Specifically, two, because the man, smashed to pieces, emerged from behind his "brother," having grown a whole palm taller. And his knife was stained with pitch-black blood, a couple of drops... despite the fact that no wound had appeared on Ilya's body, and his Hide hadn't activated.

How?

Really, how?

How many extra talents does she have if she managed to attach “The History of Things” to the character, turning the knife into a quasi-artifact? It's another bundle, another set of balancers, another bunch of drops that need to be taken from somewhere! On the other hand, if she initially possessed so many talents at the first step, then she had a bunch of opportunities to earn drops by almost committing genocide on everything around her. For a normal gifted person, the lack of talents for all their desires is one of the restraining factors that force them to cooperate. Such a powerful storyteller with a bunch of extra talents can build kingdom after kingdom from the very start, quietly and unnoticeably destroying even entire towns.

The initial cleanup and elimination teams will simply not understand what they are facing... if there are any teams at all. Storytellers are one of those classes that can stage a bloody massacre without arousing suspicion, blaming all events on other causes, and hiding between the lines of the story they tell. In a normal situation, such Storytellers would not form before the second step, as they would lack the necessary talents. But his rival is unique, a walking horror story on two legs! In general, he understood quite well where so many drops for talent development came from. She could, in theory, roll over the Sector with such a steamroller that fifty drops per cycle would be the norm rather than luck.

Well, if she is absolutely ruthless and doesn't go crazy from such an overloaded status at the first step! The risk of running into a group of twos or even some duke-threes who have decided to rock the old style is included in the starter pack. Even with a couple of twos, she, with all her imbalance, will hardly be able to cope; even with one, she will only have a chance if no one knows about her, if they let her build a fairy tale specifically for that very two. But, to be honest, right now he wasn't worried about how his rival was leveling up, but how he himself could avoid becoming a leveling opportunity for her.

Ilya kills each of the men several times, but they only grow taller and taller, already reaching two and a half meters, as if they had truly “activated Spriggan,” using the iconic ability of Dwarf Blood, even as characters. Ilya became genuinely interested in the legend of these men, and also in how long his rival had been collecting their tales, since they were now showing themselves to be so powerful. He categorically did not want to test another “interesting” question, namely, “Will they be able to grow taller than Ilya himself in combat form?”

Despite his humorous inner monologue, Ilya actually has a rather gloomy view of the situation. In principle, he can handle the men. He already knows how; he's just choosing the right moment to attack. But what's the point of killing characters if he's being pushed further and further away from the Cald Territory, if the size of this territory is getting smaller and smaller? And all around him, Fairy Tail is pressing in, and nearby, huge, fucking thugs with knives are jumping around, making Ilya bleed without even wounding him. It's as if someone has managed to use “Biographical Record” on him, reading the list of talents and choosing the perfect countermeasures against him.

Thoughts lazily flit through his mind that of all his opponents, only the cat-girl had any chance against this Storyteller, and only if the arena was equally convenient for both sides, not in this cubic house. Most likely, the cat's blood would have won, but not without struggle. Well, if she hadn't been stupid again, if she hadn't decided to play... although no, it was interesting for her to play with Wendigo, but the Storyteller would have died as soon as the Cat Girl found her opponent hiding backstage. No amount of luck would have saved Mommy's Occultist if only he hadn't been literally placed in the same room as the Storyteller, but his luck wouldn't have been enough for that.

The men did not grow taller than him. They did not have time. The earthling had dealt with it earlier, forcing the advanced enemy to recoil with a single weak Ice Breath, putting them on the same line. And then... he uses Transformation, going beyond. He manifested himself partially, only with his hands, grabbing the second one by the belt and pushing him onto the first. He used Transformation afain again, becoming the concept of Evil, and then manifested himself in a brief flicker. Simultaneously with the activation of Hungry Hide. Hide was created separately from his body. The Hide was created, and then gently, deceptively slowly, fell like a shroud covered with maws strictly on both men.

The Hide wounded them simultaneously, sinking into them with dozens of phantom maws with very real fangs, while at the same time realizing that it was not flesh that had entered its maw, but a decoy. Classic, damn it, you have to know that! Such Hungry talents always reacted very nervously to attempts to feed them fake meat, be it the Maniacs' decoy, the Assassin's false double, or, in this case, a character from some legend created through Madness. Just one character, because the two brothers were essentially one entity and could not disappear while at least one of them remained intact. It's a good thing that the Storyteller didn't have a legend about triplets in reserve, or they would have been covered by the Hide thrown through the Transcendence.

The characters were sucked into the maws, as if they had turned into thick spaghetti, but that didn't make it any easier. New enemies entered through the open doors. And Ilya was sure that each of them would be as strong as the giant men, even though each of the heroes that the Storyteller could summon, control, and carry with him could easily become the basis of a build. The Narrators, as an advanced class of the Storyteller, are almost always played through an “imaginary friend,” a single, constantly strengthened character, whom they often cherish more than their own lives. Unlike the diver himself, once incarnated, he will not be resurrected, so you will have to recreate him and spend a long time building the foundation of the fairy tale character, regaining his lost strength.

On the left, a tall and unattractive woman enters, thin and slender, but only slightly shorter than Ilya in his active Form. If you don't count the horns, that is. She is dressed in a moth-eaten fur coat, and something seems to be constantly moving under it. The snow swirling around the holes in the coat behaves very unnaturally. On the right, a man enters, looking like a playing card, as if two young and dashing men with chic mustaches had been sewn together, cutting off both their legs at the waist. One is in a red uniform with green elements, the other in green with red. Both have red and green mustaches, only in different proportions.

But Ilya had already used up almost half of his reserves. And he had been saving as much as he could! Plus, the snow kept falling, slowing down Wendigo's movements and covering the floor and walls. Yep, snow, and it was slowing him down! Because it wasn't snow anymore, but weird white flakes, like really thick and weird tree fluff. Ilya once saw a fruit-bearing poplar tree in an arboretum, a species that had almost completely disappeared in his latitudes. It turned out that his girlfriend had a severe allergy to poplar fluff, so the date was unforgettable, and he never took his girlfriends to botanical gardens and arboretums again, even if they asked him to.

He exhaled at his feet, raising a pile of “snow” that did not prevent the jack from striking him with their whip, sharp and seemingly consisting of many sharp rectangles, like old, old razor blades. There were two whips, but they merged into one, as if flying along two trajectories at the same time. The lady simply threw off her fur coat, revealing what was hidden beneath it. This battle stripped him of another layer of Hide and severely injured his leg, and the wound from the whip was slow to close, even though his leg was still functional and the blood was barely dripping. The jack was torn in two, and Ilya made the split right across the waist, patting himself on the shoulder for his quick thinking. Both halves immediately grew legs and began fighting each other. The red and green one won very quickly, as his opponent slipped on the ice.

Ilya only had to step aside slightly, allowing the remaining mustachioed man to crash into the woman who had taken off her fur coat. Or rather, not crash into her, but simply seal himself in. She somehow dressed herself on him. Her body resembled a lump of cobwebs and leaves, and then she put on the fur coat. Bowing somewhere behind the wall, she immediately vanished with a sharp bang. The earthling did not dare to check whether it was a trap, a trick, or just a slight misfortune of his rival. He struck through the wall, breaking into a large hall, almost no longer cold and covered with knee-deep “snow,” resembling a medieval infirmary.

When he froze it, the stench of rot and old blood was clearly noticeable from the beds and sheets. But now those beds are no longer visible. Instead, he saw his rival. For the first time since standing on the cliff in the void. He saw her and immediately howled. Although, since going into overdrive, he hadn't stopped howling regularly about once every thirty seconds. He howled from the realization that he was too late. Ilya understood almost instantly, even before he met her calm and completely unpanicked gaze. And it was no surprise — with her many talents, she was either the bearer of a trait similar to his own, or she had injected herself with so many stabilizers and balancers that her psyche could not be shaken, not even by a dozen Wendigos. Even if they dressed all in ballet tutus.

She smiled with the corners of her black lips visible under her hood. But it wasn't a triumphant or malicious smile; it was tired and a little sad, and then it shifted slightly, revealing what she had hidden behind her back when Ilya started breaking down the wall. It was at this moment that he knew he fucked up. In her hands was the elusive “Key to the Fairy Tale.” A talent with six fucking steps! And the earthling was ready to bet his apartment on it, since he had enough money for a new one anyway, at least half of the steps were filled.

The key-sword looked too lifelike, with its distinctive movable edging on the hilt and the overwhelming power emanating from it. If it were to strike, that would be the end of it. He would simply be locked up in the Fairy Tale Kingdom, made an integral part of someone else's narrative, and that would be the end of him. Yes, he wouldn't go crazy. He wouldn't be turned into an enthusiastic slave or anything like that, but what good would an untouched mind be if his body and energy were turned into a rabbit? Or into grandma's pie? Or into a soft ottoman? Or simultaneously into a talking card suit with dissociative identity disorder and a stoned Rastafarian caterpillar?

Complete and absolute control over the reality of the chosen target, which cannot respond with its own Reality, keeping it under the Key's spell. Ilya will not be able to do it. Even Transcendence will not help. He will not have time to activate it. The only defense is evasion. He won't even risk using Transformation. It won't hurt him in such a state, of course, but it could knock him out of existence. There is a place for Evil in every Fairy Tale, so that Evil will also begin to pull into the Key, like fruit paste from a tube.

