Chapter 19-2

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"Okay!" Trying to keep the shameful squeal out of my voice, I turned on my inner Hero, who was now atypically silent and seemed to be huddled in the farthest corner of my leaky attic. "I've learned something, and now I know the point of our next attack. But the armada is even bigger than the last one, so we'll have to be smarter than that. Or dumber. Yes, definitely dumber, but much riskier!"

After about a minute, Taria and Hestia managed to move Tia away from me, which calmed my paranoia that claimed the druid could start growing FLŰGGÅƏNK∂€ČHIŒβØL∫ÊN for me, and then we started discussing the plan. I realized there was no threat in Tia's words and actions, and she was just out for another time with my love of messing with people's psyche. But at some point, I really started to get nervous! In one respect, my premonitions were completely true - the current plan was indeed even crazier than usual.

It took us at least an hour, if not an hour and a half, to find a suitable group. During this time, the mythical giant licking the timeless octahedron had managed to thin its prison, and the reinforcements frozen in the stopped space above the Palace also began to move slowly. Even without intuition, it was clear that it was the breakthrough of the mythic that had damaged the original structure of such powerful charms, reducing their time of effect to completely unplanned values.

In full deployment, such work on the Law could keep its prisoners for days, if not weeks, and this prison could be deactivated piecemeal, slowly and methodically grinding the armada of the devils. In fact, in this attack, their commander-in-chief threw, if not all the reserves, then a considerable part of them, at once, reducing the available forces to operate to values not at all soothing paranoia. But this commander-in-chief, whoever he was, was well aware of the presence of such a trump card and realized that no one would spend it on smaller prey.

The armada itself, though amazing, consisted mainly of weak and average devils, among which all really strong individuals were at most chasers, but not fighters, administrators of sorts. Ideally, the Mythic should have completely broken the order of the Emperor and his family, bringing the whole thing down on the palace. Even huge losses among the attackers would not be particularly dangerous because all this trifle had almost no personal souls with them - weak and deprived of prospects, the middles could rarely boast of a normal sonm. The fall of the central stronghold, falling into the hands of the Eternal Blood devils, or even the Emperor himself, would more than pay for this massacre.

But even if they managed to capture both the armada and the mythical giant simultaneously, humans still lost. Exceeding any imaginable limits, the resistance of the mythic damped all possible influences, weakening them dozens and hundreds of times. Perhaps people could have used the pause, but the pause was put only by those who came from above, while the main assault groups, consisting of the devil elite, did not weaken the onslaught for a second. Every second, the ruler of the Empire of Ages received dozens of panic reports about the attack, losses, betrayal, lack of communication, the impossibility of dismantling strategic artifacts, and so on.

Time, ironic as it may sound, was now playing against the bearers of power over the Law, forcing them to make mistakes and waste time. And even if any of the Eternals could speed up Time for himself, having the opportunity to think carefully and make a plan, the rest of the capital was under attack, and there was no one there who could think. No matter how true and correct the orders of the Emperor, who had spent several hours compressed into a second to create them, he could not be heard by the warriors and mages fighting for their souls, and if they heard him, it was in one case out of five. The plans depended on information in the first place, and it also came incomplete, false or not at all.

In short, the situation was complicated.

It wasn't any easier for us, admittedly. It was hard to find the most suitable target, at least because the devils were not in a hurry to walk around us in an ideal composition for us, preferring to act in a way that was effective for them. Amazing, isn't it? The few groups we encountered, which were getting smaller and smaller, and the groups themselves were gathering into larger and larger crowds, we quietly cleared out, moving towards my intended goal. The reason for the increase in the quantity and quality of the cultists encountered was that all the small groups had either fulfilled their original small goal and went to join one of the larger groups or had been killed. The only ones left were the relatively dangerous factions that would not be easily broken.

We flooded three of these reinforced groups with Heaven, Shadow, and Druidic techniques, not caring so much about disguise anymore, though not forgetting it completely. Some of them had to be passed over because they were either moving too fast, or even by air, or they were too close to even larger formations, or they were already in battle with the defenders of the capital.... or they were strong enough that destroying them would require us to expend a lot of energy without doing much good.

A group of six creatures hugged and held hands, creating a sort of roundelay that floated above the ground and flew in a direction they knew with the speed of a good race car while covered by a fortress-class shield, maintaining all possible maneuverability. And all six of them had levels approaching the fiftieth, and at least one of them even exceeded the coveted fifty.

