"Phew, they ran away," Vallynor said, sitting with his back against a tree. He closed his eyes and started to count all the losses from the clash with the Kraken. They were substantial: over 500 people were spent, he owed +150 souls just because he had borrowed 15 souls. "Damn banking book. It should go work in a bank. Or with the Jews," Vallynor muttered.
As a result of this fight, he better understood his weaknesses: he couldn't attack what he couldn't see or what was hidden, he couldn't effectively slow down enemies, and he didn't have a spell that could attack large enemies.
After thinking about the situation, he decided that the quickest way to fix the problem was to slow down the huge enemies. Vallynor stood up to start testing and trying to eliminate this weakness. If only he hadn't hesitated and wanted to have a snack.
Not because of hunger, but because of the habit that he had acquired when he lived with Baba Yaga. Looking at his right hand, he saw a ring on each of the four fingers. He would have put one on the fifth finger, but Vallynor didn't like how it looked or how the fifth ring felt on his thumb.
An invisible beam came out of one of the rings and created a hole next to his hand. After a second, a piece of meat came out of it. Without thinking, he bit into it and started chewing.
Meanwhile, Annino, tired, entered the shadow to rest. His eye was the brightest of all, and he looked around to warn the others of possible enemies.
Half an hour later, when Vallynor opened his eyes, he summoned the book and asked it to show him a list of spells that improve the Earth of the Dead spell.
The book quickly showed all the spells, but unfortunately, some of them were inaccessible because he had to move on to the next stage. Damn soul, because of it, I can't move to another level. I don't even know how many levels or stages there are, and the book doesn't want to say. I'm dying of curiosity… Wait.
Vallynor turned his head to Eye and, seeing her, his eyes lit up. And Eye herself unexpectedly felt a look on her, turned to Vallynor, and looked at him in response.
"Eye, how many ranks exist in this world?" Vallynor immediately asked what he had wanted to know for so long.
"Ranks? What do you mean?" Eye didn't understand her master's question and started asking questions herself.
"I mean, how many levels exist that divide human strength, and show on which level of strength I am currently?"
"Hmm... I understand. You're talking about levels of ascension? There are twelve. Mortals can achieve any of the first eleven, but the twelfth, according to many, is only accessible to gods. It's also said that there are even more levels."
"Can you call them ranks, Glazik, so it's easier for me to understand? And can you name each rank?"
"Okay, I'll call your rank in the future, if you want. As for the names... to be honest, I don't remember. I remember the first, third, and eleventh ranks. The first one, because I was forced to kill when the flies came to bother Baba Yaga in other worlds. And the last one, because the Honored Baba Yaga herself was at this rank..." She stopped, sinking into memories. After sitting like that for a while, she continued: "The first three are: Commoner, Apprentice, Lower Level. And the eleventh is Holy."
"So, I'm at the rank of a Commoner," mumbled Vallynor to himself, hearing new information from Glazik.
"No, you're still a regular mortal who has only just started to learn the secrets of magic," Glazik replied to her owner's muttering.
"Then how come I can fight with such ancient monsters and even kill them?" This question had long tormented Vallynor. He wondered how such a weakling like himself could fight such creatures. He was not the main character of any book. Or maybe he was... Nonsense.
Glazik looked at Vallynor like a fool and said, "It's elementary. It's not that you are strong, but the inhabitants of this world have weakened so much that someone like you can harm them. But don't forget that all this time you were killing the fallen ones - the souls that fell because they weakened to the level of mortals. But if you start fighting a sentient being, run."
Vallynor remembered his encounter with the Lion Man, who could move more than 5 meters in an instant and, if he wanted to, could easily kill him. Goosebumps ran down his spine, and he realized how dangerous this world was, even if it was cursed and weakened to death.
"Not as much information as I wanted, but better than nothing," he said as he looked at the book lying nearby.
"I'll return to my duties if you don't need my help anymore," Vallynor replied.
"Mmmm. If you're no longer useful to me, go back," he pointed to the book with his hand. And it turned into a tattoo on his skin again.
Sitting in place, Vallynor began to ponder how to improve the Land of the Dead. But nothing came to mind. "Let me summon them instead, and then I'll think," he decided.
Getting up, he stretched out his hand in front of him and quickly uttered a spell. Slowly, the hands of the dead emerged from the sand in front of him. They didn't move from their spot, just like I did when my father was tinkering with nuts and bolts while I held the lamp.
