Chapter 13

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  The cause of the illness was not magical in the case of the burly broad-boned woman Kirik had asked to check for health problems. She was his wife's retive. It was the drooping of her left kidney made her unable to stand, for the organ in that position drooped more and more, causing her to faint from the weakness. Everything was normal while she was lying down, so the young man was not rushed to check. Even an apprentice healer could deal with such a disease if he could diagnose it, so it was not difficult to cure. Stepan spent more time to ensure he didn't cure her too quickly. He limited himself to summoning a specialized spirit to strengthen the area of tissue, and another spirit to wrap around the kidney and physically prevent it from changing position too much, more for the sake of reassurance, separately prescribing the conditions of not causing more harm with his actions.

  The fee was minimal for a normal healer's rate. Not only to avoid haggling but also to avoid expining to anyone what had happened to the patient and why she was so bad. It was enough to imagine him expining anatomy, blood flow, and peritoneal deformity to the semi-literate vilgers, trying to make the terms as clear as possible. In the end, he just finished with a cssical by the standards of the magical Middle Ages phrase about bad blood flowing to the head and decred the session over. He asked only not to walk and not to stress the patient physically for the first couple of days so there would be no repse, and he left, not really listening to the tearful gratitude and assurances of eternal friendship. Kirik, characteristically, was and remained much more taciturn, which was a noticeable advantage against the general background.

  In fact, this short healing session was the most significant event of the next five days. At first, the young man once again endured a kickback from the alchemy he had used. He walked back to the clearing and began to assess the task ahead, already intuitively guessing that this would be a long time coming. Protective elements were burned out or used up, most of the circuits were either ruptured or simply discharged, and even the totems were worn out from the excessive stress, though outwardly remaining the same, in the spiritual reflection received some damage. All of this created a list of future tasks, not counting payback and payment of debts, plus a little more on top, for good work. Still, his retinue had leaped above their heads in this battle, even with all the support of the shaman and his backbone, but had destroyed extremely strong and numerous opponents.

  A Creep Bear alone could eat a Senior Shaman and his retinue if he caught him outside the pce of power. For a simple Adept Shaman, even the pce of power would not be helped much. Well, if it was a simple one, because the same Angry Tit, as Stepan suspected, could not notice such an attack behind her home walls. If her mother is a really strong master, at the expense of contracts stretching to the next rank, then there are only senior spirits to meet the guests should be at least three, and if everything is serious and it's time to throw the st reserves, and up to a dozen. The boy, of course, could not know for sure, but simple math and basic shamanic erudition pyed a role here. For so many generations, having such power, it was impossible not to make a lot of useful deals. Since without this plethora of deals and contracts, there would be no such power.

  It took another twenty-four hours to evaluate the events of the past battle and the amount of debts. The notebook and good memory allowed him not to be afraid of forgetting about someone. The volume of purchasing power for the System Store gave the possibility of not being too skimpy on reciprocal gifts. To his relief, he had successfully forgiven at least a third of his debt by the fact that all of the spirit and power left behind by the enemy had gone to the allied entities that had fought the enemy. In general, such things are most often prescribed automatically, combat trophies and combat booty, but for Stepan pyed the fact that he, first, made the payment for combat participation as clear as possible, giving no room for interpretation. I pay you for the fight, and I get everything else, including any trophies, so that they don't demand to feed them the guts of prisoners or something like that. The usual, albeit extremely high-quality, over-insurance for working with spirits, especially dark and evil ones but it didn't fully work here. After all, we were not talking about material trophies or living people, but about the remnants of power and will of fellow spirits.

  But here everything was better. On Stepan's side was a pce of power, which nourished the whole retinue during the battle. The enemies had fallen there. Technically, the young man was not prevented from using the remains of spiritual bodies and echoes of power to strengthen the totems and the clearing but he did not do so. Instead, he feeds and nourishes the retinue. He wanted more than anything to return to his body and sleep for twenty hours, but he didn't have the energy for the hard, somewhat tedious, and not entirely safe work with the spiritual matter and flesh in question. In general, the trophies went to fighters, so he got a lot of discounts for debt-crediting, not to mention that many spirits had enough of the payment already made, they could only be tipped for good cheer. In fact, most of the upcoming task was to renegotiate the spent one-time contracts, as well as to pay the costs of those of the spirits whose contracts "for battle" were not designed to fight against the same inhabitants of the spheres, because we were talking about fighting in the real world and against material beings.

  It was important and extensive, but nothing fundamentally difficult or at least challenging about it. The only thing that remained unchanged was the amount of wasted time, but nothing to be done about it, so he had to spend it. That's what he did while patching totems and creating at least some protective barriers for his clearing because the main ones had died. Well, not all of them. The third one, which covered him and the base of the totems, no one managed to break through, not even Creep Bear. There was also an outer one not letting the enemy out, which the enemies did not hit almost at all, concentrating their efforts on attacking. But everything in between was either completely unusable or so mangled that it was easier to uninstall the remnants and do it all over again. This is even though uninstaltion will also require considerable effort. The defensive contours reinforced by territorial influence have become firmly embedded in the nd cursed by spirits. Now their mangled remnants will have to be uprooted.

  Because of such routine, the first decade since the end of the adventure passed almost imperceptibly, only interspersed with visits to the house for physical and mental rest, as well as attempts to teach Meld the basics of ritualism for the ungifted. Stepan remembered how he had conducted that unfortunate fortune-telling - even if incorrectly, but very competently guessing some details. In general, he began to expin to a teenager about safety techniques and how to get at least some benefit from such entertainment, except for the vilge fame. The same conspiracies for health are actually harmless even in case of error, have a high chance of working, and do not require - most of them - bloody sacrifices or symmetrically imposed curses on the neighbor. The boy's interest didn't wane, which was even pleasing, but underlyingly he realized that the kid was learning it all just to show off in front of his peers.

  Just a couple of days ago, when Stepan was once again in the clearing and missed everything he could without even watching through the spirits, a rge fishing boat and a couple of smaller ones just from neighboring vilges, came down from upstream of the Dantra River, a kind of combined team. And even though there were their own "ship-boy" of simir age, who had gone to the river fishing with their parents for the first time, now Meld the main leader of Lyady had something to answer. You were just fishing and trading, just floating on the river, and he had almost learned to talk to the spirits! Stepan can't say it tipped the scales in his favor, but it was certainly a worthy argument. Before it was necessary to bring everything to a fight with strangers, otherwise there was nothing to answer. That's how the boy expined it to him, shining with a bck eye, and if his almost truthful boastful statements were to be believed, his opponent had two of it and a broken nose.

  The second of the three avaible attempts to get an elite item from the System Store had also failed, though this time he wasn't being offered a combat dildo for free. The item was a reagent, but such, you know, bearing a fir of typical Autogoddess handwriting: a small vial highly saturated with magic venom of an extremely rare snake, which had to be born and live all its life on a specific magical source with very persistent and unusual characteristics at low energy saturation. Moreover, not only the snake, but also its nine generations of ancestors, so that the tenth was able to give a portion of poison with the right characteristics, and then another nine generations to wait for a new snake. A separate species of snake, not the fact that such snakes even exist in this world, or exist in numbers greater than a couple or three specimens, bred by powerful mages on the cultivated source. According to the reference - this reptile always ys only one egg, and to hatch twins from it, it takes very strong luck.

  The poison itself was dangerous, but as an offering reagent for the spirits, it was almost priceless. However, the type of poison itself and the spirits that would come to the offering... is questionable. The poison is actually quite unpleasant, it causes memory problems, makes one forget elementary things, and destroys the personality, the brain begins to create a false memory, from which the snake-bitten dies a completely different and completely insane personality. Extremely unpleasant death, and not every antidote will not work, even if the poison is not particurly murderous, if you quickly take action, it is quite possible to save yourself. But the spirits, spirits, even very strong, even very close to the elders, which on such an offering will fly moths to the fmes and flies to shit, belonged, as it is easy to guess, to the Sphere of Charms and Suggestions, especially those that work with the memory of the victim.

  Stepan thought for a while. In the list of contracts to be obtained one very useful, which allows you to naturally dig into the memory of the victim looking for the necessary information, and harmlessly and unnoticed for the victim, which does not necessarily need to be kidnapped and tightly bound. But this spirit was not on the list of "WANT-GIVE-GIVE-GIVE!!!", but in the third queue to receive, only if free time appeared, so the shaman did not choose this product either. Moreover, he also had spirits of a simir direction, just many times weaker and rougher, in contact with him, a couple of them he even took into his retinue. Yes, the young man was taking a risk, especially if the third of the lots turned out to be an analog of the magic stockings lying dead under the bed, but still, it was better a small chance for something useful than something almost useless right now. And Stepan didn't hope for success, he had studied too well the degree of MILF's influence on the System and the system's issuance of all sorts of assignments.

  But he was lucky, albeit a little, with the falling tasks, among which there was only one from the Autogoddess, and even that was small. However, two small assignments in a row: one for the standard work with the spirits of Light and Sor Spheres, postponed, but the second required to repair the arrays of protection in the clearing, making them at least not too inferior to the past power. After receiving the second one, he immediately put the first one out of the waiting, because there wasn't enough time for the assignment, but it would have to be done ter. If the work with the sor spirits promised just experience, a fifth of the scale, as well as an increase in affinity with spheres in general and light in particur, then work with the defense promised to improve a developed base of techniques for creating those very protective arrays. This is quite a reason to strain his brain and ass, he had to process it again, having spent two nights in the clearing, which made his mood a little spoiled.

  He accomplished the first task almost in passing, easily using the totems he already had as support and synchronizer for the call. He had done well, even making five new contracts. He had a certain ck of light spirits, especially combat spirits, rather than healers with support. It was the specialization of the spirits, which very rarely combine combat aspects with the light sphere, but they do. He emphasized sun-born beings that embodied the draining light of the desert sun, taking moisture and life. One of the summoned ones turned out to be a small treasure, able to cause rapidly progressing dehydration by bright rays, literally evaporating the liquid from the body, and the standard defense worked poorly, requiring a full-fledged field, covering the entire body, rather than the usual barrier. Or at least a selective one, if you can't pull out the field.

  The second of the memorable ones could, in addition to simple analogs of ser beams and light arrows in the style of Star Wars bsters, cause rapidly progressing snow blindness, and it affected the body, not the aura. The magic trick only accelerated the progression of a quite natural disease, and normal defense against such an approach without knowing the original mechanism of influence could only be a defense that is initially higher in css. Stepan only grinned sadly at how he had managed to find a curser even among the light spirits. Not that it would be a particurly difficult feat, but with his life, he was more likely to be attracted to all sorts of weird shit than a kindly cutie with kittens. However, kind cuteness with kittens does not take root in high spheres or is so dangerous in itself that it's scary for ordinary dreadful cocksuckers to even get close to it.

  It was too early to start working on the task with the tasty reward. Stepan wanted to take care of his debts first, so he fell out of his usual mode of sleep, or rather, of its remains for a long time. The days became a continuous stream of calls, meditative rest to replenish the reserve, and calls again. Most of the tasks went smoothly, and among the weak spirits in his retinue, few would have been willing to refuse him. A couple of them had slipped away. Apparently, they find the st adventure too risky. Spirits' self-preservation instincts were fine, as was their greed. Another had been eaten since he left, as he was unwilling to stay in the totem and had gone to the spheres on his own. The strong spirits were not reluctant to cooperate, especially Trio, who had to go into the coffers and pay them enough money for four summoned lizards. On the other hand, they'd taken out the most dangerous of the enemy, and they had a right to demand a reward.

  As Stepan had feared, Donut Langolier raised the rate in proportion to his increased strength, but not too high. If Stepan hadn't been looking closely, he might not have noticed that the spirit had changed its requests. He would have to check with an independent expert to see if it was only for him that the increase was insignificant or the same for everyone. But the young man had suspicions as if there was a consequence of the fact that he had activated the blessing of the system on the spirit. And now the spirit does not have any debts to the shaman, but he did not dare to increase his rate. Only for such a test need to see how someone else will call a Donut.

  The rest of the retinue renewed the deals or confirmed their validity almost without difficulty. The Lizard's request to add a little more wood for the fire, the smoke from which Stepan used as a resonator, was not considered as a difficulty, was it? There was only a request not to add pine needles next time, which was not even a problem. It's just that spirits sometimes have these little mood swings. The Milker didn't seem to see any unusualities or problems in the past massacre, having been quietly summoned under the same conditions. He was a golden spirit, honestly, all should be like that, and not as it usually happens with such entities, where the stronger, the more fastidious. The two jellyfish were just as golden, and they didn't seem to think that the dangerous end of their contract was a reason to break the terms of the deal but only asked Stepan if he had any cims for leaving him alone. He didn't, though he could have, but there honestly just wasn't any chance of following him there, even if at the cost of existence. It all happened literally instantly.

  A lot more effort. Or rather, not effort, but creativity. He had to hunt down every bastard that had abandoned the summoner and the contractor at the moment of greatest need. They were understandable: they were outnumbered and outcssed, and the shaman couldn't physically charge them for their treachery. He would be finished. So, he had to call the trackers and hounds again, give them the images of the traitors he remembered well, and then eat popcorn, when those who thought they were the smartest were found, eaten, and the fragments were brought to him. He collected these fragments, the imprints of the st will, and pced them in the central totem, creating a new, or rather, strengthening the previously underdeveloped, superstructure. This message proves that not only do they pay generously here, but they also demand that the payment be honored and that you can only get screwed once.

  The st debts were paid by about the middle of the third decade from the time of the massacre. Winter had already set in and regur blizzards made it necessary to ensure the clearing remained insuted. One particurly severe blizzard Stepan pushed aside, closing a small task at the same time and receiving as a reward an increase in affinity with the sphere of the blizzard, as well as a handful of snow. Not just ordinary snow, but saturated with spiritual power and the corresponding aspects that Stepan held an extraordinary call the same evening and night, without returning to the house for dinner, calling another strong spirit, a pure elemental-fighter. He was able to cold and freeze, to attack with icy wind and pure cooling to absolute zero, and instantaneous, able to impose not too strong, but insidious area curse selectively freezing the aura of the enemy, making it difficult to control and replenish, as well as slowing down the process of creating charms, especially fire or generally "warm".

  Twelve summons, indefinitely, but the best time to summon a spirit was in winter, or at most in very early spring or te fall: bound to its season, affinity with it to the deepest yers of its essence, in normal times it weakened to the boundary between strong and weak spirits, hardly remaining combat-ready. Of course, Stepan had contacts of more advanced entities devoid of such vulnerability, or even capable of bringing their winter and blizzard with them. There were, but there was no time to call them, and it wasn't even a matter of workload and the need to do basic tasks, for for the sake of one more elder spirit, and even a pure fighting spirit, the shaman would have found time. The problem turned out to be the offering itself, the handful of snow from the top of the highest mountain in the world (the world, by the way, was not specified), received for driving the storm away from Lyady. The snow was rapidly losing its saturation and usefulness, becoming less and less valuable with each missed second, and Stepan could either take a risk, summoning the dangerous spirit with little or no precautions or be satisfied with a tit in his hands.

  Considering the fact many of the entities of a simir type avaible for summoning, about which he had enough information in his knowledge, had a high coefficient of aggression and would definitely try the shaman for strength even not out of malice, but as a test of his professional aptitude, then without protection to get in touch with them - to pass the exam for sure. On the honorable winner of the Darwin Award with gold trim and purple cord. And his summon was not useless: there was no telling what might happen this winter or any of the following winters, which Stepan intended to live a long and peaceful life. Also, after gaining knowledge about the nature of a handful of snow through the help, the thought of finding the local Himayas, climbing to the analog of Everest, and calling there. It was not only his weakness and a lot of more useful ways to spend time that stopped him, but also the theory that in the magical world, such a useful point from the magical point of view must have been occupied long ago. And it wasn't even clear what was worse: humans or other intelligent beings, or some terrible shit thing that had made its nest under the very heavens.

  By the way, the blizzard had really gone away from the vilge, or rather, had not touched it all the time of its existence. By morning there was a complete calm and such a powerful snowfall that from the weightless and rge fkes of snow it was impossible to see the path on which he was walking back home, lighting himself with a small and fidgety firefly. The path, also part of the defense array, even in its battered state managed to protect itself from being completely blocked, but still, while he reached it, he created several new cursing constructions. Already in the house, when he found Meld dozing off st night, he shook him up and had dinner and breakfast with the already cooled down food - he didn't touch it, either out of politeness or out of fear for Kirik's ears - feeling surprisingly peaceful. The boy who came to the threshold and looked at the resulting ndscape, wiped his reddened nose and immediately stepped back into the warmth. It was freezing, but the weather was beautiful.

  "If you're not sure you'll make it, stay." Stepan offered, following the rules of politeness, though he hated sharing living space with anyone, to the point of fury. "Or I'll send a spirit with you to keep you from getting lost."

  Meld, at first, had also thought of staying in the house for some time, jumped at the st phrase, and Stepan mentally patted himself on the head. So that this bearer of a thorn in the ass, agreed to wait for the weather to clear up, when there was an opportunity to get another magic trick, and even to brag about it? No, this world is undoubtedly magical, but one should be able to distinguish between a slender, carefully verified magical theory, and completely unrealistic children's fairy tales! Meld, who refused to show off, was the tter. Sometimes it seemed to the young man that this boy would have run to Orodruin instead of Frodo for a chance to have a good ugh, and he would have come back in time for dinner. But that's just a grouchy grousing of a shaman who feels like an ancient super-intelligence, not a serious suggestion. Sooner or ter, the boy would leave this vilge and go in search of a better life. He was simply cramped here and had nothing to keep him in Upper Lyady. Stepan, who understood this, tried to teach him what he didn't need, wanting to increase the chances that the boy wouldn't become another highway robber, goods in a sve corral, or a corpse in a ditch, but would be able to settle down in life. Or the boy would get his way, marry the girl he had saved from drowning, and settle down, you never know.

  "Here, tie it around your neck and bring it back to me tomorrow, but don't lose it." Stepan took off one of the elements of his neckce and put in a small stone a couple of spirits of wind and snow, which would allow him to navigate in space, even in such a snowfall. "And don't py with the talisman, the spirits don't like it."