Nevertheless, the right group was found, and not without the help of clairvoyance, for the sake of which I had to stop controlling the shadow disguise, take a mirror in my hands, and fall out of life for a couple of minutes, allowing the others to cover myself. The right jackpot was a rather small, shabby team of half a dozen fighters, including only two devils. The cultists, however, were not a gift, being their elite - excellent equipment, levels under forty, and no sense that they had recently gained those levels due to the huge number of victims, calm behavior of freaks accustomed to their vices, enjoying the flair, but not losing concentration and sanity, as well as a clear willingness to act coherently and the ability to achieve this coherence.

Despite the casualties that had thinned this team by more than threefold, they were still dangerous and important enemies, capable of causing a lot of trouble, especially if you let them join up with a larger unit. If we were to fight in the style we were accustomed to, we'd have to pour shadows over them at almost full strength, and it wasn't certain that a single blow would be enough, for they had high-quality amulets of protection on everyone, and they could put up their barriers with amazing skill.

But there's a reason I was looking for idiots like this, right?

My attention was focused on the devil couple. The incredibly skinny Thirsty for Laughter, wounded by some priest, judging by the remnants of divine magic on the stump of the missing limb, didn't interest me much. Giver of Caress of the forty-seven level was a different matter. The deviless was only a little taller than the human standard, about two meters and a half, while maintaining normal proportions. She had dark scarlet skin with a blue tint, large breasts covered by a bony breastplate and the equivalent of Taria's abilify (a popular trick among Lust's spawn, judging by the examples we'd seen so far), long legs, a gorgeous ass, and three tentacles on each side of her back, growing from somewhere near her shoulder blades, looking like an ugly parody of wings.

All of her power, which I could read through her defenses, was sharpened into the kind of subtle mental influence typical of devils and doubly typical of this aspect. A kind of slave driver capable of enslaving someone or reconfiguring an already-treated cultist on the fly. At least a third of the remaining people (though they could be considered people if they were a quarter of a step away from warped status) were firmly attached to her. The lady had obviously insured herself against a surprise attack by almost drinking their souls and caressing their bodies, so the bond between them was so strong that any blow to her would be passed on to the people who trusted her. I'll bet they almost fought for the right to be near the devil and thus protect her in case of danger. And she's not going to take them into her fold and eat them, except maybe a couple of the most damaged ones, because they're no longer common meat but useful assets. Such people are taken to the end only on big holidays as a reward for a feat or as a punishment for failure, no matter how much such mutually exclusive paragraphs piss me off.

The second devil was a melee fighter with the ability to absorb attacks directed at him while simultaneously burning the minds of his attackers with a wave of fun, happiness, and idleness. It was an orgasmic joke, and the harder you hit him, the stronger your connection to his magic would become, making it faster and easier to take the attacker down. If you kill him, then only with a powerful single blow, without giving him a chance to use his ace trick, and preferably also to be able to get rid of this trick. Even with a banal planar saturation, unless there is something more elegant and cunning, like Shadow Theft, Aegis, or Manifestation.

Not ideal for my plan, but far better than anything we have a chance of finding in any reasonable amount of time. The timeless cage has only a short time left to live, and when it bursts, all our chances of escape are just as likely to burst like a giant soap ball with shit inside. It'll make any straw seem like steel rope.

With these thoughts, I reconfigured the stolen shadows on the team, refined them a bit more with Creation, added a little concentrated essence from the vessel, then covered myself with Aegis, stepped in front of the group going about their business, and, without waiting for a logical reaction to such insolence, poked a shining ring in the direction of the deviless, who was about to weave her attack.

Take two, yeah.

Last time, the consequences of the ring's blow to the devil were so powerful that the flux from the heroically dead (and thank the tits!) creature was so strong that I could feel it in full Form. This time, I decided to prepare a defense against such an uncommon wave of vice, laying a straw, so to speak. If I, being ready to meet something similar, can stand even without the Form, based on endurance alone, but for my friends, I can't vouch for it. Tia and Losius at most, but not Hans and Taria. Of course, we could have just led them away, but we were running out of time, and the group we'd met could either disperse at any moment or reach their goal by joining forces with other comrades.

It was a pity to discharge an ability that, in theory, could temporarily stun even a small army of devils on such a minor nuisance, but for the crazy idiocy that I hypocritically called a plan, I would need an allied creature, preferably a strong enough one. Giver was a good fit, and she was also the closest, so I rolled up my frugality into a tube and stuffed it deep inside. And I still had hope for one more ability of the Ring, which, in the same theory, can give an effect similar to the basic subjugation. In fact, my plan was based on that hope!

