Chapter 18

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The spectacle that opened our eyes proved in practice that no amount of speculation will prepare one's mind for objective reality and its twists and turns. Of course, I had expected that one of the key points of the ritual created by the cult and on which the fate of the cult depended would be protected to the highest standards. But not even my sick imagination was sufficient to suggest the enormity of protection and the height of the standards. So much so my first, second, and even tenth thought was to just turn around and go for easier prey, for heroism is for heroes, of course, but sometimes you have to think with your head.

The devils had cordoned off a whole complex of well-fortified buildings. It was the base of one of the large mercenary units unofficially serving as a Trading House from the first fifty of the Golden Belt of the Empire of Ages. Apparently, the trading house was serving the devils and Hell in whole or in large part. There was no sign of battle here. The creatures and their human allies had come and, with orderliness and discipline that would do honor to any other army, had begun to fortify themselves, dragging everyone who happened to be near them to the altars. Judging by the intensity of magical techniques and the general veneer of diabolical Vice, this place plays a much more important role in the ritual than the labor artel I destroyed in the beginning. Or maybe my attack just prevented the fighters inside from deploying their ranks.

There were as many creatures as there were people, and I didn't realize right away that not all of them matched the low end of the big bastards we'd encountered recently. If the devils had the strength to throw that many thirtieth-level elites into battle, they wouldn't have gone for Eternal and taken the entire province at least. Fortunately, previous encounters with the elite elites, the most dangerous creatures who got the strongest souls and were trusted with admission to the common bank at the most favorable rate, had inflated my expectations a bit. Most of the forces concentrated in the distance consisted of middle and lower-level creatures that, while dangerous opponents, were far from invincible.

The standard devils that made up the backbone of the Hell forces that were arriving through the portals hidden inside the central building of the mercenary guild had a level from fifteenth to twentieth, not very powerful talents, for which there was nowhere to get improvement points (the level was too low, and even the devils could not get free ones so easily!), racial and aspect features, which also did not shine against the background of their elite, as well as a maximum of a dozen or two of souls in the sonm, and just ordinary souls, not super valuable and unique. Yes, with luck and a bit of tactical thinking, which eternally living scum most often have in stock, such a fighter is able to kill two warriors of the human tribe in direct combat. In indirect combat... well, it wouldn't be that hard to defame the population of a small farm or a very small village. A normal and close-knit group of adventurers with good amulets and brain protection could easily slaughter a dozen of these devils without any casualties on their part. But there were not a dozen of them here, and the enemy contingent was not limited to devils of the lower-middle status of their hierarchy alone

We watched from afar, using one of the towers of some large building, apparently formerly a trade mission, as an observation position. This building was scorched by one of the first long-range strikes as the creatures cleared the surrounding area, extinguishing all suspicious points. It was a relatively clean attack that didn't leave the fleur behind, but the target wasn't a military bunker to spend so much energy on. Plus, they didn't want to damage the nearby barracks and houses that were now packed with desperately praying people. As said before, the devils were here for the loot, not for the fight, even if the loot was living, breathing, and thinking.

It was the fact that we were almost two kilometers from the mercenary farmstead between two hillocks that allowed us to assess the enemy's contingent, after which we could only repeat Taria's phrase because it was very appropriate. My hard-working third eye knew that six hundred years ago, the two large hills that had been razed to the ground had been mounds, albeit cleared, but then the locals had hired a good Stone Mage who had leveled the hills and turned them into a landscape suitable for further urban development, but it wasn't the history of the place that bothered me, it was its reality.

Three layers of serious stationary charms covered the entire space of the farmstead and the adjacent territories, among which only one barrier was hellish. The other two barriers, a pure energy dome of standard fortress defense and a more elaborate dark purple one, created on ritual Malefic with Astral inclusions, were brought here by the cultists. Specifically, the hellish outer defenses consisted of many small creatures of lower rank, which someone confidently controlled, creating from their bodies, fleur, and souls a segmented and extremely mobile closed barrier, surpassing both normal defenses. All three lines of defense created a partial dome rather than a complete one, freeing up a relatively small area at the very top of the hemisphere of barriers, from where a golden-gray beam rose into the singing sky, in which back and forth flashed the silhouettes of the souls who had been sacrificed for the ritual, even now, both in Hell and in the farmyard at the same time. Some of those silhouettes, however, were very advanced creatures, possessing rare and specific sets of talents and sonms to keep the ritual stable, if possible correcting the ritualists' hasty mistakes and speeding up the transfer process itself.

Separate from the barrier stood a multitude of vicious magic-filled nets, shields, and traps, among which flickered the essences of minor devils and captured souls, set to amplify the already skillful enchantments even further. In this world, to empty another's essence for fuel for enchantments is an insanely effective, albeit expensive, means of extreme blackness. It was Hell who was ahead of all other users in such an art, which made sense if you thought about it. Many planar creatures could work with souls, and among those endowed with these tricks were not some unprecedented miracle-shit (remember only those ancient ones, created by which dolmens I once cleaned), but no one could outdo the devils. And, to my deepest happiness, not so often they tried to do it.

In general, storming this place with an army was fraught with massacre and a lot of souls drowned in the Vice, which would strengthen such defenses even more. And that's without taking into account the defenders themselves, to whom it would be necessary to break through all these obstacles somehow! And if we take into account, the army here should be either obscenely large or reinforced with elite and super-elite units. And ideally, ask the priests to beg their patrons for a Miracle, as they always try to do in the case of devils entrenched in reality, because against such an enemy the celestials help almost always and in significant numbers. A couple or three Heralds, or even the Avatar, not to mention the Incarnation, can wipe the insolent creatures, for whom Alurei is not their home, to dust and ashes. Alas, neither the army, the elite units, nor the Divine Miracles of the highest order are around now, and they won't be here soon. Traitorous strikes on command centers and simply influential individuals, regardless of their success, paralyzed the work of guards, guilds, guild fighters, mercenary merchants, and aristocratic vigilantes for a long time. And even though not all of them were destroyed, rather the opposite, the creatures won time to consolidate, and they will retaliate in full readiness and at a time of greater depth of the Eternal relative to the real world.

Here, the devils did not just sit in defense, but also sent out small and toothy raid groups, helped to support teleportation beams from the bubbling skies, and also conducted artillery fire on the defense points of the inhabitants of the capital. The artillery was also worth mentioning separately. It was quasi-living and very vicious. Thirteen creatures with a level of forty-five each resembled a huge, five meters tall, cellulite asses on two legs. That's what they looked like, I'm telling you! It would have been funny if it weren't for the aura of purest Lust surrounding each of the Great Sowers, under which the average person would, at the mere sight of these nightmare bodies, at best be mentally damaged and get a bunch of perversions straight to the brain.

These things were shitting huge clumps of half-digested souls coming directly from the common bank, sending these projectiles toward the center of the city. I'm sure they're hitting the opposite end of the barrier, not to mention the Imperial Palace. And the power of a single strike is well worthy of the phrase "tactical strike magic of the military type." Because a couple or three of such shitty lumps of brownish (as a matter of fact) with golden and lilac tint would be enough to destroy the shields of an average estate-fortress of some aristocrat, and another one would be enough to destroy the estate itself with all its inhabitants. A damn dozen of creatures, firing in a coordinated manner, will destroy even the defense of the palace in a couple of hours.... well, given that there are only passive defenses there and no defenders, as well as their trump cards for the most extreme cases.

The assholes, as I'm going to call these spawns of someone's sick imagination, ignoring the system's definition, were supported by about a hundred magical-type devils. They applied reinforcements, reduced rollbacks, poured their magic or even souls into the assholes' shells, corrected the fire of not-very-intelligent entities, and generally resembled typical artillery servants, as they were shown in war movies.

Another two hundred or so mage-devils maintained the barriers, assisted the ritualists, set traps, commanded the rank-and-file devils lower down in the hierarchy (the spherical in a vacuum "mage" almost always had a level higher than the twentieth, and the sonm sang incomparably brighter), and mauled cultists and cultist women, as well as just random victims. The last point, however, was performed by all the enemy units in a cluster, and as much as I wanted to write it off as gorging and loss of control, I knew for a fact that there was no gorging and no loss of control. They were just rewarding and buffing cultists in this perverse way, reinforcing each other, creating slave puppets, turning those puppets into still-breathing billets for particularly deadly enchantments, fixing minor flaws in traps and barriers that weren't part of the main three, all in a cluster.

The physical power of the invaders was represented by the melee-oriented devils and cultists, even if any adherents of Hell could, thanks to the fleur of their Vice, have a limited influence on the brains and souls of those around them, and the corresponding talents, or at least one bad talent, any devils could still use. The presence of abilities characteristic of this type of creature and their servants did not cancel the orientation to direct conflict, as well as the numbers. The devils alone numbered at least five hundred if I added to those visible from my vantage point the ones under the roofs of buildings, barracks, and warehouses. Cultists were over a thousand, and I bet a lot of them were brought into the city at the very last moment, summoned from distant lairs and cells, because no intelligence could not have noticed such a crowd of armed assholes for long, whether they were traitors or not.

And, of course, we couldn't do without the elite, those very forty or so levels, which recently almost gave us a nasty slap in the face. They are not great in numbers. Even fifty may not be enough, but it is harder to count them. Some of them are in plain sight, and some can be sensed by intuition and perception, but still it is only a part. It is very hard and nasty to look deep into their positions. And without detailed reconnaissance, there's no desire to make a decision. What are the somns of each of these guys, what personal talents, do they rely on in direct combat, like the Envoy, on special devil magic, or on the brainwashing so beloved by all their coterie? Well, in the latter case, I'm asking about those creeps who are fully oriented on love and mental magic, and not just "know a couple of racial tricks". There's no one to ask, and there's no time to find out.

I'm not saying there's at least one Legend in there, too. I can only sense it on the edge of my perception. Someone is holding up a segmented barrier of a couple of thousand inferior creatures, and I doubt it's just a circle of a couple of stars, narrowly sharpened fiends. No, someone alone has raised this barrier and is controlling it, and with my luck, he won't be the only one there. On the one hand, the presence of even a single legendary creature replaces an average army, and with an army like the one that unfolded before my eyes, and the Legend will be much more serious than the lower bar of the legendary. But if we take into account the intensity of the situation in the Eternal, it's not so hard to assume the presence of another beast to watch over the first one - divide and conquer, and no devil can trust each other.

How many Legends are there in the city? We met one in the middle of the street, but I could feel in my bones it had been dropped off there for some purpose, perhaps even to join this squad. I wanted to believe, fiercely and fiercely, that my suspicions that there were creatures of such rank in the ranks of Hell's army were not limitless. Logic said that if they had at least a hundred devils and devilesses of legendary rank, then no tricks would be needed now. They would be crushed by simple superiority in the magical, physical, and mental planes.

So it's not that much.

But this backyard is also clearly a marginal point, where only the best or some of the best could be placed.

In any case, even I couldn't cover such a crowd in one blow, not without long and thoughtful preparation, that's for sure. And so, the voice of reason demands that I turn around and leave quietly before the increasingly dense sensory charms of the creatures make retreat too problematic. If we're going to start hitting individual ritual anchor points, we should pick the ones that are smaller than this one. They might not be as important, but they'd be more cooperative with the guards because it wouldn't work to ask them politely to die. I'll ask them, but they won't listen to me!

"Need mirrors, lots of them." In a whisper, barely audible over the cries and groans of both the souls entwined in the spell and the 'prayers' of the cultists and devils, I issue a targeted directive. "Tia, you and Losius are going to have to do a good job of giving out an awful lot of planar power. Prepare the necessary ritual circles on the roof, inside, between the collapsed floors, and in the basement. Taria, Hans, mirrors on you. Hestia, try to shade the area with that tower from the sensors, but don't overdo it."

Yes, yes, it would be smarter to retreat, which I still hope to do, but why retreat when I've never punched an enemy in the face? I can't break this crowd all at once, either alone or with my team, but only if I attack head-on. If I can't do powerful damage with the first blow, I'll run away in terror, and there's nothing to prevent me from preparing a way of escape. I must at least try since the situation may be no better elsewhere, and time still flies.

"You'll take the disguise?" Tia, businesslike as ever in a combat situation, as if the ability to hesitate she'd surgically amputated. "And, if it's not too much trouble, outline the necessary ritual."

Instead of answering, I send her a packet of images, which are not particularly well-designed and unprocessed, and I deserve a long, judgmental stare. I'm sorry, ma'am, I'm not even sure how exactly I'm going to attack, and will my attack be an attack at all? Even though she has already told me a thousand times her opinion about my improvisations without a clear plan and recipe. But right now, from her point of view, nothing can be done in a normal way anyway.