All these thoughts were obvious and understandable, so the Storyteller was not at all surprised when the earthling became frightened. Even in Wendigo's body, it was noticeable and obvious. What she didn't know was that he had undergone training dedicated to accentuated changes in his own consciousness. Roughly speaking, he knew how to experience fear, horror, and despair at will. In an earthly human body, this was only possible after long preparation and taking special pills that were only available with a prescription from the group's curator. In a body gifted with the Mechanism, with all its attributes and enhanced physical characteristics? Here, everything he had barely been able to do on Earth came easily on the first try and without any effort at all.

And he struck. He struck beautifully and not brutally, twisting his entire body with his leg, performing something suspiciously similar to capoeira. He himself did not practice it even in London; it was not his choice. This fighting style was strictly taught in separate classes and builds, like those of the Jesters and Harlequins. But Victor Schultz, a great lover of patriotic Bavarian beer and this very capoeira, as well as Ilya's roommate, practiced it.

In general, he had mastered a couple of techniques, specifically combat techniques rather than showy moves for showmen, and now he applied them. Softly, even gracefully, his clawed foot curved around the key, which was held forward in a fencing stance, striking from below under the chin and simply tearing off his opponent's head.

It didn't work out, even though it seemed that way at first. Surprisingly, her head flew apart like bloody confetti from the force of the blow. Literally bright red confetti, “Sacrificial Doll,” four steps, damn it. Well, who would doubt that she wouldn't go into direct combat if she had no protection? Ilya had no doubts at all! Was Ilya upset about this? Fuck, if he could, he would have cried, but his Form wouldn't allow it!

She appeared from another door that had reappeared on the wall, now surrounded by dancing pieces of paper covered in sparkling pale pink ink. Something from the branch “Letters to Myself” or “Script Template,” actively used primarily by the Sages, especially the Scriptors, but also by the Storytellers. The spit of Cald, put to the test, froze one sheet and then exhausted itself, soaking into the text page. But the doll's body, which was also a Storyteller in part, was not stopped by the leaves, forcing her to react.

She immediately cut the body with a key, instantly turning it into a cloud of confetti, but missed the frozen body of Wendigo, which rushed forward at the maximum possible speed, Transforming again and disrupting the narrative. He took a long stride and sent another wave of cold air in front of him. Ilya acted at the limit of his strength and reaction, managing to grab the woman's elbow and squeeze it tightly until it cracked and the joint broke, not allowing her to touch him with her active ultimate talent, even with the slightest touch. She clearly told a fairy tale about herself, a fairy tale in which she was strong, agile, and fast, on par with some of the best Assassins, but Ilya was faster, stronger, and, importantly, more experienced in personal combat. His class obliges!

At the same time as he threw the dead doll, the Storyteller simply fell to the floor, slipping under the throw, causing all the sheets to hit Ilya, pinning him down and exposing him to attack. The Hide devours these sheets with the last of his reserves... He doesn't even have the strength to Ice Breath; he put everything into the Transformation, the lunge, and the step, but the earthling is above her, throwing out his hand, burning himself to the flesh on the sheets that wrapped around that hand, staining the skin with rows of ink inscriptions that penetrate the flesh to the bone. But he still managed to pull her toward him, upward, breaking bones and bringing everything down to an unprincipled ground fight, in which she simply won't have time to stab him with the blade held in an awkward position.

At the same time, she dodges the throw again, but now she herself steps onto the ceiling, as if the top and bottom have switched places. She steps forward and breaks the distance, not allowing Wendigo to develop a fleeting advantage. In an instant, the doll's body crumbles into confetti, but his eyes see the Storyteller's heart appear simultaneously behind the cloud of glitter, in the next room, and behind his back. Actually, it's more of a Jester tactic, but he's tired of counting her talents and thinking about how unfair it all is to him. In an instant, she is already waving her key, sending a thin golden line at Ilya, which he does not even think to block with his skin, feverishly dodging with a couple of Steps, curling up into some kind of shrimp.

His mind is completely calm, despite the fact that three sets of memories have appeared, each of which depicts him using the same move and his opponent reacting differently. Perhaps this is "Scenario Fork," another variable talent favored by Assassins. It has a different name, but the effect is exactly the same. And Oracles can and do play these games too, and they enjoy it. The Earthling is certain that the Garden resident who automatically surrendered was bound to possess something similar. Roughly speaking, it's a branching precognition that allows one to live the path chosen by the one who activated the talent. As a side effect, all lived scenarios are visible to both the talent holder and those caught in a kind of prophetic simulation.

Ilya is calm, and his thoughts are calm, expressed by something like DAMMIT, FUCK, FUCK, FUCK!!!

The enemy, however, doesn't care about the wounds inflicted on his fragile inner world, preferring to focus on more immediate ones. She continues her combo, her narrative pressing, constraining, and a multitude of characters emerge from every door, most of them extras, but some of them reinforced. Ilya is forced to retreat to the last room, where parts of his Cald still remain, breathing out the last of his reserves and channeling the full power of the source and his own Horns to create a death zone around himself. A zone in which Madness and the Fairytale Kingdom have no place. A zone that was his own small and fragile kingdom.

A fang cracked in his mouth and sprayed a couple of drops of instantly frozen blood, his skin began to peel, and Ilya barely had enough strength left to keep himself from dying right then and there. She stood opposite him, clearly unafraid, without even a leaf to shield her — either she was ready to replace herself with a doll again, or she had some other talent up her sleeve. The key to the Kingdom filled her hand with power. Another minute or two and she would simply open his protective canopy, but she didn't give him even the slightest chance, just in case he came up with something. Two swings and around part of another hall, which he covered with Cald, a circle drawn with a golden thread forms, a protective line. Literally locking him here, creating walls around walls. Now that's it, now he can't even leave this cloud of Cald, even if he wanted to.

"A good fight." There's no praise, no approval, no mockery in her voice, only a mechanical, doomed weariness. "It's time to end it."

She is hinting that he should not disgrace himself and allow himself to be killed or kill himself, rather than attempting to disrupt reality to such an extent that his burst corpse will no longer release Ice Breath, but rather Cald itself. She doesn't know that, and in such a thick cloud of breath, she won't be able to read it, but he can hardly pull it off. He's not at that level of talent yet. If he were at the fifth level, or even decided to raise his talent to the sixth, then yes, he could. And he would definitely do it, just to spite her. Who knows, maybe they give awards for a draw at the tournament?

"Good fight." It is not Wendigo's raspy voice that answers her, but her own voice, clear and calm, because Ilya has had time to listen to that voice, build up his vocabulary for mimicry, and therefore is not averse to chatting, after all, it's a chance to gain a couple of seconds, a minute or even two, and who knows how it will turn out. “But it's always better to die than to be killed, Queen of Fairy Tales.”

For the first time, he saw not excitement on her face, but irritation. The excitement came when his Horn cracked lengthwise, dripping black ice shards, and along with the horn, the bursting space began to crackle. Could it be reaching? He thought the plan would only work if he aimed right at the center, but it seemed that even just activating the Source so close to the center... no, still no, his body would give out first, but he would be slightly comforted by the fact that this unbalanced beast would at least get a little nervous.

"You're going to die anyway." She would have shrugged her shoulders, but she seemed too indifferent, or she was diligently playing the role of someone who didn't care. "I need this victory, and I will get it one way or another. You can leave with dignity or cling to life until the end, but I guarantee you something else — as soon as this kingdom is in danger, I will open your cocoon. And you will regret not dying."

Again, there was not even a hint of contempt, disdain, anger, or threat in her tone. She literally promised. Admittedly, this only made it scarier. Someone else would have been intimidated by such a manner. What the heck! If Ilya didn't have his mental and psychological fortitude, it would have affected him, too! He would most likely have preferred to admit defeat rather than be opened by her key. For some reason, there was not the slightest doubt that the lady would keep her word. Not because she was a sadist who enjoyed other people's suffering—he had seen enough of such people unleashing their inner demons in Broken while still on Earth—but because she had promised.

"He'd rather see the story unfold than end it himself." Since she avoided using "I" or "you" during her narrative, the mimicry of her face's voice couldn't find any unnecessary words, so she had to express herself in the same pompous style as the narrative, ignoring the bleeding crack along one of her horns and the skin that was beginning to die. "Every victory must have a price, and she must be ready to pay it."

Her smile didn't waver at that moment, but something very, very wrong seemed to emanate from beneath it, so wrong that on Earth he would have immediately turned and run, calling the police along the way. Well, that's not surprising; all divers are a little crazy, everyone has their own hang-ups, and the owner of so many synergistic talents is bound to have a slightly unstable psyche, even if her Lot is ignored.

"What do you know? I've won eight times; I must win a ninth. For you, this is a battle. For me, it's not even a question of life, but of something greater than the Sacrifice itself, may the one who made it be damned forever. I need this Gift, the ninth, the most powerful of all."

