'Show me, show me,' Stas mentally grumbled as he moved towards the front, 'When will I finally understand that sometimes curiosity and audacity are not at all a blessing?'
After waking up at night from his own scream, Ordyntsev barely managed to rush out of the tent and thoroughly emptied his stomach, after which he sat by the burning fire until morning, casting wary glances into the surrounding darkness.
There, in that darkness, Ordyntsev could see the familiar abyss and the eerie bluish-red expanse.
Stas shuddered, and Leviathan, circling around him, gave her master a worried look.
The man said nothing to his snake so that at least she wouldn't worry, but Levi was still uneasy about her master's condition.
Someone might wonder, "What is the cause of Stanislav's strong reaction to blood and wounds?"
After all, not only was he a medic, but he had also spent more than three and a half years in this world, fighting and risking his life.
The problem lay in the wounds of the Great Serpent, or rather in the poison of chaos permeating the flesh writhing in agony.
This substance was so unnatural to the perception of ordinary living beings that one glance at it was enough to confuse the mind and plunge the weak-willed into madness.
Stas had seen such an amount of chaos pus that only by a tremendous effort did he remain sane.
Moreover, the filth tormenting the body of the great spirit was proliferating, giving birth to those horrendous creatures resembling a mix of flies and fish.
Ultimately, the man was plagued by heavy thoughts for which he had no answers.
Take, for example, his arrival here.
Was the Serpent King responsible? Or did he, on the contrary, save Stas when he found himself here?
Again, there were no answers to be had.
Stas doubted that making contact with this entity would be easy. And even if he did make contact, he suspected it would not end well.
What if the serpent's desire to leave his followers stemmed from his fear of infecting them with the poison of chaos?
This, in turn, meant that if Stas were near the serpent's body, he risked contracting the same disease, turning into something similar.
And then an important question arose: why would the Great Serpent need some human? More precisely, a healer with knowledge of both worlds?
Could the great spirit have somehow foreseen what happened and summoned his savior?
Reading about all sorts of prophecies is fun when you're not involved with them. But feeling the breath of fate on your neck is hardly pleasant.
But whatever Stas thought, there was nothing to be done. The Serpent King neither asked for nor demanded his help. Stas was left to his own devices, so it was still he who was the master of his own fate.
*****
'I've not missed any of this, not one bit,' Stas sighed heavily as he passed the checkpoint of his country and entered the lands of Hyugo Country, or rather what was left of them.
Trying to keep Jun's team away from the front, Io inadvertently lessened the horrors they could witness.
Yes, before them unfolded views of ravaged villages, disemboweled captives, wells stuffed with corpses, clusters of hanged people, and much, much more.
But all this was encountered rather as a rarity. More often than not, bandits still needed various servants, informants, or just toys for entertainment. Plus, they could be profitably sold. This gave ordinary people a chance to survive.
War in local conditions almost eliminated this possibility.
Any house, yard, village, settlement, or city could have value. And that meant that in case of defeat, it could fall into the hands of the enemy... The locals knew very well what to do in this case.
The scorched earth tactic had been practiced here for many centuries, if not thousands of years.
And if the sight of another burned village, through the charred boards of which you could see the contorted bones of the dead, was hardly touching the heart of the earthling, then something similar but on the scale of a whole city stirred feelings of unease.
Too many deaths, ruined fates, and tragedies for one person.
Even just walking along the roads, you could see dozens of corpses thrown on the roadside. The bodies were stripped to the loincloths. Fat, glossy crows didn't even try to hop away or fly off at the sight of a human.
With lazy gazes, they watched another warrior pass - as if contemplating whether to peck his beautiful green eyes first or, perhaps, to nibble at his cheek and pull out his tongue.
And to grasp the full horror of the situation, more than one generation of these birds had been raised exclusively on human flesh.
Summer, winter, autumn, or spring changed, but the crows never had trouble with fresh meat.
Suddenly, something flickered, and several crows found themselves in the jaws of Levi, who burst out of the ground.
On the road, there was a panicked cawing, and the crows, losing feathers, scattered away.
Stas smirked. He was pleased.
Although he had given no command, Leviathan had perfectly understood his attitude toward these impudent clumps of feathers.
Stas decided to stop on the outskirts of one of the destroyed cities. To his surprise, people still lived in its suburbs, trying somehow to tie the ends of their shattered lives.
Looking into their eyes - extinguished or, on the contrary, filled with hidden hatred - Stas walked fearlessly through the city streets. If anyone could challenge him, they decided not to mess with the suspicious traveler.
The city where he stopped was adjacent to a wide river on which small merchant ships and fishing boats sailed.
This allowed the locals to stay afloat somehow. Most likely, this place belonged to someone very powerful, which is why no one had looted it yet. Occasionally, supreme warmasters would buy property in other countries. With their money, it was no problem.
As a result, even the great clans sometimes saw no point in quarreling for a couple of stores with people of such caliber.