"If only I had the same precision and ability to keep my hands in one position, I wouldn't have dropped the lamp on my father's head and gotten a beating," Vallynor recalled the past. "But that's all in the past. I'm no longer the same, I've changed."
Putting aside nostalgia, Vallynor looked at the hands of the dead for a long time, sometimes making different facial expressions. He noticed that one hand covered one eye, while the other opened it wide.
"...Nothing comes to mind. Besides horrible scenes, I need even more eerie music to create a complete atmosphere. You, please move your hands to the left and right of me," Vallynor orally ordered the hands. He waited and, to his surprise, they began to execute the command.
This surprised and pleased Vallynor. He thought that in the future, if he remained alive, he could dramatically appear and verbally order the hands to stop, like a real powerful villain.
Looking at hands filled with sand, one thought suddenly came to his mind. He took one of the bodies that Anino brought. Damn, he wants to create a mountain of corpses again?
Then, with the help of the thread of the soul, Vallynor severed the hand from the body. He could cut off a lot at a distance of two meters from himself. He stuck the severed hand in the sand and mentally ordered it to be attached to the Grave of the Dead.
He didn't wait long and ordered everyone to drop their hands on the sand. And, lo and behold, the severed hand fell to the sand too.
"Hmm. If I'm not mistaken, the rest of the hand should be in the sand. How does this work without a body?" Vallynor was surprised.
He approached closely and ordered the hands to bury the hand in the ground. He wanted to see what would happen. As always, it was crowded, and he couldn't even move his leg or finger.
Before him was a zombie, which had two hands sticking out from the right side - one of which he had just cut off. How did he know? Because that hand belonged to a fish-man. Staring at the place where the connection was happening, Vallynor saw nothing - sand interfered, and the zombie's position was uncomfortable. What to do?
"Darn, what an idiot I am," he thought, ordering the zombie to move mentally. And he was able to see how the zombie's flesh entered the hands and how the threads connected to the body. When Vallynor saw this, an interesting idea came to him, but first another test was needed.
This time when he emerged from the sand, he nullified the spell, then created it again. To his surprise, the hand remained in place. And what if he destroyed it?
After he destroyed the hand and removed the spell, then created it again, the hand did not reappear. Do all the changes remain until they are destroyed?
With this thought, he conducted several tests and confirmed that the template would always be there, and changes would exist until they were destroyed.
This greatly pleased the necromancer Malenkov, giving him hope that he would be able to solve one of his problems and in future battles with giants, he could slow them down properly.
Taking dozens of bodies, he threw them into the Graveyard of the Dead, then ordered them to be torn apart and glued to their hands. What he saw made Vallynor want to vomit, but what to do when his stomach was empty? But that was trivial compared to the new opportunities that had emerged.
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
Regaining self-control, he was scared of what he saw: guts and black blood on black sand. It was a bit illogical, how could he see it? But Vallynor could see, and how? Parts of the stains were visible on the intestines, and there were discouraging pools of blood nearby. But that was insignificant.
What surprised him the most were the deformed hands, similar to the hands of people with genetic diseases. One hand had two extra fingers, making a total of seven fingers. The other part of the hand had a tumor. This gruesome sight continued.
"Hmm. How can I make it so that these hands, by connecting parts of the corpse, increase in size?" he said thoughtfully. Tearing a finger from one of the corpses, he glued it inside the palm of the other hand and ordered it to connect with the finger.
Then he cut off five fingers and threw them in the center. Pointing at the recently attached finger in the palm of his hand, he ordered, "Connect the severed fingers as they are on this hand." The hands quickly obeyed the order and connected the fingers exactly in the same position as on the specified hand.
Inspecting the hands with the attached finger and confirming the success of the experiment, he was ready to jump for joy. Now he could create models of the necessary hands, and the others would copy that hand.
With this thought, he severed the hands from the corpses, attached them, and began to look for something sharp in the rings. Fortunately, Baba Yaga had filled the ring with various things, including a set of dishes and so on.
The search took more than half an hour, but Vallynor finally found a knife. Checking its sharpness, he was disappointed - the knife wasn't as sharp as he wanted. He needed a sharp knife like surgeons or Japanese katana swords.