It's funny, but they're both stalling for time. Both understood that this conversation would only last until Ilya's strength ran out. Or until his Cald circuit began to push through the arena's foundation. In the first case, she'd kill him with no risk at all; in the second, she'd risk a little, but the most Ilya would do would be to snag her before he died. Or rather, that's what she fears. Meanwhile, the earthling is almost completely certain he won't succeed. He's already at his limit. If he adds even a little more intensity to the source, his bones will snap, the second horn with which he still holds the exhaled abomination in check will snap. That's why he's stalling, hoping for a miracle. What if the floor beneath her gives way, and she falls onto a sharp piece of iron? The likelihood is far greater than the chances of his victory in battle. Orders of magnitude greater.

"Power, glory, pain?" This time, he quotes her words directly, one of the lines of the annoying buzzing in his ear, eliciting the first genuine emotion on the part of her face that isn't hidden by the hood. "What reward is worth everything?"

"Touche, my adversary. It's awkward to hear your own voice coming out of someone else's mouth, like a rod hitting your bones." The rod, if he remembers correctly, is analogous to the instrument of the Inquisition, or whatever they are called, instead of earthly Spanish boots and iron maidens. "The reward is worth everything, you're right. The reward is one step, one step above yourself."

Provocation? Most likely, because a normal gifted person, knowing that the reward for the ninth victory would be a completely known ritual of elevation, and it would be impossible to misunderstand such a phrase, would literally go mad, make a mistake, or at least flinch. The lump surrounded by the golden line of Cald did not even flinch, no longer strengthening, but also not weakening even slightly. Ilya noticed the slightest tremor at the end of the Key, as if she really believed that it would throw him off balance. From the outside, his little kingdom must have looked like a lump of cold wind moving continuously in a circle, like a piece of an icy tornado torn out, so black that even his figure could not be seen in it, but she still sees, looks straight into Wendigo's face and waits, waits for him to give up, to lose the last of his strength.

She's a storyteller, damn it, but she acts like a Traitor. She looks for weaknesses in his psyche and wants to shake his confidence. He wouldn't be surprised if her hidden talents included treachery. Some of them are available to storytellers. Alas, she made two mistakes, but it's hardly worth blaming her for something she couldn't have known. The Earthling already had five different options for class advancement, each of which depended on the aspects that came up. And even if something doesn't go according to plan, he can easily calculate a new ritual himself or simply buy such a calculation from several trusted forum experts. The second mistake was that, surprisingly, he had read the descriptions and information about the tournament, the very ones that were available right on the Forum's title page, open to all divers even before the Tournament began.

"Lies do not benefit anyone, because the truth will come out one way or another." And again, he found a suitable quote from her narrative, which Ilya took as a small victory, but the second part of the phrase cannot be created so easily from someone else's words. "They both know the walls of their duty... Kha... The rules of the tournament do not reveal what the rewards will be."

Ilya almost jumped at that moment, being too cautious. His words didn't just hurt her; they really made her flinch, and she almost moved her fucking Key! Until the very last moment, he suspected a trap, a classic one, when you pretend to open up, intending to catch those who believe in the pretense on the counterattack. And only when she pulled herself together, returning to her fighting stance and even stepping half a step back from the outlined trap circle, did he realize that he had to try right now. The circle was strong, but by sacrificing the last of his energy, he could push himself one more time and, using the Trancendence, break out and strike.

Even if he hit her, even if she hadn't been behind the doll or the fork, there would still have been at least some chance! But he'd squandered that chance, alas. He desperately wanted to give in to his instincts and howl, growl, and vent his impotent rage and hatred. He could see the kind of impotence and venom he'd seen in his rival's bitterly twisted lips.

"You're right, you freak." Oh, and here comes real anger, real emotions. If only he could figure out what exactly he said that evoked those emotions. "I don't know, I only believe. But my faith will be enough for you."

The swing of her key, and he barely suppressed a wheeze as several more threads joined the first circle. Then they began to swirl around his "little kingdom," their grip tightening with each passing moment. In places, it wasn't skin anymore, but actual flesh peeling off his body, the frozen flesh of his form falling away, but he didn't give in and even increased the pressure slightly. Impossibly black cracks appeared in the space itself—not even cracks, but merely the intent to create them—but that was enough for the Storyteller to come to her senses and stop pressuring him. Her golden threads even retreated slightly, allowing Cald to wrest a little space from Madness.

"So, do you really need to step up to the next step?" He's trying to hurt her, trying to shake her even more, force her to make a mistake, but he can't convey the sincerity of his surprise when he realized from her look, from another tremor in her shoulders, that he'd hit the bull's eye, right in the center. "Ha. Ha-ha-ha-ha!!!"

Perhaps it was madness, or even Madness. Perhaps her abilities had affected his mind, breaking through or deceiving the defenses he had always considered impenetrable. But at that moment, it seemed to him that he saw not just a chance for a respectable loss or a draw, but a real opportunity to win this bet after all.

"Right." She seemed to go numb, voice and body alike, simply shutting down all emotion and deciding to turn the conversation around, realizing that in this paradoxical battle of words, the Storyteller was losing to the Wendigo, which, frankly, was nonsense. "And I'll step over you."

She had no intention of continuing the conversation, increasing the pressure of the key, the pressure of her entire Fairy Tale, her Kingdom, which, alas, did not collapse onto a piece of Cald. No, she began to press, gradually, increasing the pressure, as if boiling a frog in milk. Ilya felt like a frog, only not in a cauldron, but in a pressure chamber, his eyes bulging, but he did not relinquish control over his cloud-tornado, even managing to find the breath to speak.

"What if the path to the end and the beginning are one and the same in their bloody circle?" She did not slow down or lose concentration, but she heard him nonetheless, and his next sentence sounded all the more powerful. "I can give you the ritual of Exaltation."

"You can't even survive." Rejecting him, she showed contempt for the first time, saying, you held on so well, and now you're lying like a little child. "Gifts are not given during battles or after they are over, and I don't believe that you have found what I so desperately crave."

"I haven't found it." He's already wheezing, feeling the fingers on his left hand crumble, and chunks of icy flesh fall away from his right, revealing bone cracking with the frost. "I can simply create one. For you. For your Lot."

"It's funny." She doesn't laugh, but she doesn't get angry, doesn't make any sudden attacks, and continues to press, increasing the pressure, squeezing the frog harder and harder inside the pressure chamber.

"Your talents..." He finally blurts it out, beginning to list the talents he has noticed, the presumed aspects and possible connections, both those he was sure of and those he only suspected, especially the choice of balancers-compensators, which are almost impossible to recognize by their external effects.

He wheezed for the first minute and a half, nearly dying in the process, but then it got easier. The pressure of Madness stopped rising at the thirty-second second, he counted. After the first minute and a half, she even reduced the pressure, bringing it back to somewhat tolerable levels. And he spoke, when her voice, if there were suitable words, even if they were pompous, when he wheezed like a Wendigo, almost coughing up blood from frostbite on all external and internal surfaces of his body. He described her class and everything she had done with it, giving an expert assessment of the build, a lousy assessment at that, one he himself would not have paid for. How much can you assess in such a time crunch and without access to databases?

But what was a sloppy job for Ilya clearly impressed his opponent so much that she did not kill him even when he dispelled the cold shield, leaving his mutilated body inside a closed circle of keys, inside the line drawn by that key. Literally “Lines,” an aspect of such talent. There was nothing to defend himself with. There was no protection, and yet he risked (purely out of desperation) turning into a human, almost screaming from the pain that had come over his body and, worse, his energy. In an hour and a half, he would simply die, even if he did nothing dangerous to his health. In the absence of a specialized priest, shaman, or sorcerer nearby, Twin with such wounds are usually recommended to commit suicide as a form of treatment.

You will be reborn as a new one.

"Something like that." She didn't interrupt him during those forty minutes while he spoke in human form, trying to articulate as best he could, despite the fact that he no longer had lips, and there were holes in his cheeks from burst flesh. "Your main problem is your own power. I don't know if it's a victory in the Trial or some other source, but you have more talents than normal. So much more that it's not funny. But the rules of the Broken are immutable, and they say the following: the more talents you have beyond the norm, the more difficult it is to pass the ascension."

Her silence would frighten some people, but Ilya, on the contrary, sees confusion, an inability to find the right words, distrust and apprehension, a desire to believe, but disbelief in her own luck. No, he understands her perfectly well, but he continues to stall for time, just in case, just in case it works out, just in case he gets out of it, just in case he manages to wriggle out of it somehow. You can always count on delivering a treacherous blow to the back of a distracted opponent — hardly any of the divers would condemn such an approach if it meant survival for the Twin... but there would be plenty of knights in white gloves ready to condemn him for winning the Tournament.

Your talents are numerous, but they were bestowed upon you by victory in the Lott... in the Trial, which means they are inscribed in the part of the Mechanism dedicated to you. He has to deliberately simplify his speech, avoiding familiar terms and formulas, because she simply won't understand them, but earthlings, who so often buy their position in the Broken precisely through their knowledge, have literally been trained to explain such things in simple words. "Your ritual is possible, you should even have had dreams... possible, yes, but proportionally complex. Probably, at some point, you will realize it, heh, but for some reason you need to rise literally in the next cycle."

And he fell silent. He had revealed enough, shown that he understood and knew a lot, but now all he could do was wait for the other side to make its move. And now he could close his eyes, just for a moment, to rest a little... Or rather, he almost cried out from the heat that enveloped him, seemingly fiery, paralyzing, finishing off the Twin's already dying body. Through his almost blind eyes, which only by a miracle and by trying not to let the Cold reach his eyeballs by controlling his horns did not burst in their sockets, he could make out another character standing over him. A girl with her face wrapped in cloth poured water from a jug onto him, but the water was the color of milk, and that color healed the wounds of the hero, the villain, the beloved, and the hated.