  "Thank you, Mr. Pann!" Immediately answered him, shining a shiny polished coin, and quickly saying goodbye, not otherwise, fearing that the magician would change his mind, ran away into the snowfall. "Wow."

  An audible exhale of admiration came from the way the snow wrapped around not only the boy but also the couple of meters around him. It's not an umbrel effect like a magical barrier. No, just each individual snowfke falling past, veering slightly off its original course to nd outside the defense. With such cover, it was easy to see the road, even if the path had almost drifted, so the boy was not to worry and Stepan could rest. After all, the st debts had been paid, and the remnants of the traitorous fire-type spirit had been buried under the central totem. It was possible to exhale a little. Also check his st chance to get a gift item from the elite list, because the next in line to take it for free will not work, only with a full payment.

  On the one hand, it was not another creation of the Milfic Goddess, which was even pleasing. On the other hand, the product itself was even less useful than that vial with a very unusual poison reagent. No, it's hard to argue with the fact that this gift of the System itself can be a cheat, for the possession of which will immediately find a pce in the court of the ruler and a high title. Or an unmarked grave, if it would be cheaper to take away and share. And indeed it will be cheaper than paying a fair price for such a thing. A very peculiar totem, in which slept no less peculiar spirit, and the spirit was at the same time very weak, the reserve of his strength barely pulled on the strong, but still remained within the spirit of the elder, simply due to the density of the thin body and its antiquity.

  The totem looked like a ft coin made of very dark, almost bck cy, with a child's palm imprinted on one side and the animal foot of a ferret or something simir on the other. It was the size of a tea saucer and as thick as a tea saucer. In battle, it was a useless joke, and in peace or calls Stepan would have no use for such a gift. The spirit did not give any signs of life and existence, did not respond to dialog or attempts to contact, only transmitted outwardly the image of calm, contentment, and "fuck you all, I'm resting here". It could do only two things - either to do nothing, just being at rest and not touching anyone, or to fulfill the only function for which this thing had been assigned such a value.

  When activated, the magic non-coin is pced on the ground or a special pedestal, there is no difference, somewhere above the underground deposits of copper, iron, or several types of not just valuable, but magical types of metal (not mithril, but also unusual and expensive things that cost hardly cheaper than gold). And the spirit begins to slowly and leisurely raise these deposits a little closer to the surface, making their extraction much easier. Where ten years ago you needed a deep and carefully designed mine adit with a lot of caves and reinforcement structures, which still had to be enchanted from colpses and other accidents, after the same ten years you can mine ore with the very minimum of effort and excavation. Plus the reserves will become scarce much slower because the spirit will continue to pull new fragments closer.

  Apparently, it was the most powerful and difficult to create acquisition possible through the advantage of the system store, if not the Autogoddess's contrivances. Just trying to think of how hard it had been to summon such a spirit and then bend it to a task so atypical of subsurface entities made one feel sad at one's inferiority. Subsoil spirits are a priori against helping to extract valuable ores or ying mines, it is against their very nature, proud and insolent. Moreover, they also react extremely aggressively to the active use of geomancy or shamanism for the same purposes, so you have to either constantly guard against the attacks of such creatures, spending a lot of energy to fight their guerril against the "invaders", or to bother and chisel the stone with pickaxes or various techno-appliances with a minimum of magic. And still suffer from regur attacks from subterranean entities, albeit to a lesser extent. Shamans who speak to the subsoil, or mages of unusual specializations, which can somehow negotiate with such things not to organize a war of attrition, but to coexist peacefully, for their services probably charge so much that the textbook bargainer selling video cards would have a conscience, if that conscience was there.

  And now the question.

  What's the point of this bullshit, which will bring good if in a decade, to Stepan here and now?

  The answer was absolutely correct: the honorable shaman and system user Stepan didn't need such a thing, just like he didn't need a personal copper or iron mine with a rge output of raw materials. He would have been better off with something capable of throwing fireballs far over the horizon or something simir, rather than this disappointment. He felt surprisingly vile admitting it, but even the divine dildo was noticeably more useful. At least he could hammer nails with it, it was so strong, whereas the gift saucer of the miner's humiliation was also somewhat fragile. The only thing left to do was to put this thing under the bed, in company with the divine stockings, also wrapped in a piece of clean cloth. And then to work again, only now on the task put in the waiting line, wishing to increase one of the talents.

  Stepan hadn't spent the two free points yet, simply because none of the things he pnned to take for those points would help with the debt distribution. It would only make him spend half a day minimum to digest a block of information. Now, here, one could try and invest them, but he wanted to finish with the task at hand and act afterward. He hadn't forgotten that new talents appeared in the choices whenever the Status changed even a little bit. Here was the hope that after increasing the skill to create defensive arrays, some ultimatum-enhancing trick of almighty OPness would open up. It wasn't much of a hope, but there was really no rush now, and no reason to waste talents right away. So why not test his theory one more time?

  He did not invent anything new. At least, at the current stage, he had only tweaked old ideas, uprooted the remnants of spiritual reflections and fragments of past calls, and put new billets in their pce. The byrinth was now a little more solid and a little more intricate due to the lessons learned from his first baptism of fire, a better selection of materials and calls, and a general improvement in development. The out-of-body skills were very helpful if one needed to alter-distort the reflection of material on the spiritual yer. A kind of incomplete and partial exit from the body, without breaking contact, but not in the body itself. The trick, which a shaman usually has to work on for a long time, was given to Stepan very quickly and naturally due to the transformation of the spirit. In fact, when he used his third hand, he was already releasing his spirit from the body without losing control over the body; he only cked the skills he had acquired during the Deed to finally understand the principle and begin to apply it almost reflexively.

  With such an approach, the restoration of the defensive array went even faster than expected, and he, this time, made all the elements fit together, without wasting time synchronizing the individual pieces of the defensive mechanism. Traps and wolf pits for spiritual entities were restored, the first and outer, and then the second barrier was put back in pce. New pots were also ordered with no problems, though this time he had to pay for the full-fledged goods. He had already bought out the stuff that suited him personally, and Ryakt could not make simple pots to order because it was winter and the cy could not be extracted or processed properly. For this ritual, he needs a pot or other cy vessel, necessarily made by hand, and not with the help of magic molded, from the tter will fall quality, because the spirits need embodied in the material idea, not its imitation. So he had to buy out the potter's stock for sale, then with a slight regret to spoil and bury in the frozen ground beautifully painted dishes, in the sealed gut of which was already burning and smoking fme-bait.

  In fact, the assignment was not so simple, even complex in many ways, but he did not apply anything really extraordinary, only well-studied and practiced techniques. A few additions, which really could be called novelties, rather than a repetition of the old defensive line, did not change the picture. The biggest change was an invisible but very sensitive spiritual network, for which it was necessary to summon a powerful spider spirit with the animal sphere and aspects of traps, ambushes, and deception to weave it. The thing reacted to attempts to break the shaman's hold over the territory and impose its own. In response, the net would wind itself around such a breaker, slowly and imperceptibly pumping him with an insidious and unpleasant poison, weakening and cutting off his nourishment from spiritual reality. Actually, the same bear, if caught in such a net, would not die, would not even lose much in power, but he is a bad example, an extremely unsuccessful one: you will have to find such an impenetrable shit. But Sucker's tricks, also connected with "territorial spiritual hacking", adjusting to another's power and disguising his influence in the shadow of that power.... such a net would have swaddled him and could have milked him dry, as he milked his victims.

  Another innovation was a more advanced modification of the signaling nets because Stepan didn't like the fact he couldn't count the number of at least the strong spirits that came for his head at the crucial moment. For the new system, he had cast the necessary effects on the most ordinary stones, literally cobblestones, which could be found near any river with rocky banks. In truth, he could have picked up the pebbles at the river beach, but because of the winter and snowfall, it was cheaper to order them from the store. It was cheaper in terms of time, and the guy valued his time. The processed stones were plunged into the earth softened by the will of the shaman in a strict order, as if the knots at the intersection of the threads of the web that stretched underground, covered the entire territory of the protective array and a little outside it. Each of the stones could become a repeater and observation camera, allowing them to dramatically increase the quality of scanning in a particur area if desired. It would be much easier for the spirits to see, and there would be no need for them to risks since they could peer through the stone with one eye and one false leg.

  It was not a complete upgrade and redesign of the scanning mechanisms, of course. He had not yet summoned any new spirits with the necessary specialties. This modification corrected the shortcomings of the past version, rather than changing the approach, but it was done quickly and with minimum expense. Even new contracts did not have to be signed: among those already avaible, even those who had not participated in the big fight. There were a couple of entities who could work very well with stones, change their reflection in the world of spirits, and do it quite subtly and invisibly. It worked out well, excellent even, with almost no drop-off in the schedule. Another assignment from the Autogoddess of little value, albeit with the offer of unlocking a random meta-skill, he just as habitually declined, immediately after familiarizing himself with it, to immediately get back to work. On one sunny winter day, when there wasn't a cloud in the sky and the frost made him breathless, the system deemed his commitment fulfilled.

  Received: "advanced basic techniques for building defensive arrays".

  The acquired talent is added to the overall Pyer status.

  He put on warm clothes and sat down on his stone with a butt warmer, immersing into himself and digesting what the System had presented to him. Already at the initial familiarization, it became clear that he would be doomed to remake his clearing again, for new realities and discovered secrets. Well, or he will have to be tormented all the time by his desire to do everything as good as possible, whatever it all may be. Seriously, Stepan would not have thought of refusing the opportunity to usefully try out his talent and gain a lot of experience. Though he had vague doubts in the back of his mind that by the time the winter was over he could build such a thing here that it would be hard to take an ordinary shaman-disciple for an ordinary homemade shrine, even if drunk, blind, and after a blow on the head.

  First of all, the new knowledge improved itself and here the difference between initial and better knowledge was visible. If in his base the talent revealed different ways to create a line of defense with the focus on existing knowledge and their synergy, combining disparate approaches so they did not interfere with each other. Now the situation was changing. In the current paradigm, he could not only combine, say, totems with cssical shamanism and territorial curses, but he could also adjust individual elements to mutually reinforce parts of the whole. Yes, it was still only the beginning of the journey, a scratch on the surface of the ice iceberg hidden underwater, but still the first, second, and even the hundredth step had been taken.

  The synergy with totems and territorial magic was just as evident as before, even stronger. He would definitely need to redo the barriers of repulsion and distraction from scratch, the current defense of this type does not stand up to any criticism, and now Stepan could not just be better, but almost an order of magnitude better. To make this pce really not findable without attracting high-level mages and shamans, and even without attracting attention in the smallest way. An interesting variant of solving the problem with an uncharacteristically steep spell gde. So as not to dismantle the results of his bors, uninstalling with such effort built and with no less effort stood in hot battle totems and amulets. And so he can carefully hide everything, hide, lubricate, and leave it for the future, say, in case he has to return someday, and there will be ready support. To avert the remaining suspicions it is quite possible to create another field, much easier, just allowing for a talented and diligent student. Only, it is really important, it will be necessary to make sure that in the usual manner not to turn the "apprentice pce for averting suspicions" into another toothy stronghold, from which even a pack of strong spirits with a lot of small things will not be able to throw off the owner. Or we'll have to make a third clearing to avert suspicion from the suspicion being averted, yes.

  Another important thing is the extremely useful mechanics of array interaction. And not quite defensive, but, so to speak, actively defensive, with techniques of remote control of spirits and attacks through these techniques. Totem support, prepared territory, merging all this into one array and all this under the exit from the body, to improve the understanding of the dialog and the range of the call: and Stepan would get a means for really tangible and really remote attacks or simply influences. This was complemented by very positive advances in accelerating the process of complex and simple calls, relying on the arrayed totems and assigned territory. As it turned out, he had even more work to do, and he had every chance to get another skill increase as soon as he finished applying the reinforcement he had already received and bringing his creation to perfection.

  An endless cycle of magical bor, when each new peak opens new ways to become better, and achieving the ideal is possible only for a brief spurt until the next level-up or out-of-level promotion happens. Someone zy would have howled with longing, but Stepan was only more impressed with this approach. He did not mind for the sake of one quick and sure victory, a graceful solution to an extremely dangerous situation, long, tedious, and hard to prepare the ground for this case. Pathos battles from the st forces, such as the one he was forced to conduct - it is always a consequence of his ziness, carelessness, and stupidity, or a very unfortunate coincidence of circumstances. And someone else's stupidity. We must not forget other people's stupidity, it can be scarier even than our own.

  * * *

  Stepan was already habitually thinking about great things in the middle of the night, in his bed, having returned from the clearing and successfully sent Meld who had brewed his first cold remedy using a magically active reagent, not just herbs, away. The boy honestly said he had been asked to do so by the father of a good comrade, a friend in his then-still quite childish games. Who said you know all sorts of things there, you are taught by a magician, so help your friend. Meld was a responsive guy, but not stupid, and he was able to read the hidden between the words, but at the same time highlighted "I DON'T WANT TO PAY, I WANT IT FREE, AND THAT I SHOULD BE OWNED A LOT MORE", and told his, so to speak, mentor about it. Stepan rated the cunningness of both the vilger and Meld at ten out of ten, allowing the boy to brew a quite decent Blue Flower decoction - not even alchemy, just hermit's witchcraft, tied to the use of an already initially magical herb.

  Apparently, the vilger, by the way, the owner of the rgest farm in Lyady with two good horses, six cows, and a fertile bull, knew exactly what he was asking for. However, of those who could make such a potion, no one would want to work for free. They will refuse at once and then demand even more for his insolence. There were a few in the vilge who knew a couple of recipes. To be fair, this approach was not even disrespectful to Stepan, according to the local mentality. Cunning-ass man, himself sniffing his nose every now and then (under the weight of snow a part of the roof of the cowshed had fallen through, the whole family had to fix it quickly before the cattle froze, and so they got cold), not from a magician venerable demanded free help, but steadily tricked an ordinary boy to "work for thanks".

  The other thing was that it would have framed the guy, who would have taken a little bit of Blue Flower from Pann's stock, for a case for which a magician could have been paid. All this was like a sickle in the balls for a guy who understood the background perfectly well. Not even because they tried to twist and cheat him, but because of the attitude as if he were a stranger. No matter how hard Kirik tried to keep the situation under control, the boy, who had been deprived of custody, was already considered a useless element, on a par with kids, and kids don't get paid, they are grateful to their elders for shelter and food. The boy, who honestly worked as a servant for Pann, as well as officially still owning the house of his te uncle, even though there lived a temporarily settled magician, such an attitude pissed off.

  Anyway, Stepan expined to him how to tweak the recipe properly. He even gave him a couple of grams of dried mushroom from the deep tropics, which reacted with the main reagent. No, such a thing cured colds and coughs even better. His friend would be helped. The problem was that this mushroom could not be mixed with any alcohol, and Vomziak and his older sons, who also had colds, loved to drink their moonshine, especially for dinner.

  So those who don't get a drink are in no danger whatsoever.

  But the cunning vilger, if he, as usual, will drink some hard drink, as well as all those who drink with him, will start very poisonous and severe ftulence. It will st three days only if you do not drink for three days, and if you continue to drink a shot in the evening, the effect will st two or three decades, until the magic of mushrooms will not come out finally. And if he had any cims, he could say at once that his friend did not drink yet, it was too early for him, and they asked for a pot of decoction for him. How could he know that the whole family would drink that potion? Purb doesn't fart, does he? It was just a recipe his mentor had told him to improve, so by morning his good friend would be on his feet and ready to py snowballs with everyone. Who knew it would come out like this, huh? Not Meld, that's for sure. Stepan even warned him to make a poker face, otherwise his fun would be suspicious, and no one would believe Meld knew nothing.

  The earthling restored social justice. Or rather, he did not interfere with the boy's restoration of social justice, since the whole idea belonged to him, even the toilet humor with ftulence - he just asked Stepan if there was such a herb to cause the worst farts until the whitewash fell off the walls - and the shaman just did not interfere with the flight of someone else's imagination. And then, when the boy, carefully holding the kettle floating in the cold air, went into the sunset, he began to work on his own development. He found the situation incredibly ironic. Here he was helping a small bully to make a fart elixir, solving a completely petty and stupid conflict. And here he was developing himself through an all-omnipotent System, thanks to which he could already be considered a very powerful shaman, capable of buying this whole vilge, or tearing it down to the ground, and even without much effort.

  Stepan had solved the question of how to distribute the two free talent points long before he got another promotion from the quest, so he didn't think about it for long. He only looked over the Status with the active help once again and wrote down a few details in his system notebook, but he didn't change his opinion. It may not have been the right or smartest opinion, but it certainly couldn't be called rash. He had considered all the risks he could and found the pros outweighed the cons. However, he couldn't deny that his choice was not only rational and carefully prepared but also something personal.

  The first thing Stepan did was to convert "advanced basic spiritual operation practice" into "advanced spiritual operation practice", which was again at the limit of development. Among all his skills, this was one of the most elite, requiring high scores in several characteristics at once, and therefore, despite regur and very persistent exercises in the use of the spiritual body, modifications of third hand, and even all the things he had done during the exit from the body, the skill frozen on the second grade did not go any further. And now, as soon as the accomplished feat in the opinion of the system - and his own, too, at least in terms of the difficulty of shoveling out of the shit - gave the young man three free characteristics, he was able to increase this skill. This particur talent, although it was a knowledge, worked with aura as well as with the spiritual body, therefore some aspects of it were perceived simirly to the system properties when rotated into the subtle body. It was not a very good feeling, but at the same time it paid off with the feeling of power filling the body and mind, the realization of a new brick to the stronghold of his perfection.

  First of all, as soon as he was able to stand again, he tested his abilities to control the spiritual transformation and immediately began to smile contentedly. Not only had the third limb strengthened, becoming denser, rger, and easier to reconfigure, but it had also increased the area exposed from the body of the phantom something. Now he could actually cim in all seriousness that he had a wing from behind his shoulder and a third arm at once. The rger volume of matter allowed him to operate several limbs at once, and it turned out to be natural and confident, practiced and calm. There were new kinds of spirit configurations, reinforcing certain aspects, like flexibility, strength, piercing ability, and the like. Even the armor and protection of his ghostly arms, which he could bring to three, had been increased, but not by much. Spiritual flesh was still vulnerable unless deliberately protected with the right influences, infusing it with power and creating a kind of armor shell. His basic Resistance could only be increased if he increased that very characteristic, which, as, for a shaman, was hardly on the st role.