"I'll put the disguise on, yes." Out loud, I answer only the first question, simultaneously tossing up one piece of mirror after another, leaving them hanging in the position where gravity caught them. "But I'll step aside."

In response to the generally outraged stares, most of all from Losius, who suspected that I was about to be a hero, I just shook my head, not taking my eyes off the labyrinth-netting that shielded the dilapidated structure from any attention and deceived both the spells and the souls inside them. Looks like I've been misunderstood again, thinking I'm going to go to war in one face. It's very much my style, I agree, but for all my recklessness and the mountains of shit I've piled on the possible risks, my usual style is useless here. I can't pull it off even in theory.

"I'm not going to fight." Still, I can't stand it, and harshness and a slight chime of mirrors seep into my voice. "It's just that for what I'm up to... the mirrors will need material. And I want to choose it myself. The most. The most suitable."

I spoke in fragments, barely restraining a painful groan. It's not so easy to create an analog of our stationary shelter on the move and in a completely different configuration from the usual one. The only thing that saves us is that this construction is not destined to exist for a long time anyway, but if it simplifies the task, it does not make it much easier. I always knew that for Dream and the techniques based on it, the choice of the victim and its characteristics and individual traits means a lot. That's why I stayed out of the dirt. If necessary, I could be a master of sacrifice because the fancifulness of the technique I had in mind wasn't that much inferior to that of the devil ritual I'd seen in the Library. To reflect in the right way, one must have something to reflect. A certain trait, a characteristic of the soul, personality, or trivial physical body. In these situations, I can't send someone else for the right material. First of all, they are hardly likely to grasp the requirements fully. Second, it's my choice, my burden, and the blood on my hands.

Another thing crossed off the "never stoop to such a thing" list, which is getting shorter and shorter, and shorter, and, bitch, shorter. You can console yourself with the fact that for this idea of mine, it is not lambs of God, not innocent virgins or even infants. By and large, I have enough banal robbers or bandits, albeit with a couple of peculiarities. If necessary, you can do without victims, providing the necessary refractions of my own will and an extra investment of effort. It's just that now is the moment when my squeamishness can cost me not only a lot of trouble but also the lives of those I care about, so I'll have to take a little more dirt on myself and try to convince myself that I'm still me.

Not funny, of course, but I can't help but have a funny thought. I'd always thought that it would be the Shadow, not Dream, who'd make me fall to sacrifice through the exact Grip. What a fantastic life. Even with enhanced clairvoyance, you still get surprised now and then. Visit us in Alurei, you won't get bored!

There are plenty of living people around, but none of them are the ones I need, even if a few of the townsfolk hiding in the cellars could be used. There's a mother and her three sons whose connection to each other will bind several solid mirrors much more tightly than bare will with the same amount of effort. In the attic, there is a young man who has recently received a class and whose high perception can strengthen the mirror in such a way that it will strengthen my clairvoyance. And if I pull the fast-drinking grocer out of his cellar, his self-righteousness and excessive ego will easily nurture the newborn nightmare, giving it a couple of extremely useful features for the future ritual.

It's wrong, it's all wrong.

It's not about the innocence of these guys, no, and not even about my three times three times "ha" cleanliness, but about something else. I don't want the easy way out or the noble and heroic way out. No. My choice must be the right one, the most appropriate for our situation. It's easy to take the most obvious route now, but at the end of it, I'll have the same Weaver waiting for me that made me so cautious about using Dream. Only now, this Weaver will be waiting for me, not breathing down my neck but showing his face in my reflection. And his face will be exactly like mine! So an amazing coincidence!

For some reason, in many books read on Earth, the heroes easily managed to preserve themselves and their morality, and humanity, if you wish, only on pure willpower and unwillingness to "bend to the Dark Side". Naturally, these stupid Sith and Jedi, or whatever they were called, just don't know how to use the Darkness, and if you are firm in your principles, like your Chelyabinsk gingerbread, you won't have any problems. I don't know how it is with the firmness of principles, but I have been saved for a long time by the presence of examples of those who, with a high probability, thought the same way. Or didn't think the same way, but did it anyway. All I had to do was to observe carefully and - oh, miracle! - restraint in impulses came even when I could not find high morals and the most honest of rules in my head, but I did not even want to look for them. You know, it is very motivating to keep your hands away from especially stinky and dirty things, very motivating.

Now, holding them wasn't working, so here, I was nervous and feeling out of place.

I wandered in an expanding spiral around the temporary shelter, sometimes almost (and sometimes not almost) entering the zone of control of hellish charms, sometimes moving further and further away from the goal, but slowly, one by one, I found the basics I needed. Life, soul, mind, fate - how many meanings there are in these words, both generally accepted and put by each person separately. In the case of the losers who got in my way, I reduced all these high-minded concepts to banal and down-to-earth interests. Percentages of reserve saved, percentages of increased mirror output, percentages of tension removed from Tia holding the ritual constructs, and the same percentages that increased the likelihood that Losius wouldn't drown in the sky blue without being able to swim out. Such routine and simplistic thinking made it less nauseating, though at the cost of the Weaver's increasingly snide face in the invisible mirror, my face.

The first was a fat but not obese moneylender and his eldest and middle sons. They loved the essence of debt slavery as much as any other moneylenders, but these were the ones who operated in the black, albeit quietly. Selling beautiful girls to brothels for debt was quite a common practice for this fraternity. Even on Earth, this practice was also common, albeit much rarer. What about Alurei with its rejection of human (and non-human too!) rights? But this family had a rather close and carefully concealed connection with a couple of almost officially existing dark guilds. Or miniature cults, as the case may be.

They were invited to participate, but they were in no hurry to commit themselves, as they see their power in gold, not in high levels and powerful magic. Both sub-guilds signed contracts with two (each gathering has its contractor) rather strong astral entities of dark shades, quite fruitfully feeding them with living people and getting from that quite specific gesheft. The right to summon a retinue of these spirits, each of which pulled on a strong and very variable epic, rare semi-material reagents dragged from the Astral, a stream of filtered experience, or even a couple of free stats. It's quite profitable, especially if it bypasses the large orders, which will rip off the lion's share of the benefits people receive, and the spirits can be forced to a much less favorable contract for the spirits. And so - everyone is happy, everyone is in business, except for the victims.

Again, selling a living for meat was not a low point by local standards, no matter how sickening the phrase sounded, even if they usually sold slaves or criminals rather than debtors, but again, nothing unusual. If it weren't for the fact that the Spars family often made loans in such a way, the debt could not be repaid. Not outright kidnapping, although they'd stoop to that sometimes, but close to it. And they would seal the contract on a special ritual stone that both powerful spirits had worked on a little at a time. These stones, in addition to imposing contract magic, also scanned the shell of the promisee, looking for areas that would be the spirits most pleasant to taste. Needless to say, few who took the loan had time to pay, avoid a sudden robbery, did not disappear, leaving the house or something like that. And since such tasty mortals were few, while with the rest of the debtors, the family behaved relatively (relative to other moneylenders, of course) honestly and even gave a slightly lower interest. There was no shortage of customers, and bad rumors remained bad rumors.

With the lightest of manifestations, I dispel a few simple protective charms on the house, slip inside, and immediately knock out all three of the intended ones with Dream's help without even showing my face. I wrinkle my face under the mask and stop for a second, dropping a tiny shard of mirror next to the youngest child of the gloomy family. He's just a teenager who hasn't been initiated into the family business. Not from the desire to keep the child from the dirt of life but because there was no place for him in the business, and they did not want to breed competition for the older sons. The boy, by the way, is developing into an artist, so let him develop... if he survived the fall of the city and survived the jackals who wanted to take away the bloody inheritance.

The shadowy limbs grabbed the trio, and then I wrapped them in Aegis, stealing their shadows and, at the same time, literally nullifying the captives' weight and inertia and transferring them to myself. Then I rush back to the turret, taking full advantage of stealth, dragging its effects over the motionless bodies of the trio in the same way. I press down on top of them with the effects of un-existence for fear of exposing my burden to the sensors of enemy charms. Dream would have been better, but it's risky to mix plans, especially in yourself, without an adapter.

When I came back, I found a working environment. It was not surprising. Hestia, who had already taken a misty form and lost most of her human appearance, was slowly spreading the fog, careful not to take it outside the dome of mirror protection. Tia chanted in Elvish, making a multitude of marks all over the inner surface of the defeated representation with her dagger, her bare hands, and even with her simple will, preparing the ground for the future ritual. Losius meditated silently, trying not to disturb Hans and Taria, dragging mirrors pulled from neighboring houses. Fortunately, the neighborhood, though far from central, was a wealthy one built mostly of trading houses and the homes of wealthy townspeople or merchants, and there were enough mirrors to make it easy to find them.

I silently dump the moneylenders who have not woken up (and what would wake them up under my spells?) in a vacant corner. After that, I silently go away, not disturbing busy people to work. Tia's face is such that she can punch you if you try to distract her. My clairvoyance, enhanced by the mirror maze, finds a lot of targets with relative ease, and all I have to do is choose the most "worthy" ones, reach them, and bring them here. There are more than enough worthy people in this world in every way!

This couple not only hid but also actively crawled away through the courtyards, logically wishing to be far away from the cluster of enemies, who did not even need to be seen, only the perceptible even to the most magically deaf troglodyte veneer coming at you in a suffocating shaft. Seventeenth and nineteenth levels, mutual love and respect, backed by long friendship and fruitful cooperation - just like Bonnie and Clyde, honestly. Their occupation also corresponded - robbery, murder, kidnapping for ransom, or delivery of kidnapped persons to customers. The sweet couple was not squeamish about anything, and they considered the notions of pity or compassion as linguistic terms only, and both had a good, relatively usual thugs, metropolitan education. They had long ago decided that in this world, only the two of them were worthy, and they were rightfully considered to be very badass personalities, even against the background of the city gangs.

But their love, yes, their love was pure, sincere, and real. It had survived hundreds of hardships and dangers, the flames of bandit wars, the icy grip of the guards who had put a bounty on the couple's heads, and the copper pipes of too-rich booty, for which one would be tempted to cling to one's companion's throat. Such love, even if it plunges into the looking-glass with the lovers, will not dissolve at once, and the souls immersed in Dream will not float away like sugar in warm water but will last much longer, clinging to this love with pincers, not wanting to lose the only soul close to them.

I dumped them on the heads of the last three, who had been dragged to another corner by someone who was cursing in Elvish so they wouldn't interfere with drawing the signs. Actually, Tia's scolding was understandable because the right ritual is not only signs and scribbles but also time, place, order of actions, and a lot of conditions, many of which should be prepared months or even years before the "H" hour. Now the elf had only knowledge, stubbornness, enthusiasm, and a lot of different essences given to her. For some village fertility ritual or even a perfectly serviceable temporary reinforcement of a group of adventurers, such a stockpile would be enough, especially with the skill and experience of a ritualist. For what did the isekai guy demand of her? Well, the task is comparable to the order to build a bicycle and dig a latrine with only a saw, a screwdriver, and two tons of raw iron. Anyway, the swear words in Elvish, which, even as swear words, are surprisingly poetic and sublime, are quite understandable.

I bet my daggers - she wasn't swearing out of fear or anger, which had never undermined her self-control, but only so I could catch on to her words with clairvoyance and reflexively realize the full range of her disapproval, which she had no intention of hiding. She had learned her lessons, though! It is useless for Kostik to hint subtly and speak politely. He needs to inject the truth into his body at once with kicks!

Twelve people, twelve destinies I had chosen for an unenviable role, without giving them the right to refuse it. And a dilapidated trading house, slowly transforming into something completely different, something that had no place in the world. We could be justifiably proud of how quickly we were able to accomplish this task because otherwise, it would have taken weeks, if not weeks, at least half a day of preparation and a much larger number of preparers. We did it in less than an hour and a half.

An hour and a half of howling mirrors, hasty maneuvers with furniture rearrangement, and a lot of swearing, but not elven, but quite ordinary, in a common language. The two-story house with a yard and the tower adjoining the house became something resembling one huge disposable artifact... I hope disposable. This house once belonged to a famous stargazer, and it was because of his profession the tower was attached to the house. Then he got rich, bought a house in a more prestigious neighborhood, moved away, and the now-deceased merchant bought the entire building as the residence of the entire enterprise. The history of the house and its walls were pouring into my consciousness beyond desire so tightly was I associating myself with these stones now, hence the huge masses of unnecessary facts.