So, I activated it.

Until the last moment, I wondered if something bad would happen and if Giver would reflect my artifact on me. I mean, seriously! Trying to enslave a devil imprisoned in depravity, and clearly, an experienced devil with an artifact like the Ring - even asking the standard "what-could-go-wrong" question would be inappropriate because anything could go wrong. Whether I had underestimated my ring, which I had grown accustomed to seeing as a useless piece of junk on my finger that I would be sorry to throw away, or whether I had overestimated this particular person of the sorcerer's tribe, everything went perfectly.

The orgasmic shriek, inaudible to the ears but clearly distinguishable through the boiling fleur, struck first the cultists bound to Giver, then the other cultists, then the wounded Thirsty, and only then all of us. And this wave, capable of scorching the soul and mind, if not instantly, then of scorching the brains with so many perversions that it would be better to scorch them, washed over the hastily installed protection, shattered it, tore some of its elements, disembodied the creatures processed by Creation and embedded in it... And already when the stream of fleur was ready to overwhelm its victims, I completely closed myself with Aegis and pulled the stolen damage on myself.

Just like last time, the blow made my favorite defensive technique darken, though it didn't put it into the afterburner, and after it began to subside rapidly. The first and decisive blow of pleasure, which was to rewrite Giver's consciousness, had already passed, and the deviless, like any experienced devil, was rapidly taking her new desires under control, acting on bare reflexes.

In the meantime, I took my time stepping out of the Shadow in front of Thirsty, using the inexcusably long gap for my acceleration, testing my newly mastered technique, the final Aegis enhancement. Cold, hunger, emptiness, and such painful loneliness blindsided and pressed, pressed on his brain even harder than my form. And that's even though I'm using the ability in as controlled an environment as is even possible in a situation like this. Aegis blackens all the way to the bottom and a little further, making me a two-dimensional figure that eats light, warmth, and even joy, making me a creature more terrifying than my victim for a second.

And then.

I.

Share.

I share a drop of my pain, sitting not even in my soul, but somewhere deeper, in the very nature of what is the Overlord of the Shadow, giving my enemy the only thing I have the right to own, and which no one and nothing can take away from me. That which lies in the nature of every Shadow, which in its essence is more terrible than eternal hunger. That which gives food for icy hatred, the thirst to inflict suffering and to take, take, take everything that can be taken from another. It does not matter if this someone is a mortal, a victim, an enemy or even a Shadow, because there can be no difference in principle.

The origin of being Shadow, rejected equally by Light and Darkness.

The endless and nightmarish Loneliness.

The lightest touch on the pseudo-body of the Thirsty, who had just begun to react, the multi-ton pressure of the accelerated boost, the feeling of my presence, one heartbeat away from spreading over the alien and vile soul, washed over my opponent, at the same time revealing me to him as fully as he could not understand even the souls of his sonm. In another situation, to open myself to the devil would have been something even more obvious than suicide, but now that his very nature was reaching out, eager to receive what he had almost willingly given.

He sees it.

He understood it.

He shared it with me.

I don't feel any better. The burden of my shadowy nature hasn't lessened because even if you share infinity with someone, it won't stop being infinite, and two lonelinesses will still be lonely. I did not throw off this burden, merely giving the victim the exact same one. And, unlike me, who was used to such things, who started to get used to it from the very first level, from the first days of being in a new world, with the first feeling of gut-sucking emptiness that appeared when using shadow techniques...

Thirsty for Laughter saw.

Became as black and two-dimensional as the silhouette that touched him.

He found himself overwhelmed by the realization.

He shared.

And ceased to be.

Somehow, I did not even doubt that even such a depraved creature, accustomed to seeking pleasure in any pain, in any death, in the most terrible destruction, would receive only bitterness and emptiness from its outcome.

The cultists had been thinned out considerably. They did not have the ability to restore their brains to normal-abnormal form that every single devil had. If they had a normal state of abnormality at all. In general, half of the existing cast was rather dead than alive, and exactly zero of the cultists who remained in the category of the living showed any hope of self-recovery in the next few hours.

I thought about turning off the saturation of body and clothing with shadows, switching to mirror effects, and turning off the longtime nonhumans in voluptuous agony before they spilled out their souls and brains, but then they began to quiet down, to calm down, to freeze. It seemed as if the vice that had gripped them was changing in tone, becoming more viscous, more rigid, not allowing bodies and minds to be free, like some kind of intangible bondage, honestly. The effect felt habitually nasty, like anything else tied to Hell, but now there was a direction to it, an alien will, light and gentle but unbreakable and pervasive.