  The synergy of talents worked as well. Combat effectiveness improved. New tricks were incorporated into the combat bundles of the fighter shaman. Dialogue and out-of-body and out-of-body combat skills improved even more, summoning techniques expanded, and the delivery of offerings directly to the spirit world became easier. But more than anything else, the properties of working with the impntation of spirits in oneself have developed. The young man had been very free with this risky practice before, receiving much more from the spirits than if they were put into amulets and influenced the body and aura from the amulets. Now he had again taken another milestone, learned new tricks, and was sure that he could try to imbue himself with a strong spirit, on the level of the same lizard, just the most suitable for imbuing and joint actions. Not just to imbue, not just to achieve safety for himself and the ability to restrain the spirit, if he decided to do something weird, but also for some time to fight with such an entity inside him, using the advantages given by it. And such a hybrid of a shaman controlling himself and aware of everything, as well as a powerful spirit, just on the allocation and strengthening specializing ... He preferred not to go up against masters of combat magic before and would not now. But now he had a good chance of success in a fight or a very good chance of a successful escape. Especially if the rest of the retinue would also be around, there would be time for preparation and reinforcement, and it wouldn't hurt to cast a spell on himself. And also the master of combat magic to bind, drugged with alchemy, put on gift blockers, burn auric knots, cut off hands and feet, and then blinded. Then Stepan would definitely be able to do it, exactly like.

  Work with totems, arrays, and witchcraft practices also improved. The new hands allowed him to directly influence the reflection of reality in the spirit world, which opened simply miraculous perspectives. The shaman didn't even doubt that if he set his mind to it and put in the effort and at least a couple weeks, his territorial magic would take rank too, it couldn't help but take rank. Many connections with other directions had improved, there were hints of using his spirit to heal wounds and remove curses, without the need to summon a helper, literally pying the role of a summoned entity with his intangible tentacles mending flesh and even a little thin body. It was the same with spells, up to the possibility of suppressing the will with a handshake and taking control over the body. Although, he had been able to do something simir before, but not so discreetly and without the possibility of actually using it to his advantage. Tantric practices... well, they had also grown considerably, not so much new tricks as improved mechanics for using old ones, so that he could heal or recover from sex even more effectively, as well as heal and recover himself. It doesn't even have to be life-giving sex, a simple massage can be done too, though not as effectively.

  Only after he finished assimiting the first talent and suppressing the desire to go to bed and not touch the next one, Stepan began to invest the second and st avaible point. There were many options and thoughts, but he had already chosen and decided, even convinced himself of it. Earlier he had been increasing his skills in combat calls because he refused to recognize charms as his specialty. Now, after the gift for the deed, he had to admit that a stupid attempt to invest more in the opposite direction of development would be wrong, even erroneous. First of all, he wouldn't close the gap with one point anyway, and secondly, there was no terribly strong reason for him to increase his 'advanced practice of combat calls' to a maximum, because he had enough combat power and strong spirits as it was. Even that recent fight had been so difficult primarily because of its suddenness and ck of preparation. If he were given time and left alone now (and if he were to make the battle inevitable and the attempt to hide or escape impossible), he would, given the same inputs, summon a horde that would tear the enemy apart without any nerves at all, on pure superiority, albeit with reliance on totems and territory.

  And that is why Stepan did not raise the combat direction. Mentally sighing, looking at two, though not elite, but unusual and more specialized knowledge, brought by the will of Princess Milsfosvna to the top of development. He chose a recently upgraded knowledge he needed for his personal, even if a little noble purpose: "advanced practice of remote control of spiritual entities", raised from the advanced base. This time the assimition of knowledge went even easier, not that habit, not that wicked excitement spurring Stepan's concentrated will. The distance of long-range control over the spirits grew not to say that much, but by twenty percent, which was not an increase worth spending talent for. But what had grown really seriously was the limit of the forces Stepan could channel through the reying merger and synchronization with the spirit sent into the far distance.

  In the past, remote control had consisted almost exclusively in the execution of a single technique, albeit with variations: resonance of one's own and the spirit's shells, use of the higher realms as a channel to transmit both reserve and pointing will, at the expense of a different understanding of distance in the spirit world. In many ways, the ying of such an energy channel was simir to the way his evacuation bracelets worked - distance was recognized as unimportant and insignificant, and the reality of the higher realms sagged under that view. Now it was as if the trick that had once been the only one had split into many subtypes, tied to methods, tactics, necessary specifications, and, of course, reliance on a pce of power, on totems, on territory, and the ability to call outside the body. Even so, Stepan still could not, without preparation, roast the entire world, or at least a neighborhood into rubble while still in his clearing, but precisely without preparation. With precautions, with the right choice of ritual and call, with the right and very specific spirits, just for remote work designed ... in such circumstances, he could strike or otherwise affect no weaker than his usual self.

  Yes, he'd have to rely on the clearing and put so much power into it that under normal circumstances, he'd get results far better than his usual self. But he was going to act from afar, directing his will to the first and only city he'd been to during his isekai. To the city where he was greeted so unkindly and escorted away even more unkindly. In the city where Rumorias, a respectable and decent adept of Artifacting and Necromancy from the young, but already noble and proud House of Krellb only saddened by the loss of his beloved son, continued to live, work, and enjoy his life, only without the prefix "de", but they were also working on it. They worked tirelessly, without days off, and without pity for the people around them, because why should they be pitied?

  Stepan could tell he had pnned all of this as an act of vengeance and justice for all those who had been turned by this family into bnks for necrotic artifacts. For bone wands and skull amulets, for amulets made of phanges and divination ptes made of neck vertebrae, for bloody elixirs and life force drained from agonizing victims. He could have, and he wouldn't have lied about it: the young man who had grown up in earthly conditions really believed that those who tainted themselves with such things belonged in the courtroom, or better at once in the electric chair. But, for ck of a court bench or a chair with voltage, and also because the argument "well, come and try to bring us there" is often applied to such guys, it is possible not to bother with the delivery, pying the role of prosecutor, wyer and judge at once.

  All of this was true and all of it pyed its part, but Stepan was quite aware of the fact that his revenge was not primarily for the multitude of dead gifted or simply sves. Not for the viotion of earthly and, perhaps, local ws. Though the local wmakers must have known everything and turned a blind eye, his informant was eloquent and could not lie during interrogation. Not for fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, daughters and sons, wives and husbands, who were waiting for him at home and did not wait for him. No, he took revenge, as he always did when he decided to take revenge, first of all for himself. Because there was a lot to say about Stepan, perhaps not only bad but also good but one thing even Rodisv Gastoldovich Yanin recognized when he took his next hundred and fifty-fifth attempt to pass the ill-fated module.

  Stepan was extremely pedantic about paying back his debts.

  All debts.

  * * *

  He didn't attack right away but first checked to see if his attempts to reach Fantrel with his servants would work. The image of the city was still clear in his mind, and he had no trouble finding it. Cities and vilges, but first of all cities, are reflected in high spheres. It's hard to miss there. It's not like a fugitive hiding in the middle of wild territories. The spirit-observer from the bird-animal sphere, sent by a pinhole with support on the totem, got there without any problems, giving him a look around with his "eyes", both from the real world and the spiritual world, which, by the way, is quite rare for weak spirits. Having looked around and more tightly imprinted the images of this town, Stepan rolled up the shop and began to prepare his entourage for the upcoming operation, again in passing rejected a minor assignment from the Autoboginja, which required to put on someone his honestly earned super stockings and then do all sorts of obscene things, while the wearer of the stockings holds this piece of closet on Stepan's face, closing his eyes. The modernization pns were postponed, the search for more advanced combat contracts was forgotten, and even the practice of leaving the body and wandering through spheres was reduced to staying in the clearing, albeit without a body, while that body was lying on a comfortable stone crib. The experience dripped slowly, slower than he would have liked, but still faster than expected due to the novelty of the case.

  It took him more than a decade to prepare, he even had to summon a couple of very strong spirits, and then a couple more, but all things come to an end, and so did his preparation. He marked it by drinking a bottle of wine in the vilge inn in the company of Kirik, who was ughing merrily and telling him about how Meld was running away from Vomziak, who was farting on the move, and not just running away, but swearing at his swear words in return. At the same time, he very competently said that there was no reason to behave improperly with him, and he didn't accept his cims, because his friend didn't fart. Judging by the headman's reaction, the boy had no problems with it and even managed to express his point of view quite lucidly. True, he had to give away the secret of getting rid of ftulence, and without even hearing an apology from the man, but it was understandable, he was much older and therefore more authoritative. And the boy got the reputation of a boy who really understood something, who could do all sorts of things, and, what was much more important for Meld, the quarrelsome boatman who could not tolerate Vomziak and his sons, and all of them, including Meld's friend, finally warmed to him. The way he ughed at the misfortune of Beaver, who had been insolently punished for his cunning - he had received this nickname for his characteristic teeth - and who would now be called Fart for years to come, he even stopped chasing the boy with pitchforks and allowed him to come to the house to have a word or two with his granddaughter, and even let him eat at the table that evening.

  Well, the boy seems to be doing well now: to be allowed to sit at the table is to be accepted into the circle and to say his weighty "yes" to the future engagement. Taking into account the realities of this world and the early formation of independent units, it's not just an engagement, it's a wedding, too. Stepan, having listened to the story he had heard earlier from Meld - only there he behaved much more heroically and almost defeated a man bzing with fire from his fart ass like Gandalf, who had defeated the Balrog - inserted a couple of comments and went to his room. To make someone else's business go badly, if not completely over. He would try to put an unambiguous and unambiguous end to the protracted revenge.

  He took his time, slowly ferrying the necessary and potentially useful spirits to a kind of anchor he'd pced outside the city limits. The small totem, wooden and decorated with cubist carvings, had been created by him as a rey door. At first, the young man took great length and care in stripping the reflection of the totem from its matter, leaving only the wood empty and devoid of imprint, and moving the totem shining in the spirit world directly to the city. One of the summoned spirits opened its maw for a moment, it was that maw, from it alone, opened it both there, next to Fantrel, and in the clearing, next to Stepan. The shaman took the reflection with his spiritual limb, slipped it through the maw-here, slipped it out of the maw-there, and then brought the spiritual hand back, leaving the reflection of the totem at the proper point. The spell artifact fshed and pulsed, which was very noticeable to any gifted person who happened to be nearby, even a hundred meters away from the point, causing several spirits with aspects of silence and inattention to activate, hiding the magical anomaly and distracting the eye with cunning mental influence.

  The lifeless wood left in the clearing flickered, became transparent and ghostly, and reappeared, but already in the pce of its reflection, also near the city. Now the totem was hiding itself, immersed in the snow, hidden from sight and magical perception. The gate for transportation of combat and not-so-combat units was ready, the city did not notice anything and on the face of the phantom Stepan blossomed a satisfied and slightly sinister smile. Probably because it was sinister because he had unwittingly combined the usual smile and the grin of the spirit form, which slightly protruded from under the image of the face, revealing the sharp teeth that were now visible. The first to go, however, were not ravenous killers or quiet liquidators, no, the first to go through the totem connected to the main array were numerous scouts, stealthy and able to look into reality without getting out into this reality, as well as sleepwalkers and suggestors. With his improved skills and revealed synergy, he was now quite capable of getting into other people's heads, not only by long and tedious looking through dreams, but also by actually getting answers to questions.

  And yes, he checked his talents on Kirik first, and again he didn't find anything red-hot, except for the lingering regret that he couldn't put his daughter under a magician. He had his suspicions, seeing that the strange stranger named Pann was much better at some things than he said, and he didn't brag about it. He especially remembered the amulet given to Meld against blizzard, wind, cold, and wet feet all at once... Maybe Stepan had really overdone it, but he didn't want to treat the boy's cold again. The headman's conclusion, however, was very unorthodox: Accustomed to the fact that magicians do not hide their power, and even on the contrary, try to force it (we're talking about weak magicians and undertrained, not normal adepts and above, with which the man almost never crossed), he thought that Pann strict grandfather-teacher harassed to such an extent that he still can not raise his self-esteem, considering himself a weakling, although in fact is not a weakling at all. And as soon as the teacher dies, the boy immediately leaves the rest of the family.

  No, they raised Pann very well, teaching him, instilling virtues, and teaching him to stand up for himself, both in word and deed. But obviously, they tried not to praise him too much, because he was already grown up and honorable from all sides, even though he was already so good, he still considered himself a boy who could do little. Stepan, of course, ughed at this interpretation of his own reservations, as he came out of his trance, leaving Kirik's dreams and ordering the spirit to send him something good and peaceful. He ughed, but he found no reason to dissuade Kirik from his delusions and even began to think about pying along with him even more, "telling him" about how he was fed up in his native home, that he left that farm at the first opportunity to see the cruel and bloody world around him, because it was unbearable to stay at home.

  Stepan shook his head, pushing the memories away and returning to his own goals and pns. The spirits, a whole plethora of them, were oriented by the markings and signatures of the watchers, filling the city and gradually getting closer to their positions. Some of the watchers are concentrating on one of the most expensive and wealthy mansions in the center of the city, where the honorable representatives of the House of Krellb reside. They formally have their own nds, but they live mostly in the city, leaving it only on business and do not check their settlements, having left the affairs to the manager. This is because their nd is not the minimum of one and a half-ruined farms, just to be considered for the nd aristocracy, but not much, and the nd itself is not fertile, there are few peasants on them, the family does not invest in the development of the nd. The main streams of gold go into the pockets of the Krellbs from their patriarch and the father of the family, who has a strong enough magical gift and a very prestigious, monetary specialty - artifacts.

  Stepan knew most of it from the te son of the current patriarch, and some of it he was learning right now, receiving images-answers from the spirits of the right direction sucked to the sleeping minds, only adding to the picture. He stayed out of pces with magical defenses, didn't direct his servants at the owners of good magical amulets, and didn't tire himself or try to harm others. The Krellb family was known in the city, so he could pick up a little rumor or information from the first guard or shopkeeper he saw. He didn't go into the mansion itself, he didn't even approach it, sleeping and night, he just watched. He began his research and revenge at the tavern where he had once lived and where he had been given a tracking amulet made by the same family.

  The memories of those days were still fresh, regurly fueled by vengeful anger, so he sent the images to the spirits with the utmost crity, quickly finding the unfortunate establishment. He was already remembering a lot of things, stimuting his memory with spiritual influences on himself, which was also a form of mental influence, and therefore easy to do. One of the maids, a skinny and gnarled woman with an evil and frankly greedy look, a long-standing anger at the whole world, which she had thrown at the young man who had settled there. And she was still working there and sleeping there too, so there was no need to look for her. No, he could have found her, in the world of high spheres the connection between a worker and his pce of work means a lot, there are special entities that will follow such a trail and Stepan had summoned such units ahead of time, sensing their necessity. But still, it's nice that he didn't have to look.

  What was more unpleasant was that he was looking in the wrong direction. The aunt turned out to be really bad-tempered, beaten by life, with health problems, and therefore often drank to dull the pain, but in moderation. She was also very God-fearing and w-abiding, so she would not even think of doing something openly unkind and harmful to other people's lives. And she was wolfish about Stepan because he reminded her of the one who had broken her. the asshole who broke her heart, who broke her life in many ways, and therefore she truly hated him. The shaman didn't intend to kill or punish anyone for the snted gnces, he wasn't a Chinese cultivator. He limited his intervention by sending the bitch good dreams and a healer spirit to fix her chronic stomach and kidney problems. After this little embarrassment, he no longer trusted his intuitive senses, turning to the experience of a combat caller, who at the second rank knew a lot about elimination and search, even if it wasn't exactly agent work.

  He started with the innkeeper, who was also very bad-tempered, rude, and liked to water down his beer, but was also a very kind man, even kinder than Kirik in many ways. He helped and treated well only his own people, even if he remembered any good done to him, while this one helped strangers whenever possible. With local zest, having exhausted all nerves, trying to collect the help ter, and also only if he was sure that the help was vitally important, and the troublesome person was not deliberately puffed up. He helped the same sick bitch with healing potions without asking, even if he brought her to tears with his nagging and grumbling that he didn't need a sick assistant. In general, this one was also not involved in the beacon, and all his criminal tendencies ended with the fact that he paid a bribe to local criminals and very, very much disliked one of the guards, dreaming, at times, how he could hit him on the head and bury him in the yard.

  Stepan had already begun to think that someone else could have put that bone in his stuff, unnoticed through the window, but still, he found his client. A cute young girl, a couple of months younger than Stepan, looking innocent and smiling with such a shy smile, that his mememe-meter started to malfunction. Well, by local standards she had been a woman of childbearing age for a long time, and in the vilges, such women could give birth to a second child, but she still looked very young and girlish. Stepan remembered her, politely "not noticing" the offer to help him make his bed, he then considered her much younger than himself, and he was not looking for adventure. But he left her a tip, just for good service and unobtrusive communication.

  As it turned out, for nothing. The little snake was so cynical that he, reading through the spirit of her thinking, was even somehow uncomfortable. And she also genuinely believed that all those who lived better than her, richer than her, happier than her a priori deserved everything bad and then to die on top of it. Without hatred or negative emotions, Stepan would have felt such feelings, it was not for nothing that he was constantly pnting spirits-readers and interpreters of words in himself. But she behaved quite normally, smiled sincerely, thanked sincerely, and dropped the bone pte given by her benefactor into the small gap of her slightly open backpack with sincere pleasure. The benefactor, by the way, was one of Krellb's men, who regurly tossed her another coin for better information, as well as giving her such tasks with a stench. The girl understood perfectly well how this nice young man would be threatened by such a gift. She was not completely stupid, but she was not even indifferent, but happy. He was young, healthy, with money and good teeth, which meant that he lived better than her, which meant that he did not need to live.