The ritual was three-dimensional, and its elements were located on every floor, in the basement, and in the space of the tower. Tia had worked a miracle, synchronizing the ritual circle and not blowing it up with the house in record time, relieving me of some of my tasks. Even if the main role to play here will be not the ritual and the mirror base, without "grounding" nothing will work. Chains of signs and pictograms sprouted moss on the stones and wooden ceilings, were hastily and impermissibly roughly drawn with blades on the ceilings and walls, and were drawn with glowing nauseous green pollen right on the floor. And where the ritual blueprint had been hindered by breaches and collapses caused by the magic that had infected the building, Tia had managed to build up wood constructs that obeyed her will. The trees looked bad, as everything her magic had created, but they would last long enough, and so would the marks on them.

The basement was completely given over to mirror storage. The mirror fragments were piled up there, and the paralyzed victims were frantically rolling their eyes. The debris was lying without the slightest order and was continuously bubbling and melting like boiling mercury, gradually covering the entire floor with reflections and already crawling onto the walls. In the center of the basement, which used to be used instead of a warehouse, stood I, who had taken off my cloak and favorite mask, spinning a real web of Dream energy around me, temporarily reducing the emphasis on conspiracy. It was unlikely that Weaver would penetrate the barrier, and the devils, even if they had Mirror-sensitive souls in their bank, were not up to the old man. I need the freed power more than I need stealth and disguise, which are already satisfactory.

The first floor was a very dangerous and slightly poisonous garden (with blackjack and mushrooms) that produced a powerful closed field that kept the energy from spreading around and reinforced Tia's ritual. Hans and Taria sat on the second floor in the most isolated corner possible, with Hestia controlling the fog a little to the side. They were left with a purely observational role, which they weren't too happy about.

The tower was the base, in many ways even more important than my basement. It was there that Dream's power and the debris that adorned all the inner walls of the tower were concentrated to the highest degree. It was on the top of the tower that the rostral mirrors and large shards stood, hovering and floating in the air, slowly orbiting in strange orbits, accelerating faster and faster as their song grew angrier and angrier. Tia and Losius stood almost side by side, separated from each other by the floor ceiling of the top of the tower, each surrounded by his own set of mirrors and each shining with his light. The embodied peace of the Blue and the unearthly brilliance of the preternatural Stars.

Did Kostik make a joke about building a nuclear missile silo before he went to the Library? Kostik was joking because if that thing exploded, it wouldn't be as big as a nuke, but it would hurt a lot, especially to those woodpeckers in the epicenter. However, what I need is not an explosion but something more powerful, albeit on a smaller scale. A concentrated needle prick, where the tip of the needle would be the same size as the territory seized by the devils.

There's so much of everything.

Magic, human and devilish, woven with captured and subjugated souls that themselves multiply any effects, supported by hundreds of mages and creatures. Such a power cannot be broken without total superiority in firepower, which I don't have either. Maybe if I struck with all my might without regard for the future, I'd break all the domes, individual defenses, and natural resistance. Maybe. But it's much more likely that I'll just sacrifice a piece of myself, and it's good if it's just a piece.

Not even the full might of the Shadow, for whose creatures the Devils and its inhabitants are the most desirable prey, can assure my complete victory. Even the mirror force's brutal cunning will not break the reflection of the fates of so many souls at once. So, I must change the rules and strike with more than one planar force, and not even two.

Endowed cannot use planar power of two types at the same time. It is an axiom. And even using rituals, the most complicated artifacts, and sacrifices, this axiom cannot be broken, cannot be broken at all, cannot be broken in any way. If you are not a God. I did not become a god, and the more I learned about them, the less I wanted to become one.

But.

Having dived deep enough into the depths of the looking-glass, keeping in mind its very nature, exposing myself to impossible risks, and having a team of really cool assistants with me, I was quite seriously going to do something that even the most talented local masters are given, to a greater extent, in theoretical calculations. To do what is available only to the strongest and the most insane at the same time, and even once in a lifetime, most often. No, not to break the mentioned axiom because it is an axiom. Only to push it away for one short moment, deceiving the universe with a clever trick.

It's madness.

It is a deadly danger to each and every one of us.

Here, hold my beer.

The tension makes the whole world blur in front of my eyes, and it's not because of my weakening vision. No. Dream is so thick that I'm already in it. I've already turned this piece of Reality into it. I've already fed reality to the chime of the mirrors. That chime has long since ceased to be barely audible, turning into a loud bell. I was the only one left in the basement, and the prisoners were protected from the madness of the world around us, but all of us, including me, were hanging on a thin thread above the abyss without a parachute.

Risks ignored, caution discarded, common sense buried under a three-meter layer of stone, and a thick steel plate with equally thick steel bolts on top. We all take risks, but if I led the team to take those risks, it's only logical that I take most of it. I want to take a breath, but I can't get my body to remember that it needs to breathe, that it could breathe. I want to scream, to drown out the clinking of mirrors with a shriek, but my face has long since become as smooth as the mask hanging from my belt. I dissolve like a drop of paint in a glass of water, lose myself in the endless maze of a world that never was.

With a juicy cracking sound, the flesh where my cheeks used to be ripped open, revealing a full-face maw on top of a perfectly level head. There's a husky groan, like tons and tons of glass windows falling to the ground, a thousand stained glass windows shattering, but I can still make out my own words behind their rumble. The words are mostly unprintable, even for me, devoid of tact and linguistic prejudice, but that's another matter.

Not today.

Once again - it's not the day of my oblivion.

The murmured words turn into another groan, and that into a barely suppressed cry of pain as I use the trick that nearly killed me once again. I make myself a reflection, and the reflection is me. It's as if your soul is torn apart for a couple of seconds, stretched out like a good caramel, which right at that moment was poured into a tablespoon. Reflection and reality, reality and reflection - a familiar picture, but this time there will be, must, must be one more detail, without which you can stop the ritual and run away before it explodes. I put my will into the technique I was using, using another effort that wasted my non-magical reserve, which in this state-place I replenish faster than I spend it.

Reflected Image: 5/9

I didn't even try to read anything, waving the system message away as if it were a pesky fly, by some miracle not interrupting the technique, the breakage of which would only end in my death, worse than death. Reality and reflection, reflection and reality. I had once swapped my real self with my reflected self, something even the mighty cultists and high-level devils had bought into. Now, I'd gone even further, unforgivably far, and only anger at my bad fate and my stubbornness prevented this foolishness from ending in the most logical, the only logical way.

Reflected Image: 6/9

Reflection and reality, reality and reflection.

The real me and the empty trick.

I don't change myself and the reflection in places.

Feeling like a wimp who foolishly tried to lift a barbell with two dozen weights, having looked at how real iron lifters carry iron, I make both reflections real at once. It's like flipping a coin, honestly! Tails will fall out, and both manifestations of Dream will become reflections, immediately disappearing for lack of a real prototype. Heads will fall out, and I will disappear because there will be no real me, only two reflections. You'd say that's two identical versions, wouldn't you? Maybe so, with coin tosses, it is often so, but my coin falls on the edge.

And here I am kneeling in a once dark but now filled with blue and purple fog in a basement where, deep in the fog, desperately howling victims are slowly sinking into the mirrored floor.

And here I am, slowly straightening my overly long body, standing atop a tower, in the center of hundreds of mirrors circling me, while five captives twitch in my unnaturally flexible grasp.

I'm in the basement putting an obscure number of hands on the mirrored floor, plunging them into this mirror, and beginning to pump as much force through all the reflective surfaces in a cluster as my body and mind can handle.

I'm at the top of the tower slowly, yet elusively fast, pushing each victim into a suitable and specially designed mirror that freezes in the air for a moment while the prey falls into it.

The love of one half of the heart for the other, the blood of a father and his sons, the kinship of brothers and sisters. All this binds the cellar to the top of the tower even more strongly. The bastards begging for mercy silently beat their hands and heads into the mirrors, beating from the other side, gradually melting into paraffin statues in the desert sun. The words seem to be spoken by both parts of me, though can one call a part what is originally a whole? I am in two states at once, completely united in each of them, but somehow, the pressure on my soul has not even doubled but intensified even more!

"Now." Neither Tia, standing right in front of me nor Losius, sitting a floor below me, doubted for a second that I was still me, that I hadn't fallen yet, that I could get back to my normal, as normal as I could be.

Although truth be told, they'd have to fucking doubt it!

Losius shines with Blue, and Tia pours out her Stars. Raw power, not formalized into techniques or complex constructs - pure power, useless in battle, for there is no will to direct it. Yes, even energy alone, without a master, can be deadly, especially with something like the Stars, but that's not the point right now.

Besides the two companions stand innumerable mirrors, whose number keeps multiplying and multiplying as if they were reflecting and copying themselves. Under the cover of the mirrors, where they touch the walls, shine ritual signs that prevent the mirrors from spreading liquid on the walls, losing their individuality, turning into one huge mega-mirror, followed by a huge *caboom*. The mirrors are supposed to take the soul of anyone who happens to be near them, but as long as I am, I forbid the abomination to touch them, and it's too hard to break or even distort that order, especially when one of me is right next to those mirrors, focused only on them.

The Heaven flows into the looking-glass, and the Stars fall into its depths. The energy grows, accumulates, and is reflected in each mirror. With each reflection, there is more and more of it. The effect begins to resemble a cascading reaction, and now the elf and the human stop pumping, but they don't need it. The same Reflected Image of someone else's charms multiplies itself in the mirror maze, and I only have to forbid the maze to change what has fallen into its clutches too much.

This Heaven is no longer Heaven.

These Stars are no longer Stars.

And yet they are still similar enough to their source that Losius and Tia can still sense and control them. They must be crushed both by the pressure of the native planes, whose amount of power has reached obscene levels, and by the deceptive Dream that calls to them and whose call they cannot hear behind what seems to them to be the familiar call of their class forces. This is where I come in, and my entry is very much like the suicidal impudence of a hamster chewing on a high-voltage wire and thinking itself immortal.

Stars and Sky don't belong to me and can't belong to me. They will never be mine. Well, unless I get a class tied to those powers, they won't be. Right now, they are only a threat to me but not a tool. However, if a very cunning and completely out of his head tries to do something, he has a good chance of accomplishing it, especially if he has the right tools. You can look for tools more suitable than a mythical class, but you can hardly find them.

The Heavens and Stars reflected in the mirrors were just reflections, pictures of their real selves, still having most of the properties of the real, genuine power of these planes and, at the same time, subject to my control. Weakly, very weakly, for I do not wish to subject them more, proportionately changing their nature. My control is almost non-existent, in fact, limited to locking the Image in the mirror maze. And thus, I have been subjected to simultaneous blows from both my Dreams and the copied planar forces seeking to tear apart an individual alien to them. If I had been alone, I would have been able to stand under such pressure for seconds, a minute at most. Now, I wasn't going to hold it for long either, but now I could.

Souls that were beating into the surface of the mirrors spinning in the air from within, screaming and turning memories and dreams of themselves. Other souls, just like that, screaming and slowly sinking into the mirror floor next to the other me. They were taking the blows. They were dying and going mad under the shaft, the unstoppable cascade of other people's dreams, lives, and memories. They were also taking on the aggression of planes that were dangerous to me, giving breathing room not only to me but also to the two users of these planes, who were slowly and surely preparing for the strike.

Under normal circumstances, neither Locius nor Tia would be able to control such volumes of their power. Their bodies and minds would not be able to withstand such a flood, and even if they did, it would be with such consequences that a dozen question marks to Status would seem like happiness. But at this moment, they need not hold that power. They don't need to keep themselves from falling. Only to weave from it, so unaccustomedly malleable and submissive, the most sophisticated planar charms in their lives (even if we are talking about Tia). And then, once again, defying common sense and the logic of this world, I will make these reflections forget that they are not real.

Losius and Tia would create a mock-up of the real charms, carrying at most a fifth of the potential of the true Blue and true Radiance. But they will unleash the chain, point the target, and rain down upon the hellish abomination no longer a sham but real doom again. Unless, of course, all this shit does not explode at the most unexpected moment. It would not be very cheerful for the devils, but they would survive this "bdyshch", being far away and under shields, though not all of them. And the ritual will definitely kill them, but it's a weak consolation. You won't be able to enjoy the fireworks if you are a part of the fireworks and already scattered with colored confetti.

I upstairs pull my hands away from the floor that has turned into a Dream, feeling the last note of the souls brought to it, how their love, loyalty, friendship, or kinship to those at the top of the tower can no longer bear the strain and become just another dream from the infinity of others. The palms of their hands leave chunks of their own gelatinous flesh oozing with ichor and blue mist on the almost intangible, almost lost reality surface of the once mirror. Rustling clothes of lilac ribbons woven into a dreamcatcher's web as the impossibly shaky fetters I had placed on the sacrificial souls slipped between the threads of the web.