He looked at the knife in his hands and thought about how to make it sharper. Perhaps with magic, like Archana did, who infused threads with magic to make them sharper. Then he could infuse the knife with mana. But what kind of mana - regular or attribute? And if with an attribute, which attribute would be better?
The more Vallynor delved into magic, the more he began to understand that it was not like in MMORPGs, where quests are given, you improve yourself and learn magic with one click. It was more challenging, but more pleasant and interesting. Essentially, magic was somewhat similar to programming, or at least it seemed so to Vallynor.
After infusing the knife with some mana (which took several attempts), he tried to cut flesh from the corpse. To his surprise, the knife became sharper, but not as much as needed. Then he infused the knife with mana of the fire attribute.
As a result, upon touching the flesh, it heated up and flamed. Quickly taking one severed hand, he began to extinguish the fire with it, using it as a beating flame stick. When the fire went out, he threw away the hand and looked at the knife.
"So, mana with the fire attribute ignites. But what will happen if you use water, earth, and wind? Standard attributes."
First, he tried earth. At first glance, the mana that enveloped the knife didn't change anything. But after spinning it for a few minutes, Vallynor realized that the earth mana had strengthened the knife, making it more robust.
Next was water. Vallynor needed a little more time to understand what it did. It enhances the mana that flows through the knife, increasing the duration of the mana-filled knife's use.
As everyone guessed, wind made the knife very sharp. The entire knife became sharper, so much so that even the hand holding it was cut. Tossing the knife onto the sand, the wind attribute mana disappeared, and the knife became normal again.
Then the question arose, why didn't his hand get burned like a corpse. Looking at his injured hand, he noticed a cut and a little red flesh. Something was still wrong, but he didn't feel any pain, which is why he didn't notice it.
Taking the knife in his hands, he wanted to test another type of magic. But before that, he filled the knife with water attribute magic. After dozens of attempts, he managed to make the magic flow only through the blade of the knife.
During the training, Glazik secretly watched her master, amazed at how good he was at magic. He had been practicing for only a few years, but what if he were a hundred years old? Where would he have reached? Without a teacher, he was very talented. Perhaps the lady saw what she couldn't see herself, which is why she broke her oath and took him as a student.
Vallynor cut and glued bones and flesh together, slowly creating a large hand five or six times the normal size. He happily cut and added bones or flesh, as if it were a construction toy. At first, he felt uncomfortable digging through flesh and bones, but because he had to do it, he endured it and now worked in excitement. After that, he searched for different bones of various sizes and lengths to make the hand anatomically similar to human hands. The creature resembled Humans.
***
Alexander was dressed in a cloak, and a huge sword sat on his back, ready to be taken out and wielded at any moment. In this world, a fraction of a millisecond could mean the difference between life and death.
Keeping a weapon in a ring was not the best idea. Even to retrieve a weapon from the ring, it would take nearly a second, and that second could be your last. Therefore, it was better to keep the sword ready for battle.
He strode towards the cursed forest, following the strange guy who had helped him find his daughter. Who knew that he was now following him? Alexander knew that the boy was unusual, and that's why even Caesar was watching him from afar. Sometimes, changes are made in secret.
Alexander had long felt that Caesar was hiding a lot from everyone for something that everyone wanted in this world. What did everyone want? Freedom? Survival? Revenge?
Many want many things, but everyone wants revenge for the betrayal and murder of our God. And how could this kid do anything about it? Gods are not ordinary people; they are rulers, essentially immortal. And it is useless to fight them. Then what remains? Inheritance?
Yes, that's what many dream of. Even I want my son to somehow escape from this world with my teachings. So do others want their knowledge and experience to not be lost, but to be preserved and used by worthy personalities.
"Does Caesar really know how to help escape from this world? Hmm. If he knew, he would have said so long ago. Perhaps he will find a way in the future, but then why wouldn't he just study the method that would help escape from the world through foresight. How complicated it is," - thinking about various reasons, he scratched his head and dismissed these thoughts, telling himself: "I will ask Caesar when I return."
Suddenly, he stopped and looked at the sand that was slowly moving, even though there was no wind or earthquakes. Taking up his swords, he leaped into the air, and as soon as he landed, tentacles emerged from where he had just stood.
"A Kraken? This is the third one this year. They are slowly starting to disappear. Poor creatures. After all the water in the world disappeared, most of the aquatic creatures either died or adapted to live in the sand. But in return, you always feel the pain of water scarcity... Let me relieve you of your suffering," he said.