  That's it.

  Stepan came out of the trance for a while, returned to his body, stood up from his bed of stone ptes, and for three minutes simply looked up at the sky, desperately regretting that there was nothing to smoke. And this despite the fact that he had never smoked before! No, he had always known that there were all kinds of assholes among people, he knew that the female sex was also subject to this rule, but still, there was something deeply sick, maimed, wrong in her thinking, which the young man had touched, albeit through the entity-mediator. Some distant part of his consciousness even suggested that she might be the most ideal candidate for testing the pool of talents that the honorable Lady Milf had bestowed upon him. He assumed it but dismissed it in passing. He was ready to use the Autogoddess's gifts against those who had screwed him proportionately, as he had done with a couple of almost-forgotten herbalists from an equally forgotten vilge. But this ughing dy intended to kill him, even if not directly, by other people's hands, but knowing for sure that this traveler, like the previous ones, would disappear without a trace, and it made her feel good.

  No, the doctor said to the morgue, so let's go to the morgue. The young man did not kill her. He just noted that one of the contracts with the creature, which would give anyone ungifted and unprotected a fatal heart attack even if he had never had heart problems, was already reserved. So the shaman continued his main mission. While he spent all night and part of the morning fiddling with the inn and digging in their heads, four spirits who had successfully combined their efforts were working on target number one. The mansion of a mage, and an artifactor, albeit still only an adept, had protection, and not a bad one, and the four of them were analyzing it. And they analyzed it well! Aspects of understanding, dispy, power, and invisibility intersected with the spheres of water, stone, space, and, of course, death. There was no way without death; after all, this was not only an artifactor's ir, but also a necromancer's.

  By mid-afternoon, when Stepan was back in his body again. An ordinary cy tablet, even a cy brick, lying in front of him. The construct he had made earlier, a simple mold for the images, now contained a very detailed diagram of the outer and part of the inner defenses on the mansion. In fact, there was nothing that Stepan couldn't recognize. He would have been able to overcome it, too, but what he needed was not a pathos assault on the abode of evil with the help of a retinue of the strongest of his spirits, but an opportunity to enter quietly and discreetly, do his work, and leave without leaving a trace. And so, taking this brick with him, the shaman began to study and memorize it, occasionally breaking off for rest and meals. Meld brought a cauldron of delicious soup because the frozen Dantra allowed fishing right on the ice, so there was nothing wrong with fish for the meal of the day.

  The young man did not return to work on his little project. First, he updated the retinue of summons, adjusting it to the new realities. It took another three and a half days, as well as a system quest with a penny reward. Another lot from the elite section of the store was also unnecessary because Stepan saw no reason to call the entity that would be tempted by the magically saturated extract from fifty babies that had already formed an aura and soul but had not had time to be born. He liked to py for the dark side in video games, but this wasn't a game right now. Getting dirty, getting his hands and conscience dirty in reagents like this... didn't want and that was putting it mildly.

  The first yer of defense on the stranger's house was opened almost without any problems. It wasn't even a protective barrier, much less a full-fledged closing field, but a simple mesh, albeit a dense one. A cssic magical defense, which he knew and read better than those who applied it. He knew the weak points and the elements that were leaking energy better than the owners. If they didn't fix them, they probably didn't see them... or they just didn't care, who knows? The second yer, embedded in the walls, presented a real challenge. Stepan would not have been able to get around such a thing unnoticed without prior spirit reconnaissance even if he had personally tried to infiltrate a spirit body. Amulets built into the walls, more amulets under the ceiling beams of the interior rooms, ashes of the dead poured into the gardens and flower tubs and a few urns with guard and battle ghosts. The tter was extremely primitive and it was obvious that Krellb was much better at artifacting bones and flesh than he was at working with ashes and spirits, but that was not surprising. Working with the intangible undead is a line between necromancy and shamanism, there is a very specific training needed to implement such an approach. Such an adept will get a beating from both shamans and cssical necromancers, especially in the early stages, before learning how to fully utilize the benefits of the approach. Stepan did not intend to give the honorable Rumorias any time for in-depth study or to correct his ck of erudition.

  Bone and ordinary artifact bnks were good, but they worked according to the methods of cssical magic and against it, while from the spiritual world ghosts and ash artifacts were supposed to cover. Maybe the shaman was a bit biased towards his opponent, because the amulets against spirits, which were used by the artifactor's men that were sent to the visiting gifted, were remembered by the guy for their good quality, but now he had become stronger, and this degenerate was not. He quietly fooled the ghosts, blurring their perception and shutting down their sense of life and magic so they wouldn't even see a bleeding virgin mage, even if only a meter away. The ash field from the garden and flowerpots should have weakened and repelled the small spirits, but the retinue picked up and amplified through the totem transmitter, simply did not notice the effect.

  The next stage required a lot of effort to drag a strong and very difficult spirit through the totem lying in the snow. Stepan used the familiar trick again, plunging his phantom hand into the central totem in the clearing to level the distance, pulling out his tentacle already near Fantrel, feeding the totem, and helping it to hold the load. The spirit looked like a lump of old and eaten rags, belonging to a very rare realm of dust and desotion, embodying equally rare aspects. After reaching the Krellb mansion, the spirit crawled closer to the defenses and crawled into them, merging with them, disguising itself as a background magical flow, drawing out all the signals, and temporarily lowering the shields deeper into the world of the spheres, allowing the other spirits to pass through the temporarily ajar window.

  The first to go in was a pack of specialists who looked like a blend of mice and cockroaches, and who, following their aspects tied to the outer image, were able to be very stealthy inside the dwellings, ignoring, deceiving, or simply making all defenses fail. The most restricted areas of the house were the bedroom of Rumorias, his daughter, the st of the gifted heiresses, as well as the basement boratory and the "normal" boratory, the basement is protected much better. He managed to see both the man himself who liked to take people apart and the to collect artifacts from them: a tall, handsome, and stately man in his fifties, he was clearly a favorite of women, perfectly falling into the image of a Byronic character. His daughter had inherited her father's looks, not those of her mother, who had been dead for nine years, but if her father was a plus, she was not. Her face was too elongated and long, her thin lips and eagle nose, not the most favorable impression. On the other hand, clean skin and healthy teeth, beautiful light brown hair, as well as a nice figure blurred this disadvantage. If in the face looking at the girl could be given seven out of ten maximum, then from behind strong, like her taut buttocks, nine.

  A mice-roach, hidden in a gap between the floorboards, smaller than a gnat, and merged with the floor material until it dissolved into it - a peculiar form of camoufge settlement in a material object - managed to look under the dress in the spirit of Japanese perversions, betraying the image into Stepan's mind. Well, the fashion for cy lingerie in this world has already been revealed. Could it be some isekai had arrived here earlier and become the creator of the new fashion? Either that or the locals themselves, which is not even surprising, given the magical nature of this world and very conventional "medievalism". The young man immersed in a trance involuntarily fshed a zy thought that it was possible to nail only daddy, sending him to his son for a date, but to test his gift skills on his daughter. This time he didn't let the thought go, not to the end, but it continued to hover in the depths of his thoughts.

  Stepan spent the next day and a half in a trance, never leaving it for more than a couple of minutes to drink water. He wasn't going to plunge himself into a coma like he had during a long dive, and he had adopted a much gentler alchemy, but he couldn't physically leave for long. The rag spirit slowly but surely made a network of passageways for the other spirits, occasionally replenished or repced, but still only those who could camoufge themselves very well got in, for Stepan did not want to turn a stealth mission into a massacre. The magician's office and bedroom were the first to surrender, as well as the outer boratory, which was easier to call an analog of a shop and a demonstration stand for customers because there was almost no serious work there. Stepan was in no hurry to get into the heads of the gifted, protected by amulets and his gift, though he was quite capable of doing so, because he had the necessary contracts, even without the Autogoddess's "gifts".

  He chose as his target the brains of a fat and fussy man who had been Krellb's closest and most trusted aide, along with the te head of his power corps, and who had died, choking on blood from his lungs, seemingly an eternity ago. The man had his amulets, but they were weak, and not good for anything. Stepan's spirits didn't even turn them on or off, they just bypassed them, passed under them, diving in from the spiritual world. Sleep was repced by a trance without returning to consciousness, and one of the best reading spirits began to pump out of the victim's brain everything necessary and not very necessary. At the same time, the essence was also healing the asshole, so that he would wake up sleeping well and satisfied with life, which pissed Stepan, who hadn't slept for twenty-four hours in a row until his teeth gritted.

  And the necessary and really important data poured in, so much of it that it was necessary to extract only the most important, leaving the rest for ter, or ignoring it altogether. Thus, it turned out that a lowly mortal and a vilge-gifted man named Pann was not even seriously suspected of the disappearance of his te son. Or rather, they began to suspect, and even sent word to the shadowmen to find and bring the head, but then their brains fell into pce and it became obvious that such a person could not have vanished all the pursuers without traces left. The camp and the horses of the son and his band had been found, but further on they had gone nowhere. There were no traces left. They had been eaten by the spirit. They couldn't even find the body by necromancy. So they concluded that there was a conflict of interest, that they had crossed someone serious, but it was not clear to whom.

  The possibility of the vilge fool's involvement in all this remained, it was not dismissed, but they rather thought that he (Stepan-Pann) had been used at most, but, more likely, had simply killed a witness who had come to hand. This version was slightly broken by the information that the kid knew how to curse and remove curses. Criminals did not keep silent in response to the generous questions. As a result, both Rumorias and his "man for all his errands" were torn between different versions, not even knowing whether to consider Pann one of the elimination groups, which was waiting for poor Kam and Dilr outside the city walls, or a random witness.

  However, Rumorias and his business were in too much trouble. Recently, there had been a rge-scale purge of the entire dark and gray sector of the magic services. They were looking for some very big shot in the spirit of the local Moriarty, who had managed to piss off the entire royal cavalry, army, heavy infantry, and drum ensemble. And in such searches, all sorts of side-frames, also illegal and also suffering from the arbitrariness of the seekers, would come to hand every now and then. Stepan would have tried to find out more, but there was no time. He was interested not in who the secret guards from Dantmark and almost the whole world were looking for - certainly not one modest user of the System, who could not make a mess of the world search with all his efforts - but all those involved in the kidnappings and brutal murders of those on whom these moral freaks had their eyes set. He searched for everyone, all those who knew, who saw, who used services, who helped to pnt beacons and turned a blind eye. He wasn't going to kill everyone, but he wasn't going to kill them all, and that way half the city could be killed legally, most of them he just memorized for the future. But Rumorias' gang and his network of helpers.... he was going to put them on the colteral damage list.

  There were girls and men in taverns, almost every tavern except the most expensive ones, where it was dangerous to buy informants. Small traders and even innkeepers, could get a customer drunk to the proper condition. Guards who could "arrest the victim" and then take him not to the jail, but directly to an inconspicuous house in a poor neighborhood, where he was already loaded into a container, dragged through an underground passage to a small warehouse in the Krellbs' possession, and from there taken to the mansion. Some of the thugs and killers from the local criminal underworld, who themselves could look for the right victim - by the way, there were no those who spoke to Stepan among them - brought them to the exchange point. It wasn't much, less than two dozen people, but even that was a lot for such a small city by Earth standards. Most of the workers and servants were at most suspicious of their masters' dark deeds but prudently did not hurry to ask.

  They didn't just catch the gifted, by the way. That's with a little luck. Mostly just illegal sves or random passersby. Legally purchased sves could be sughtered or otherwise killed, but not for sacrificial or magical purposes, for that you needed an expensive license, which you couldn't get for simple money. Krellb never managed to get it for himself, but came at it from the other side, acting semi-officially. Citizens who bought youth potions, battle amulets, guard nets, and other necro-shit understood everything perfectly well but did not hurry to worry. Who would care about sves or just some vilge witch doctors if they accidentally wandered in? Rumorias knew the ropes, he didn't touch other people's workers and mages, he didn't open his mouth, and he was a companionable man with whom one could always have a drink, py dice, or go to the club of Ruada's Admirers.

  While Stepan was finishing with the steward of this family, restoring him to maximum working order and wiping away the traces of his actions - well, the actions of his spirit - with another call, the rag spirit finished with the protection of the basement. The celr was very rge and spacious, another floor, but that wasn't surprising. Necromancers tend to bury themselves deeper in the ground than cssical mages as if the grave beckoned to them when they were alive. And they are pale not only from the impregnation of the body with necrotic but also from a banal ck of sunlight. It has its reasons, such energy really suits them, but it's still a little funny, just a little.

  The cockroach-mouse was the first to slip into the thin break in the protective barrier, checking, searching, looking for signals and traps, but there is a limit to the paranoia of a semi-legal necromancer, there is a limit to his skill, and there were no new surprises. The closed field of signaling type, a full-fledged field, not a net or a barrier cocoon, can not notice the mouse, can not perceive the spirit, whose essence is imperceptibility and invisibility. After the first spirit in the breach the defense enters the next, they do not care that this breach is the size of the eye of a needle, for them the gate is already open, they go to High Spheres, where distance and size mean nothing. The spirit-transtor, through which Stepan gives orders to the rag spirit and the mice roach, is the st to pass, he already has to be covered fully, he is too conspicuous, even though the shaman tried to pick one who knows how to conceal himself. But the task is too hard. He broadcasts the will of the shaman simultaneously through the totem outside the city and through himself, the double load causes disturbances in the background, and it can not be avoided. If Stepan had been around, even outside the walls of Fantrel, but in person, everything would have been much more fun and, most importantly, faster. Well, the young man increased remote control of spirits not to personally get involved in all sorts of adventures, enough of his adventures.

  There's a lot of stuff in the basement, smelling of magic, cssic and alien to the shaman, but recognizable, only he wasn't too keen on recognizing it all. Stepan sees with mouse eyes, peering out into reality, ignoring the signaling properties of the field. He sees shrunken legs hanging by the wall, three male and one female, the flesh on which has not only shrunk but has become transparent, like getin. They are cane bnks, which will be a counter to the curse if it gets it, but they will look much more normal, like ordinary canes, not this horror. They just waiting for the flesh essences to be absorbed by the bone. There's some wrought human skin hanging there. It's a camoufge artifact for some infiltrator agent, and when you put it on, you'll look like a common peasant. Height and weight are not important, and you can wear it over clothes, but not over armor. There is a cage trap for an immaterial entity, made from a rib cage, and this one seems to have belonged to a gifted person and is also often used. It seems to be the one where ghosts are restrained for protection or sale.

  Stepan uses a connection with two spirits at once, he looks with the eyes of a roach-mouse but sees with the images of the spirit of understanding, which analyzes and suggests the application of this or that subject if Stepan cks the erudition to understand. In most cases, by the way, he does, but now the depth of System erudition is not to his benefit. In the most spacious hall of the basement workshop, Stepan finds two anatomical tables. On the first only pieces and fragments, impregnated with magic and alchemical potions reagents for simple in essence things, only effective and cheaper to make than their counterparts from normal materials. Sometimes many times cheaper, or even by orders of magnitude, which is why this small workshop thrives in the spirit of tales about ogres and witches from gingerbread houses, but the houses are not gingerbread at all.

  The spirit-transmitter hovered over the second table, on which y a corpse not yet dismembered, or rather, only partially dismembered: no eyes, part of the skin removed from the face. Its lower part, and neck, the sternum opened and giblets pulled out, genitals cut off, hands cking fingernails. As it happens, agony is often important in necromancy of this sort. Pain provokes the aura to release more power, and to pulsate actively, so sacrificial rituals are often painful, especially if the material is scarce and its quality has to be compensated for by effort. Ironically, the cooler the bck mage, the less need he has to torture his victims. Here, apparently, the material was poor, and the mages were far from skillful. It was clear the main specialty, for which Krellb was trained, was cssical artifacting, but he began to study necroconstruction much ter, already independently seeking his path. He could tell from the state of the material and the victims.

  Stepan did not immediately realize, looking with his spirit's eyes primarily at magic, not at reality, that in front of him on the vivisector's bed y an actual boy. Even though he is older than Meld, about sixteen years old, he is practically an independent man by the standards of the local mentality. Stepan knows that he will regret it, but he does it anyway, yielding to a fleeting impulse and the pressure of intuition. The spirit repeater works again, letting through not just a spirit, but Stepan's ghostly hand, in which the necessary essence is compressed. The essence is poorly able to disguise itself and moves in the yers of spheres close to reality too chaotic and jerky, it is easier to deliver. True, the sensations were specific. First through the gluing of two points of space between the totems of the gde and the totem-mark, and then from the totem-mark to the spirit-transmitter. It was as if a ghostly grip was being pulled on a rack and chewed lightly at the same time.

  Disregarding the sensations, clearly aware of their temporary unthreateningness and constantly making sure the Raggy Spirit continued to mask him by distorting the workshop's sensors, the young man plunged the proper spirit into the dead man's open sternum. If there was anyone here and now skilled in magical sight, they would have seen the strange picture of a barely recognizable cwed paw appearing out of the void, which plunged into the dead man's chest for a moment, immediately disappearing again. It disappears along with a whole swirl of images of someone else's life and, more importantly, someone else's death. Ordinary life, fun games, gradual growing up, the death of his father, followed by the death of his mother, a quarrel with his retives who had squeezed out the rest of the property, and a forced escape to the city. A magic gift, its crumbs, which he didn't even know about, allowing him to be a little stronger, a little livelier, a little healthier, a little smarter than his peers, an attempt to get a job in Fantrelle. New acquaintances, new faces, drunken chatter, too-strong beer, a spinning head, and someone's hands dragging him along. A dark celr and stone walls, occasional servants carrying food with a strange fvor that made him feel sick, and then two faces. The noble and terrible face of a gentleman, which you can see at once that nobility, and a beautiful maiden who looks like him.

  And pain.