Slowly, as if to show off (not "as if," but definitely showing off), Giver of Caresses rose to her feet, crushing her companions with the ruthless efficiency of centuries of experience. From her point of view, however, they were all originally just her toys leased to her with the prospect of permanent ownership. And if you let her work properly and at the same time set her clear objectives, then these toys will continue to serve her even if she diametrically changes her goals. Well, they would. If they hadn't been damaged beyond reason by the consequences of Giver's conversion.

"What next?" The words flowed into my head with sweet molasses, seeming to bypass my hearing entirely, reaching at once to the base of my mind. "Orders, wishes, demands?"

There wasn't a hint of threat in her voice, just a slight mockery and a touch of not even love magic, more just natural charm. I wonder what level of seduction skills she has. She's trying desperately to probe me now, despite her ostensible calm and bravado, staying within the rules, unwilling to harm me with even a shadow of influence, and afraid that she'll become dangerous to me if she learns too much.

The deviless was literally rebuilding her personality on the fly so she could enjoy her new state even more without wasting a second. Her ring-bound loyalty was the cornerstone of her essence, more solid than she could have imagined, but her skills allowed her to build on that foundation any shell she or I needed. Whereas with Taria or Hestia, I was wary of influencing them too much, lest I break the original personality, the new victim of the ring was a different story.

Among devils, brainwashing each other and themselves was generally the order of the day, and it was not even considered something special for such creatures. Bosses would plant triggers and bookmarks in the brains of their subordinates, subordinates would seek to do the same to their bosses, allies would deceive an ally through a planted and pre-processed soul, and enemies would do the same to their enemies. At the same time, the same willingness to enjoy any pain and any outcome of events was the best defense against any influence of the inhabitants of Hell. It was impossible to subdue devils, for their personalities flowed with honey, ignoring any nets or barriers, reassuming their original form. Or not original, but any other form the devil desires.

The foundation, whether it is there or not, remains unchanged, and even a Domain Overlord has far from complete power over the foundations of his servants if they are strong servants, dependent not only on the domain but on their sonms and skills. Now, Giver has a new foundation, much stronger than she could have imagined a moment ago. There is a new strength to it, giving a backbone to her techniques and methods, strengthening them by a quarter minimum, but there is a weakness as well. Now she is doomed, for the moment, someone suspects her of her altered nature... she knows her kin all too well, and she doesn't want to lose her new feeling. It is with me that her pleasure is so complete, so all-encompassing.

As with the bloodsucker from Arenam, the subordinate creature did not feel the typical human feelings or urges for me because its essence is not exactly not adapted for such things... it doesn't see the point. As with the aforementioned bloodsucker, the resulting transformation, while providing absolute (even against the typical effects of the ring) fidelity, did not make the creature's essence any more tolerant. And it was still a devil of Lust, which didn't make it any better.

To her, many things seemingly obvious even to a bloodsucker, despite all her experience and knowledge, are something distant and incomprehensible. Just as a professional animal trainer, scientist, or taxidermist understands much about beasts but hardly realizes how they think, she simply could not fathom some things. No, no, she perfectly mimicked feelings, emotions, and social roles. She could deceive and feign at an admirable level, as a creature of her rank and type should, but something was missing, completely missing. She wasn't a bloodsucker who at least remembered what it was like to be human, to be endowed. She had never lived as a normal mortal, and so it was difficult to read her, even given her complete openness and utter unwillingness to cause harm on her part.

A painful realization.

It's almost physically painful.

No way!

I was on the verge of killing the creature I'd just discovered, ignoring all self-control. If it had been me, even if it had been a medium-sized visionary with the same ring as mine, it would have had a good chance of being so mentally damaged by the images of its new "slave," despite its care and desire to keep the new "master" safe.

A mutual exchange of understanding of situations. That's what becoming a visionary is all about. It would be great if we could create visionary-only battle groups, but we're not in a fairy tale, are we? In a few seconds of eye-to-eye contact, we exchanged images, and I gave Giver some of the tasks that would need to be done by her. The deviless possessed a vast sonm, among which there were also seers, forming a small compact circle and a few more working separately. Most of these souls were personal souls, not loaned from the soul bank, and only for the duration of the attack. The credit souls were the first to be spent, and the battle her squad had been given had forced her not to conserve her strength, laying down trump card after trump card.