With a single sword strike through the air, the kraken flew out of the sand, split in two. With a jerk and a hand, he caught the falling soul and took a bottle with the other. Opening it, he threw the soul inside. Watching the writhing soul of the kraken, he shook his head and returned the bottle.
As he turned his head, he saw a beauty sitting on a flying black cloud.
"Lia? What are you doing here?" Alexander asked, approaching the girl in surprise.
"I came to see Baba Yaga's disciple," Lia replied.
"You're not..." Alexander didn't finish his sentence as Lia hit him, sending him flying for several kilometers before he crashed into the forest.
During her flight, Lia often encountered distant and enchanted invisible birds, which puzzled her. But not knowing to whom they belonged, she simply destroyed them. She didn't like it when someone unfamiliar was watching her, and she didn't know who it was.
The monk opened his eyes and gave his lord bad news - the queen of nightmares was flying to the cursed forest.
"Done," said Vallynor, finishing carefully creating the arm, connecting the muscles to make it work correctly. But sometimes he didn't know how to connect it correctly or what to do next. He cut off the hands of corpses that looked very similar to humans.
"After all, biology has been useful to me somewhere. I take back my words. My old biology teacher isn't the worst. This statute completely takes away physics teachers for some reason. But in biology, I remembered a lot. But what can I remember from physics lessons? Fuck it and my past. And someone's been looking at me for too long," he said, turning and looking at Glazik.
"It was interesting to watch you and your show of grimaces. It's a shame you're used to the end... And now I'll go back to my business," said Glazik, leaving.
Vallynor left Glazik and turned to the hand, which was larger than the others. Such a hand could already easily catch and hold the leg of an Ent or the tentacles of a kraken.
He was confident in its strength, as even the bones of Gundabad orcs were used to create it. But the question remained, how strong was it?
He would find out the answer to this question in the future. And now he had a few more things to do. He hoped the hand would work, as all the time he spent should not be in vain.
While Vallynor was thinking, he collected all the remaining body parts and new corpses. He had grown accustomed to the sight and smell of dismembered bodies of creatures that resembled humans. The dislike remained, but he no longer felt repulsion towards them.
After dumping a large pile of bodies on the ground of the Dead, he ordered his hands to copy and become like the huge hand of Frankenstein.
The hand, which was covered with pieces of skin of different shades and sizes, did not have smooth fingers, but it was functional and ready to carry out orders.
The hands emerging from the ground began to tear apart the bodies and connect bones and flesh so that at first large piles of meat were formed, and then they slowly turned into hands.
Unfortunately, not all the hands could transform due to a lack of corpses, but that was not necessary.
After 15 minutes, there were 17 huge hands in a pile with other smaller hands in front of Vallynor. Checking them, he was able to confirm that all the huge hands were created by him. It was very interesting and strange how it all worked.
To test them, he gave a few commands and to his surprise, they were able to carry out most of them. What more could he want from such hands? It was very simple - to hold huge creatures.
Recalling the tentacles that had tried to catch him, Vallynor simply burned with the thought that he didn't have such hands at the time. He would have tested them in practice.
Vallynor looked at the hands, closing one eye, then the other, thinking about a new project - creating his own tentacles.
"What an interesting idea! I will have my own tentacles that will become tentacles when I catch a girl in them."
"I don't know why," Vallynor thought, imagining a dark-haired girl with an erotic face as his victim in the tentacles, "but this excites me." Looking down at his pants, he did not notice any movement. He remained dead as he was.
"Well, I'll give it a try," said Vallynor to himself, collecting the remains that had not been used to increase his hands. Specifically, small bones such as wrist or ankle bones. Some parts had been used, but not all.
As he collected corpses, Vallynor pulled some of them out of the ring because all of Anni's corpses had already been used up. Uncertainly, he began to examine Anni's body and noticed that it had become larger and fatter. Something rubbing against it, Vallynor realized that fat had accumulated under the skin that wasn't there before. Where did this fat come from? Secondly, if he has fat, does that mean he's a lazy ass? But it can't be that he was overcome by laziness.
Casting aside doubts about his wolf, Vallynor thought carefully about how to create tentacles. After all, they are made only of boneless flesh. But Vallynor wants to add bones to them. Remembering all of biology, a plan slowly began to form in his mind. After he thought it through, he confirmed that it could work.