Perhaps that's why a couple of stores near the piers were still operating, and Stas managed to buy fresh food. Thus, as he sat on the porch of one of the abandoned houses, he felt someone cautiously touching his travel bag.
Unfortunately for the petty pickpocket, Stas had long noticed him. The Earth Sense technique consumed little prana, so Stas tried to use it as often as possible.
Of course, it also consumed attention. Besides, after a couple of hours, a headache would start, but gradually, the boundaries of using the technique and its duration were pushed further and further.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Because of this, approaching Stas on the ground unnoticed was becoming an increasingly difficult task.
And let's not forget about Leviathan, who was monitoring the entire area with spiritual vision.
A light shift of prana, and a boy about seven years old was lifted off the ground by the arm gripping a small piece of steel, which he wanted to quietly use to open the bag.
The handmade knife fell into the road dust with a quiet clink.
Looking at the wide-open eyes filled with horror, Stas sighed. Obviously, in his armor, he looked to the local ragamuffins either like an ordinary samurai or some kind of mercenary.
In any case, the pickpocket certainly did not expect to encounter a real warmaster!
The fact that the man was dressed in a cloak that concealed the Sumada insignia also played its role.
In Stas's hand was a skinny boy with light hair and a mouth opening and closing in silence. Apparently, out of fear, he couldn't utter anything.
From somewhere behind the rubble came several frightened squeaks, but everything quickly fell silent.
Stas noted that two more hiding children did not abandon their friend, continuing to watch the unfolding tragedy.
'If an ordinary warmaster or samurai were in my place, it could end very sadly...'
Stas was not irritated by the pickpocket - who was he to judge anyone? In this life, he had done way worse things.
So Stas slowly lowered the child to the ground, then rummaged through the bag of purchased food and gave the boy one of the recently bought buns, and finally, without saying anything, let him go.
The urchin looked at the towering man in confusion for a few seconds. Presumably, the kind and generous warmaster thoroughly shattered his worldview, causing cognitive dissonance.
But a child's psyche is a malleable thing, so he quickly came to his senses and immediately made a run for it, slipping between several beams.
Stas, quietly smirking, sat back down, took out another roll, and began to eat it with pleasure, keeping an eye on the trio out of the corner of his consciousness.
And they had a heated argument. The pickpocket turned out to be an honest boy, so he divided the bun into three even pieces. But a single bun, logically, was not enough. And the food they received only whetted their appetite.
In the end, the little ones were deciding whether it was worth the risk or not.
At that moment, Stas felt as if he was trying to feed a stray cat, which suspiciously sniffed the offered piece of sausage, sitting in some kind of shelter.
"Master warmaster," Stas, feigning indifference, looked at the three children shuffling before him, two boys and one girl. The second boy's hair was so long and unkempt that it fell over his face, covering his eyes with a fringe of bangs. "Could you... Give us a little more food?"
"Food?" Stas raised an eyebrow. "And what can you offer me in return?" Stas decided to play with them a bit.
The children looked at each other in bewilderment, trying to figure out what they could give to the great and terrible warmaster.
'Master, these three hatchlings have large reserves of prana. Especially impressive are those of the female. Almost twice as high as the other children combined.'
'How many times have I told you, not hatchlings, but children, and not females, but women.'
Nevertheless, Stas paid close attention to the girl while activating his spiritual vision.
There was a connection between prana and spiritual energy, albeit a weak one. So, the more prana a person had, the more likely they had more spiritual energy. On the other hand, that "more" could be just a little bit.
But if you know where to look, you could use it.
However, Stas's close attention to their friend did not go unnoticed, as the boys immediately shielded the girl, looking at Stas with angry gazes full of disgust.
Obviously, they already knew about one of the dark sides of this world. And, apparently, they were planning to make a run for it already.
Stas grimaced. He certainly did not want to be branded a pedophile under any circumstances.
"Calm down," a light wave of bloodlust made the children freeze. Stas had only recently learned this trick. The size of his prana core had reached the minimum size required to activate such an ability.
For this, it was necessary to focus very strongly on the required emotion, usually anger or malice, and then release prana into the air in a special way.
The more prana or the stronger the emotions, the brighter the effect.
His bloodlust was still, to say the least, pathetic. But for ordinary children, it was more than enough.
"I don't intend to harm you. My attention was drawn by the fact," Stas paused, pondering what to say next. "That you have the strength to, if you're lucky, become warmasters. And your friend has the most of it. That's why I looked at her for so long."
"Warmasters?" gasped the pickpocket, but immediately shrank back, afraid to believe the adult's words, and rightly so. The other children did not dare to join the conversation. "Or maybe you're deceiving us? Adults are always deceiving."
"That's for you to decide," Stas chuckled and took out three more buns, then threw them one by one into the children's hands. They looked at them distrustfully and almost sniffed them. "But I would like an answer now. Would you like to become warmasters?"
The children looked at each other again.