I'm downstairs, looking up with my eyeless face, easily recognizing the swearing Hans doused in all possible protective essences, Hestia hurriedly removing the mist and regaining her human form, Hestia smiling feignedly and Taria groping Hestia's tits, both of whom I'd managed to save from the impact of the force. I'm at the top of the tower, standing next to a radiant elfess glowing with maddening light, looking down, recognizing myself below, just as I see myself above. We both squeeze out and spit out together with the drops of mirror mercury turning flesh and the flow of the Mirror's unformed fog, the necessary phrase, knowing that it will be heard by everyone who is now in the building. And Tia, almost deafened by the surrounding ringing and screaming, and Losius, who had almost lost the ability to hear in the heavenly silence, and the increasingly nervous trio of non-participants in the ritual. Because here, in this place where reality no longer exists, where only the nightmare I've created, it's impossible not to hear those words.

"Hit."

And then, when not a single soul that would have protected me, that would have taken upon itself the planar force contamination that had fallen upon my companions, when the panic began to rise in my soul, the realization that I might have miscalculated somewhere, or failed to keep track, or stupidly missed, bringing us all to our doom... it happened.

I'd even say it's come.

It came true, like an unspoken prophecy, which, given Dream's reinforcement of any attempt to divine or predetermine the future, would not be so wrong to assume.

It was an awesome hit.

They say that a true spiritual heir of Julius Caesar should be able to do three things at once, which, no doubt, has long since become a moss-covered chestnut. Specifically, I no longer felt like a ruler of ancient Rome but a fucking hundred-armed octopus. Each of my tentacles had to do three things at once, three at a time for the entire hundred, of course. Under such a load, there was no time and no power to cover our attack from the enemy's intuition, but that's why I had created a barrier of mirrors around the house that had turned into an incomprehensible anomaly. In the house itself, many elements had nature not only to create our crazy mixture of magical energies but also blocks of disguise, concealment, and deception, strengthening the already powerful barrier.

It was practically useless to completely hide such a real threat, such an intense promise of a quick strike, so it was not surprising that we failed. Actually, I didn't try to hide myself, knowing perfectly well that we wouldn't be able to create the necessary disguise in such a short time. But to blur these sensations, to delay them for that time, after which it would be too late to react, to change the reference point of the direction from which the blow would come. It was already possible. And at the end, even if it was hard to say in words what it cost me, I also covered the very first strike with un-existence, winning a couple more seconds.

They sensed the threat, or at least the strongest did, but they couldn't react. At first, it was just a faint stirring of premonitions, as if an army was gathering somewhere on the horizon to storm their den. A reason to take your mind off the victim but not to hurry things up too much. Then those feelings changed, as if the attack had become distant for some reason and would come from the other side of the same horizon. The commander of the creatures was still just calculating what forces might come to visit him, still just changing the configuration of the sonm to strengthen the necessary aspects of clairvoyance when any premonitions disappeared altogether. After that, there was a flash, if not panic, then a clear realization that they were about to be beaten. Perhaps the smartest ones, and, with such levels and experience, they are all smart there, even realized that the blow would be struck by magic from a distance and even began to select variants of who could make this blow. Whether it came from the Palace, the Academy, or a large Guild was an important but irrelevant question.

No one had time to react, except for the shields being frantically reinforced and the souls being fed to the spells for fuel for the sake of temporary reinforcement. A segmented dome of thousands of inferior creatures and many times more temporarily embodied pseudo-material souls is a defense that can't be matched at once. I am convinced that the standard long-range spells, though powerful to the extreme, this construction could withstand without wasting a fifth of the invested captives, bringing the survivors back and rebuilding the structure of the dome to counter the attack better. What a pity it was precisely such a move that was expected from them, that it was against such a move our attack was prepared, that it was for the sake of this reaction the mirror house fed its lies to the universe.

In a single heartbeat, the heavens above their heads, the part of them above the devil-occupied territory, ceased to shine with all the vices at once, becoming pristine black. This was neither Darkness nor Shadow, even if the blackness was truly terrifying. It was not the darkness in that window that was a hundred times more terrifying, but what was hiding in that darkness, shining with hundreds of pale dots, faintly visible and distant lights. In the window was the night sky, covered with Stars, and those Stars, only for a brief moment, submitted to the will of the one who carried their blood, the one who for long centuries had developed that blood bond, for the first time in her long life stepping so far down that path.

They were and remained distant, indifferent, and inscrutable. To them, no effort to control their power mattered. Even the right of blood and the might of class offered no advantage. But still, all the strength and experience, the adamantine strength of Tialrianrelia's will was enough to make those hopelessly distant lights a little closer for one moment, indistinguishable in its brevity. And because of this proximity, their familiar glow, which had nothing to do with the all-burning power of the Sun nor with the purity of the Light that carried the truth, took on new, completely incomprehensible shades. Or rather, the entities caught in the light of these fires were able, to their sorrow, to distinguish these shades.

I cut off the clairvoyance, curling it into a tight ball and shoving it to the bottom of my heels, where my heart had flung itself a second earlier. Both of me closed the eyes we were both missing, shut down most of the sensory elements of the entire house, and then began rapidly blackening all available mirrors, crushing and destroying even the reflections of what was now staring back at us from the all too real night sky. Our lives were still hanging in the balance, but it was no longer in my hands but in the graceful fingers of the elven woman who was accomplishing her feat.

Just one moment.

As I open my eyes and reactivate my blackened sensors, I can only marvel at the consequences of my prudently overlooked spectacle. The devils could have found a remedy for the terror unleashed upon them, had they known what wait them. I could tell you exactly how to reconfigure the shields: to increase the pure energy pumping, to reduce the number of naked souls, to draw the inferior devils deeper into the dome structure, to segment the dome even more, at the same time expanding its volume, albeit at the cost of loss of strength. Perhaps this would be a variant, if not ideal, then close to it, and it would be entirely within the power of the devils. My deception not only prevented them from preparing the right strategy but also helped them choose the wrong one.

Even a shadow technique strike wouldn't have been as effective, I'll be honest. More cumulative, harder, more penetrating, capable of reaching even the leaders hidden beneath the walls of the buildings occupied by the outcasts, but that was all. What was needed now was a different kind of action, one that the use of The Shadow was incapable of producing with the same effectiveness. True, the stronger creatures had been frightened or, in the worst cases, a couple of casualties in their ranks, and there had been few casualties among the elite fighters coming up.

But the rest.

The domes, all three of them, as well as the defenses and sensor networks surrounding the former mercenary guild, were gone. All of the souls spent on reinforcements at the last moment, along with the devils holding them, were gone, too, since they didn't have the sense not to look at what had graced them with its presence. More than two-thirds of the cultists and about half of the rank-and-file devils did not die, but the difference was insignificant. They were squirming, breaking, being torn apart from the inside out, their flesh flowing and solidifying in the most bizarre forms, and every soul of their sonm, which they, like their elders, had tried to protect themselves with, was experiencing the same things they had experienced, if they still existed.

Some of them will die, some will become very weak, and some, especially the cultists, may become something else, equally dangerous to all living, non-living, dead, and never lived, making no distinction between allies and opponents. The main thing here is that barely one-fifth of the original number of the enemy, even the strongest and most toothy of the bastards will be able to fight further or take any part in the surrounding events. In one fell swoop, both the enemy army - an army, not a squad - and the structure of the ritual node were damaged. The structure was not too badly damaged, and its strength, already in working mode, was incomparably higher than the one we had destroyed earlier. At that time, I successfully timed the attack without letting the fuses deploy, but here they not only deployed them but also put additional ones in obscene numbers. Even though the ritual itself, which was being stabilized feverishly by the specialists who were sitting inside the closed rooms (and therefore almost didn't notice Tia's blow), wasn't seriously threatened... from surviving the blow.

Reinforcements were running out of the barracks, warehouses, and apartment buildings into the newly normalized sky, though not very many in comparison to the casualties. The other thing was that those running out were something much more serious than ordinary devils and lower cells of the cult. The higher creatures were rapidly changing their defenses, rebuilding them as needed and kicking their subordinates to help them do it, combining shields where necessary, borrowing a soul or two from their sonms where necessary, or granting limited access to the bank with their name. Less naked souls, so vulnerable to the power of the Stars, and more pure energy, dense and segmented, spreading out in a wide front, which easily reflects such star tricks - even though it is very difficult and excessively suicidal to attack with the Stars, such techniques are sometimes used, which is why they have learned to defend against them. The defense technique is not too complicated and not particularly secret, but it is more difficult to be ready for such an attack than for a standard army firestorm.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

In general, well prepared. If Tia, unknown to science and common sense way, was able to strike again in a similar way, even if three times amplified, she would at most finish the affected radiance of the previous strike, that's it. The creatures are already looking for the point of attack, transmitting signals and messages, calling for help, and demanding support. It won't pass another starburst, even if you take Valerium from Taria and shoot yourself! There's one funny coincidence in this whole circus. The ideal defense configuration against the Stars is quite vulnerable to those planes that are so skillfully penetrated by energy techniques based on the power of Hell, which, in its pure form and without the "soul" support of the sonm, is quite weak against the same Sun, Flame, Light or...

If the glow of the Forerunners came from the sky, the blue of the heavens, as if in mockery, did not touch the heavens. Nor would Losius be able to give the Eternal City back its stolen Sky, which was not only a window for an attack to slip through but also a near-perfect door for escape or at least temporary shelter! Those who try to run towards the glow of the Stars can only sympathize, but the chances of surviving a trip through the particularly high Heavens, though ridiculously low, are much higher than a run through the deep Shadow. Losius, under this boost and with the mirrored power given to him, had almost a hundred percent chance of tearing the blockage like paper, as I do with Shadow, but that would be too illogical a waste of power.

The sky appeared all at once and everywhere, exactly eleven seconds later, which seemed not short at all, when I was already internally prepared for the disclosure of our hiding place and the blow to us. Again, many people, mostly elite representatives, managed to react, but the devils who survived the first attack and even spent far from bottomless (without access to the bank of souls at the unlimited tariff, it's not surprising!) reserves to defend against it, like the same "mages" up to the thirtieth level and maybe a little higher, realized that the phrase "eternal rest" is successfully embodied in the harsh reality of Alurei not only by adepts of Death.

The heavens appeared at once as a huge sphere, covering the entire mercenary lair and even part of the surrounding area, where there was no one and nothing after Tia's blow. The energy, which at first seemed light, not at all dense, and even somewhat airy, hardened, shone, and... with a ringing sound, collapsed with a clang, literally knocking the creatures to the ground or tossing them into the air. In both cases, more often than not, in pieces. In terms of sheer depth of concept, this attack was much weaker than Tia's because Losius was already working on the edge, and stepping even deeper could simply pacify him until he was completely numb. That's why I asked him to strike just like that, just at this moment - the mentioned strike with a deep base would be much more effective, but right now, even a strike with classic, one could even say academic in its public comprehensibility magic was no less useful. Against the shields of the monsters, it was just right, I testify as an eyewitness!

Only the same elite defended, and the "artillery servants" covered and were covered by the mutually reinforcing and synergistic combat auras of huge assholes. These avatars of cellulite asses of roadside burger-house regulars did not even scratch, and the surrounding fleur, almost material in its effectiveness, covered the little imps crowding around them.

It was the most logical group for me to target. I had been trying to regain my human form all this time. If it hadn't been for the potions I'd drunk in advance, which I'd created specifically to work with Dream, the consequences of my antics would have been much less gentle, but I managed. With a quiet sob, the still staggering me-in-the basement ceased to be real, became a reflection, and then it became what happens to reflections when the mirror disappears. At the same moment, I stopped levitating at the top of the tower and fell to the creaking and crumbling floor of the tower, next to Tia, who was frantically wiping the blood from her nose. The flesh was crunching and squelching as it lost its fluidity, becoming a familiar piece of meat with four limbs again, and the face opened into normal eyes. Well, as much as a scarecrow as I'd already become could have a familiar body and a normal face.

Switching from one plane to another is not a safe thing to do, even if, by some miracle, you can make the transition. The experience of the battle with Ferer Roche showed that this trick was possible for me. However, my brain, which had been a little more brainy since then, demanded that I endure five heartbeats pushing out the Dream's power before calling Shadow again. I just don't want to find out what happens to my body and soul if some asshole tries to mix the two planes. If someone tries it, I will watch from afar, but I will not rush to the stage myself.

Because of the loss of time, the Devils were able to recover a little after the strike. They have already begun to guess that they are not a safari for bored tourists, and all sorts of antelopes and monkeys with crocodiles suddenly grew not only horns, claws, and fangs but also Kalashnikov rifles, mounted armor, and multiple rocket launchers to meet tourists in full armor and provide them with an unforgettable experience. Well, it happens.