  There is endless pain as they cut him, without words, without ominous screams, as was expected underlyingly because of the vilge folklore about bloody magicians, but with complete indifference. He wants to scream, but no one wants to listen to his screams. His vocal cords were cut at the very beginning, it almost didn't even hurt. All he can do is to breathe wheeze, gurgling blood, under those indifferent and collected stares with which the boy and his retives cut the cattle. Working mood and all that. But what he remembered most of all was the way the girl carefully wiped the sweat from his forehead, blood from his body, and drool from his mouth open in a mute cry. It is this caring indifference of hers that breaks the victim completely, not the indifferent contempt in the noble's gaze, but the equally indifferent and ruthless carelessness in the beautiful maiden's actions. And reason leaves the young man, breaks to pieces and no pain can cause him any further suffering, because only the body suffers, only the meat, and there is no reason left in him.

  Stepan cut off the contact carefully and calmly, curtailing the actions of his spirits. He took them out of the boratory and then out of the mansion, leaving all of Fantrelle only observers and tag bearers, who could be visited from the spirit world. He returned to his body, came out of the trance, and dimmed the totems, doing all these routine actions completely calmly. It was night again, only the heavens remained bck, the bright dots of stars hidden behind a sheet of clouds, so watching the had to look into an analog of Malevich's Square, only with a fantasy-space setting. There was no nausea, the toughness of spirit saved him, and everything simply weathered away during the time he was cleaning up the traces of his presence in that boratory. He remembered his thoughts that he could use an almost beautiful woman, who wasn't exactly involved in his problems, to practice his charms. The smile on his face was sincere, but somehow inanimate, dead, just like a piece of his soul after contempting those images. The System, as if waiting for this reaction, immediately came up with a new message.

  System assignment (average): apply the Mind and Passion Mastery to Ritze Krellb, distorting her personality in a depraved manner to the best of your understanding. Satisfactory use requires rewriting basic aspects of her personality, changing her life paradigms and priorities; complete use requires creating at least three full-fledged subpersonalities of the depraved type (maid, lover, doll, and the like); perfect use requires imposing all of the above effects on Ritze Krellb's original personality without her being aware of her changes, which will be triggered by activator effects of any type. It is permissible to use the gifts of Liarat si Merrinal, the Lady of Gifts, and the Giver of Gifts, the faithful servant of Innes Inney.

  Reward: a significant increase in the effectiveness of enchantments, a significant increase in the probability of svemancy branch talents among those avaible for selection at level up, one free talent point; at full performance: one talent point for each of the modes-subliminals, but no more than seven; at perfect performance: one random knowledge of an advanced or elite type, one unit of characteristics in the most undeveloped stat.

  For a second Stepan gave in to weakness, thinking about how to accomplish this task at all, roughly realizing that he had some chances to do it even from a distance, even if not immediately. He would have to get her blood and hair, tune into her aura, create a specialized totem, and summon several strong spirits, or even some of the older spirits of the specialty in question. success in summoning and contracting with a senior entity. But then he remembered the image of Ritze wiping the face of the tortured boy, and the weakness went away. It wasn't worth it, even despite how tight her ass was, it still wasn't worth it. It was a matter not only of his revenge, but also of someone else's, of retribution for the one whose images he had so carelessly taken, albeit with every precaution-they still left their mark, even if not spiritually or magically, but simply in the banal human desire to make this shit go away.

  "No, no, no, you can't fool me with tits." He said indifferently and without emotion, getting to his feet and stretching his stiff body. "Even if I'd agreed, I couldn't fuck something like that, not after the images I'd seen. I should have suggested it before I became familiar with this family's modus operandi, then there would have been a chance."

  Sighing, Stepan refused the assignment, left the clearing, and went to the house to eat the pre-ordered dinner and send home Meld. He was dozing at the table. Boy gdly took his permission to eat, if he knew how to measure it. He sent the yawning boy down the path already trampled in the snow, pushed the still-warm boiled potatoes with butter, onions, and scallions into his mouth without tasting them, and went to sleep. He didn't have nightmares, he didn't have nightmares about that dead kid, whose images-memories bothered him less and less, no. The dreams were, of course, far from normal, but not terrible. He dreamed of Stepan Fatty, who remained on Earth, but for some reason he dreamed in space, dressed in Mass Effect armor with the emblem N177KILOS on the armor, desperately haggling about something inaudible with the Catalyst, which pulled his hair out of his fury and threatened to compin to higher authorities. Behind his namesake's back stood Commander Shepard, dropping his face into his palm and repeating over and over again that he should have left while he had the chance.

  The young man woke up rested and rested, finally recovered and also formed a pn on how to do what he had pnned as efficiently and cost-effectively as possible. Everything seemed to be fine, but Meld, who came in the morning and brought half of a still-warm turkey pie when he saw his smile almost dropped the pie and turned pale. And it was nothing, Stepan had been careful not to let out a spiritual grin. It wasn't just that his face was very grim.

  That's okay, someone's mood will soon turn grim.

  * * *

  The same actions, the same methodology, only the trap checks are even more paranoid, but no, they didn't notice his st visit and didn't prepare a meeting. The phantom limb stretches through the real and spiritual space again, only now it is much more powerfully saturated, which makes the spirit try much harder to make the workshop's defenses ignore it all. And not just one cwed hand, but two cwed paws, clenched in a boat-like fashion, between which beats a heart-wrenching strong spirit that has taken on such an image, a spirit darker than ever, malicious like Yanin's ideological follower, dangerous.... well, like a dark spirit of high power and dark orientation. The limbs of the spirit body sink into the spirit's chest, disappearing, leaving a bleeding and writhing heart inside the body that continues to reach its conditioning. It had been moved around a bit since the st visit and seemed covered with a fresh coat of some important alchemy, but Stepan couldn't identify it immediately. It was definitely something for preserving the remains of thin bodies, but not specific, and an odor suppressor, so there was less stench and only a slight note of menthol.

  The hands disappear and the spirit slowly takes root in the heartless body of the dead man. It can't be seen with the naked eye, but inside the corpse, the cut veins are fusing, the blood vessels are strengthening and seeming to move with earthworms, and some too-dark and bck void is settling in the empty eye sockets. In the magical reflection, it does not show through at all, Stepan's spirits do not even need to disguise anything additionally, the sub-settled one copes with its invisibility by itself. At the same time as the shaman has fulfilled the main part of the first stage, the rest of his spirits began to act, he called them today with a reserve, and the coordination of such a crowd takes a lot of effort. Seven of the reying entities alone, even if they were simpler than the one that had gone into the basement workshop had to be summoned to rey orders to all his fighters and non-fighters. I had to be stealthy, too, so that some of the local mages wouldn't smell something wrong, or they'd start yelling about an orc raid since so many spiritual observers were hanging out here.

  The spirits take up positions near those who cooperate with the Krellbs in their hard work of extracting material, not exactly close, but within reach. All those little brats like the snake in the inn are under indifferent and relentless scrutiny. It's nighttime, most of them are asleep, and they either don't have protective amulets, or they have such amulets that it's as if they don't exist at all. The part that had protection was given special attention, but there were only a couple of them - the steward and Dilr's newly appointed colleague in charge of guarding the shops, force actions, and all that. The rest will be enough for something simpler, but with an overkill to guarantee it. Stepan had accumuted four-fifths of experience up to level twenty for the summoning of all these assassins, which took four days, and he expected to take this level by the night of judgment.

  Meanwhile, while he's getting the assassins into position, the body of the sin young man in the basement has moved, unhurriedly at first, tentatively, but more and more surely with each passing moment. Spirit does nothing, but the defense and sensors do not see the corpse moving, although deep within the partially closed wound on his chest, where the opening scar was, shines with a distinctly magical scarlet glow a ghostly heart beating in pce of the seized real one. The defenses can't see it, because this spirit works with some pretty funny concepts: the body it occupied died here in this room, mad with undeserved but terrible pain, and so the defenses that were here when it died don't perceive the actions of the entity that took the corpse, can't perceive it. If the defense had been better, more complete, varied, and flexible, such a spiritual-aspect veil would not have worked, but the defense was what it was.

  The spirit raises the body and hangs its legs off the vivisection table, spping its bare and skinless feet on the floor, leaving no trace of it. Complete darkness, diluted only by the glimmer of a scarlet drop deep in the corpse's sternum, does not disturb the creature, and neither does Stepan, who controls it. The entity is not easy to control, it wants blood and vengeance for blood and pain, it is willing to listen to the shaman who provided the receptacle and purpose, as long as he follows the terms of the deal, as long as he promises to set the creature born of the desire of unjustly tortured sves against those who destroyed this body, who drove it mad with pain, opening the spirit to the possibility of coming to reality. The spirit willingly takes nourishment from the shaman, and the shaman channels power into it from the totem as he draws it from the clearing, but the power and nourishment of this entity are not so necessary. Its purpose, its desire, the remnants of the young man's thin body, its pain, and mad agony, feed the creature as well as the shaman, nourish and energize it, strengthen it, and make it quite deadly. Still not enough to defeat two gifted in the pce of their power, especially if one of them is adept and quite strong, but that's even better. The entity, though thinking in other categories, understands the concept of aid and willingly exchanges temporary obedience for the support of a spirit-speaker. Such rarely call this spirit, an old spirit, unpleasant in communication and contact, more often he tries to come himself, but also never refuses help, as long as the help is not contrary to his aspect nature.

  The spirit was following Stepan's lead, and the tter, despite the enormous strain on his mind's resources, despite the need to control so many goals and tasks at once, involuntarily burst out ughing when he realized he was pying a very postironic version of Dark Souls with a hint of Bloodborne. That didn't stop him from bringing the body of a dead man possessed by a dark entity - or an entity that had taken up residence in a dead man, so much so that the remnants of the young man's aura and bloody heart were fused together - to one of the stands. The one where the cane bnks were hanging, which were still someone's mummified and getinized feet. He gazed again at what he had seen a few days ago when he had first entered the pce with his-alien eyes: a kind of arm-sensor that monitored the workings of the charms embedded in the dead flesh. If suddenly the workpiece began to deteriorate, to ooze strength, and the getinous flesh began to liquefy, the special weave would signal to an equally special amulet, and the necromancer would come down here and fix everything.

  The fingernail-less finger pokes at the right point, giving a crumb of power, Stepan's erudition does not fail and the spirit activates this very signal. It twitches all the muscles of its body, it does not like the next order, but the creature still listens to the shaman's arguments. A ritual knife, resembling some strange scalpel or dangerous razor, flickers in its mutited hand, appearing and disappearing. The weapon seems to be both there and not there at the same time. It is not material, but its wounds are no less terrible. And this bde is also a replica of the tool used to hurt the spirit-occupied body the most. It is attuned to the aura of the one who inflicted the pain. The old magician tormented the young man too, but it was not so memorable to him, not so imprinted in the posthumous shadow as to manifest itself, but Ritze, Ritze is a different matter. To attack with such a spiritual bde, and against one who was its prototype and target.... it would take a master to repel such a thing. Attuned to the gift of a pretty necromancer, the bde will simply ignore simple shields, and some of the complex ones as well, and will work with greater efficiency against the rest.

  That's why it is necessary to destroy the bodies, getting rid of imprints and images, which become clues for vengeful spirits and then come at night to the murderers! The shaman had no doubt that the Krellbs knew this, and that was why he kept the body, which was about to become something useful, in a locked and isoted boratory. But they had to use the body for reagents and materials, they had to preserve the remnants of subtle bodies, otherwise, what was the point of the ritual killing process? Well, we should admit that the probability of the spontaneous emergence of Stepan's summoned spirit was not great. Even in an isoted hall, it was negligible. Well, they neglected it, practiced their necromancy, and ran into a vengeful peasant!

  The spirit is dissatisfied, but it obediently leads its body, returns it to the table, lies down in its former position and freezes motionless, stops the manifested knife, extinguishes its aura, pretends to be an ordinary corpse, even the light in its chest is almost extinguished. In the meantime, the mouse-observer sees Ritsuke wiping her eyes with interest, looking at the amulet pulled out of her belt pocket, quietly exhaling a few words that a proper dy should not know, rising to her feet and adjusting her dress. In the images from the dead man's memory, she was dressed in a work pantsuit, but now she's not going downstairs to work, she's going downstairs to fix her broken preservation charms, so why change clothes or put on a battle set of amulets?

  "Maleficent catchers, father." She expined to her parent, peering into his office. "Leaking again, I'll fix it, but I'll need to check again tomorrow."

  "Do it and go to bed, Ritza." There was an unexpected tenderness in his voice, the diminutive form of her name sounding touching, and Rumorias's wrinkles smoothed out and made something human appear. "Your youth will pass, and all those hours of lost sleep spent reading will be returned a hundredfold, remember that."

  "Yes, Father, I remember, so I'll do your will and go to bed at the same moment." She smiled, too, and Stepan, looking through another roach mouse, noticed that one corner of her smile was slightly sagging, no other reason than that it was the result of an old injury that had damaged her facial expression. "Otherwise I'll be a wreck like my honorable father."

  She ughed in response to the joking threats to deprive her of sweets, where through the deceptively dour tone there was the same cheerful but suppressed ughter, the girl went downstairs. If anyone would have had a conscience after that, not Stepan, who had put himself into a deep trance and was torn between dozens of spirits. He must have hardened even more, because the image of the concentrated and attentive face of the same bitch, when she worked with her knife on the phanges of fingers and nails of the fixed "patient", was too fresh in his memory. Well, they are all human beings, even such scum should not be treated as human beings, but somehow are. They all have hobbies, passions, lovers, and friends. Such specimens, which cause evil, suffering, unjustified sacrifices with breaks for killing puppies with kittens literally twenty-four by seven.... they're vanishingly few. Necromancer bastards, inhuman freaks, bloodthirsty cultists, skilled executioners, cruel witches - they behave like perfectly normal people apart from their professional pursuits.

  They live and enjoy life.

  That someone else doesn't have.

  The illuminating crystals in the basement hall turned on simultaneously before the massive door even opened. Ritze-Ritza enters the room calmly and rexed, walking into the very room with the prosector's table, only dabbing her gaze over the motionless body, not paying attention to the corpse's barely-altered pose. The healed scar from this position was poorly visible. She is all engrossed in those very canes from the stranger's legs, peering out the expiration and genuinely pleased that the cause is not poor work on the material, but rather an idle arm. She carefully straightened the bent part of the weave, though she would have noticed the fact it looked as if someone had deliberately hit it and damaged it. But she has no combat experience, and her sense of danger is not even rudimentary, so she misses the hints of fate. Her brother, who was experienced, could have figured it out, but it wasn't a sure thing, either - not many people expect an attack in their own home, especially one so sudden.

  She corrects the spell, turns around, and starts to leave, checking the body fragments lying on the prosector's table, which are also very demanding to pay attention to. And only on the seventh second, having checked another empty skull without brains, she stops as if struck by lightning. Neurons in the brain become active, memory finds a discrepancy with the picture of reality, and the brain takes the signal and forces the body to inject into the blood a portion of hormones, among which adrenaline prevails. The girl does not fully understand the situation when she slowly turns towards the second table, where the corpse of the boy is lying.

  Lying before.

  There's a void on the prosector's table. The mind catches an error and gives out a blue screen, because a person, especially such a homely one as this girl, lives by expectations and patterns, sudden and unexpected changes in the usual picture of the world knock out of the rut, driving her into a stupor. Ritze Krelb is still an aristocrat, albeit a petty one, and a magician with a very unfriendly specialization, so she comes to her senses quickly. She hesitates for less than a second, assessing the situation, looking around the room with a quick gnce, not finding the missing body in front of her, which, as she would like to believe, could have just slipped and fallen under the table, even if her subconscious realizes that this is not an option.

  "Oh gods..." She exhaled, realizing, without seeing the body in front of her, that there was only one direction in the closed hall where that body could hide from her gaze. "God..."

  She turns around in a swift motion, reflexively raising one hand in an attempt to defend or attack, the other reaching for her amulet belt, but not quite in time. Her turn is quick, but she is met with the mangled face of a dead man, the empty gaps where his eyes had been. And then there is the pain. The pain of a scalpel knife. The same one y in a separate room of the underground workshop with the rest of her tools. The pain is swift and deadly, the pain of a blow that barely touches the flesh but instantly deadens the most important auric node, spreading in a swift stream of hungry bck dust through thin bodies, gnawing away the aura, licking the shells and mutiting the spirit. She opens her mouth in an attempt to scream, but only lets out a trickle of blood along the corners of her lips, fading into a very quick but violent agony, an agony like the one she herself inflicted on that corpse, only contained in a single second, she hears the words coming out of a throat unable to speak. Words are spoken not by the spirit, which knows no words at all, like concepts, but by Stepan, who has taken over some of her control.

  "No." It sounds a rumbling, double tone, in which you can hear the snarl of the creature eager to exact its vengeance and the voice of the young man who gave the creature anchor and flesh. "Just me."

  And then, for Ritze Krellb, who had experienced the full range of other people's pain in one second, was only darkness.

  Eternal and endless.

  * * *

  The spiritual image of her ritual dagger thrust into the heart of the innocent maiden became the trigger for a whole series of actions that Stepan began to perform simultaneously, miraculously without confusing his orders. First of all, several weak spirits flew into the body of the falling girl, and in an instant, they took control of the fragments of her thin body. No, this was not healing - his vengeful ally would be out of control in a second for attempting such a thing - nor even the creation of another walking puppet. This trick had only forced the signal ьгдуе linked to the life and blood of the murdered woman to show not complete and final death, but merely a pre-mortem state. He didn't need an artifactor adept in his own house, but a worried father, rushing not to fight, but to help his still living daughter, who might have accidentally miscast something and hurt herself.

  Who knows what the hell happened to her?

  Necromancy is a life-threatening science.

  Especially when they come to ask for this science.

  The way Rumorias twitched, staring first at the ring on his finger and then at the small bone circle that looked like a clock face on his desk, it seemed that Stepan's trap was working properly. The man grabbed a string of amulets, a wand flew into his hand, and he practically sprinted toward the basement, stopping only long enough to open the safe stash and retrieve some potions. Stepan was still looking with the perception of cockroaches and mice. It didn't have absolute crity and accuracy of transmission. However, he could still bet the central totem of his clearing against the copper penny that half of the things Rumorias had grabbed were first aid kits, not battle amulets. The rest of the clearing, against the same copper penny, he'd bet that the old mage, if he chose to fight, would have been able to arm himself better, having unpacked his stash for a rainy day.