Yes, Giver was well aware that every soul in the Domain belonged to Sovereign, even if it was a private one, sharing that awareness with me. But right now, Sovereign has too many things to do to keep track of every servant of his. Neither my personal abilities nor the hundreds and hundreds of souls of seers constantly monitoring the situation would help - the plan required maximum investment from everyone, even Sovereign himself. Even though Giver of Caresses had only a modicum of understanding of Sovereign of the Domain's full plan, even that was enough to make her wish even more strongly to be away not even from the city but from the Empire of the Ages altogether.

Surprisingly, until a minute ago, I thought this desire was incapable of getting any stronger.

The essence from Hestia's vial poured down the tall, forty-first-level cultist's throat, causing him to turn from a wilted zucchini to a fresh zucchini. It's almost impossible to restore brains after such a shakeup, even if I had a few days and a decent lab, but we don't need to give the patients their minds back. Just the ability to function and a modicum of adequacy so the dolls don't give us all away before they do.

I was working with essences, elixirs, and even Dream at the same time, which earned me the annoyance of Hans, who had to drag a mirror from the nearest available house again. And we were in the Middle Ages, albeit a magical one, so mirrors weren't the most common item, even in wealthy neighborhoods, so I couldn't open the first house I found and find everything I needed.

Slightly off to the side, Hestia worked, not caring about the anthropomorphic nature of her form, concentrating the mist on individual cultists, trying to maximize its impact without the need to accumulate it over a long time. She was doing very poorly, but she had a mythical talent, so she was getting something. This something was supplemented by the effects of Giver, who was leaning over her material while humming some lingering melody, whispering something inaudible to our ears but easily recognizable to those to whom the whisper was directed, and braiding the heads and hearts of the cultists with some strange black threads that were thinner than a spider's web and seemed to ignore material obstacles, going straight into the energy spectrum, merging with the victim's shells. Tia was scribbling some ritual that was supposed to cover us all since I was paying only minimal attention to disguise at the moment, and Taria was simply and uncomplicatedly shining her breasts into the faces of those Giver pointed out, helping to weaken even more the already almost non-existent natural resistance of the cultists' minds.

At a certain point, when it became clear that my potions (originally prepared to pump me and my companions out if we happened to catch a planar overdose) would no longer have a significant effect in a short time, I switched from the work of a medic to that of a ripper and taxidermist. A trick that had not been used for a long time, since the battle with Roche, and which was first tried by the late (I often mention the deceased who became deceased after meeting me) Maître Gordion, the head of the Stone Security Service.

I start decomposing still breathing, or just dying cultists into essence, literally ripping out chunks of their already chewed-up souls, feeding those chunks to the summoned Shadows, and then creating those Shadows in the right way. It was only slightly inferior to the recent Dream sacrifice, and that was only because the material had been worse than dead.

...Image Stealers, they're called...

Old and almost forgotten quote from the system description. It had seemed quite ominous even then, but it was only by doing it again, by taking up the task of creating the perfect mask again, the perfect garment, by likening ourselves to the Face Takers, that one could realize that ominousness, if not fully, then fully enough to shiver once more because of the unpleasant shiver that ran down one's spine. Or maybe the draughts are just too fierce in this half-destroyed building where we're staying for final preparations.

Six creatures, bursting with streams of gold and blood, literally devouring first the souls I had filtered out and then the lifeless bodies of the cultists. Once, they were small Shadows. Now, they are something completely incomprehensible, signed by the System with incomprehensible and constantly changing terms. This is the first time I've ever seen the System, or more likely my Hero eyes, unable to give a precise definition of the thing in question. I've seen completely hidden information or even planted deception, but I've never seen such a thing until today. Eventually, the process of incomprehensible transformation was complete, and the six creatures became six Garments of Shadow Flesh. No level corresponds to artifacts and amulets, not living or quasi-living entities.

Losing their intangibility, resembling a golden-black mixture of marshmallow, jelly, and smoke, they were, indeed, like garments. Not just camouflage in most of the spectra I knew but even allow me to use some of the donor's abilities. The latter, however, was of no use to anyone, but it opened the door to other advantages. Together with a part of the classes and gifts, part blocked and almost completely extinguished, deliberately reduced to a barely smoldering embryo (so as not to risk poisoning the wearer of this abomination with Hell fleur, among other dangers), the garment would give skills, pieces of memory in the form of sudden insights when it was necessary to answer a question, even the donor's manner of speech or movements. Combined with the disguise should be enough to keep us from being discovered right away.