I run through the system's pop-up messages, then jump down from the tower, activating the Leaf in the Wind for a moment, and while still in flight, I begin to gradually take my Form. First, my palms, then my lungs, throat, and part of my chest, then my legs and the rest of my insides take on the properties of Shadow, and the crazy hitman starts preparing his attack while still in flight. I summon small Shadows, who I weave into the structure of the charm, who I put there as a living projectile, and who I remake on the fly (on the jump?) with the help of Creation. At the same time with the summoning, I'm working through Manifestation, trying not only to mold something killing from pure power and sacrificial creatures but also to tie it all to the fabric of reality, manifesting the properties I need. It's no big deal. I've done it a hundred times (no).

The shadow teleport brings me to a distance satisfactory for a magical fight, leaving behind my recovering companions. I need to focus all the enemy's attention on myself, not letting them start looking for (and, logically, finding) Tia and Losius, who are exhausted by the attack and who can't be protected by the remaining three, while even the devils, who are shaken by the attack, can take down the whole team.

I wasn't afraid of jumping out of the teleporter into some nasty trap or network of enemy charms. After successive defeats of the territory by Stars and Sky, there was nothing dangerous here except for the residual emanations. Using a skill that was normally quite unpleasant to use while inside a field that complicated spatial manipulation was comparable to having to run an old and rusty grater over my entire body. If it weren't for the insane regeneration granted by the Form that almost completely occupied my body, I could have incapacitated myself before the battle began. In my current state, my losses were limited to the unpleasant sensations I had experienced and a slightly higher degree of anger, though where could I go from here?

This whole situation, having to fight in a war that wasn't my own to save the lives of those assholes who wouldn't hesitate to nail me to death at the first opportunity, had pissed me off ever since the barrier had been raised when it had occurred to my tight brains that just getting out of here wasn't going to be "easy." But now, when I'd almost killed myself against the wall when I'd been soaked in the shit of sacrificial magic when the pressure of planar energies and visions sent by clairvoyance had brought me to the edge... Now, I was really pissed off, and I needed someone to take my rage out on. It was a good thing that there were plenty of suitable targets nearby!

I chose the assholes as the focus of my attack, largely because, despite their level and danger, they had the least chance to fight back, having gathered in the biggest pile at the same time. If they were intelligent, they were on the very edge of intelligence, where even Ygra would seem like an academician with three advanced degrees. I'm not going to argue with the fact that a single volley fired at a single target was guaranteed to make any Legend unpleasant if it couldn't dodge it, but otherwise, they were as primitive and simple as scrap iron. Powerful defense auras, wild survivability, enormous stature, a crushing fleur of Lust, and virtually a single attack ability, albeit a highly variable one. But even with a thousand varieties of artillery cannon shells, each with its effects and features, the cannon will always remain a simple cannon.

I took a deep breath with absent lungs - somehow, I got into the habit of linking magical actions to breathing - and exhaled, having already taken an absolute Form, having grown to a height comparable to that of a standard asshole. This form, whose basis was centered on the maximum conductivity of planar energy, its maximum concentration, and purity, looked like something between a frog, a sea anemone, and a very ugly mushroom. Immobile, unable to move due to physical effort, weakly armored, and quite vulnerable in the real world, it was far from being the embodiment of doom, but the firepower of the resulting scarecrow was awe-inspiring, even to me, who was used to operating with huge amounts of force.

Above the Form, literally another height away from its uppermost limbs, a black sphere incarnated in an instant, as if it were another sun, only absorbing light rather than producing it. Immediately, the glow of the purple sky dimmed, and the surrounding world, at least within a radius of about a kilometer, became completely black and white. At most at a greater distance, there was a slight fading of reality, but next to me, an ordinary warrior might have been driven mad simply by the mental pressure of a Shadow, if his brain hadn't been burned out by the recent phantasmagoria.

They reacted very sluggishly to my appearance, which was completely understandable but a little frustrating. I tried so hard! And even though my efforts were aimed at being ignored to the last, no one and nothing could stop me from taking offense because good boys don't start a fight without a suitable "casus belli." If I had been a little longer, I would have been kicked in the ass because, for a direct fight, Shadow Form was as suitable as a pug for a bear hunt, but I chose the moment. The speed of charm creation, the cover from the intuition, which now, for myself alone, was much easier to perform, the choice of the point of arrival on the battlefield. All this gave me only a fraction of a second of extra time, but they were exactly what I needed.

The sun flickered and then appeared above the center of the complex, just a little away from where the assholes were based. Even if I'd chosen those creatures as the target of my attack, the first target was still the structure of the ritual, which the twin blows of Heaven and Stars still couldn't crush, only undermine. As it appeared above the enemy positions, the sphere of blackness acted like a real bomber, opening like an inverted shadow rose (I remembered those flowers from the first time I'd seen them before the assault on Stone), and from its petals came a stream of blackness as black as the stuff that made up the sphere.

It wasn't even a stream of energy, like a spear, a battering ram, or a huge wave, but a Manifestation embodied by the utmost concentration of this energy, which literally bound a piece of reality to the space of my "favorite" plane, turning it into something completely indescribable and very dangerous for life. More than three dozen Shadows planted in these enchantments helped to hold the construct together and activate it in time. The stream hit the ground, catching only a couple of unlucky creatures, but it was no miss, for in the next instant the Obelisk of Manifestation (whether the name came from the scraps of knowledge brought by the visions or from my sick imagination) ceased to be an Obelisk, spilling over the entire surface of the tainted and desecrated ground. At the same instant, those who had not been atomized by the mere touch of the resulting cloth fell swiftly into the Shadow, right along with the shields that had covered them and prevented them from being atomized.

Some of the creatures, not all of them even among the elite fiends, managed to withstand and not let themselves be dragged away from reality. Some managed to cover even their neighbors, reasoning it was better to spend on their protection and then use them instead of a meat shield than to face the assault group (which would come after the attack of several circles of high-level sorcerers), but the situation was not in favor of the creatures of Hell. However, my advantage didn't last long, which was a shame. They were reminded of their existence by those who couldn't be hit even by three such vicious attacks, especially if they were square attacks rather than targeted ones.

There were indeed two legends at once, not just one. That certainly made me feel good about my pride as a Sensor and Seer, but otherwise, it was sad and frustrating news. Not that I was sure I was going to die soon. The creatures were shaken up, and I'd barely used up about half my reserve and was still far from the point where the roof would blow off - but it wasn't pleasant. And who would be pleased to be up against two legendary Devils of such a cheerful Aspect as Lust was known for? Especially if those two, unlike the late Mistress, were not beautiful and feminine.

The first... asshole emerged from the flash of spatial skill, surrounded by a dozen Darkness-burning tainted souls. It looked like the mother of all assholes at once, even if it was inferior in size to Ygra or even the aforementioned Mistress. The problem was that it had no concept of "height," as the width of this lump of fat was roughly equal to its height. The appearance matched - like a morbidly obese Jabba Hutt from an old Lucas franchise. It would have been funny if it weren't for the fifty-eighth level and the aura of mortal danger surrounding Eloquent Whacker. He was the one who maintained the segmental barrier over this crib, and with the death of all the souls in his creation, the eruption itself had weakened, but not enough to write him off.

The second looks almost like a classic demon from Earth fantasy, even if not a demon, but a devil - huge stature, horns, leathery wings, glowing red eyes, and an aura of admirable, servile Vice dripping off Third Dreamer of level sixty exactly. And, if my intuition, from which he did not even try to hide, can be trusted, then this guy, like the ordinary devils, focused his talents almost exclusively on direct combat, only in a much more advanced form. He didn't have the sophisticated mental techniques that I liked so much because they were of little use against me, nor did he have the voluminous magical attacks at the expense of the souls he invested. Speed, armor, defense penetration, and soul damage are like a two-button paladin joke come true, only not funny. And I can't say that this guy, who jumped out of some barracks right through the wall, was so badly hurt by the previous attacks.

They both moved exactly where it was most logical to move - to the assholes still protecting each other, the servants concentrated near them, and the elite hurriedly arriving at the same point, with unprecedented sanity wishing to be close to their formidable superiors. Even the black cloth covering the ground was quickly scorched at that point and without much effort. To my deepest regret, the creatures had not gathered together to facilitate my task or even to fuse passionately into one huge cock-like fuck. Their goal was and is to protect the ritual, which they did with annoying competence - where are all the enemies with the "stupid evil" worldview? Why do I almost always get very intelligent bastards? Arbitrariness!

Darkness and Shadow are black and darker than ever. It's almost impossible to confuse them, even if you have no magical talents and one basic point of characteristic in Energy with Concentration. Where Shadow looks like the blackest silk cloth, a ribbon, a cut on the flesh of reality, a hungry abyss staring at anyone who dares to look at it, Darkness is quite different. Like a bubbling and boiling mass, like the thick smoky smoke of burning flesh, equally black, but at the same time very different. Darkness is not hunger or loneliness. Darkness is madness that takes everything it touches, but unlike the Shadow, which is greedy beyond imagination, it always gives the same madness in return. It is the favorite plane of the sacrificers, thanks to which it is easiest to get free power, stat, and skill points not related to levels, taken away skills, and, in general, everything you can only wish and hold on to, getting what you want.

In many ways, a Darkness user is an even more unpleasant opponent for a Shadow adept than a summoner of Light or Heaven. The power may not have the same piercing advantage against shadow techniques, but where it cannot pierce, it is very easy for this abomination to seep through any vulnerability, like oil droplets through cloth, like a stream of smoke through cracks. And few people have the skill set of a shadowcaster that I possess to recognize and devour the abomination.

Whacker demonstrated... demonstrated simply splendid control of the sonm, whose souls might be inferior to Mistress's trophies in terms of exoticism. But they were great in number, and the creature could chase whole squads of the strongest prisoners at its disposal. There was no variety - only those marked by Darkness in all its manifestations. He was careful not to let the souls go far away from him, fearing that an ambush regiment of planar creatures would emerge from the darkness of the breach (I would have created it, but the same barrier wouldn't let me summon and recruit a crowd!). Smoky, almost liquid streams struck in a wide fan as if a figurative fountain had released dozens of jets, and tons of reinforcements began to pour into Whacker, giving him the ability to not think about reserves even more than usual.

With a satisfied gurgle, grunt, and fart at the same time, the creature (which, without mental defenses, would also be crushing my brain with Lust, which was nauseating in itself) tore away the veil of the manifested breach, turning it simply into pure energy, first pushing the canopy away from the guild's central buildings, where the ritualists sat. Dreamer didn't attack my clumsy carcass only because he was still searching the main ambush regiment and summoner. He mistook me for a pre-called creature. And his sensory skills were pretty good.

Hysterical laughter burst from the dozens of jaws on the Form's tentacles so naturally that there was no attempt to hold back. It was like that Batman joke, where under the mask of Batman there was another mask of, you won't believe it, Batman! It was a bit like that for me. Beneath the first layer of enchantments lurked a second of a similar nature but of a slightly different configuration. The Darkness stripped and defiled the first layer almost effortlessly, for the attack was perfectly calibrated and sharpened against the use of such abilities as Manifestation. The second layer did not spill over the ground like the first but transferred, appearing directly over the ritual center and falling on it in a huge pancake. The layered defenses, which had not had time to recover properly from the previous attacks, were not strong enough to break the enchantments that were trying to throw the entire building into Shadow.

No one waited now, though Whacker's farts were indignant, and his indignation was mirrored by an agonizing ecstasy dropped directly on his trophy souls. Dreamer simply vanished from one point and afterward appeared before the carcass of the shadow creature he believed to be, to strike with the claws of his hands glowing with pure Light, and the wings turned into sharp blades. As I continued to blade my favorite daggers, he repeated this rather popular trick, tearing the unresponsive shadow apart while unleashing a concentration of Hell power that no amount of resistance could save - overkill. Double overkill because I wasn't there anymore, just a deception so thick and concentrated, complete with a couple of Shadows planted in it and treated with Creation, that even such a powerful fiend fell for it. This deception was scattered into innumerable ribbons, trying to bind the creature while the rest of the energy flared up with attack charms based on the same Manifestation (I didn't expect to hurt this death machine with simple magic).

My hopes were not realized because the freak (very graceful and devilishly handsome, but still a freak) ignored the ribbons, as they could not even touch him, dissolving in the lilac glow around his body. He broke the charms that had not had time to unfold with one more flap of his wings that shone with corrupted light. Like I'm an angel or something? I don't like this religion. Can I be an atheist?

I fell out of the concealment and un-existence at the same time, almost in human form, and right above the blackened building, which, under the cover of the shadow shroud, seemed like a Photoshop cutout of a picture, a blur of a broken screen on a digital image. Green rays of some evil charms break through from time to time, preventing my charms from completing, taking the right configuration, and destroying the desperately resisting ritualists, who by some miracle did not ruin the ritual, and I have no idea how they kept the ritual.