  The possessed corpse grabs the ordinary corpse by her long hair, pulling her up by her side and tearing the amulet ligature from her belt, coming closer to the basement door. At the same time the visuals of both the spirit itself and its victim flicker, the creature itself happy to help, it grasps the man's pn for itself, letting the shaman lead the way, supplementing its actions with its own. It's a surprise, but a pleasant surprise, lightening the already stunning load and investing in one short moment. To run to the basement is not a very long time, especially for a strong man on a horse dose of adrenaline. The image of both blurred mirage in the heat, and now the refreshed dead man drags not the corpse of his killer, but still breathing and twitching, desperately twisting eyes in the eye sockets poor thing. If you look closely, you can see that her movements are overly puppet-like, looped in a few short frames, but you have to look closely here, don't you? And the shaman, viciously grinding his ghostly teeth, wasn't about to give it time.

  The amulets work properly, the remnants of Ritze's aura, aided by the spirits in the corpse, are enough for the defenses to recognize the allied element and release the dead man into the dark and sleeping house. They meet in the first-floor hallway, literally around the first corner from the basement b, as if in a movie. One end of the hallway, immediately fshed with bright illuminating crystals by the same will of the artifactor and the owner of the house, is occupied by the dead man. Mutited and, seemed to be mockingly canting a freshened face, holding a life-signaling Rizke by the hair, even raising that head higher to face her father so that he could see only fear and nothing more in those eyes. Rumorias Krellb appeared at the other end and immediately froze, stately, grim, anxious, and already raising his battle staff into an attacking stance, in the cssic dueling stance. He only brushed an eye over his daughter, fully focused on the dead man, who behaves much smarter than the inferior undead, and therefore much more dangerous. His face was a mixture of fear for his blood, for himself, and also desperate anger, understanding, and indignation at the same time.

  Stepan deep down wanted these bastards to understand why the trouble had come to them in the first pce, why they were meeting a night guest, but he also realized that in this world even the dead speak, especially in the house of such experts. That's why he didn't talk and expin about the mistake they had all made, considering the wandering shaman a worthy billet for some craft. What is doubly amusing is the reaction of the man, who, it seems, was able to understand, analyze, and think up a consistent picture without needing any hints or prompts. Another thing is that his conclusions turned out to be somewhat false, but they were consistent!

  "We had a deal!" His voice was at once angry, pleading, fearful, respectful, and hateful. "Yes, I was in jeopardy, but I did not give away names or secrets! I had almost paid, my letter should have reached you! I... ah, by the devil, I'll give the full amount, for knowledge and patronage, but don't you highborns push me to the brink! I can still be useful, you have given me... assurances."

  He spoke the st word almost in a whisper, paling rapidly, cmping his trembling lips together in a line and looking at her with such hatred in his gaze that it alone, combined with his gift, could have been the basis for a targeted curse, and not the weakest. The spirit, at Stepan's command, dropped the cloak from Ritze's corpse, and the man who had switched to true sight immediately saw that there was about nothing left of her aura, but a few more nodes occupied by the spirits that prevented the amulet-controller from recognizing death. In this despair, in this hatred, the creature literally bathed, realizing that it could not win the battle, but was satisfied the shaman's revenge had already, in fact, accomplished. The shrieking freak was offering to "negotiate" while he was watching the dead man, not noticing the more serious danger not even behind his back, but all around him.

  The rag-weaver spirit goes to its empyrean, having finished its work and deactivated the necessary element of defense. The mice are retreating, returning through the holes to their native pne of existence, other observers are rising higher and higher, almost losing the corridor and the events in it out of focus, the old magician raises his wand, not even noticing the danger, preparing to at least try to reach his puppeteer colleague through the body of a random gifted person captured by an anonymous patron. At this point, the shaman gives the order, and the prepared spirits break into battle. It was them that Raggy-kun was paving the way for, temporarily weakening the enchantments that prevent the spirits from moving normally, passing in and out of the spheres. At the same time, the controlled dead man, following the summoner's request, raises his hand, not showing his middle finger, but only lighting a small light, as tiny as a lighter.

  And everything is covered in white.

  Not by light, but by color. All the free air space is covered with a very dense cloud of snow-white dust, or rather not dust, but flour. A strong and old spirit of the mill and millstones, without a clear sphere, with the aspect of a guardian of the pce, only not of the house, but of the very mill. This spirit, once settled, in the millstones, located, it seems, not in this world at all, owned the flour. It took the remnants of grain dust, soaked with human bor, which rose into the air, this bor, this will and desire, for its nourishment, at the same time helping the millstones to spin, protecting the miller from injury and still collecting excess flour. Year after year, century after century, generation after generation. And all this flour was his, he owned it and ruled over it, used it as he pleased, and kept it in his little spatial pocket, where nothing but flour could be kept. And on this night, the shaman was able to persuade the spirit, not too spoiled by sacrifices and invocations, to sell some of his flour reserves, which were in a full micro-domain, in exchange for power and the same surplus flour, a whole sack of it, taken from a hundred and three other mills - a surprisingly cheap purchase.

  The payment was accepted, the spirit opened micro-portals from his domain, and another spirit from the sphere of space, using the path id out, filled the entire corridor with flour. The flour, which was bursting with power, became for a time a very high-quality accumutor, holding as much magic as ordinary flour can't holds. But it was still flour, so it was of little use if only as an alchemical reagent. Or set fire with a small match fme so the fire naturally for flour released excess energy, creating a volumetric detonation and noticeably more powerful than of simple flour, due to the additional released energy.

  In the hallway of a cozy and tastefully furnished mansion of a gloomy necromancer, right around that necromancer, who on reflex manages to cover himself with a hemispherical barrier and try to reach the amulets in the walls of the house, there is a very bright fsh, a pop, and subsequent smoke. The avenging creature leaves the body a moment before the explosion, leaving only one spiritual false leg to watch until the end, consciously sacrificing the limb. The spirit watchers, the miller's guardian, and the spatial guide also flee, so the explosion is visible only to the observers hovering a hundred meters above the mansion, even though they are as sharp as eagles and therefore see everything in a good zoom, broadcasting to Stepan.

  The gss in the house was blown out, as was the wall of the corridor, the outer wall but not the inner one, and in general, the building, fortified with high-quality magic, wasn't too badly damaged; the explosion was still in a retively small area, and it was entirely on the mage and the dead doll. There, there was almost nothing left of him - a piece of skull and one foot, which were carried outside the cloud of smoke and debris. But further observation showed that there were comparatively few rge fragments of Rumorias Krellb, even fewer of his daughter and the body of the avenged boy. The spirit creature Stepan allowed to connect to the contract with the observers in order to see the result of his actions, grumbled contentedly and went away either disappearing into the depths of the spheres or disintegrating and dying before the next summons. The shaman only allows himself to enjoy just a few seconds of watching his own bors and then brings his pn to its final phase.

  One of the three servants who carried food to the prisoners, cleaned the workshop, washed away the blood, and swore no less bloody oaths of loyalty to the lord, receiving only double wages for it, and himself died, having gone to the toilet at night on the wrong side of the corridor wall, and therefore receiving a pebble in the temple. The pebble was a little rger than the victim's head, but much harder than that. The other two, already awake and panicking, wheezed and twitched, trying to breathe, trying to hear the beating of the heart, which had stopped pulsing abruptly, dying quickly and, in general, painlessly. A vaguely familiar inn maid, who had pnted his beacon, and several other individuals involved in Krellb's affairs, mostly among the criminals, die the same way.

  Since the number of heart attack masters at Stepan's disposal was less than necessary, some of the bastards had to be killed with whatever he could find. Stepan only tried to do everything so as not to leave traces not so much of magic, even a fool would realize its presence, as of the presence of spirits and the shaman's attack - heart attacks would look absolutely natural and they would be suspected not of the work of a shaman, but of some alchemical poison - so he turned mostly to physical attacks. One of the sleeping thugs, who hadn't even woken up from the explosion that went off all over Fantrel, only scratched his hairy belly and rolled over onto his other side. His own shadow, the shadow of a murderer without honor or conscience, moved, pulled the shadow bearer's battle axe out of its sheath, and struck his head three times, cracking it with a rotten walnut before returning to its normal shadow state, hanging the axe back up. It's only effective against murderous robbers or gentlemen of the night; against an honest soldier or an agent of some special service, this particur spirit won't raise any shadows.

  The sergeant of the guards, by the way, the one the good-hearted innkeeper disliked, was already coming out of his house, hurriedly dressing and foreseeing the imminent problems with his work. And, suddenly, he staggered, wheezed, and breathed frequently, but quickly lost consciousness and died. The wind spirit began to steal his breath right out of his mouth. The air simply did not get into the trachea and refused to be drawn in. His assistant in these matters simply stumbled and rolled down the stairs, hitting his temple against a protruding rock, and knocking down a couple of colleagues on the way. Those just have bruises and abrasions, and this one was useless to save. The manager of the honorable Rumorias, the same man from whose memory Stepan had learned about the details of the agent-criminal network created by the family of murderers, managed to open his eyes, vomit half-digested dinner, and lose consciousness again. The liver, kidneys, and pancreas failed at once, and with the discharge of toxins directly into the blood - a verdict even in spite of a good healing amulet, which he simply could not reach. Here, too, they would suspect poison, not a curse, because the effect was too physical, and the aura was almost untouched.

  The head of the guard, newly appointed after the death of his commander a little earlier, met that night in his own house. He went to the window, looked out, and even muttered something like "You've had it, you old corpse-eater," apparently to his chief, and began to think of going on the run. So he fell near that window with his neck twisted, when his head was squeezed from both sides by the translucent hairy paws of the incarnate spirit. The spirit, by the way, looked literally just those two hands along with the shoulder girdle, where the hair only covered the area around the hands and up to the middle of the elbow. A very powerful entity that was able to simply ignore the partially removed overnight amulet protection as if it wasn't there at all, but quite insidious. So, easily killing a seasoned warrior with a fractured vertebra before he even noticed, this entity would be completely powerless against the summoner's namesake who remained on Earth.

  Why?

  Well, the best defense against such a spirit, a guaranteed amulet, was wonking at least once every eight days. If you follow such a simple recipe, these hands can not even touch the protected individual. It would be very funny - actually not - if against this asshole, living with two sve-lovers, the summon would be useless. It would have had to end the whole thing in a hurry not with a measured blow, but with the summoning of some powerful beast that would leave clear traces of the shaman's involvement in the whole thing. But the Autogoddess had saved the absence of pornhub and hentai manga in this world.

  Stepan had cleaned up all traces of his presence beforehand. The final stage had been carried out in the right mode, wiping up, as far as he could, the traces of spirits' presence, their activity, their reflections in the worlds of the spheres, and even their negotiations with each other. Some spirits could work with the invisible flow of information, confusing the cards to all sorts of fans of throwing fortune-telling dice, scanning the stone for those who walked on it, or asking the wind for answers, so that he answered clearly. No, if such individuals were brought here, they would be able to figure out that the murderer was a butler, that is, a shaman. But even they, unless they were the toughest, would find it extremely difficult to find any information about this shaman, let alone his auric imprint. Without such heavy artillery, Stepan had a hope that everyone would accept this event as the elimination of the necromancer by his patrons or clients. Actually, this thought was formed in those hours, while he was digging into the memory of the Krellb family's steward, concerning the conducted search among all the dark and gray elements. He was finally convinced of his rightness when the now-dead mage came up with a clear version of the misfortune that had befallen them and his family.

  Among the goods created by the necromancer amuleteer were such a popur item as bone needles, which allowed to interrogate the corpse of a murdered person if necessary. And Stepan would eat his hat if the local guards didn't have a couple of them for extreme and not quite official cases. The bastard was killed only physically, the aura and shadow of the deceased are unaffected or minimally affected, they will still be able to talk if the body is collected, but this is a feasible task. And they will realize that the poor guy was simply taken and nailed by those with whom he traded his skills too badly or too well in exchange for patronage and new knowledge. They decided to clean up their younger colleague on the eve of the big purges so they would not be attacked and cleaned up. No cirvoyant can answer how many such stories there have been and how many more will be repeated.

  Stepan finished his research by turning on the pre-installed mode of the broadcasting totem, which caused it to rot and lose all spiritual brightness, turn to dust, and cease to be in a minute and a half. Now you can find its remains only if you sit on them by accident, knowing exactly what to look for. Well, or just for the case will take a pro extra-css, the degree of coolness of which is banally beyond the understanding and paranoia of the young shaman. This is also possible, but here he tried to cover himself, to make sure that these guys were not called at all, distracting from other, undoubtedly important, cases, because everything is clear. It is a cssic of the Earth criminal chronicles. There is no need for mysterious and unsolved crimes, such crimes will only attract more attention. It would be more correct to just give the investigation a simple and obvious version so the investigation would calm down.

  But still, in the depths of his soul, Stepan realized that he, with this explosion, the simultaneous murders, and a pile of corpses of bad personalities that had appeared overnight, in some five minutes, to put it mildly, a little bit, just a little bit, literally a little bit too much.

  But he just imagined it, didn't he?

  * * *

  The young man returned to his body in a good mood and without any accumuted fatigue. Even the reserve wasn't fully spent, and his head wasn't too sore from the very difficult task of microcontrolling many separate groups of spirits. The System was giving off the equivalent of a flicker, indicating that he had managed to earn at least a new level, but that didn't seem to be all. It felt good and calm, as it always did after you had managed to do a nasty thing to someone who had once seriously offended you with impunity. Yes, Stepan grew up a kind and sympathetic boy, often ready to help just like that, sometimes even to his own detriment, from which his kindness, sometimes, tried to abuse. But as he grew up to be a kind boy, so he turned out to be, to an even greater extent, a vindictive, sometimes even writing down grudges, if there was no hope for memory. And at such moments, when he paid the bills with another asshole, he was always covered with a warm and tender wave of peace.

  He intended to study the system's message flood, as had become tradition, a little ter, when he reached home and settled into a proper bed. After leisurely packing, dressing, and disbanding his entourage, giving away the remnants of the fee that had eaten up almost the entire night, he returned to the house at dawn, sitting on the porch for a while, gazing at the sun and meditating, replenishing his strength and reserve. There was a small bag of nuts waiting for him in the house, which he ate in his thoughts, and then Meld fetched breakfast, having been told by the shaman not to disturb him and to let him sleep, drowning himself in his girlfriend. Only after he had satisfied his hunger and put himself in order, Stepan closed the window with the summoned spirit, which plunged the house into darkness, y down on the bed, and began to look at the vengeful adventure.

  Received: "methods of undercover work"; increased intuitive understanding of actions in undercover activities; increased likelihood of acquiring knowledge and properties of the spy and undercover use branch of the gift.

  The acquired talent is added to the overall Pyer status.

  Stepan had time to be pleasantly surprised at the fact that he had received such a useful thing for himself personally, both now and in the future, and then he was flooded with knowledge. It was not like the principle of the mastery of combat calls, not reflexes, and tricks, but knowledge, standard within the framework of the System, but at the same time very deeply interacting with reflexes, too, which made it involuntarily simir to the mentioned tricks. He was gd to have made contact with a couple of entities, what kind of entities hide energy trails? Now he knew not a couple of them, and the entities themselves were of a rger caliber, all the necessary offerings and methods of dialog were also present in the information block. Hiding traces, aura, spirit, interference with mass or targeted search charms, methods of extracting information about who is looking for you - an extremely rich list of interesting approaches to his gift.

  Charms and suggestions began to reveal themselves in a useful way. Synergy opened up not so much new ways to brainwash and instill feelings, as methods to do it unnoticed by the victim and those who would then see the victim every day. Creating double and triple agents, false identities, even for oneself, to simply not remember compromising information and readily swear that one knows nothing about something. Interception of control over other people's influences, the ability to leave their corrections to the work of another master brainwasher, so that the always faithful bed sve suddenly sticks a needle in her master's eye during intercourse. Distorting vows and contracts, gradually removing them, or imposing additional penalties on an unsuspecting victim, followed by a final blow. Creation of a ir, not only as a pce of power, but as a shelter, one-time or long-term, for now, or in conservation, so that one can come there decades ter.

  Techniques for surviving in the wilderness, concealing oneself from prowling trackers, throwing them off the trail, and confusing tracks. Tactics for ambushing hunters or avoiding ambushes, whether in the wilderness or an urban environment. The most suitable spirits for the entourage during an operation to kidnap a hostage, seize a document, or extract information of a certain nature. A very serious block of work with bypassing traps within curses or opening monolithic defense arrays on their own. Escape or battle in the spirit world, tracking shamans through the spirit world and the real world, the difference in approach to the same tracking, only for cssical mages, druids, witches, priestesses, or cultists of demon worship. Methods to figure out the wanted individual if they are trying to hide, ways to determine the strengths and weaknesses of the chosen target.

  Gathering information about personal, social and organizational vulnerabilities, gathering dirt through dream spirits or mental tricksters. Battle rituals and powerful rituals in the city limits or other monitored locations, ways to conduct them unnoticed and hidden from search. Techniques for fighting in the same conditions, to finish everything as quickly as possible, raise a minimum of noise. Hiding their aura or disguising it as someone else's with the help of correctly called spirits, which should be put on himself, like an invisible coat. In the darkest cases, you can also put on someone else's aura by sacrificing the recipient to the desired spirit and then allowing the spirit to cover you.

  He came out of the trance in the middle of the day, rolled over onto his other side, scratched his ass, congratuted himself on becoming, if not an elite James Bond, at least a rval stage of Jason Bourne, and then went for a bath. His body was sweating as if it had been wrung out again, I was ungodly thirsty, and a pack of jackals had shit in his mouth. After the first portion of joy, Stepan takes another update. This time, according to the system, he did not commit the deed. It's obvious - to compare the complexity and risk of that insane marathon of killing aggressive spirits before they kill him, yes with the past almost entirely according to pn operation to cause grievous justice.... well, that's improper, to say the least.

  The scale is incomparable.

  So the system congratuted the guy on the fact that instead of "deed" he had done "act", which is probably good too, although he wondered what the ranking of these, in fact, hidden quests was. System Help, as it is not difficult to guess, on this topic was silent, like a partisan at the interrogation in the Gestapo, and a mute partisan at that.