This time, he overcame himself, refraining from rejecting the narrative and allowing his own death to be healed by another character. Such healing is unreliable; it only works fully for the Storyteller, but now, in the middle of the Kingdom, it is enough for him to stop dying. The wounds are not healed, they are still there, but now they seem to be covered with makeup and mascara, allowing him to act as if he were healthy... until the Storyteller decides that she needs to show him his place, because now she has anchored herself in his energy and flesh. She would have subjugated his mind as well, but even now that is not possible.

"You were wrong about a lot of things." She tries to maintain the same indifferent calm she used to exert earlier, but now she's doing a terrible job. "But you were right about a lot more. Speak up, speak up, everything you know."

"First, dispel the Key and weaken the Kingdom around me, and then we'll discuss the price for my services." The Key simply irritates him; If handled incorrectly and if control is lost, it will tear apart everyone except the Storyteller. "And, if it's not too much trouble, tell me about clothes, it's actually rather awkward, really."

His voice was hoarse, like that of someone seriously ill with pneumonia, but there was nothing to be done. It was a good thing her Tale had even reached his lungs and managed to partially restore them. However, the Storyteller herself clearly wasn't pleased with his demands, which she considered impudent. So what? She had won, she had him by the throat, and at any moment her healing and the regrown flesh could turn into death and torment for the naive Wendigo, and here he was making demands.

"You're in no position to ask for anything," she points the Key in his face, again without malice, only with a warning and a promise.

I'm not in a position to ask, right, but I can demand." He allowed himself a smile, so sincere that he surprised himself. "You need a ritual, and I need victory. It is victory that I will demand from you, given willingly. And you understand this yourself, you're just trying to save face. My mind and my memory are beyond your control, even now, even if you stab me with the Key. Actually, you can try, but keep in mind that, having become a slave to the Kingdom, I will not help you for any price or promise, because I will not have a single opportunity to demand what is due to me. Either you trust me and accept my terms, or you finish me off and believe that you will receive the reward you believe in."

She is still calm and composed, but this is a facade, and he understands perfectly well the inner struggle this young lady is going through. He literally demands that she concede victory, turn her defenseless back to him, and believe that he is not lying to her now. Who would agree to such a thing? Right, hardly anyone. And so Ilya is ready to argue, ready to give in, ready to pretend that he believes she will really agree to give him the victory, and not try to kill him again as soon as he ceases to be useful.

"I can do unimaginably bad things to you." Again, not a threat, but a statement.

"And I can endure almost anything without losing my clarity of mind." The same statement.

"You demand complete trust, saying that you will give me great knowledge that even the highest episcopate of the Sacrificial does not possess." Ilya feels uncomfortable because she wants to believe what she has been told, but she feels even more uncomfortable because the damn Key is trembling in her hands, as if asking to strike at his very core. "I am not an Executioner, I am not a temple Assassin, my Lot is different, it is extremely complex and filled with a multitude of talents like a cage with bars. You demand faith, but where do you have even a handful of soil in which faith could sprout? How could you know secrets that I could not find? Could none of those I asked find them? Whom did I take?"

Now he really surprised her, surprised her by laughing simply and unpretentiously, cheerfully and purely, as he hadn't laughed since childhood. Well, okay, not since childhood, but since the moment when Lysy and Borzy, red as lobsters, ran out of the “Look, what a cool bar, let's go get drunk,” almost screaming, because the bar turned out to be a BDSM gay club, one of the most famous and popular in Europe, by the way. In short, Ilya laughed with all his heart, until his lungs hurt and he coughed up blood as black as night and as cold as the harshest winter.

"Oh, you made me laugh. Great secrets? Higher knowledge, accessible only to the bishops?" They are all categorically advised against indulging in this superiority and pride when dealing with less knowledgeable natives, for modesty and vezh are often far safer, unless they are initially perceived as weakness. But now he simply needs to knock her down a notch, or his ass will melt, despite his icy flesh. "Respected lady, I learned more over dinner in my native cantonium than your monks did in their entire careers as keepers of dusty scrolls. I've forgotten more about the Broken World than your entire bishopric has any chance of knowing. I made my living by creating custom builds of Lots or plans to clear lacunas for a percentage of the Essence profits."

At some point, it became clear to him that he had to stop bragging, otherwise he'd just push her too far and she'd either disable his masqueraded flesh or simply grow spikes into it. So he took a deep breath, coughed out another mouthful of black mucus and ice crystals, and then finished more calmly.

ЭI'm not the best at what I do. Even in my chosen specialty. I'm probably in the top thousand. Although it's debatable, I'm hardly in the top hundred." And even if he was in the top thousand, he'd be in the lower bracket, but he would have been there. The ratings of his completed tasks and the qualifications he'd earned were a good gauge of his own worth as a professional. "Alas, my specialty is constructing Lots and planning lacuna clearances; that's precisely where I excel. Rituals of Ascension, like the specialty on a student's diploma, are only open to those who sign a contract with the Assembly or an states."

If he'd started telling her that he was a super-specialist in this particular facet of the Broken science, she wouldn't have believed him. Even if her talents had indicated Ilya wasn't lying, she still wouldn't have believed him. The world around her isn't a fairy tale, not even a Fairy Tale. After all, such coincidences could have happened to her in the Broken, where her FaFo plays a role, but not here, at the Tournament... Although who knows, perhaps it was Fate and Fortune that pitted her against Ilya, as the only one who could give her what she desired.

"Nevertheless, even what I know and what I have learned on my own is enough to elevate me from the second step to the third." For someone from another world, this could be described as something between “I designed and personally assembled new ballistic missile systems” and “I was a producer who elevated world-class stars to stardom.” I literally did this. Three times, even though in all three cases I was only part of the working group that developed the ritual. And all three cases were successful; only in one of the three did the ascended diver waste the Vessel of Rebirth and also receive a three-cycle debuff, but still ascended without permanent complications.

At that moment, he almost lost an eye when the Key jerked. The lady was getting more and more stunned with every word. She couldn't help but scan him for truthfulness. A third of her talents had very useful and often occurring aspects that would allow her to assess Ilya's truthfulness and the degree to which he believed his own words. It's just that if before he had boasted that he was cooler than mountains and higher than the heavens, which were subjective judgments, now he was stating facts that had come true and were clear, and she could see that he was not lying.

"The thing is, you won't find anyone better than me here at the Tournament or in your Sector of the Broken World. I'm the only one who can help you, which means I can set any price I want, since you admitted that some things are worth everything." He tries not to grin too brazenly because she might also decide to stick to her principles and kill him despite all his offers, not to mention all the possible scenarios of mutual deception, where she has a much better chance of deceiving him. "So here's my demand. Victory over you. Here, in this battle and in this arena, immediately after the creation and calculation of the ritual. Take away the Key, stop pressuring me, make the clothes, and start talking. Well, or kill me, I'm sick of this place."

The silence seemed sharp enough to cut steel, but then her hand twitched once, twice, and then dropped sharply and opened, releasing a heavy golden key about an elbow's length. It scattered sparks even before it fell onto the floor, ravaged by the cold. The same sparks showered down on the circle that still held the earthling captive within its closed barrier. Then she slowly, unhurriedly, pulled her hands up to her hood and revealed her previously hidden face. Like all the other divers, she was very beautiful, and it was easier than easy for the Storyteller to tell her appearance.

Twenty-seven years old, if by standard measures for physiognomy of gifted people, on Earth, she could pass for thirty, considering cosmetics and rejuvenating procedures. Black-haired, fair-skinned, even unnaturally pale, as if she had never appeared from under her hood. Her eyes were dark brown, but now and then, barely discernible flashes of amber would appear in them, revealing the activated “Theatrical Gaze” or “Actor's Eye,” specifically “Actor's,” as “Actress's” would have a purple tint. Her lips are really black, and it seems that this is not lipstick, but a property of the “Coal Kiss,” which compensates for talent by five steps, a very unpleasant thing.

In the base, until you pump it up and learn how to get benefits from it, it blocks two to five talents each cycle, sealing them with a kiss, so to speak. However, she may not suffer from the compensator — five talents completely block the entire build for a normal diver, and for her, five more or five less makes little difference. But at high levels, it is quite possible to seal not only yourself, but also the enemy, for example. And if not to personally kiss Wendigo on the cheek, then to enhance the status blocking properties of other talents. His head was spinning from all the possible synergies and combinations, so he didn't immediately realize that she had spoken.

"My name is Elea Valt, the stuffed animal." He'll still ask her what a stuffed animal means, because she says it with respect, not insult. "I will trust you and what you say. I will grant you the victory you so desperately desire. But know this. If you deceive. If you betray. If you do not fulfill the bargain..."

Are there supposed to be terrible threats now?

Now there must be terrible threats!

"I won't be able to find you right away, but I am strong." Obvious things said in such a quiet and polite tone usually require the speaker to be killed immediately, leaving no trace behind. But they were divers, so what good would killing do, even if he could just yet? "And I will become even stronger, much stronger than I am now. And I will spare no means or lives to find you, even in your own realm of Infinite Filth, to find you, and... you cannot even imagine how tragic your tale will become. Even for your unbreakable will."