I touch the building enveloped in my magic while Dreamer tears through the deception, ignoring the four elite creatures around me as well as the fifth that was about to strike from above. Several things are happening at once, merging into a single stream of rapidly changing frames. My mind was trying to be confused and bound by mental techniques, among which there was a surprisingly powerful spell. The body itself, quite human but black and white because of the activated Aegis, is filled with attacking charms embodying blades, beams, pulsar balls, a seven-tailed whip, and something suspiciously resembling a stream of worm-like phalluses. The Aegis went into afterburner mode, and the attacks that flew through the two-dimensional me forced the creatures to spend their energy on defense.

But.

A second before the first attack, the worms (worms, period, because I don't want to think otherwise!) touched me I managed to finish my black work, and the building beneath me disappeared with a pop. It didn't fall too far. Probably, the ritualists of obscene levels sitting there could still pull it back up on their own. But even with extreme effort, the wizards couldn't stabilize such a thing. A barely audible, familiar ringing and a wave across the slightly lighter skies indicated that one of the anchor points had fallen out of the network. And then I took a sharp step back, saving my ass from Dreamer, who was ready to work out my ass with an unsheathed log, with a mixture of surprised pleasure and, at the same time, childish resentment.

The creature sensed me even in the Shadows, especially since I couldn't dive any deeper, so it wasn't going to leave me alone. And I had a nasty suspicion that my being on the other plane wouldn't stop that asshole's blows from getting to me. And there were still the other surviving creatures, who were now rapidly taking up positions to hunt me down and block my retreat, coordinated by Whacker and Dreamer at the same time. Alone, the tired and battered, albeit elite, forty-something creatures weren't so dangerous, true, but together they'd kick me around, and with Dreamer's impenetrable cover and Whacker's area magic, I'd get a bit too uncomfortable around my anus.

The battle potions seemed to have survived my planar adventures. The glass of the vials, treated with essentialism to almost absolute insulation, protected them well. I had tested their reliability more than once for just such a case, taking only five vials with me so as not to ruin the rest, if the insulation failed. The practice showed that even such powerful insulation would not protect the subtle shades of the essence from distortion in the mirror plane. The glass vial I'd thrown at it on my way out into the real world was simply knocked aside, and instead of a fiery inferno at the point where it met Dreamer's limb, there was only a barely perceptible flash.

I managed to bounce off the Legend's blow, but the second creature, which was now surrounded by almost half of the surviving elite, reinforced its spell. He used the same flame, only it worked. Dreamer stepped into the hellfire without fear, but I was saved from burns and some extremely tricky debuff tied to the flames by Aegis. Aegis took a spear thrust from a deviless who jumped out of the blink and tried to counter me while her boss was squeezing me straight on. Aegis met the spear, which resembled a blue misty spine, without even going into boost mode, and its point only slid across my back, going into the melted and cracked stone of the sidewalk.

Taking advantage of the creature's hesitation, I grabbed the spear, at the same time releasing thin shadowy threads from my fingers that crawled up the spear, grabbing the devil's limb and pulling it under Dreamer's strike. Showing surprising solidarity, the latter did not strike through her, ducking the blow of the glowing scorcher's hand, instead giving us both a kick with a sweep of his wing. Aegis ignored the damage, and I could have easily stayed where I was, preventing the blow from transferring momentum to me, but it wasn't in my best interest to refuse to break the distance.

Still in flight, tightly hugging the creature that was trying to kiss me on the top of my head and pouring a heap of Lust through her mouth, I used the ultimate form for my left arm and, with almost no resistance, reached the creature's heart, crushing it in my Grip. In the process, the victim kept pummeling Aegis with all the magic it could muster, trying to redistribute the damage to the various souls and battering my brains with fleur. Alas, the ultimate concentration of the Form is ultimate for a reason. The only embarrassing thing was that even dying in a very painful way the devil moaned so much that I felt like a bald German plumber on the set of a porn movie, even though I had come to fix the pipes.

From Dreamer, which was extremely annoying with its speed and power, I expected to hit the Aegis directly, which could be put into the afterburner for the sake of such a thing, but it remained in place without moving after the wing poke. Then I felt mentally inferior. The reason for such a self-critical assessment of my brain activity was not automatically reflected attempt of the just-killed creature to impose a posthumous curse that reduces cognitive functions of the brain to the level when I could ask Ygra for math advice. It's just that Dreamer didn't dumb it down and stop the hit because he didn't want to hit his companion but rather set us both up for the hit. Devils are not shy about framing each other and never show any concern for their allies - what a surprise!

Whacker and five other creatures, backed by at least half a dozen of the assholes' servants who were coming up to fight, covered me with a clever, multilayered cocoon of Flame and Sun, and his cheerleading squad was reinforcing the cage with all their might. The grin on the creature's fat face was so infuriating that I barely restrained a howl-grunt, not wanting to indulge Shadow's instincts. The cage didn't last long, immediately turning into a crematorium where even Aegis couldn't keep me alive for too long. If I switched to Fastspeed, I'd just turn into a creature from the kickback because they could keep the crematorium going far longer than I could keep my sanity at maxed-out Aegis levels.

I felt an unpleasant heat, gradually turning into a painful one, but still managed to take back a couple of square meters of the fiery hell space with the help of Manifestation. Further down the line, however, the advancement stood still. I was putting in a sea of energy, but my opponents had more, and on the outside of the firebox, the souls summoned by Whacker were scurrying back and forth, patching up techniques that were being torn apart by the Manifestation. I was being pressed slowly and surely, either to take me prisoner or just kill me slowly and painfully (is there any other way for fiends?).

The level of anger in my shattered essence takes several new levels at once, and the ruins of the fortified fortress of the invaders, which had become almost perfectly level ground after my first blow, are covered with cruel laughter coming from all sides. The mental attack, to which such displays of emotion could well be attributed, had little effect on the creatures. Except that a few of the weakest shuddered in ecstasy at the horror it inspired but never reduced the intensity of the power invested. Less than twenty seconds had passed since my appearance in the arena, and barely a minute had passed since the first planar Star Strike when an Idea popped into my head. I would even say a Thought!

After changing my mind about using the made-up combination of Manifestation and Creation that I had hoped to use to break my cage, I began to prepare an equally cunning and equally made-up attack. Because breaking the cage would be handled by a very different force. Slowly, I stand up, stretching my back hunched over with my Form, almost completely occupying the space of the coffin I've reclaimed from the sun's fury (it's just the right size). I know they can easily see me, as I can easily see them. I'm aided by the Gaze that doesn't turn off in this state, and they must have their counterparts. The cage muffles, crushes, and blurs what I perceive, but I calmly raise my hand forward, pointing at Whacker as if promising him something bad.

The one smiled even uglier, shaking in a sickening fit of laughter and ecstasy, but I wasn't pointing at him, which it might have realized if it hadn't been such a narcissistic fat ball. Behind him levitated a relatively small, forty-fifth-level deviless, clearly of the magical subtype of fiends, and no doubt taking a significant part in maintaining the fiery Gehenna that clutched me in its grip. Her face was constantly changing, and without mental protection would take the form that would seem most beautiful to the beholder. The powerful aura of mental influence would easily make the victim believe before him, it was his beloved, erasing all the incongruities and inconsistencies of this version of events. She sobbed with happiness and laughed with grief, wasting her sonm's reserve and dragging strength from the bank of souls but keeping the magical basis of the technique stable while Whacker strengthened and modified it through controlled souls.

I remember when I had subjugated a bloodsucker to my Ring, I had already noticed the creature was more pleasure-filled than ordinary people. But at that moment, I realized the waves of ecstasy experienced by the Arenam bug were bullshit compared to what instantly covered Stranger Beloved. Because I could have guessed that the devil of her Aspect should be covered with something quite unimaginable so this pleasure could actually rewrite the consciousness of such a powerful creature in one short moment.

It was good that I was already in fusion with the plane and full concentration, having taken a partial Form and covered by Aegis, because if I had caught the wave of fleur she spewed, being in blissful ignorance of her arrival, my brains would have been, if not burned, then directed along a strictly outlined and far from chastity route and then I would have been ashamed.... if I survived a tumbling with such a sacrifice of a ring. More important than my reflections on what had never happened was something else, directly tied to my pitiful situation.

Creatures need control.

The iron will that held the spells woven from hundreds of souls.

Devils, despite their exposure to their Vice, are overwhelmingly strong-willed, especially at high levels. These were no exception, fully committed to fighting me and keeping the trap set. Question for the experts. What would happen if one of the main supports of the aforementioned charms not only fell out but exploded, flooding everyone around with their feelings and pleasure, which gives the devil strength but also vulnerability? Yes, beating Lust with another Lust, without being a stronger devil, can be considered a reason for an honorable nomination for the best suicide of the year because any Slavemancer or Seducers to these creatures akin to walking to Moscow right from Alurei. But a mythical artifact is a different matter, isn't it?

With another, no less loud, but far less dangerous "bdyshch" my crematorium turned into a fiery whirlwind in which my Aegis was no longer scratching. And the opponents themselves, including both Legends, were stunned by the ecstasy for a second - a whole second! - were stunned by the ecstasy of the convulsing deviless. Such sudden vulnerability in the creatures appeared. I don't even know how to react.

Oh, wait, though!

I know!

Dreamer doesn't hit, Whacker doesn't push, and the assholes don't aim in my direction. The crowd is enjoying the waves of the storm of ecstasy raised by the fleur of my target - it's just the perfect moment for an attack when all those who are able to interfere can't do it! I was preparing an attack instead of the crematorium breakdown for a reason, and the flaming prominences were only to my advantage. The main thing is not to exhaust me this time. Even with my reserve, quite tired from the previous dances, such a task is not easy.

A light shadow canopy spreads out from me in an invisible wave, not extinguishing the flames but lifting them upward, revealing a view of prey so vulnerable that it can't even protect the clusters of its souls. My shadow instincts burst up like an unruly horse, lashing out like a furious rhinoceros but still not completely overpowering me. The upward flames give shadows, many long, very long shadows, moving and fading with the disappearing fire, giving way to darkness. Even the glow of the purple sky does not pierce through the armor of raised dust, ash, and smoke, but for now, the flames still live, survive, and give light, which in turn gives rise to shadows.

It is impossible to grasp the moment when the shadows no longer follow the movement of the fading flame, when the shadows that have become even thinner rush into the Form's limbs, which have become monstrous paws, like dozens, hundreds of threads caught at their ends. And then almost all of the remaining reserve - something like three sevenths - is whisked away into the abyss of the void, leaving a pitiful crumb in the body to keep it from dying in squirming. The Form restores the reserve with great speed, but even it has a hard time compensating for such a drastic loss, so I nearly kill myself, falling back into human form.

The threads in my hands - now normal-sized but still as black and clawed- leave bloody slashes in the black flesh, and no less black blood protrudes from the wounds as I use all the strength I have to manifest them. I make them more than just threads, more than even the most intense attack lash. With a hoarse howl in which I don't even know whose anger is greater, mine or the shadow's, I pull those threads towards me, tearing them, ripping them, and taking them for myself. Each thread, when it breaks, hits me like a whip, to the point of howling, to the point of blood, to the point of more hatred, and there are too many threads.

And it would have been a foolish self-torture if it had not been for the huge assholes disintegrating as cut-up soup sets. If it had not been for the deep, perfectly even wounds on the fat body of Whacker. If it had not been for the privates and not-so-devils, who had been dissected in the most unexpected places... Those threads simply cut through reality as the manifested sections linked it to the Shadow. To stop it with a standard shield was simply impossible without a huge superiority in pure power and their favorite tricks with captured souls. Stunned creatures simply did not have time and therefore, did not give their wounds to other people.

The reserve is empty for only a fraction of an instant until I overcome the weakness and crushing hatred, activating the Breath of Magic and once again finding myself full of power, even if not moral. My psyche is shaky, but it's shaky moderately as if the rolling marbles were stopped by a pillar of purest smugness, which I rightfully felt from a successful attack with a clever diversion. Kostenka is a good boy today, which is useless to argue with if you want to live.

I couldn't risk using the shadow step, not after the storm of energy I'd just created, so I dashed the most banal way possible, transforming into another Form as I went. Reflexively, I slice open the forty-first-level creature that tried to stop me with my clawed limb without noticing its mediocre defenses. Whether it's because the devil's sonm have thinned to an obscene number..... or maybe it's just that my brain hasn't had time to get back in place. Again, everything is in speed. Maximum maneuverability is an absolute priority, and that's why the appearance of the Form is similar. This time the size of the body acquired for the time was more compact, the curves were a little smoother, and the jaws with limbs were smaller - the need to fight with a significant number of opponents and not to bury one single blue-skinned scum.