"Now I'm going to say 'my deeds have contained even worse madness' about this one." The sarcasm in Tia's words was about as poisonous as the battle-flowers she grew. "You're a seer, Tin! How can you even tolerate what you willingly took on?"

"And you have to try what I've experienced to fully understand, Stargirl." The creature replied softly, now gently pulling me against her, pressing her face into my tits, while keeping as much traction on me as possible, creating a small circle of just three onlookers. "Then you'll feel better, and I'll feel more desirable."

Tia ignored the attempt to get under her skin with her typical indifference, seemingly not recognizing Giver of Caresses as a person, just an inconvenient tool, like a cursed blade or an unstable explosive potion. The devil immediately disliked the elf for two fatal (from the subjugated creature's point of view) flaws. First, the druid was the only woman in our ranks who remained untreated by the Ring. Second, unlike Hans and Losius, who were relatively well-read by the devil due to their experience, skills, talents, and some souls from the sonm, Tia was able to hide and deceive those watching. And then the typical logic of her kind worked: she was hiding, so there was a reason to hide, so she was planning something, so this something was dangerous for me, so Tia had to be quietly bewitched, put bookmarks in her head and preferably completely defamed and bound, and then polished with a ring on top to guarantee it.

She even managed to subtly, really subtly, and, importantly, very logically hint that the ring would be a reasonable option for Tia. She managed to do it in a way that didn't completely piss me off by making me turn Form and eat her heart out. Moreover, without any magic, hypnosis, or any other influence, just the ability to deliver her thoughts. I, for a second, consider her proposal. I mean, I rejected it immediately, but the fact itself shows the level! This is someone who had a lot of experience in seducing the righteous from the righteous path.

Even my contempt, my unconcealed disgust, frozen on the border with hatred, was perceived by her with sincere joy, as well as any other of my actions. She got more pleasure from the very fact of her humiliation in front of me than in her whole life, and therefore, she could not get upset or offended almost conceptually. This, of course, is entirely like a devil, only with all thoughts fixed not on the desire of Vice to follow but on me, but fuck! Fuck me three times!

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

"Objection!" Taria, observing the situation, behaves, as always, completely unconcerned, hiding behind that unconcern a desire to troll all sides of the altercation. "I've experienced it all on my own, but even to me, this idea seems crazy. And I'm a very broad-minded person, my tongue."

Still, Taria is surprisingly thick-skinned and reckless, and not just in a good way. From our stories and the many training sessions she'd had in Dream, she knew the threat of creatures, as well as the difference between them and the endowed. Moreover, she had already developed her senses well enough to be able to sense all sorts of things even without a connection to the plane. And she was still drawn to frivolous pranks and fun in obscure directions. Luckily, even she wasn't desperate enough to seriously try to get someone like Giver into bed.

I hope.

The deviless, instead of answering, only stuck out her tongue, which Taria had mentioned, and started to move it in the air, putting her fingers to her face in the shape of the English letter "v". Again, no Vice, only body tongue (pun totally intentional) and a kind of hypnosis, but after watching this "dance" for five seconds, the dancer almost cum on the spot.

"I don't like this thing." Losius didn't listen to the argument at all because he was fully focused on his garment, which disliked Heaven even more than Losius disliked garment. "And it obviously didn't like me either."

"I'd look at someone who would even like that thing." Hestia showed no enthusiasm either, though it was to her, as one bound to the Mist, that such things were not so much a source of danger as a hearty supply of strength that could be given to the Mist at any moment. "But we're not likely to see such crazy ones here."

"Gah! Ha! Huh! See what I can do!" Hans shouted from the opposite end of the ruins we were occupying, twirling his daggers, which flashed fire and cold in his hands, filling them with a faint shadow of planar power from the residual essence of their former owners. "I wish someone had told me I wasn't fucking awesome!"

"Yes-yes?" Losius's face expresses a strange mixture of world sorrow and doomed politeness.

"Well, yeah." Hestia agreed, finishing dressing, pretending that she hadn't said her previous phrase and that the people around her had heard it.

"Look, Losius!" The pathfinder persisted. "I can light a pipe from my finger!"

"Holy Heavens, Hans!" The aristocrat's soul still couldn't stand it. "You're a tracker. You mustn't smoke, for the odor of tobacco will give you away."

"Yes, but all my youth, I wanted to light a cigarette from my finger, to be like a real wizard!" Losius' argument was wasted. "Well, not all my life, but only until I shaved my mustache. But I dreamed of it! And anyway, being able to light a cigarette from a finger is better than not being able to light a cigarette from a finger."