Ilya remained silent for a few more seconds, waiting for more words, and when he realized that there would be no more, he simply shrugged. As if such words had not been said to earthlings hundreds of thousands or even millions of times, as if they themselves had not said them even more times to those who had already offended them. Rather, he was thinking about whether to try to attack again, trying to play on the element of surprise and kill the Storyteller, who had lowered a significant part of her defenses; he could sense it, but he didn't. His body still existed in someone else's fairy tale, and even if he somehow managed to cause her real harm, he would die before she even stopped twitching, without her even consciously trying.

The only option here is to rely on regeneration, hoping to patch himself up a bit to the point where he can survive for at least five seconds without the Storyteller's support. Or, to take a more humorous approach, he could truly believe that she wouldn't kill him as soon as she got what she wanted, but would actually let him win because of the deal, honor, and honesty. Yeah, right, from a resident of such a beautiful world, even if she were a heretic.

"Yeah, I understood and was terrified." For a change, following his frank sarcasm, he chose to tell the plain truth. "No one could ever accuse me of dishonestly fulfilling an order related to the Broken World, which you all so affectionately call the Endless Filth. By the way, I didn't expect it. Not from a heretic, I should clarify. You're not on good terms with the Church, to put it mildly."

"You have no idea how much you've minimized the disagreements between the Church and me. But I share their opinion on this matter. The Broken One is the Filth, the Greatest, and the most merciless. Not because the Holy Scrolls say so, but because it kills within us all that is bright, all that is good, all that is necessary, all that makes life worth living... In the next room, two walls away, a large wardrobe, and the clothes within belonged to a cavalier and lover, similar in height and build to you."

Nodding in response, he rose to his feet rather briskly and calmly, eliciting no reaction or even a frightened twitch from his rival. He walked in the direction she'd indicated. It was unknown whether the closet had been there before, whether it had originally been a wardrobe, or whether there had even been a "cavalier and lover," but there were clothes there. And they truly suited Ilya, like a glove—velvet, silk, and all that. He dressed well, albeit in an extremely light set of pants and shirt. Cracking his knuckles, noting the places where the joints had been almost completely replaced by someone else's fairy tale, he walked into the next room, where Elea, if that was even her real name, was telling him something.

"Not bad, but tell tale about paper and writing utensils, plenty of both." He's no longer asking, but ordering, like a hired hand who knows his own worth and his work. He's also made his demands clear, though, as the client is such that it's unlikely he'll be able to survive his dissatisfaction. "I'll have to write a lot. And talk, yes, so I hope you can endure hunger or subsist on the tale food."

"The remark about hunger was amusing." Sarcasm didn't stop her from simultaneously whispering the narrative without using her mouth, while retrieving the necessary tools from suddenly discovered hiding places in the desk, walls, and floor. "I noticed you didn't like what I said about the Broken."

"Because we also have opinions like those people with this opinion." He recalled the list of recent terrorist attacks by radical Luddites, as well as the lists of divers killed, whom certain wings and divisions of anti-essentialists tried to destroy at any cost, grimacing involuntarily. "These individuals have done a lot of bad things and thoroughly annoyed everyone around them with their antics. And no, you shouldn't compare them to you, the Assembly is much nicer than the Episcopate... although a third of them could do with a good beating or two."

While talking, he does not forget to draw all kinds of diagrams on large sheets of A2 and A3 paper, as well as to prepare his workplace, even bringing a chair from the neighboring room himself. The Storyteller did not strain herself. There was no point in running away, because far from her, his resistance would begin to squeeze the Tale out of his body, which would bring back all the trauma he had received from his own Cald.

"Start talking, recall and meditate if necessary, but I need to know everything, absolutely everything." It is truly necessary. And, he has no doubt about it, she will definitely mix something up or leave something out. They all mix things up and leave things out. Every time. "The entire status list, or, as you call it, the personal scroll, all talents and aspects, as well as, importantly, the order of talent advancement and how exactly the essence for advancement was obtained. Altars, lacunae, rituals — indicate these as well, even if they are minor or just village divinations, indicate them anyway. If you need to remember, I personally have time, and judging by the structure of the scroll, you do too, so we should be able to manage."

And she spoke.

* * *

In fact, she had a surprisingly well-assembled build, for someone from a world where the Forum was practically empty, and all the information was in the hands of a defunct church that naturally beats its kind with iron batons and then burns their half-dead bodies. She vaguely and clearly didn't want to elaborate, saying that she'd received help creating this build, though she didn't want to go into detail and clearly demonstrated this reluctance. Since such knowledge wasn't necessary for the job in general, or even for the initial stage, the earthling didn't push it. He was too busy suppressing the searing waves of envy he felt at the status of his "employer."

No, her psyche wasn't protected by an analogue of his Great Trait, but by her own set of balancers, pumped up almost to the gold standard of one and a half to one, and these balancers were also assembled into synergies, albeit primitively obvious, but nonetheless. A build like this could have been assembled by an Earth student who had passed an optional practical course on the Broken at a regulaк university with a solid B, not even a C. However, it's far from easy to screw up with so many extra talents; there will always be something to compensate for the obvious weakness of any given combination.

Fifty-five fucking talents on the first step.

Ilya calculated several times, then calculated again, and then quietly widened his eyes. Yes, that was her reward for winning the Lottery, called the "Greatest Waterfall of Talent," giving her a number of starting talents comparable to those of the most highly-leveled inhabitant of her world. That is, the first Three who had reached their fifth step. To the earthling's immense happiness, the reward was a one-time only; her base talent count was the classic eleven for Storytellers, so at the second step, she would receive twenty-two talents. But still, of course, it was a complete imbalance, no less than what Ilya himself or other famous Lottery winners could have created.

Even stronger. The first step is a total blast. By step five, it'll all start to even out, though not completely. A lot of extra talents with good aspects are, of course, very important, but they'll be step one talents, not higher ones. The step multiplier will work on these talents, that's true. But even one talent taken when moving from step four to five will be ten times more useful, stronger, and more flexible. Ilya's Trait's full power will be revealed at the later levels. Well, at least he thinks so. It allows him to do things at a hypothetical step four that not every step five can. Waterfall gave a boost at the start incomparable to any other Lotteries he knew.

And young Elea, then still a girl of seventeen, used her abilities quite pragmatically and wisely. True, her combat prowess was nothing compared to what an Executioner or Warlock with similar Mechanism gifts could accomplish. But she was incredibly flexible tactically, capable of being frighteningly stealthy and setting extremely cunning traps. And she was almost impossible to catch, even in a driven hunt by a host of equally gifted individuals. Heck, she successfully evaded even the second step gifted, and even killed one of them in his own bed—a feat for anyone else, but not for someone with such gifts.

A man simply woke up in his own bed one morning, unaware that he'd awakened in a fairy tale. Afterward, his buxom cooks were fucked as usual, a couple even impregnated. Afterward, the cooks oiled him, cleaned his intestines and stomach with enemas and alchemy, stuffed an apple in his mouth and a carrot up his ass, and roasted him in a huge oven, like a lamb. To be fair, if Elea wasn't lying, the man also roasted his own children with commoners in that same oven, thus obtaining Essence and also charging the oven itself. An oven-no-oven, a micro-Heart capable of reviving its master after death, if only him.

That's why he kept so many plump commoners around him. Because they could bear children often and often. A combat gifted one, constantly risking his life, found himself in situations where he needed to be resurrected. Raids against the liege lord's enemies, into the wilds, on long campaigns, and all that. In short, if Elea had wanted to frighten or impress Ilya, she failed with the former, and only marginally with the latter. A Storyteller, when used for a surprise attack on a victim unaware of the impending attack, can be more dangerous than even an Assassin, a Charmancer, and a Dreamwalker. Perhaps all of them combined.

Because there are many Dreamwalkers. This class is common in most sectors, which is why they protect their dreams quite well, especially among the aristocracy. But Storytellers are very rare among the natives, and those who can be a Storyteller and bend can be considered an endangered species. They are rare even on Earth. Even though divers in general and earthlings in particular are much more likely to be assigned this class than the natives. And with gifts like Elea's, pulling off such an assassination... no, not easy, but quite difficult and risky, requiring extensive preparation, icy composure, and a sick imagination, but the Storyteller possessed these qualities.

Her journey through the Broken was marked by a great deal of bloodshed and genuine carnage, erupting here and there whenever she began telling her tales. There was a slave revolt at the largest sacrificial processing center in the entire region, there a rabble uprising against a single unpleasant character, there the burnt-out temples of the Elder Father, where the priests drank holy Cahors wine to the last, ignoring the flames and scorch marks, as if they were unnoticed. The woman was probably trying to justify herself, a psychological defense mechanism that portrays her as the good guy and all her victims as the bad guys. However, she was smart enough to acknowledge the obvious collateral damage and not hide the selfish aspects of her actions.

It is much easier for a Storyteller to pump up on society and interaction with it than on creatures, although she has also slaughtered quite a lot of monsters. In her Sector, there was a regular and constantly threatening crisis problem of “savages”. Her abilities also worked perfectly on their tribes, tribes of intelligent defiled beings, and she could easily wipe out a tribe in a Cycle. Two hundred, three hundred, five hundred creatures, having fallen into the fairy tale, died quickly and ingloriously, while the Storyteller Elea flew on the wings of a huge predatory duck-character searching for a new victim. Ilya mentally named this construct Donald, in honor of the very cartoon whose third reboot coincided with his childhood.