  A meaningful act has been accomplished!

  For the accomplished revenge against an influential and noble enemy who wished your death, for the scope and targeting of this revenge, for a comprehensive approach to it, and for the care shown, a corresponding reward is provided!

  Received: increase a random meta-skill by one point; two development points to a random meta-skill from a yet-to-be-discovered meta-skill.

  Additional reward from Liarat si Merrinal, Lady of Gifts and Gift-giver, loyal servant of Innes Inney: one random property of advanced or elite type.

  This time the reward was considerably more moderate, but Stepan didn't have any mortal risk or anything like that, even on the contrary, everything went as he wanted. He prepared, reconnoitered the situation, adjusted pns under the new data, silently and without pathos battles fulfilled what he had pnned, and then left, hiding all possible traces. Not badly, by the way, hiding, as new knowledge suggested. It could have been better, but he didn't make any stupid mistakes, only a few little things, some of which could even be corrected a little ter, for his comfort.

  This kind of pumping was to the shaman's liking, but to do something like this regurly, looking for and cleaning up all sorts of irs of warlocks.... no, he didn't want to do that. He remembered all too well how he had been flooded with those images of the st hours of the gutted young man's life. Stepan did not regret what he had done. He didn't think he had overdone justice - if only on a scale that might attract attention - he wasn't going to have nightmare dreams about the faces of the dead men who came to him, just as he hadn't seen them before, after a fight with brigands or a group sent after him. But to engage in such activities regurly would definitely lead to mental disabilities, not to mention the fact that no one had promised him that he would be rewarded for every single moral and mental freak. On the contrary: he didn't just extinguish a random necromancer, or rather, blow him up with fireworks, he was avenging an attempt to harm him personally.

  This is without even touching on such a small detail as the presence of practically all such ghouls (sometimes not only figurative) have quite real patrons and those who benefit from their practices. Those who use their services, and do not give a damn, despite all the immorality and even wlessness. If Stepan goes out on the warpath and starts tearing the nostrils and stopping the hearts of such people, he has every chance of success, the first couple of times, let it be ten times, let it be even twenty because he will grow and develop. But then real pros will come after him, who can't be deceived or led astray, they will come and start asking uncomfortable questions. Stepan, taking into account the speed of his development, will be able to answer some of them, but the war with the whole world is doomed to failure ... if started at the current level.

  He wasn't a fan of killing, even killing those who deserved something worse than death in a good way, but he didn't dislike the idea. And when he reached the rank of High Shaman, consolidated his power and position, and gained legend and patrons, he might revisit the idea. Even then, he could hardly punish every injustice in the world, punish every dishonorable scoundrel, if only because then he would have to start with the local rulers and work his way down the chain. No, he's not idealistic enough to try to help everyone for free and to make sure that no one goes away offended except the bad guys, among whom no one goes away either.(*) But to eradicate the abomination of small things, like such freaks as Rumorias was, or better yet, to take some territory under his patronage, to get a job there as a "court magician", and then legally demand from those around him to observe the ws of the world, God, conscience and honor, and whoever refuses, the terrible spirit will bite his balls off.

  Such a dream, which is more properly called a wet dream, but he can actually reach the level of power when it will be cheaper for even complete assholes, who do not want to change anything in their way of life, to go along with it than to try to strike an insolent upstart (which will not prevent them from trying to strike him). Yes, these are clearly very long-range pns. They are triggered by the moment, by meeting the dirty underside of this world. He can change his mind a thousand times, or find a better goal, but why not dream, since no one is charging for those dreams?

  Stepan clenched his teeth as the gift from the Autogoddess, given for his deed, began to melt itself into the shaman's essence. This time the main sensations were concentrated as if in blood vessels and parts of thin bodies responsible for those vessels, as well as in the loins, which were burning not painful, but very intense heat while the veins and arteries flowed the same intense and even pleasant cold. He endured it all in silence, not even blinking - because he kept his eyes closed from the beginning - and when he opened those eyes and began to analyze the truly powerful property, although not reaching in value to the Shroud and Transformation, as well as not increasing the characteristics. He was not even surprised and angry. He was just tired already. He didn't have enough fervor in his ass even for another indignation, no spicy seasoning would help.

  The property was called "heritage in blood and spirit", somewhat strengthening the connection with the spheres, but even at a minimum not comparable to the proper marks, as well as markedly improving the already good health, as well as longevity. Another plus thirty years of youth, although for him, with his characteristics and the possibility of if not buying himself legal and not bloody alchemy, then establishing contracts with the right spirits, it has long been not so useful. The main, and perhaps the main, function of the property was to provide power not for himself, but for his offspring, even if without the ability to pass on the system to his children and grandchildren. The power was what mattered. Magical gift and the potential for its development, which any of his offspring, accidental or not, will be at the level at which such a descendant will become an adept only if he will make conscious efforts in an attempt to remain mediocre, and even then it will not work. A minimum of a master, with minimal support and the presence of minimal resources, on bare talent and intuitive understanding of magic. If we are talking about systematic and confident development there is the road to the magisters or higher.

  If we are talking about the fact the child's mother will also turn out to be not so simple, things are even more fun. Because the child will take the best features of the parents' gift, increasing the potential in these directions, the child is guaranteed to have this potential fifty percent higher than that of the mother and (or) father. All in all, not a trait, but some kind of a breeding bull's license, no other way. Stepan would not call this gift completely unnecessary. In the future, such a gift could certainly come in handy, no doubt, but now it was just dead weight. And, well, not quite dead, he could sacrifice his semen to the spirits. Now it's a very cool reagent. It had been before, as well as any gifted with a bright aura, but now it was like liquid gold or even ptinum!

  In general, just as Stepan didn't think of doing such things before, he doesn't pn to do it now, no, no, thank you, Big Milf, but he'll pass, it's not that kind of upbringing, the problem is not in you, but in him, and all that.

  There would be another reason not to take off the Shroud but this property, fortunately, wasn't shown in the aura, only with a really deep scan, which just a gnce can not spend. No, some witchcraft practices can help you find or recognize strong blood. There are the right spirits, which when pnted in the eyes or other parts of the body, will recognize the strength in the blood and compatibility with members of the family, but these are tolerable problems. Who in their right mind would walk down the street with such a specific spirit, witchcraft, or cssic scanning weave, checking every passerby for suitability to leave offspring?

  Absolutely, no one!

  And this is even good. It is almost impossible to hide such a property normally with a shroud for the same reason it is not shown in the aura - the wrong type of modification, too deep and at the same time distributed level, it can not be taken out in a separate aura node and then masked. It remains either to look for very unusual ways to hide his "Chosenness", which can only attract even more attention, or just not bother, because to get under the right and properly skillfully executed scanning ... No, even Stepan's luck, which allowed him to pull out the only one of a hundred tickets on the exam, which he had not learned perfectly, had limits of logic and common sense.

  To the study of meta-skills the young man moved in a somewhat lyrical and mencholic mood, so that neither to be upset nor to be surprised, but to rejoice.... it was the only way to rejoice! Again the normal System, by the will of gracious admins and despite the intrigues of the Autogoddess, increased not frozen at two "lecherous development", but at the system clock. For the first time, Stepan was just happy that it wasn't the skill from Milf Goddess that had increased, but the not-quite-complete uselessness of the clock was a pleasant surprise. Now he realized that the note in the help that even seemingly useless meta-skills were no longer useless at high levels was completely true.

  After increasing the level of "temporal awareness III", once a day, for a period of five seconds, you could speed up your subjective perception of time tenfold. You can't move faster, but you can think or send images to your spirits, that's fine, that's possible, that's good. It would seem that it was not such an outstanding thing, although it was also very useful. Stepan himself knew how to accelerate consciousness and thinking, especially if out of the body, and special spirits, which will help to achieve the same effect exist, and he even knows how to call them, what offerings to buy in the system store. But the pumped clock was not cssical magic and did not belong to it, being a manifestation of power that is higher than the local gods. That's why the acceleration from the system acted independently, it didn't require either mana or calls, it didn't stress the reserve and brains, and also, most importantly, it was compatible with any other ways to accelerate this very perception.

  It multiplied.

  "If I were a Warrior, I would agree to chew off my own arm for such a gift." Stepan decred mundanely and calmly, feeling very strange at the same time. "If only because if I were a Warrior, my arm would regenerate. Probably. Or not."

  The young man concentrated on the Status again, finding a new line there. The meta-skills, unlike everything else, were added immediately and automatically, as they did not burden either the mind, the subtle bodies, or the conscience. The System did not fail this time either, and only the received gift already on the second level was not too inferior to the watch, even slightly superior to it. The meta-skill called "Reserve Renewal II" at the first level could instantly replenish the magic reserve once a decade even after it was completely depleted, and this replenishment was not traumatic and completely harmless. At the second level, the waiting time was reduced from ten days to five, and the number of refresh charges became two. However if applied within an hour, one after the other, the second application would replenish only three-quarters of that reserve.

  It was a trick for a battle mage, adventurer, and risky guy, who was always in the epicenter of events, who quite estimates the probability of being among the enemies with an empty reserve as high, and therefore reinsures himself. Stepan did not consider himself an adventurer. He pnned to stay as far away from the center of events as possible and for him, this modification is much less useful, but he was not going to give it up. It was a situational thing, but it could be used during calls, in case of sudden problems in the world of spirits, and even when captured, under the pumping out of the reserve, to fatally surprise the captor. The young man had already seen those situations or summons in which the use of this meta-skill was not only justified but also damn advantageous.

  If only those of dark or simply evil spirits, which always try the shaman for strength, if they see an opportunity: to drain the reserve for the call and the offering, to wait until the creature begins to get insolent, since the exhausted shaman will not oppose it, and the protective circle and tear can be, and then quickly restore themselves and with a nice smile to ask to be more modest in requests, or the shaman will take offense. A shaman is a very vulnerable creature, airy and romantic, you can not offend him, and he starts to cry. To offend a little shaman is almost like offending a catgirl, and who should you be to offend catgirls, really?

  Stepan assessed his meta-skills, and the System probably rated his condition as satisfactory for the st part of today's feast. He had managed to understand the image about getting to the twentieth level, which was not surprising, given the small amount of experience he had to gain before the breakthrough. If not for the "act", he had every chance to take the twenty-first level, or at least get more than two-thirds closer to it. As in the st promotion multiple of ten, this time the received talent point could be spent exclusively on properties, and elite to the extreme, tasty to salivation and screams of the inner munchkin. And, just like st time, the Autogoddess gave one additional property from herself as a gift, and it was at the same rank of power and strength.

  The aura twisted again. But now the sensation was different, unlike any he'd felt before. It was like he was being shaken, like a lump of clumped salt or powdered sugar, forcing him to crumble again into fine crumbs, powder, bits, and pieces, each of which was buffeted by a breeze, touched by tiny feathers. It was, as always, not painful, not even as intense as expected, but still a memorable experience, ten out of ten to never repeat. However, after looking at the result of these non-tortures, Stepan immediately changed his opinion, immediately wanting more and more, twice as much.

  The property of "patchwork spiritual echo" had a very strange nature, which Stepan felt very well at the moment of aura transformation. It was as if the spirit was disintegrating into small dust shreds, without losing its integrity or vulnerability, but taking advantage of the fact that these shreds could now be shifted in one way or another and in an appropriate order. This property could be considered the favorite child of both the shroud and transformation because synergized with both properties, it is just fiercely mad. Stepan assimited the new understanding for a long time, diligently, persistently even, understanding every moment more and more, and slowly began to realize that the Autogoddess really gave a thing. He almost forced himself to thank her, through gritted teeth and in a whisper, but still he held himself back.

  First of all, we are talking about a new level of disguise, the ability to not just hide by the Shroud his gift or parts of it, but in general to change the aura as desired, pretending to be a completely different person. Combined with the newly acquired agent methods, Stepan almost had a puppyish excitement from the manifesting prospects. But expanding the functionality of the Shroud is still bullshit on the background of a deeper type of disguise. More recently, Stepan mented about the impossibility of hiding his traces in the spirit world. experienced cirvoyants or masters of reading the subtle shades of auric imprints could still get on his trail. Now... well, it's gotten many times harder for them, if not by an order of magnitude, though the tter is very optimistic. Or, on the contrary, he was the one who was still being modest. That patchwork, constantly as if shaking from changes and reorganizations, the structure is in fact false, its spirit is still static. This trembling - it is like an analog of pulse or breathing, a natural process, harmless to the shaman, not affecting the deep basis of subtle bodies.

  But such a process disrupts the very adjustment to the imprints, each of the traces left by him is different in some way. It is impossible to find a simirity and trace the scheme, to create an accurate map of the aura and subtle body, to prepare a personal blow or particurly clever charms against a particur individual. Disguise, protection, and hell knows what else, especially if he does not leave anywhere hair, saliva, blood, and other body particles, because they contain the body and spiritual connection with him. It will be the very bridge that will help to pass this protection without notice. However, taking into account the method of battle so like Stepan somewhere out there, sitting in a fortified totem stronghold ... Here and expnations are unnecessary because it is the imprints and search on them Stepan should be afraid, with such tactics. You can't take the imprint off him unless he comes to voluntarily surrender after standing in a magic scanning circle for a couple of days while his patchwork echoes are deciphered.

  Everything is clear with the disguise pluses. Next, it's about working with spiritual transformation. A lot of things have improved here. It became easier to manipute his limbs, to morph them, to change their properties, even the volume of these tentacles, pincers, and wings grew but all the same things gave him other things, simpler, like spiritual operation. What's important here is the way the mechanics of the Autogoddess's system, which complemented the system, outsmarted itself in its attempts to mold him into the perfect shamanic brainwasher. Since the system was clearly modified for Stepan's namesake, from the point of view of this modification, this property should have been used to manipute the rest of the properties and, in particur, the marks of the spiritual spheres.

  For example, let's say Stepan Fatty, who for some reason chose the shamanic css instead of the THAT css, has a bunch of marks to strengthen his authority in front of charming spirits, and he needs to save his fat - if he doesn't want to lose weight and get prettier instead of cospying ugly bastards - ass from being penetrated by, let's say, a bandit's spear. He can take all these amplifying marks, and shift them towards the regur mark of the higher spheres. After that, the reinforced mark would temporarily become stronger, as if it had been invested with additional talents from those very marks that had become a reinforcing factor. Roughly speaking, it was an attempt to make the brainwasher a more combative individual or to strengthen some of the facets of the charms at the expense of the rest.

  But in the performance of Stepan, who was not so fat, the result was quite the opposite. He could take the same improved mark of passion, merge it with the mark of roots, strengthen it, and then add the mark of spheres to it, creating a megastructure. This is also difficult, and requires not so much reserve as concentration, complicating the subsequent dialog, because part of that concentration will be eaten up by attempts to hold the enhanced mark. But it would be possible to summon even those spirits that would otherwise behave very unseemly if they came. The fearful beast that had given him the oak leaf would not be under contract, but he could at least count on the fact that, when the leaf was activated, he would either not be eaten, or would be eaten st, giving him a chance to buy himself off.

  In fact, this gift opened up some interesting tactics, like the ability to take a rge number of properties of the "mark someone" subtype and then manipute them, shuffling and amplifying them without having to increase the ranks of those marks. Of course, this tactic has limits: merging three different marks while amplifying one is difficult, but possible. Repeat that with a dozen? You will tear yourself into the spiritual analog of the British fg, too much has to be changed and remade, the shreds risk not to bear the load, to become shreds not in the reflection-perception, but in the real state of a whole and indivisible spiritual body. And still, the possibility of throwing a couple of improvements into the same mark of spheres at the expense of the marks of roots and passions just surprisingly raises Stepan's mood, because HE CAN MAKE THE CHARMS WORK, damn it!

  The list of bonuses was rounded off with the increase in characteristics, which went unnoticed against the background of the basic transformation: a unit to Spirit, Sensitivity, and Control. It would be necessary to evaluate everything he had received in the next few days, during the new tests, but even now he could say that it made him much stronger. He also noticed that the previous elite trait had only two characteristics, while the new one had three, which was a trend.

  In a good way, Stepan should have fallen asleep, but he couldn't sleep at all, his body was throbbing with energy, and he wanted to roll mountains or at least move a table. And also he was literally burning a free point, the desire to put it in and become even better, even stronger, even cooler ... Well, he just wanted to be honest with himself, he just wanted to finish the transformation quickly and didn't want to waste another day lying in bed. As the day drew towards evening, Stepan bathed again and drank ice-cold water without fear of catching a cold thanks to his doubled Constitution, and then sat down to choose his options.

  Just like st time, his eyes were scattered, his sense of beauty was failing along with his sense of proportion, and his inner munchkin demanded to sell his ass and kidney to Great Milf and beg her for at least one more gift of the same kind, or better two, or even to pawn his balls along with his ass. How about the ability to work with the dimensionality of distance on a level that was completely unattainable before? So that you could not only transfer the totem through the right spirit but also jump. Stepan even now could do that, but with risk, heavy and preferably relying on his gde of wonders, and after modification, he would be able to make such transitions in the same way as he used to go to the neighboring city. Yes, a problem, you have to buy a ticket and wait for the bus, but nothing extraordinary. Or, maybe, the great isekai would like the opportunity to talk to elder spirits before the time, a kind of improvement of spiritual dialog to the level that you begin to understand even those spirits that are still out of your league, and they will understand you? Of course, understanding doesn't mean agreement or at least non-aggression, but he could call the elder spirits earlier due to his markings and knowledge, and with the new gift of the Autogoddess, even more so. The main thing is to reach an agreement, so that they understand what was said, and hear the proposal. The price isekai with the system store will be able to pay.

  The ability to make the body partially or completely phantom, giving it more spirit than body properties, was of great use. The very transition into a different form, the path to the ability to go to the world of spheres with the whole body, only much earlier and with the emphasis not on experience and knowledge, but on the property of aura and spirit. In general, even with such advantages, you should not float on the spheres without a reliable guard, because part of the skills of the supreme shaman does not mean that you have his power and ability. As a bonus, almost complete invulnerability to physical damage and the ability to become invisible without active magic, just going deeper into your own phantomness.