Somehow, it happened that Taria, who was simultaneously trying to probe the devil's vulnerability to bad humor, and the three of us, who were bound together, looked at each other and shrugged perplexedly, and even Giver was almost genuinely perplexed. That is, she sensed my attitude to the situation, and then she changed her attitude a little, trying to evoke a response from me, no matter what coloring, but just a little, rather than deliberately stirring up a false feeling in herself.

Yeah.

"It's time to go."

* * *

This fortification was probably the second most important, if not the most important, of all the anchor points of the Eternal Ritual. The complex of buildings that belonged to the Golden Feather Magic Guild had been surrendered to the cult almost without a fight. Unless you counted the token resistance on the ground. Just in an instant, almost all the defenses, all the defense lines, multilayer traps, and artifact perimeters were turned off, and almost all the guards, rapid response teams, and the strongest guild mages silently let people, non-humans, and creatures inside. After that, the defenses were raised again, adding new ones and putting the guild under siege while continuing the abundant flow of sacrifices that went on in the guild cellars.

This organization was never known for its strong fighters, preferring to keep a huge staff of mercenaries, and specialists, or simply tie up retired fighters from the army who wished to retire, but without losing the streams of gold and silver that they were paid for their service. The Golden Feathers traded in all sorts of enchanted amulets, alchemical potions, and ritual supplies. They were often shamed for having such close ties to the Gold Belt merchants that it wasn't even clear where the peddlers ended and the proud mages began.

To be fair, it was not an unsubstantiated accusation. The Golden Ones had much more of the above-mentioned merchants in their actions and manner of doing business, and they were accustomed to solving their affairs with money rather than magic. Nevertheless, they had their own researchers, prominent scientists, and even outstanding young talents in their ranks. Even though this guild did not have a clear specialization, it had enough wide-ranging specialists and the departments they led. Their masters rarely created true masterpieces, and the elite layer of amulets, elixirs, or rituals was not under them, but this guild held the lion's share of the turnover of grassroots charms and amulets in the territory of the Eternal, as well as in the central or distant provinces.

The chicken pecking at the grain, the presence of patrons among the imperial court, allies among mercenary units, many of which could be considered mercenary armies, even if not as "free" as they said, as well as partners among the most prominent trading houses made them one of the richest guilds of the Empire of the Ages. Not the strongest, because only mercenaries and talents lured by various means could not get to the top, not the most influential, because for the protection of "free" mercenaries and favorable state contracts they had to pay a considerable share of autonomy, but really rich.

They had a stronghold to match their ambitions and wallets, and when put into battle mode, filled with cultists ready for battle and reinforced by the spells raised by the devils and their terrible magic, it was capable of stopping almost any attack. It did. Defense calmly repulsed a few sluggish and a couple of not-so-sluggish assaults from the gradually recovering guards, guards, and mortals ready to fight the creatures.

The trick was that with all the turmoil raised by the betrayals, the broken bonds, and the general panic, all these guilds, even those that remained unaffected by the betrayals and managed to recover quickly from the surprise attacks, began to defend themselves and their own first and even the direct orders of the Emperor did not always reach the ears of the senior officers and honorable guild masters. The creatures didn't need to storm every point of defense, only to hold them back, to give themselves time without giving it to the others.

So it turned out that not the most powerful forces went to storm the Golden Feather, getting epic kicks back. Reinforcements were arriving, communication was restored, the depth of FUBAR gradually reached everyone and everything, and the endowed realized that there was no way to sit back and that it was necessary to go to war. But slowly, this truth was germinating in their heads, and the devils and the remnants of their network of agents were doing everything in their power and a little more on top to make "slowly" even more "slowly."

I could try to make a situational alliance with the army and militia, slowly gathering outside the reach of artillery charms or battle artifacts. But there were two things in the way. The presence of Tia and I in our squad, who are a bit sought after for such a small thing as a successful assassination attempt on the ruling bloodline, slightly reduces the likelihood of a successful alliance.

Instead, we headed straight inside.

Of course, the territory of Golden Feather was surrounded and blocked off by its barriers, enchantments, and artifacts. The personalities defending the capital included their Heroes, legendary artifacts, and elite units. There were too few of them to storm the fortification, and they would hardly be able to gather enough forces before the Emperor's locking technique fell. Unless they were sent to their deaths by direct decree for any chance, even realizing that they would all just bang their heads against the wall, but that would be of little use. The defenders were already strong enough to make life difficult for the devils in hiding.