She was able to single-handedly close off an entire flank of threats to her Sector, performing work that is usually done by entire groups, a bunch of sevens working together, covered by fully-fledged second-step gifted individuals—at least a couple of them. Yes, usually a higher-level creature can be taken down by lower-level gifted individuals. If you choose the battlefield, the group members, and all that correctly. But this applies to creatures that are unintelligent or too alien. The Savages, however, are too human-like. They are too social, and their high-ranking individuals are, of course, inferior to gifted ones of the appropriate steps, but they remain extremely unpleasant enemies. In fact, during her entire journey through another world, which took more than five years, Elea killed only eight of them. She retreated much more often. And a couple of times, she almost died when a wild second-level sorcerer-hunter, on the verge of becoming a third-level, began to pursue her.

The same one, by the way, she barely got away three times.

It was probably because of this character that she switched to humans, having become too familiar with the literally wild lands, no longer risking venturing too deeply into them, for she could be expected there. And once she switched, she didn't just occasionally practice her tales and collect myths for characters, but actually started throwing bloody parties, which got her into much more serious trouble. Those who are not so easily shaken off.

"Well, you didn't say it out loud, but I kind of figured it out." He said and leaned back in his soft chair, looking at four stacks of notes he had made over the last four full Earth days and a couple more hours. “If you want, you can tell me exactly what you've gotten yourself into and which of the natives is going to kill you; that only the second step will save you. I can't guarantee that I'll be able to calculate the ritual for the perfect upgrade to counter your specific enemies, but I can try to suggest something. Huh?”

This “Huh?” was caused by the fact that his opponent suddenly burst out laughing, hysterically, so hysterically that her laughter almost turned into crying. He involuntarily assessed his own regeneration and realized that no, it wasn't worth it, because even if he tore off her head, even if Elea wasn't under the puppet, he would die right away. After that, she calmed down with difficulty and simply breathed heavily for a few minutes, regaining her balance. The fairy-tale kingdom around him was shaking like warm wax melting in the sun. In general, he preferred not to calm someone else's hysteria, but to pretend to be a rag until she calmed down.

"You're smart. I can already see, I understand how your Lot... doesn't reflect you fully. You should have been born a Sage." It's not exactly offensive, but it still stings, because he may not only be a Sage; he made an excellent Wendigo, too. "I see the value of your knowledge. I understand that it's worth something beyond the measure of coins, stones, or drops. But now you're mistaken. I need to obtain the second Step, not for another dive into the Filth. So that I can carry out my plans when I emerge."

And she began to tell her own tale, one that, as is customary in this universe, grew more terrifying as time went on. Her build, quite professional even for her backwater, especially with its nearly dead Forum, hadn't been assembled by her, but by her beloved, even adored, older brother, who had protected his sister with all his might. She had even voluntarily and without permission laid down in the Dream Star he had drawn, because she wasn't a heretic but a true believer. But her brother, whose name was Aeneas, which caused an internal dissonance in an earthling familiar with Greek mythology, was a true genius.

Even if you divide the words of the enthusiastic girl who remembered her brother exactly like this by ten, he's still clearly the kind of guy who should have become a star of the Assembly's research department. He intuitively and spontaneously made discoveries that Earthlings considered impossible to understand without the entire experience of Earth civilization. He personally wrote the lion's share of those scraps of decent builds that did exist on the "Sinners' Forum" before he himself entered the Star, before he became a diver. His problem was that their village priest had a blind eye and a wicked heart. He had no suspicions that a secretive heretic was at his side, but alas, the mother of his siblings didn't give him.

In the end, he simply lied about spotting the diver diving illegally. The diver went to bed suspiciously early, even though the guy hadn't been caught and the dive in his time zone was in the middle of the night. He himself spent most of his time working as a charcoal burner at a remote village outpost. There was no one there to check on him. It's easy to imagine the local Inquisition's surprise when they came to check on the boy and her husband, hoping to "deem him guilty" based on old connections, but instead discovered a genuine heretic.

Because, despite its size, the village was located just half a day's ride from a very large temple, which housed the appropriate relics for identifying sinners tainted by that very Greatest Filth. And this relic, duly seized upon for a routine call, the bastard went and used it on this treacherous heretic and evildoer. It's a horror, good people, what's happening!

The parents, who had sown the evil seed but were not heretics themselves, were simply and unpretentiously executed. The little sister fled and later hid under a false name and in very distant lands, and no one really looked for her at first. And the brother was taken. The brother who managed to spank his sister on the ass, not in a sexual way, for tampering with his Star; the brother who was initiated into the same Cycle as her; the brother who managed to give her a link to a page of the Allbook so she could read his work and choose her Lot and build. The exact same one as her brother, because he wanted to be either a Sage, a Storyteller, or, oddly enough, a Mechanist.

And the girl went and won the Lottery. She didn't tell him the gist of it, but Ilya suspected a typical free-for-all, where only one could survive; very characteristic moments flickered in her speech. She won and immediately assembled a bunch of builds for herself, using her brother's hints and her own brain. And she also knew, learned, and wrested this secret. The secret of where exactly such heretics are taken—those who have already accepted the Star, but haven't dived for the first time. They aren't killed, no, although they would very much like to be.

The world of "sinners" has been in the Mechanism for quite some time. Over seven hundred years. A vast amount of time has passed. But the searching relics, as well as other church sacraments, not only haven't crumbled, but have even gradually increased in number, and their charge hasn't been depleted. Although the world hasn't had its own "fives" since the Three. Officially, there are no "fours" or "threes." Unofficially, they exist, but only temporarily, until the Filth is defeated, and then they will all, of course, voluntarily ascend the stake and stand under the rods. In the meantime, good people, don't ask why that bishop over there will soon be living for two hundred years, or why he needs an entire private monastery filled with exclusively young or not-so-young, but extremely beautiful nuns. Or very, very young and pretty monk choir singers.

And don't look too closely at the other servants of the Sacrifice, those who don't spare their lives or souls, having plunged so deeply into the Greatest Filth. You might even be a heretic, after all. If the Bishopric's investigator calls you a heretic, then you truly are a heretic, even if you don't know it yet. And certainly don't imagine that those same heretics, who haven't yet dived, are forcibly bound to the largest temple stronghold in the Broken, where they are subjected to continuous torture both in the real world and in the world of the Mechanism, thereby increasing the flow of essence and pumping it at an accelerated rate, fortunately for them, they have their own fourth-step Theurge.

That very complex and very dangerous method of transferring Essence from one diver to another, regardless of the distance between Sectors. A living bridge will help two holy men bind themselves to the Filth and take more than their due. The Assembly, as I recall, famously condemned the experimenters for such experiments, despite the fact that they used real volunteers, paid them enormous compensation, and forced them into an agonizing resonance for one cycle, no longer. And the torture there wasn't exactly torture, not so extreme as to turn you into a vegetable, more like very hardcore BDSM without safe words.

Again, it quickly became obvious to everyone that, without violating the Treaty and mass-producing the practice of turning divers into screaming bundles of agony, there would be no significant gains from the method. It would be easier to upgrade a few fourth-level Theurges and let them work independently, without a Bridge. It would be cleaner, and the Treaty wouldn't be thrust into the ass of the bureaucrat who proposed this idea like a red-hot excavator bucket. But sinners didn't bother with such matters, so Elea understood perfectly well that her brother was still alive, still breathing, still existing... for three more cycles. And then there would be a huge celebration, which happens during a solar eclipse once every 17 years, during which practically all those "asking for forgiveness" would be killed.

Well, after demonstrative torture, quartering, whipping and, of course, rods and fire.

Officially, because the Sacrificial One was pleased with their sacrifice and, through the hierarchs of the episcopate, recognized the completed repentance. The unofficial reason was that most of the Bridges had simply worn out, and the mad vegetable wasn't in much pain. They weren't physically injured, tortured with the relics of the Three. And the abandoned brat sister, who had grown into a deadly woman, worthy of victory nine times out of nine, but only intending to win eight, had one last Dive before the triumph. A dive in which she simply had to undergo a ritual, one that had to work; there were no other options.

"Okay, I'm calm."

He is not calm.

"I'm not furious."

He is not furious.

"I don't want to send you out to pick snowdrops in the middle of a hot Californian summer." He wants to, of course, but she holds his life and death in her hands, and his body seems in no hurry to regenerate; it's weakening even more under the damage, and without a magical healing and Elea's presence, he won't even die; he'll fall apart. "For whom, pardon me, did I talk so much? About how I need every piece of your Scroll? Including the gifts of the Mechanism. Including the one you obviously left out."

It's worth noting that she was shameful enough to turn away, biting her lip in regret at the wasted time. But she also revealed her second gift for winning the Lottery, albeit very reluctantly. The gift is called "The Diver's Great Presence." The gift that still gave her hope of saving her brother, even in the real world. In a world where she was simply a single woman who would have to somehow break into the Most Radiant Temple, reach the tortured Bridges, kidnap her brother, and not die in the process.