  He was delighted by the property that opened up the possibility of working with the spiritual reflection of Reality in an extremely flexible way, which was closer to witchcraft than to shamanism, but could be used to make totems, amulets, area effects, or even to give a shit the properties and spirit of gold so that it would also be perceived as gold in magical rituals. There are types of calls, where the value of the offering is also important, for example, drown a hundred kilograms of silver in the sea, and your expedition will not meet serious storms, or sughter a herd of sacrificial bulls, getting a guaranteed harvest for the next ten years, even if the neighbors will not harvest a grain. With such spirits, you can buy a ton of manure, one gold coin, and then make the spiritual reflection of shit to take the form of a mountain of gold coins and - pop! Do great things. Just remember that the stronger the spirit, the more demanding, intelligent, and attentive it is, the more likely it is to see what such "gold" really is. This will hardly add kindness and forgiveness to the deceived essence.

  However, Stepan put all these options aside for one reason or another, choosing the one he had dreamed of so much during the preparation for the Rural Vengeance operation. The property was called "multiplicity of spiritual awareness" and it just fit perfectly with Stepan's current pns for his further development. He had noticed, during his visit to Fantrel, that when battling a crowd of creatures in his pce of power he sometimes cked the time and concentration to give the right commands to the right spirits. The same battle with the spirits would have gone much easier if he had been able to change tactics in time and not let Sacker and Whiskers put him in a zugzwang, but he didn't have time, he didn't have the reaction and the time.

  This property raised the Spirit by two units, and by one Control, but in essence, it simply changed the spiritual body so the shaman could realize himself as one-many. This property is common to many elder spirits and virtually all higher spirits. It is not the parallel stream, - or streams, - of consciousness so beloved in Earth fantasy, nor did it create mind-controlled schizophrenia, no. It was simply that the shaman was getting the ability to think the same thoughts but in different directions, simultaneously but separately. And, when it came to controlling rge masses of spiritual subjects, giving them different goals and checking that those goals were fulfilled - that was the best feature given.

  There were disadvantages as well. The first of which was that in the meat body, before becoming supreme and re-shaping the spirit, this property became either less effective or overheated the brains during active afterburner. Also, this spirit modification did not allow multiple contracts to be made at once, one had to certify duties after a pause. Calling up old contracts and managing them was fine, pulling out small spirits directly and forcing them to do something without a contract was no problem either, but when it came to complex and multifaceted deals and offerings, there was a stoppage. Each mark on the spirit is very individual, and the contract, any of them, is that mark, so to impose two of them at once will not work, they will merge into one, causing headaches and injury to the spirit of the shaman and bewilderment, and even anger, the spirits. Well, or conclude a contract with all of them at once, a single contract for all the summoned and contracted, it is also possible, but there are their pitfalls.

  Stepan closed his eyes, put in a free point, and sank into a trance. This time the modification was not only in his aura or spirit, but also in his head. Colors fshed before his eyes that could not be under the human sky, thoughts slowed to a complete stop, then rushed dog pack, and not in time, but it was over. The sensations were... uh, they were. The shaman got to his feet and washed his sweaty body again, trying to figure out what he was. It wasn't bad, it wasn't the very thing he had feared and the ck of which the system's certificate had convinced him of. It really wasn't a controlled schizophrenia, a mind divided into independent streams or an additional personality. He was the same as before, just had time consciousness a little more, not simultaneously parallel, but connected, as if the separate calls and orders to the spirits, on the contrary, merged into one, making them easier to manage. For several hours, having already had time to wait for the deep night, the young man pyed with a lot of small entities, called directly or taken out of the cells of the neckce, feeling them all incredibly full, transmitting dozens of different commands and almost making the little scoundrels dance a synchronized ballet and cheerful can-can. Okay, whatever, that's exactly what he made them do before he finally got tired and went to bed.

  Before closing his eyes, he checked the st of the status messages that had come in, also a very pleasant:

  Ten units in the "Spirit" characteristic are achieved. One characteristic bonus point is gained. The next bonus point will be unlocked when twenty-five units in the "Spirit" characteristic are obtained.

  "No, that's tomorrow, I'm done for the day," Stepan said to himself, removing the forgotten spirit, which was dutifully hanging in front of the window, not letting the moonlight into the house, covering himself with a bnket and closing his eyes. "Most likely I will raise the Spirit, the main directions are tied to it, and for the second sensitivity, but tomorrow, all tomorrow, tomorrow, tom...."

  Dreams came very quickly to the exhausted by the events of the night and the subsequent day of raking the rewards, as always, delighting with crazy images and absurd situations. A huge snowman as tall as a five-story building, armed with a buckshot gun that fired hybrids of small xenomorphs and cats, fought off a walking robot of the "Ordinary WH40k Titan" css, on which shawarma stores and souvenir stores were set up. A dragonfly with the face of Dobby from Harry Potter knocked on the window of a sorority house where a naked foam party was being held, handed out flyers offering to sign up to work at a meatpacking pnt as meat, and took great offense when her flyers weren't taken. A huge blueberry pie the size of a mountain was slowly falling on the metropolis, very slowly, at a rate of a couple of centimeters per minute, and the people were saved by a group of fat regurs at McDonald's, eating the pie faster than it could crush the civilian popution.

  Some dreams were clearer, some were blurry, some showed an unconnected series of images, while in others there was an event line. Not otherwise, from excessive contact with the images sent by the Autogoddess, which come with her gifts, some of the dreams were obscene. It wasn't even about Dobby the dragonfly climbing onto the naked party with flyers from the meat processing pnt.

  A beautiful and tastefully furnished room, with two armchairs, in one of which a half-elf was sitting rexed. He is vaguely familiar as if seen somewhere in a dream, but in which there is a strange falseness and a vague affinity. In the second chair sits a graceful and beautiful elf with raven-winged hair in a tight and tantalizing dress. She says something nice and fascinating, measuredly and with a clearly defined rhythm of pauses, then asserting, then asking, then crifying, and the half-breed only nods and agrees, occasionally answering some questions. All his attention is fixed on the bare feet of his interlocutor, who put one foot on the other, wiggling her bare limb up and down, up and down, like a metronome. On the softly carpeted floor between the armchairs lies a lone sandal, dropped by the long-eared beauty, but the half-breed's gaze is fully focused on the same ever-moving piece. Behind him stands a beautiful and busty catgirl with red hair, equally red ears, and a fluffy tail, and she too is focused on her own, paying no attention to anything else. She stares at her tail, swaying in front of her face, and her pupils shift continuously after its movements, as if there was nothing for her but the tail as if there was nothing for the boy but the elf and her bare feet.

  Some kind of office, richly decorated, but obviously not often used, as if it were intended for secret negotiations. A tall and very beautiful woman of about thirty-five, with dark red hair braided into a complicated and openwork hairdo, lushly-breasted, attractive, beautiful, and yet full of authority and the habit of commanding, speaks strictly and deliberately, with a kind of frighteningly calm menace. She says that she is risking a lot, but the one she is addressing is risking even more, says that she is not the one who is being hunted, and it is she is willing to lend a hand in exchange for cooperation and, importantly, respect and obedience, recognizing her right to command in return for the benefit and shelter provided. If her interlocutor is not satisfied with something, he is always free to go wherever he wishes, but without all she has provided him. The threat is clear, perfectly delineated, and therefore as visible as possible. However, it is spoiled by the fact that the woman is completely naked, lying on her desk, with her long legs behind her head and her hands rubbing the dark cherry nipples on her full breasts. And her first demand, in response to the recognition of her authority, was to shut up and never dare to refuse her if she wished to give her interlocutor and "subordinate" a powerful and dominating blowjob.

  A darkened room upholstered in scarlet fabric, dimly burning sparks of smoky aromatic sticks, semi-darkness, and soft glow of illuminating crystals. A massage table, massage paraphernalia, fragrant oils, and the deft work of strong fingers of a couple of masseuses. Miniature and doll-like Asian women who look like mestizo Chinese and Filipino women are clearly passionate about their work. They are both very short, fragile, and touchingly vulnerable in their nudity, but apart from their intimate crotches adorned with intimate haircuts and small breasts with rge dark brown nipples, one can see strong and trained bodies, smooth and confident movements and considerable skill in their massage science. They knead their client and chirp incessantly, chatting about something of their own, seemingly seeing no reason to listen to answers. If only one of them asks, the second will answer, the first will agree, the first will agree, and the second will confirm, assure, and repeat, which is extremely amusing in combination with their less-than-perfect knowledge of Confederate dialect, which makes it impossible to listen to them. Here is a young man lying on the bed, - seemingly familiar, already seen somewhere in the mirror - and he does not listen, only enjoys the four-handed massage. At some moment he is turned over, not resisting, and one of the Asian women starts caressing his cock with her strong palms and fingers, hard, fast, demanding, while the other one continues to say something, naming his shoulders and neck, before climbing onto the table and sitting on the client's face, who has lost track of time.

  All three scenes seem to have fshed simultaneously in three parallel moments as if they were dreamt in the same second, but each occurred at a different moment. It appeared to the sleeping mind of the shaman that he was about to grasp some important truth, to understand something necessary to him personally, revealing the answers to those questions he had not even asked yet. That answer was so close that he almost managed to touch it. Still, he woke up from the weight that seemed to squeeze his soul, opened his eyes for a moment, and immediately fell into a new dream in which Michael Jackson fought with Morgan Freeman for the right to punch the face of Soton, who had invaded the Earth at the head of his legions. When he awoke in the morning, he retained very little memory of his dreams that night, only noting that when he found himself in a normal city, he could look for a good pce to relieve the tension.

  Until then, he will have enough "regur fucking" with a fucking totem clearing, which by the end of winter will need to be completely re-equipped with new skills and knowledge. The only comment in response to a new batch of mad visions and crazy colorful dreams has already become traditional for each awakening appeal to oneself, shown with habitual yawning:

  "Holy admins, what nonsense!" The yawning young man, who was already thinking about investing the unexpected free unit of characteristics and another expected one, honestly received for the level, threw the dream out of his head faster than he had time to wash his face.

  The development, testing of his own limits, new contracts, testing of the received properties and knowledge, numerous experiments with dangerous entities, as well as cooking Kirik's wife, a golden woman, whose name and face he still did not recognize. The world of magic, charms, spirits, and all sorts of anti-scientific by earthly standards bullshit y ahead of him, and the unwilling isekai caught himself thinking that today was probably the first day when he didn't even try to pretend, for the sake of self-deception, that he wasn't happy about his new position and his newfound gift. He was finally getting used to his new role, his new powers, and his new world.

  Maybe it can be made a little better.

  * * *

  THE STATUS OF STEPAN "NORMAL" AT THE END OF CHAPTER THIRTEEN:

  Name: Stepan

  Level: 20

  Css: Shaman

  Characteristics: (free: 2)

  Talents (free): 0

  Constitution: 2

  Sensitivity: 9

  Power: 6

  Control: 5

  Source: 5

  Spirit: 12

  Resistance: 1

  Knowledge acquired: speaking and writing: Free Cities, academic Neirat, Isnd Kingdom; advanced developed call practice; advanced fundamentals of spiritual dialog; wilderness hermit; advanced basics of working with healing spirits; advanced basics of casting shamanic charms (GIFT); advanced basic techniques of dream-inducing and dream correction (GIFT); the advanced basic practice of combat calls; advanced basic techniques of interaction with magical sources; advanced basic techniques of countering curses: basic fundamentals of fast call; the advanced basic practice of spiritual operation; the mastery of a martial call; basics of spiritual haggling and contract agreements with otherworldly entities; the advanced basic practice of remote control of spiritual entities; basic methods of teaching magical sciences; basic methods of tantric practices; basic methods of territorial influences; basics of work with totems; basic techniques of building defensive formations; advanced techniques of spiritual wandering; advanced basic skills of spiritual conflict outside the physical body; advanced developed techniques of suggestive influences based on shamanism (GIFT); methods of undercover work

  Minor knowledge: contract with an elder spirit: Sleepwalker (GIFT); contract with the elder spirits: The Shroud of Touch and the Creator of Decisions (GIFT); a contract with a strong spirit: The Eater of Diseases; defense by distortion of the anteroom of the spheres;

  Obtained properties: blessings of health and long life; toughness of spirit; resilience of subtle bodies; small mark of spiritual spheres: spiritual shroud of higher auric concealment (GIFT); flexible transformation of the spiritual body; marking of fallen leaves and bck roots; a tantric spiritual hearth; recognition of creators of passions and weavers of feelings (GIFT); heritage in blood and spirit (GIFT); patchwork spiritual echo (GIFT); plurality of spiritual awareness

  System modifiers: peaceful development III; issuance of system assignments III; lecherous development II (GIFT); access to system purchases III; small system endowment of characteristics; temporal awareness II; reserve renewal II

  Special: Blessing of Liarat si Merrinal, Lady of Gifts and Giver of Gifts, loyal servant of Innes Inney: likely to grant additional talents as you level up; grant specific System quests with increased rewards; Mark of Destinies: Singha, daughter of Maega, and Maega, daughter of Maedra; hidden effects

  * * *

  Here's some more lore, literally two lines of it, concerning the types of deeds and their gradation: act - deeds - accomplishment - feat, this is roughly how this scale looks like. To describe in detail is too spoilerish, and unnecessary - you personally have already seen two examples of such awards to compare the difficulties of obtaining them, risks, and degrees of reward. The evaluation of a committed action always goes on the scales of danger for the character and the importance of the deed for the character, as well as on the scale of what has been done. That is, you can do a feat on the first level, killing a young dragon with a bare ass, but if the pyer is already pumped up and his ass is not bare, then you have to kill an adult dragon. And if the pyer has already pumped himself up to the magister, then you have to kill a dragon pack with the support of the lizardmen army.

  For an act, you are rewarded with free or invested talents and material rewards, for a deed you add characteristics, both invested and free, from one to three, for an accomplishment you get all of the above, plus you may get an elite property like those given for multiples of ten levels, for a feat you get all the same, but much more plus the probability of something outrageous - the rarest and absent in the catalog knowledge, big or small, property, meta-skill, "special" modification and so on. An Autogoddess can add a lot more or less from herself, plus she has a much easier time getting something from the "special" section. And yes, it's Milf that can count as an act or deed something that Stepan would spit venom for.

  That's it.

  * * *

  Oops, I forgot to post Avada's Dice comment, though.

  In general, despite the saturation of the chapter with events and active action moments, the events themselves went surprisingly smoothly, just like the dice. There was practically not a single significant crit or just failure, but there were quite clear successes. Not stunning, but very confident: the level of the hero, his skill set already allowed him to feel at ease and not be afraid of an unsuccessful throw at the expense of crazy bonuses.

  Of the failures, we must consider the 11 on the hero's reaction to the successful borrowing of the dead man's imagery. The line between shamanism and necromancy is, in fact, the same interrogation of a corpse, only performed through a mediator in the form of a spirit. The hero's noticeably twisted, although, again, he quickly came to his senses and did not slip into enrage, only became even more convinced that this family should be buried. At the same time, it buried even those small shadows of hope for the MC to accept the Autogoddess quest and py with Ritze's brains.

  The funny thing was that the vengeful spirit summoned into the dead man's body was conceived by me as a serious problem that would get out of control and spoil the hero's conspiracy and mood. But, all the same skill shaman and roughly coinciding desires made this spirit an almost perfect tool. Until the very end, the creature did not even try to move its fetters and in general, help began. The alliance was situational; with a long retionship, this cruel and vengeful - vengeful, not just - shit would surely try to break control and start killing everyone in Fantrel in general. Just for the fact that they're alive while the kid-corpse-mediator is brutally dead. But this is the perfect alliance in this situation.

  Also, the hero, to put it mildly, overdid it with the coolness and demonstrative power of eliminating all those involved in the dark deeds of the Krellbs, but here the chances are really high that everyone will think about the patrons. And they themselves will scratch their head and decide that their protégé, with whom they really agreed, sold his services and loyalty to someone else, and this someone did not agree. And they will start thinking and guessing about who he sold his ass to, certainly not the undead lords of the far North, who may be much more active in the politics of the living than it seemed before. Let's check it out while all this big mess is going on, or who knows?

  As for the reward options for the act: it's above average, but at the very minimum, however, Stepan didn't work up to the maximum, everything went smoothly, with no stress. And yes, the trick with the clock and time slowing down I thought up before the prologue was finished: here's a new facet of the power of meta-skills. But with the renewal of reserves, everything is sadder: with the pnned development of MC it is not so useful to him, he sharpens himself into a puppeteer of the whole army-detachment.

  Actually, the skill for twenty he chose exactly in this direction, turning himself into a kind of server, directing a cloud of all sorts of evil and not so evil shit. Quite a worthy tactic, although not very pathos-heroic, as it would be to pnt in himself a stronger spirit and personally go into combat. But so Stepan is not a boy of any pathos, practical and utilitarian to the point of boredom. Another thing is that the will of fate may be against his having everything boring and practical because it is possible to foresee everything, and so, hop and Angry Singha.

  Well, we can't forget about Stepan's st dream. Was it a vision of the future or one of its variants? An echo of real events or just unfulfilled pns? The answer is unclear, but it is simir to what I already raised in the comment about GG's dreams: shamans are often able to see the shadows of the future, but it is difficult to identify them, it is difficult to understand where is a dream, where is a premonition, and where is a delusion. Except that MC had 49 (forty-nine, motherfucker!!!) on understanding the nature of the dream, almost reaching, and 2 (twice as many as one) on interpreting and remembering details. How would he not want to go to a massage parlor now, with that near failure, instead of staying away from it?

  Maybe it will be hentai, because I've already pnned a few dozens of scenes, which can be imagined. The other thing is that such preparations may not work, or may work wrong, or may work in the wrong pce. You know, that moment when you write a five-page hentai omake and the result is this.

  Best wishes to everyone, to Brinar muses and my usual thanks for his magnificent world, to all the female readers (if there are any, because there are no female readers on the internet) my sincere congratutions on March 8th, to all the readers my sincere empathy on March 8th, don't be sad.