"To kill people?" the girl asked softly, looking at Stas with eyes that were too old for a child.
"Yes," Stas nodded seriously. "And do other equally terrible things."
"Then I agree," she nodded resolutely, eliciting surprised glances from her comrades.
"We agree too, then," nodded the leader of the trio, hesitating a little. "What should we do now?"
"For now, wait," Stas shrugged to the surprised children. "I don't know how soon others will come for you. Maybe in a year, maybe in a month. Now, your task is simply to survive."
Stas dug into his bag and pulled out a couple of dozen copper coins on a string. Thinking it over, he added a couple more silver ones. It wasn't a lot of money for warmasters, but for a few starving children in a war-torn city, it was almost a legendary treasure.
"Never show all your money at once. A maximum of one coin. Don't buy often," Stas began instructing the children. He didn't want them to be slaughtered by those who thought they had a lot of money.
"Thank you so much, uncle warmaster," the children sincerely expressed their gratitude. Hiding the coins given by Stas, they literally glowed with joy.
Stas wasn't naive, so he considered that the trio might not care about all the arrangements and just run away with the money.
But Ordyntsev didn't care. Even so, he had already done a good deed, slightly lightening the burden on his soul.
However, there was one more thing to do.
"Merchant-san," Stas leaned over the counter and looked intently at the seller, who was clearly taken with the seriousness of the situation. It was from him that Stas had bought the buns earlier.
"What is it, warmaster-san?" the man asked in a slightly trembling voice.
"Do you know three children, two boys and a girl, who live in this area?"
"Yes..."
"I want you to look out for them. Nothing serious. But if they buy something to eat from you and something happens to them afterward, I would be very upset. Do you understand me?"
"I understand very well, warmaster-san!" the seller quickly nodded, fiddling with some cloth in his hands. "I will treat them as if they were my own!"
"I'm glad we understand each other," Stas smiled genially, flashing his serpentine eyes. "If all goes well, you won't be at a loss either."
Assured that there was nothing more for him to do in this town, he calmly moved on.
Four gazes burned into his back. Three were filled to the brim with gratitude, while the fourth - with fear and relief.
Why had Stas even decided to think about the fate of these children? After all, it would be at least ten years before they turned into something worthwhile.
Ordyntsev just remembered that he wasn't planning to die in the next couple of decades and, ideally, a couple of centuries.
And that meant he could well start raising from the cradle those who would be loyal to him.
The most affectionate cats come from those who have had their fill of "happy" street life. Maybe that's why domestic cats, and even those with pedigrees, often have the most arrogant characters.
And who said that this principle couldn't be applied to people?
*****
Moving through Jishin's camp, Stas couldn't help but notice that his friend definitely had leadership qualities.
There was exemplary cleanliness and order everywhere. Almost no warmasters were idling – everyone was busy with some useful work.
As Stas approached Jishin's forces, he encountered at least two squads of scouts on his way.
He could have bypassed them, but Stas honestly showed his mission scroll and moved on.
By rough estimate, the younger prince had about three to four hundred warmasters under his command.
A very impressive force capable of destroying small countries if desired.
Of course, not all of them were Sumada. Many were fighters from small clans subordinate to Sumada, scattered throughout Rashta. In case of war, they came under the command of the great clan.
And among this mass of troops, there were only a couple of supreme warmasters.
But even so, it was clear that Jishin was not someone to be trifled with.
"Shiro!" a loud cry made Stas and the warmaster accompanying him tense up, but Stas relaxed and even smiled almost instantly.
"Kensei, glad to see you among the living."
Uramasa Kensei approached with wide strides, then immediately grabbed Stas in an embrace.
"I can't believe it. You finally decided to visit us," the one-eyed giant smirked. "You're dismissed; I'll escort him myself," he ordered the guard, and under Stas's surprised gaze, the warmaster did not show that he was offended by the samurai's words.
"I see you've found your place among them," Stas slyly smiled, testing the waters. "Shall I now call you a warmaster, not a samurai?"
"First of all, I've long ceased to be a samurai," Kensei did not take the bait, leading Stas further. "I'm, as it were, a ronin. And secondly, to hell with you all. I'm not going to learn all your tricky techniques. A warrior's path is on the edge of his blade, and excesses are from demons."
"Looks like Jishin isn't giving up?" Stas chuckled softly, seeing Kensei frown. "But admit it, if you learn techniques too, you'll become much deadlier."
"I'm good enough as is. Advanced warmasters are just blood lubrication for my blade," the one-eyed man thumped the scabbard of his two-handed sword against his shoulder pad. "You can't teach an old wolf new tricks..."
Following Kensei's sign, the guards dispersed, and they entered the underground bunker.
Jishin, who was sitting and frowning over the map spread out before him, looked up.
"Shiro. Glad to see you. Good that you've finally arrived," but contrary to the joyful tone of the greeting, the look the younger prince gave his friend was far from genial.