"My attributes have been with me since the first day after returning from the Filth." This alone allowed her, without any combat skills, to slaughter four roadside bandits with her bare hands and a small "maiden's" knife. Her initially rather plain appearance gradually improved to the point where she began hiding her face constantly, lest she find suitors more dangerous than bandits. "And I can also use the Hour of Power nine times during the allotted time between dive cycles. But only one hour per day, until the Heavenly Light circles the sinful earth."

Ilya understood perfectly what Elea hadn't said. She was, after all, a Storyteller, not an Executioner. An hour simply wouldn't be enough for her to break into a temple guarded by the best of the best, where several of the highest hierarchs—the Fours—reside, find her brother, save her brother, leave with her brother, and survive. Almost all of a Storyteller's abilities, especially the truly powerful ones, require constant monitoring and a very gradual unfolding. An hour is guaranteed to be insufficient for this, no matter how she tries, and once the hour is over, her work will simply fall apart, unsupported by a world where there's no place for the Mechanism. Not at her level.

"The second step will give you nine Hours for the second step, and the first will become permanent." He doesn't ask, but states, smiling mirthlessly, and she nods silently in response. "It's good that such a Lottery didn't happen in my world; it would have complicated things greatly. I'd sympathize with anyone other than your bishops, but I didn't skip interworld cultural studies, and I know perfectly well what your bishops are like. So I'll simply wish you luck. You. And I must also point out one important detail: you've been diving for ten years. Ten years..."

She answered immediately, smiling sadly and truly touchingly; you couldn't help but forget how dangerous she was. However, he himself admitted that victory and defeat in the tournament meant far more to her than to him. Because a significant part of her mental stability was tied to her great goal, which prevented her from retreating into her ideal Fairytale forever. No, no, he would still kill her if he managed to win, but he would fulfill his part of the bargain honestly... if only because he still had no chance of betraying her and killing her, whether in the face or in a rat, not in his dying state.

"I know." The sadness is so intense that reality itself is about to burst into tears, and that's not a metaphor, because you have to fucking control your emotions when dealing with Madness on such a large scale. "I know there's little left of him, just his body. But I'll take him, I'll warm him, renew him, restore him. I'll sing him a lullaby, I'll make up a special story for him. A tale with a happy ending."

Moment of silence.

Five minutes.

Ilya's quiet sigh.

"If there are no other secrets, then make me more paper and ink, and I'll rewrite some of the constants." Fortunately, not very many; a gift of this kind has almost no effect, despite its scale. It doesn't affect the status list; it simply changes the concept of interaction with the Mechanism in the real world. "And we'll write your story."

And they began to write.

* * *

"I have seven hundred and eighty-six drops of unspent Essence," Elea admitted unexpectedly, when they had already finished everything and were busy with him forcing her to memorize a ritual, a whole series of them, and she, accordingly, was memorizing. "If I succeed, I will give them all to you, every drop."

She didn't say a word about what she promised in the event of his deception or failure, but Ilya didn't press the issue. It was obvious that she herself believed in success; her Lot responded to these descriptions, these signs, these memorized chants of theurgic prayers, literally screaming and begging her to begin right now. A deceptive confidence, by the way, since the Mechanism reacts to the very possibility of a breakthrough, not its guarantee, the chances of success, or the list of side effects. Part of him wanted to stuff the ritual with special "Danaan" gifts, but he wasn't Greek, and what good would petty revenge do him?

But it would be very, very beneficial for the entire Earth if the "sinners" who regularly inflict fire and iron punishment on Earth's divers were to run into serious problems. And if she succeeded, those problems would inevitably arise, which would slightly improve the situation of communities forced to compete with those of these fanatics. It was hard to believe she would actually hand him the victory, but you never know, anything can happen. Honest divers who keep their word do exist, no matter how endangered their species.

"How?" the earthling asks laconically and with a hint of a smile, once again reviewing his notes for errors. "You won't be able to transmit your Drops through the All-Book before the fourth step, even if I find you myself. In your world, the proper function in the All-Book isn't unlocked for you to find me yourself. And when I become a fourth myself, I won't need those drops anymore. Give me the victory, and I'll consider us even."

"I promised, I'll give it." And take it as you wish: either she's lying, or she truly believes what she said, or she still has doubts. "Tell me. Tell me, honestly, how good are my chances?"

Luckily, she's a Storyteller, and her memory is excellent. There's no need to memorize information for months, or use mnemonic techniques, or even pure rituals. A couple of her aspects simply enhance her memory, and another aspect allows her to read any page she's ever seen, just by thinking about it and closing her eyes. In short, she won't get confused during the ritual itself, and he even had her outline the figure; they even knocked down the walls of a couple of rooms to create one large space, without any spatial expansions. Ultimately, using all his experience, he can say with complete certainty.

"You have so many infused drops and so many fully developed talents that if you were an ordinary Diver, I'd say you don't really need the ritual. You could have ascended spontaneously." Scratching his nose and searching for the right words, he continued his thought. "Your Lot is formed without any significant flaws; the very nature of your gift protects it from talent overload, and I chose the ritual to be as stable as possible. I don't argue with the idea that it could be done better; I would have done it 'better' myself if I had access to my notes and knowledge repositories, to the advice of other specialists in the Allbook."

Oh, many of them would have paid him to work with such a client; it would have been a truly unique experience! Such mercenary thoughts even made him want to check his kinship with Odi Sitt and obtain a residence permit in Israel.

"Others would have done it perfectly, but I'm sure I could have led you to the same 'Tale of Colors' or 'Harbinger of Doom,' but the better is the enemy of the good." Countless ascension rituals could have been performed with a complete guarantee of success, but someone, alas, decided to bite off more than they could chew. "If you don't make mistakes, if you aren't hindered, if you don't make a fool of yourself, you will ascend and become either the "Inspired Storyteller" or the "Bringer of Woe," but I would recommend the first option—it will provide the most reliable foundation, guaranteed not to cripple any of your key talents, and your aspects will be suitable."

"Then... that's all, I suppose." She rose from the table, and Ilya tensed his entire body, preparing to give up everything he had left in one sudden lunge. "I've taken off my deception and won't split the past on the line. Strike me with one blow, scarecrow. This will be my first death in the Filth."

Well, she didn't lie after all.

Or perhaps it's just a cruel joke, where they offer hope and snatch it away at the very last moment. It's a dangerous pastime, and you could die that way. Earthlings, simple trios working as an unwitting pair of Sage and Seeker, once seriously wounded a fifth-step native. Then a group of fours finished her off, seeking her power, her resources, and, of course, her share in the very large native Heart. It's even larger than the one in the Citadel, which is the main one, just not as universal and divided on a quantum level between "majority shareholders." A remarkably vile sector, combining the worst features of feudalism and trade power, similar to the Earthly Hansa.

What's the point of all this? It's because you can't play with your loot, or leave toys half-finished in the same room with artifacts that are dangerous to you! You can't play at all, unless for pragmatic reasons. And so far, Elea hasn't been able to deny her pragmatism.

"Strike me, Possessed, don't make me nervous and doubt."

"I won't hit you, why would I?" he replied, enjoying the genuine bewilderment and even a hint of anger on his undeniably handsome face. "Just admit your defeat and my victory. Out loud."

She clearly didn't fully understand his words and actions, but she still didn't refuse such a simple request. Well, to her relief, she wasn't the only one who'd ever considered it.

"Your victory." And, after a brief pause. "I admit defeat."

Victory is granted!

"Is that possible?"

Flash.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

So, he had eight drops left, which he couldn't use anywhere anyway. Ilya relaxed, allowing himself to exhale and savor his healed body and energy. And also the fact that he'd literally bought a victory by bribing his opponent. His rival. Honestly, he wanted to believe she'd be able to reach the second step and complete her grand plan. In any case, they'd settled accounts honorably, had no grievances against each other, and were unlikely ever to see each other's faces again.

An additional bonus for the winner: the free choice of a talent drop at the beginning or end of the dive, as well as the free distribution of an attribute concentrate under the same conditions, has been acquired!

At that moment, the Earthling realized that if Eleia had deceived him and prevented him from receiving this reward, and he had later learned exactly what he'd lost, she would be the one fearing the Wendigo's visit to another sector of the Broken. This... This changed a lot, especially in terms of how to further construct his build. It was best not to choose any extra talent he could take now without recalculating the entire build, but, in principle, he could assume about seven strong talent options that wouldn't harm his build and might even increase the likelihood of getting the aspects he needed. And there's certainly no doubt that the attribute, a free one, needs to be used wisely, too.

That is, to recalculate everything again.

As if he is against it.

He subconsciously expected some other announcement or major announcement, but no, nothing of the sort. The almost familiar platform simply vanished into the void, and Ilya opened his eyes in his bed. If the tournament's special mechanics had existed, they were clearly only accessible to those very Fives who had chosen the incentive tournament for the earthlings. Yawning widely and suppressing a wickedly satisfied smile, the diver crawled out from under the covers and dragged himself to the shower, washing away with hot water all his worries about what had been and what might have been, had he been a little less agile.

All his messengers were bursting with messages, his news feed was a complete mess—he was receiving messages from Magnus the Crocodile, Irina, coworkers, Forum acquaintances, and a plastic surgery clinic specializing in gender reassignment and hormone therapy. He wondered how it got past the spam filters. Although, no, there was no point in lying; Ilya wasn't interested at all. Having poured himself a huge mug of perfectly decent coffee, best not to ask about the price, he was paying for the bank with full-fledged credits, he sat down in a chair and opened the first pages of the Forum.