I appeared above Whacker. He rapidly regenerates and simultaneously summons more souls for his cover. I exhaled such a concentration of shadow power that purely visually it could also be confused with Darkness, so material it seemed. Wounded, deprived of protection and thousands of subordinates from whom he could draw strength and to whom he gave his fatigue, Whacker still managed to cover himself with some cleverly twisted spatial distortion that reflected the flow of shadows into myself. What about me? I regain control of my energy, directing it to the same point. A Legend, especially one so specific, had to have equally sophisticated tricks in its arsenal. I could even sense some kind of soul disintegrating in the depths of Hell, which should have given him a defense comparable to that of Aegis for a second, but he just didn't have the time. On the second attempt, the stream of blackness, filled with inferior Shadows created from raw power that wouldn't last long until the hastily used Creation holding them ran out, slammed into the fat block, tearing its shell, and the Shadows, like worms, began eating everything they could reach. In such a state, Whacker could do nothing against the grasping blow to the center of his body, which succeeded in destroying the base of the somn. In this case, it was even easier because the part of him responsible for controlling souls was almost his main "organ," if such a definition could be applied to such structures.

Aegis habitually ignored a few dozen not-too-dangerous blows that the survivors of Whacker's crew tried to stop me with, but apparently, they failed. I felt like an invulnerable imba, and for the second time, I got slapped for it, and by the same "educator"! Again, Dreamer managed to inexplicably dull my senses and hit me so hard that my entire five-meter body shuddered from the pain that burned him! Yes, I sensed the attack and easily had time to use Aegis, but the monster inexplicably disguised his blow as one of the attacks of the crowd, deceiving the automatic defense.

With a hiss worthy of the accounting department of my last job, I take a step back, and in this form (and Form!) I can ignore the danger of blending myself up like a mixer. I don't want to fight Dreamer, who wants to give me a big hug. No, no, no, no, no, I'm not like that. I'm made for other relationships, and Taria won't forgive me for cheating!

The merry game of tag continues, and I'm not the one having fun. The creature ignores everything I throw at it from a distance and manages to shorten the distance every now and then. The violet glow around his skin absorbs or weakens any hastily created attacks, and what does get through the barrier nullifies his regeneration. That said, Dreamer is too strong, fast, and very dangerous even for the Form for me to allow myself to stop for a moment and create something dangerous enough. Suddenly, though, this particular Legend is outclassed in such a way that I have trivially nothing to cut him open with.

There's still the Aegis ultimatum attack, but I feel like that's going to hit my brains too hard, and they're already tired of putting up with my arbitrary behavior. And as if one Dreamer wasn't enough for me, the creatures circling around me are trying to pick me off every now and then, while their bosses are not giving me a break, and I don't even have time to respond properly because of the same boss.

Step.

I create a dozen shadow copies, just out of a desire to block the view and dull the sensors, not in the hope of at least scratching, while trying to create a shadow puddle in the place where he will be a moment later, at the same time manifesting this puddle into a kind of camouflaged and almost non-radiating breach, a wolf pit leading to the depths of the Shadow.

Dreamer swings the spears away with his wing without even slowing down, just as he ignores the spiked shadow chains hidden in the spears, stepping brazenly right onto the mine. His defenses are too good to drag him into the Shadow or just rip his leg off, and the detonation of the collapsed Manifestation only caused a few fuming wounds. The creature was too close and ready to attack, so I ducked away.

Step.

I ignore the strange water net, literally drawing in any magic, sucking it into itself and mixing it with its structure. I atomize it with a burst of shadows, but there's no time to attack, so I run away again.

Step.

I spit out a stream of blades, trying to braid the main freak with rapidly manifesting ribbons, but he tears the ribbons, and the blades only make him cover his eyes again with a wing. He trying to get me with a second one while ghostly swords, covered with rune patterns reminiscent of fucking dwarves, fall from above.

Step.

I missed the moment when two of the creatures covered me with a cloud of dust, constraining my movement, which literally reeked of the power of the Hardness, crushing me and preventing me from moving normally. The weight of a mountain range in a single speck of dust is not like cutting off heads with stone blades. Clearly, some particularly badass soul was strained, not to death, but only exhausted. I don't care even more than I care about the purple glow that Dreamer used to continue his claws, striking me again. I'm forced to take the attack on the enhanced Form, not wanting to freeze in boost under the pressure of the dust spell. It's not going to go away. It's going to keep pressing in and pulling my mind out of me, and Dreamer, an experienced bastard, can easily see how much I don't like to get hit by such prolonged attacks with continuous damage.

The shadow body groans in pain, missing the blow again, and common sense and commonplace logic suggest that it's time to turn on my brain, temper my pride, and accept that I can still take out this legendary fiend one-on-one, but not under the pressure of the remaining elite, who are very skilled in the tactics of pen hunting.

Step.

Step.

Step.

After about another minute, filled with adrenaline rushing out of my ears and injuries to my isekai pride, I realize I can do nothing to the main freak while the others are in my way. I don't want to risk it, but I can't do it without risk, so I stop attacking Dreamer altogether, just running away from his clawing paws, focusing my energies on the rest of the contestants of the "Punch Kostik in the Skull" contest so they wouldn't get bored, bitches.

Step.

The edge of the wing hits one of my limbs, slicing it off and causing it to scatter in black flakes, but I manage to retrace my steps, narrowly missing the second blow aimed at my face. The consolation prize is a slightly hesitant creature with two heads, one of which sucks its breasts, occasionally spitting streams of liquefied Lust at me, while the other has just realized with surprise that it is now the only one. The extremely accelerated and surprisingly thin blade sliced off the head, the not-so-high-quality spear concealed from the premonition was slashed past the hideous body, and the head had already begun to regenerate. The two-headed devil couldn't die if only one of its bases was damaged. Only when the ribbon hidden behind the deliberately not completely hidden spear wrapped around the second head, literally crushing it and dissolving the resulting eggnog with shadowy power. That's when the creature dies, letting out a death groan, which I'm slowly getting used to not noticing because I'm so sick of them.

Step.

Curving unimaginably and almost twisting myself into a spiral, I evade another of Dreamer's blows, barely restraining the childish urge to give him the middle finger (because I'm not sure if I have limbs with enough fingers right now). Not a bad motivator for restraint is another success. Two of the creatures took serious damage from a powerful shadow ram and a few dozen harpoons that saturated their weakened defenses. They were not killed, but they would not survive a second attack, even a weaker one.

Step.

Dreamer, very cunning and able to predict dumb mortals without any clairvoyance, immediately calculated I would eliminate two obstacles with my second move and therefore created an illusion, which followed my move. The devil himself was transported by a very powerful and almost instantaneous blink (probably using a strong soul for fuel) to the place from which it was most convenient for me to attack because his eyes had already seen the movements of the shadows in that area.

Dreamer was surprised, as were the two creatures, when instead of my carcass, the only thing that fell out of the other plane into reality was the smaller Shadow, bloated from the forces infused into it, which immediately burst like a hamster from a spoonful of nicotine, splattering its remains all over the trio. It was a pity that the damage from such a bomb was only moral. For such dangerous creatures, such a shower would only leave a couple of burns and a quickly passing status effect. The farthest of the creatures, which had already prepared another Hardnessi-based enchantment, this time deciding to finish off the very soul that embodied the past Severity of the Mountains in a slightly simplified form, did not have time to be surprised because I struck from maximum concealment and simply ripped the cluster of souls from its body with one decisive blow. I like the Form ore and more, less and less strength to restrain its impulses and release the captured souls and not eat them.

Step.

Dreamer laughs a sincere and pure laugh as if he were a truly innocent child, enjoying the fact that even after all these years, there are still those who can outplay him. I've managed to break the distance considerably, so his joy is not so much shared by his handmaidens, who have realized the possible prospects. They may get high, as only a fiend can, but enjoying battle is not their specialty, and death in the grip of the Shadow is far from the pinnacle of bliss, even for those who can achieve it in any situation.

For the first time this minute, I have time to create relatively complex enchantments, making up for the lack of time with another additional infusion of power, which does not benefit the reserve. The shadows around our company stand as a wall, cutting us off from the world around us. Everything around us becomes gray and monochromatic, and a piece of the city falls into the Shadow, even if it is not deep enough. Somewhere here, the ritualists had died, apparently having tried to hold on to the ritual at the cost of their existence and paying the price. Seven of the nine remaining creatures, not counting Dreamer, died here at once when I created several thousand whirlwinds (that is, I stupidly whirred the mixer once again.... which was too many blades) and ground them all together with the defense. The rest of them, realizing that I couldn't drag them down deep because of the barrier, managed to pull themselves together and escape back to reality, and Dreamer tried to snag me to force me out.

Step.

They are now retreating, though I can just see how desperate the legendary creature wants to continue, but they too, have plans, contingency plans, and special situation scenarios that forbid them from destroying themselves and others in battles that are of no use. They signaled for support early in the battle, but Eternal is a large city, and there don't seem to be any available forces in the area.

I don't want to wait for another Legend, this time a fresh one, or at least an attack with tactical spells from another stronghold, but I want to crush the abomination without giving it a chance to internalize the experience gained today. I'm not talking about the choral groans from their sonms, which make me cringe, and not just because of the Form. Another horror story with no one to finish it, another fairy tale with no ending and no happy ending. It's pissed me off!

Step.

Once again, I tried to surprise Legend, attacking not the allies behind him, who were only waiting for my attack in the back, but him. Relatively successful because he was surprised, which didn't stop him from throwing several blows. It was so fast they merged into one. The first two ripped off another limb, and this particular one, at least for the third time in this fight, ripped out a clump of spiked tentacles. It was very painful in my whole body when the touching claws tried to inject the concentrate of corrupted souls as if injected with a syringe. I guess I was counting on Shadow's hunger to make me eat the stuff, but I wasn't a Shadow, so I overpowered myself by burning the poison out with the concentration of my power.

I took the other three hits with a boosted Aegis, but the first two were enough. The remaining two devils had enough, too. They were the ones I was targeting while I was getting my kicks. One of them died when it was hit in the center of the cluster by a tiny and surprisingly saturated shadow needle, which I had refined with Manifestation for better shield penetration. The second one died more slowly, but without most of its torso and with its core damaged by another harpoon, it had no chance of recovering.

And there's exactly two of us left.

In my current state, I was even a little taller than my opponent, especially if I didn't crouch down to the ground but slightly upward, not to mention my length and overall size. The snake-like body revealed the same speed, but now no longer for a swift dash, but a different facet of it. Flexibility, mobility, evasion. All the things that would be vital in a battle with a Legend of a very uncomfortable type. He was happy with this turn, even though I can't imagine what would make this creature upset. Nor could I imagine what he wouldn't have a desire for.

But there are different games, and the creature clearly wanted to change this game for a new one while enjoying the victory as soon as possible. If I hadn't morphed into Shadow so completely, I wouldn't have even been able to catch the beginning of his move. I have no idea how much of this trick was natural or how much was pure Hell power, but one thing was certain: he possessed the remnants of a nearly disintegrated soul base that was either a carrier of Eternal Blood or belonged to someone who had mastered working with the Law of Time at a very high level.

The Law has relented.

If I hadn't been so resilient, I would have died in a heartbeat. I was saved not by my survivability, which allowed me to survive the first few blows. And not even the merging with the accepted Form, thanks to which I, even frozen as a fly in amber, could perceive what was happening, even with a great creaking and mostly at the expense of clairvoyance. I was saved by the previously unused Moment of Eternity, which also affected Time, though not on the same scale as the Dreamer's effect.

I'd been reluctant to use this trick from the beginning of our battle precisely because my gut was telling me to wait. Dreamer's defense, despite his seeming openness, was surprisingly good, or he wouldn't have been able to catch me a couple of times and set me up for his attacks. I listened to my beloved ass. You might say I thought with my ass. What's ten times more amazing is that I didn't fail in my actions! If the creature had known about my trick, it would have used its trump card, which was clearly being prepared against someone from the ruling dynasty under completely different circumstances, leaving not even a shadow of a chance.

But he finished that soul, gave it his lust and his joy, his ecstasy and happiness right now. And I, maddened by the pain in the body torn by his blows, activated my own perks, feeling that a little more and it might be too late, too late. The time spent on activation could not even be called a wink, especially considering the subjectivity of time.

A Moment became an Eternity.....

At the same time as the triumphant laughter bursting from my throat, I also used the explosive power boost, feeling the strength increase twofold. Even though the power of the Form exceeds the power of the human body, it is calculated from the basic characteristics! The twofold increase in strength, when converted to Form, is not a twofold or even a threefold multiplication, which may not be to the liking of dreaming individuals who are too close to my embrace.