The list of topics inspired both respect and horror, especially the growing number of comments under the thread "My duel with Zoreslava the Icebound, Tsarina of all Boretzars, screenshots included," posted by Mesmericles. And yes, screenshots were indeed included, and the lady, the fourth step of the Ice Domain, clearly misjudged the idea of ​​Cald as a reliable defense against Dream. However, she didn't express any displeasure in the screenshots, quite the contrary. Ilya actually read this battle report and even used a separate script to hide all the pornographic material, preferring to read about how Dreamwalker dismantled and fucked the Frost Princess.

Tsarina is, after all, the princess-heir, and the Tsaritsa is precisely the queen ruling jointly with her husband. Oh, that would be another reason for them to hate earthlings, but judging by the report certified by the Forum, this lady with an extremely luxurious appearance and an even more "extremely" nasty character was happy to encounter not just a fair fight, but a full-blown conflict and rudeness. What's more surprising here is the very fact that Mesmericls chose combat trials at all, rather than mastery, but that's his choice. On the other hand, knowing him, he probably did it precisely for the opportunity to have fun with a full-fledged four-step, and without the risk of failure. And some of the scenes that Ilya, let's be honest, watched provoked a completely natural reaction, and not always the one usually evoked by Mesmericls' reports.

No, seriously? Convince Zoreslava that she is a chicken and must lay an egg, thereby defeating the insolent and disrespectful assemblyman? Force this princess to literally, albeit imaginarily, shit out her own brains and ice balls from “warm” ice stuck up her ass? And that's just one of the “games.” Their duel lasted almost six weeks, with Tsarina spending the last two weeks mostly fighting her opponent by sucking out his magic along with his seed, as well as squeezing out that seed in every possible and impossible way. Mesmericles is such a Mesmericles...

It was all the more ironic to read another post by Ugly Bastard, who also decided to enter the combat tournament for some unknown reason. The most popular and obvious explanation was that the two had simply made a bet. Fortune brought him together with Lady Jezebel Blanche Angeol, the first lady of the Albion-Avignon Pact. An ally, so to speak. She's truly done a lot for the Earthlings who interact with the Pact communities. In short, Ugly showed civic awareness and, standing on a platform in the void, swore to conduct the duel as a fight, not as an attempt to create pornography with mind breaks and brainwashing.

Ugly Bastard [OP], [confirmed diver], [fourth level: CLASS HIDDEN], [Yes, that's the one!], [does not accept orders to use abilities in the real world], [not actually ugly]: And she listened to me, nodded understandingly, turned pale as death. And SHE GAVE UP, DAMN IT! SHE JUST GAVE UP, YOU FUCK! I swear on the names of all the Dead and assure the Forum that I didn't plan to do anything like that to her! If I had won, I would have finished her off; if I had lost, I would have burned! But no, fuck! Have I ever, even once, even once, fuck, played games with the allies of the Assembly or our earthlings?

P.S. Fuck, don't mention MyrtleDirtle, she volunteered and knew what she wanted, she was the one who pursued me, really, we even dated. And it still happens sometimes [looks around], it doesn't matter.

P.P.S. And that story with the cucumber patch, too, it was friendly fire, we hit everything we had, wherever we could!

P.P.P.S. In the case of the three horses, Miss_Losx and VeryPerry absolved me of all responsibility, and I paid compensation in Broken and on Terra!!!

R.R.R.R.S. Shit, really, it was just a misunderstanding with the Order of the Sluggish Crane! I sincerely apologized, but they were really asking for it!

Ilya studied the statistics of victories and defeats of earthly divers posted on the Forum. In principle, the descriptions of the battles from a bunch of people convinced him that he had been matched with particularly vicious opponents, as the winner of the Lottery. The rest fought such poor warriors that even a recent graduate of the accelerated courses could get through the first three battles. Well, if they were ready to fight and didn't freeze in terror, but those who weren't ready to kill and die, or had already learned their weaknesses, regretted becoming divers and didn't go to the tournament, or went through Proficiency.

In combat trials for the first step, the average win rate was [6.9], which is very, very high. Most lost only once or twice, and losses of more than five were mere thousandths, with a couple of those clearly deliberately testing the waters to see what would happen if they lost all nine battles. They gave a consoling drop of Essence, by the way, which upset a lot of people, because three hundred credits are three hundred credits.

The second and third steps had the healthiest and most pleasing coefficients for each Earthling's sense of self-importance: [8.4] and [8.2], which isn't surprising. In the early stages of the first tier, Earthlings take more balancers and tend to level up during that same 1.5 to1. If it's not cinematics. Because of this, they are still, on average, weaker in "raw damage numbers," as far as that term applies to the Broken. They are strong with preparation, talent synergies, and a very good knowledge of lore, but this won't always help overcome the purely combat-based gap in strength and ability.

But at the second and third steps, earthlings fully develop. Their classes and elevating rituals are polished to a shine, synergies abound, and the talent deficit caused by the balancers is already corrected by new steps, turning them into individuals who are very dangerous for their step. This has long been a proven fact: while each fourth step is inherently distinct and highly individualized, from the second to the third step, the earthly doctrine exhibits the most powerful output of any world known to earthlings.

The four steps performed a little worse, with a score of [7.2], but the guys there are already too dangerous; it's not surprising that the odds are lower; what's surprising is that they're not even lower. Mesmericls and Ugly, by the way, haven't lost a single fight, but both have drawn (a draw counts as a loss for both sides), by the way. They don't talk about who they couldn't beat, much to the annoyance of the fans. And yes, both had three female opponents, and the rest were all men... not that that stopped Ugly.

The results of the fifth-step battles at the Forum weren't weighted, as there weren't many of them. You could look at each one's profile. White predictably took nine wins out of nine, with two draws and three losses. Two of the three losses belonged to Cemetery. He had only recently reached the fifth step. He simply hadn't had a chance to master it properly and had a tough time in the later duels. And yes, another player with eight wins and one draw hid his profile and didn't give a name, which sparked a lot of paranoia. Either one of the official fives was playing a prank, or there was still an unaccounted player somewhere.

Conspiracy theories were growing faster than edible bamboo grows in greenhouses, and the Forum was already seriously discussing the option of demanding (!!!) the five-level step to certify to the Forum that the profile did not belong to one of them. This was despite the fact that among the officially certified fifth-level users, there were no people who refused to participate in the tournament. But the eleventh profile does exist.

Proficiency: [6.5], [6.7], [6.5], [6.9].

Earthly Sages and other “crafters” showed such class and boasted such awards that the network buzzed incessantly, and the celebrations promised to turn into mass riots if law enforcement agencies did not take control of the situation. However, this is not the first time this has happened. Usually, it is not on such a large scale, and it does not involve divers, including those at the top levels.

The gifts for all steps were roughly the same, but a significant portion of the additional bonuses received by Ilya are equally useful at all levels, especially the last three. However, it should be acknowledged that at levels above the first, the gifts were not limited to just a dozen drops in the Vessel. The gifts were quite substantial. Also, so far, there has not been a single confirmed case of receiving the Hour of Power at a level other than the first. This is encouraging, given Ilya's knowledge of the gifts of the lovely Elea. He wishes her luck in her endeavors. However, there have already been almost five hundred confirmed cases of receiving this gift through the Forum.

Just great, yeah.

Some admitted it on purpose so that, under the supervision of the authorities, they could get rid of the dangerous gift, showing civic awareness. Some asked them to keep it locked up for the duration of the gift, because their Twins were either not quite normal or completely cinematic. Still others were simply burning with the desire to show off and were in no hurry to part with the analogue of a real tank in their pocket. Well, or at least some kind of howitzer. On the one hand, it's good that he didn't receive a gift that was so dangerous to those around him, but on the other hand, it's a bit of a shame — he certainly wouldn't have been dangerous to society, not with his Trait.

It was at that moment that Ilya saw clearly.

It wasn't quite like what a Twin would feel when looking at a status, but there were some very noticeable similarities. Similarities expressed in imaginary lines before equally imaginary eyes.

A shadow of connection, a shadow of gratitude, a shadow of sincere thanks has touched you, Diver!

Received a split touch of the Great Presence of Diver!

Charges in this cycle: 7/7

No more than once per full planetary day from the moment of the last use!

For some reason, he remembered how his blessing had leaked outward, clearly adding extra drops to Irina. For some reason, he remembered Eleya's words about how she would find him if he deceived her. For some reason, he remembered videos of the Assembly's special forces in action, catching crazed divers or idiots who decided to have a blast using the Hour. The latter, however, are rare—by the time the gray helmets arrive, the Hour is already over. Well, unless you count those cases where the suspect's possession of the Hour was known in advance. Then they were brought in ahead of time, too. Or someone simply decided to set fire to the Assembly office with a "Fire Scream"—those were idiots, too.

"Oh-ho," he said, uttering a very profound phrase, and went to answer Irina's call. Fortunately, it was another day off from work.

These were not the consequences he expected from the Tournament.

Not these at all.
* * *

Внимание! Этот перевод, возможно, ещё не готов.
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Переведено на Нотабеноиде
http://notabenoid.org/book/88055/594986

Переводчики: Camrad_RIP