When the creature, whose claws were covered with black and hissing blood..... the creature, smiling and cutting me up like a pig for a feast, not expecting any resistance, realized that its motionless victim wasn't so motionless, it couldn't even burst out in happiness because I had attacked earlier.

The claws tore. Instantly regenerating limbs immediately joined those already clawing at the victim. Shreds of my shadowy form, torn away by the flow of Time did not have time to settle to the ground, dissolving into dust and resuming again. Time stretched, but the eternity granted by the perk was very subjective, as was Time itself, which tended to return to its usual course. Every moment of the perk's continuation had to be paid for at the expense of the reserve, which was being sucked out literally in front of his eyes. Dreamer didn't stop hitting me back, even if I had the advantage in such a party, but the devil couldn't realize his strongest traits - his sophisticated technique and quick recovery of the dropped defense.

It's funny, but our techniques are mutually destroyed simultaneously, like in bad movies. But it wasn't the dramatic effect that was to blame, but some bullshit with the skills affecting each other. Here we are, having bounced back to our previous positions, standing opposite each other again, but the situation is again not in my favor. I am already in a human, fully human form, clasping my bleeding side with my hands and rejoicing that thanks to my clothes, there is no threat to decorate the broken and crumbled paving stones with my intestines. My regeneration, especially under the potions still bubbling in my blood, is good, but these wounds aren't easy, and neither are the bastard's claws. I wish I could lie down for an hour or find a dozen worthy candidates for shadow stealing to give them such unique wounds, but I have neither the former nor the latter. I've got a third of my reserves and even less moral strength; I don't know where my companions are, but they're not much use in a direct fight with Dreamer.

The creature took no less, its enormous body missing entire clumps of ghostly flesh, one of its wings missing, both horns broken off, one of them sticking out of its eye, but it stood on its feet, grinning with its toothy maw, crushing the flurry and literally drinking in the sight of my condition. He'd also lick the blood off his claws to finally show his attitude. I'd definitely freak out in response.... and I'd be glad.

Thank you, Tia, I'll definitely buy you a present when I can figure out what to get you because if it wasn't for this idea you showed me on the first day of our acquaintance, I wouldn't have used this trick. I wouldn't have guessed, wouldn't have risked it, or would have just been stupid once again.

Blood of mine on his hands.

Stealing Dreamer's shadow wouldn't work simply because he was protected from such tricks at the level of, pardon my captaincy, a legendary creature designed to destroy self-important casters. It was unrealistic to break through such defenses with initially subtle and cunning techniques, especially in a fast-paced battle. Yes, Shadow Theft is very capable of showing itself in battle, but against weaker opponents, you can even in the plural. It is ideal for capturing the target alive, and clairvoyance helps quite noticeably. All of this was useless against the Dreamer.

But the blood of mine on his hands.

Blood, which in many magical schools and doctrines is considered to be a perfect conductor. My blood, the blood of the Overlord of Shadows, filled with Shadow, soaked in it, and being Shadow. His body, made of alien souls and pure energy, may lack the concept of shadow a thousand times over and may be alien to the very essence of it, but now, he is literally covered in it. And, grinning under my mask with the inadequate smile of an enraged raccoon, I poured all my remaining reserve into my blow, listening to the howls and cries of Dreamer with sincere and inexpressible pleasure.

The gaps in the stomach healed, the intestines began to heal a moment later, a few unpleasant curses that natural resistance could not erase disappeared, the head-spinning Lust washed out of the thin bodies, the liver, which had been torn and only by a miracle had not fallen out through the hole in the side, healed, the cracks in the bones disappeared, the scalp was restored, and the torn ear was put back in place. The creature howled and shrieked because the sensations transmitted to it through the Shadow could not be absorbed by the fleur. No Aspect could protect it from the grip of a single plane whose power did not care about most of the devils' tricks.

The reserve is empty, but I'm not done yet.

The returning wounds alone wouldn't have stopped Dreamer for a second. It wouldn't have prevented him from ripping off my head or even trying to rip out the soul of the exhausted me. Along with the blood, I poured into him all the power invested in the attack, that is, all the remnants of the reserve, turning it exclusively with shadow energy. I was literally, and not in a funny way, opening a breach in the Shadow right in his pseudo-body, and no defenses, no damage transfer to captured entities, and no gifts from the soul bank could overpower this trick. If he'd been ready for it in the first place, if I hadn't started building the foundation for the battle curse while the Moment of Eternity was still in effect, if I hadn't put in all my remaining power, I would have been devoured. But that was just the way it was, so I was grinning with my needle-sharp teeth beneath my mask while the creature tried to make itself at least move, its shadow power control allowing it to paralyze me almost effortlessly. Until I had no new injuries left to give to my opponent, no more of this pain, no more of these wounds.

The creature stood up.

The creature howled.

The creature literally shattered into energy particles.

The creature spat out the gold of other people's souls, losing control of the sonm.

But the legendary creature, the pinnacle of evolution among the denizens of Hell, was still there, and I didn't have the strength to stop its final attack, the desperate dash of the dying Legend. I didn't, but it was at that moment that I was reminded that, unlike Dreamer who had been left alone, I was not alone at all.

A tattered and barely levitating deviless, who had apparently severed her connection to the soul bank after being subjugated by the Ring. She had lost most of her son when she defended herself against my threads, and who had recovered from her wounds... she was no match for Dreamer. She was no match for him in full strength, not even for a wounded one, and now all she could do was laughingly embrace him and detonate the rest of her sonm. Perhaps it was a strong act. Wounded, dying from her wounds, not daring to reconnect with the soul bank for fear of revealing the changed essence and priorities of her being, she did the only thing she had left to do on her own terms. Gone, so to speak, beautifully, protecting the one who had become her most precious, most cherished being in all worlds at once. I can't even imagine what her feelings would have been if she had survived, and I don't want to know, especially since she died to protect me anyway.

And her suicide, though it took off Dreamer's left arm, who was a little freaked out by the setup (brainwashing the devil of Lust Aspect!), it also washed away my technique, allowing interrupt the death process! What a creature, in every sense, and even her heroic self-sacrifice in the name of the "big and pure" had a catch. Seriously, for all the selflessness of her deed, she helped not me but the former chief because embraced by shadows, I could still crush him until he did not kill me and crippled, but no longer constrained... It's sad.

Dreamer looked at me.

I looked at Dreamer.

He grinned, rapidly regaining his previous emotional state.

I grinned, even though it couldn't be seen, going over the available attack potions and calculating the chance they hadn't spoiled.

He stepped forward.

I listened to myself and took a step back.

He grinned even wider and stepped even faster.

I exhaled tiredly as I stopped holding the advanced out-of-existence, watching as the Valerium's lump of energy flew into the face of Dreamer, who had been daydreaming about everything he would do to me. I watched as the Golden Needle, a sword that shone with heaven and sun and was finally unpacked by Losius, severed the other arm of the monster with its activated skill. I watched as the creature that had attempted to jump on the blue-glowing duelist that had emerged from the blink was further away from the target because of the slightly changed path. And I smiled a perfectly normal smile as the dying creature was slashed from the back of the head to the ass by the legendary dagger because you can't help but smile when you watch Tia, thrown upward by the Trail, plunge the dagger into her target and, holding on to that dagger, slide down to the bottom, slicing through rotting flesh along the way. She also managed to jump away from the decaying (how does energy meat even rot?) five-meter carcass like a circus performer doing a complicated acrobatic trick!

As I said, I'm not alone now, and fortunately, my companions, unlike the heroically dead Stranger, performed their performance without screwing up in the process or getting killed themselves.

I take off my mask, taking a convulsive breath, swallowing the seemingly sweet air despite the dust, dirt, cinders, and hundreds of other effects. Once again, I'm not dead despite the odds. What a lovely Tuesday, rightly so. Or is it not Tuesday?

"I think you've had enough for today, Tin." Without even letting me say thank you, the elf took the bull by the horns, and me by the ass, not to put it more crudely. "You're barely on your feet, and our contribution to the battle has already surpassed all limits of politeness or solidarity in a time of general inclement weather."

Tia put the dagger to its sheath and spoke in a tone so quiet and calm that I knew at once if I made a fuss about continuing to be a hero, she would knock me out and drag me to some rookery. And, judging by the fact she could do that easily, it was time for me to rest. No matter how silly it all looks in the current madness, but now I'm not a combat unit, but ballast. And it's not even about the empty reserve, which can be replenished with another portion of alchemy, not about the spent reserve renewal and not about the wounds. A little more, and I wouldn't be able to keep the pressure of the plane on my brain.

Even the singing of the purple sky, even the remnants of the fleur of the fallen devils, were pressing me, restraining my thinking, though, in my normal state, I didn't even feel the effects. Now, I could only hope that what I had done would be enough to turn the situation around, and then the Imperials would be able to cope with it. They're not completely helpless, are they?

"You may be right," I answered in a tired tone, pulling the mask back on so I wouldn't have to breathe the Lust-soaked air.

Taria had just begun to give Hans the contested coins (what disrespect to bet on the inadequacy of one's own commander!) when the Imperials confirmed that they were indeed far from the term helpless. Just unimaginably far!

By Will of Mine!

These words. They were not spoken aloud. I did not hear them with my ears, or touch them with clairvoyance or sensory skills. They simply came, as a new day came, manifested themselves as the movement of the second hand manifests itself, and materialized in the world with the same ease as the ticking mechanism of a pocket watch. I didn't even have to look for the answer, because everyone endowment in Eternal, unaffected by the fleur of Hell, knew, even against their will, to whom those words belonged.

The Will of Eternity spoke its word, issued its decree, and ordered the world, relying on one of its Laws, and the world heard, turning the will into reality. The hands of the clock froze, shuddered, and turned back, turning back Time, for all those who today will die for the sake of others and their lives, for the sake of something more than just life.

The reserve was restored instantly and without any painful or merely perceptible effects, but the reserve was the last in the list of miracles accomplished. Breath of Magic, as I knew without even looking at the Status, had also rolled back, ready to be used again. I didn't need to look at my Ring to know its activating effect had been updated. And even a barely kept normal psyche, even a tired soul..... they too had lost that weariness. Such a trick could not roll back your lost endowment, but as long as you held on to it, it was as if you were granted a renewed day. Your state became what it was this morning, what it would be if you rested in meditation for a week or two. I could still feel the alchemical cocktails in me and my companions while the intoxication was also reset (but now it was ticking back up, just from the start of the timer, as if we'd just taken the potions). I guess all those infected or subjugated by the fleur or love magic of the devils were freed, too, if their souls hadn't been chewed up too badly yet.

"Or maybe you're wrong." I continued my previous sentence, stretching my whole body until my joints crunched.

Tia ignored my banter, and so did the others, who were also not immediately taken aback by the blessing of the highest rank. It's even cooler than the mythical level if you think about it. I wonder if this word will roll back the wounds received, broken weapons, discharged drives, or even recent deaths. Somehow, I even respected the local crown bearers... which didn't diminish the desire to introduce them to the FLÜGGÅӘNKб€ČHIŒßØLĮÊN, but that's another matter.

"The right of step accomplished backward, stepping forward." Tia sang in a single breath, looking gloomily toward the palace hidden behind the ruined houses and terrain. "This news is joyous. And equally disturbing."

"Why so disturbing?" Taria was still angry about the lost money and at me for not starting a riot so Tia could smack me on the back of the head angry. "I think that crowned fag played right into our hands."

"And into our legs, fuck!" Hans only spat, seeming to understand Tia faster than Taria or even myself. "I'll be sober all my life if these bitches don't answer."

"Right." The druid nodded, still looking toward the palace as if the barriers to her eyes simply didn't exist. "They will."

A calm tone, but each of us can easily pick up the tense anticipation hidden behind it. With her race's perennial fear of creatures like the Devils and what fate they might have in store for her in their vast hospitality, she has had the hardest time with both the fall of the city and the need to fight for its existence. As much as she realizes she is saving herself, she still has the same realization that she is helping the Eternal Dynasty through her actions.

"Above." Losius is calm and even cheerful with that hangman's cheerfulness, which is why he doesn't raise his tone or add much emotion to his words. "This is a total [long and profound line of swearing]!"

I was consciously aware of the shocked look on Taria's face, who was more surprised than anyone else that it was Losius, with his correctness of speech and carefully maintained eloquence, who had repeated her recent quote. When we looked up, however, all of us again fully supported what he had said and even added a little of our own.

There were very few decent words available, unfortunately.

Because in the very center of the barrier-covered Eternal, the purple skies that had previously dimmed due to the control point we had knocked out flashed particularly brightly and... opened up.

* * *