It would have been enough if the creatures hadn't foreseen such an obvious move if they hadn't prepared their countermeasures long before the final stage of the plan. One of the unremarkable buildings was a small mansion of some provincial aristocrat who had bought the property only out of a desire for a place to live in the Eternal. The unobtrusively treated servants quietly allowed the masters who arrived a month ago to create a powerful and almost no background ritual circuit of a one-time portal, which works only in the presence of a certain key. It was not easy to hack such a thing and to survive the hack and be able to get inside the perimeter of the Golden Feather, you had to be a very dangerous and lucky scumbag.

This portal was a backup loophole for some laggard group that would have to get inside the ritual support unit but would not make it in time for various reasons. Giver of Caresses had that reason even before she met me. She was carrying a vial with the soul of a very famous master jeweler she had fucked, commissioned by one of the generals. She had also broken into the estate of a proud aristocrat who had an extremely curious artifact that he didn't want to give away to his rivals and a vicious group of elite guards who also didn't want the artifact to be taken away bloodlessly. It was on the second assignment (the most difficult of the half dozen errands) that she lost a significant portion of her toys and one of her devil allies.

She could have pulled it out, but she didn't. There was no point in risking herself, having already seized an artifact in which Sovereign had shown interest. It had been a mild, indirect interest, but one of the higher subordinates had remembered it and had thought it logical he should be the one to present the gift and not someone else who had witnessed it.

From Giver's point of view, she had completed her task in full, even if not at an ideal level. No one would praise her for her losses, but they wouldn't punish her too much either. It was just that her profit from her deeds was less than she would have liked, but any devil wants everything, right? Losses among the elite toys were unpleasant but understandable. She hadn't been sent to kill a squad of bums but rather serious warriors, ready to defend their lives and successfully fend off a surprise attack by a recruited servant or a brainwashed family member.

But that was before. Before she met us.

She was the only one of the devils left, even if she still had her prey, but she was not to be praised. I had to take care of the opposite. We all needed to get close to the source of the ritual, but to be allowed to go there, even with a guide in the form of a high-level subordinate creature, we had to be cunning or breakthrough. Breakthrough, when surrounded by an army even larger than the one at the last point, it's a breakthrough to our demise.

I had a vial of Tia's blood, a little free time, a sick imagination, a growth mirror, and vegetable-like cultists, which, even after disassembling some of them into Garments, were still enough to do the trick. Enough to collect all the available essence of star elements, add to it the essence of life, and, with the help of frankly black alchemy, mirror reflections, and strong words, disguise the victims as pureblooded elves.

If you dug a little deeper, these meat puppets (puppets even more than devils usually put into that word) would reveal it with half a glance. But they wore the same garments as we did, with the difference that they were sewn on, not put on, and I could still control the disguise, even if I was getting close to my limit. Disguise on us, on still alive and relatively capable cultists, on deceptions in the form of elves, maintaining communication with the deviless, and the need to maintain all these deceptions, dynamically change, adjust to individual scanning abilities or closed fields .... Let's just say that the problem here was not even in concentration, but in the diversity of actions. It was one thing to pretend to be something or someone else in front of any audience - it was not that difficult for a shadowman. It's much harder to pretend to be several separate identities at once, as in the case of a shadow stealing team's cover. But when the disguise is taken to the next level, and the number of people being covered up has increased significantly, you just have to grit your teeth and bear it.

For a second, I wished I'd thought of pretending to be one of the captive big-eared ones myself, riding the handles all the way to the final target. It would have been much less stressful, but now, under the inaudible ticking of the incorruptible timer, marking the approaching moment of total fuck-up, I had only to play the chosen tactics to the logical finale. It was a pity that the logical finale of this idea was only a stupid suicide.

It was with these thoughts in mind I stepped into the bloody light of the portal ritual, where a minute earlier, five of the subordinate servants had been laid down by Giver's command. It was disgusting, but there was no time to search for another batch of victims, and the victims themselves more than deserved their fate, as I hypocritically tried to convince myself, carefully omitting the fact that most of the fatal distortions in their brains and essence were not voluntary.

I wondered if I should promise myself a glass of vine for the repose of their souls in the distant future (if there was a future for all of us), but then the portal went off, and all thoughts of food and drink went out of my head, and I almost threw up in my mask. Not because of the disgusting sight of the transfer but because of the very peculiar sensations of the transfer that seeped through the construction of the Garment.

Welcome to Hell office, Kostik.

Don't fuck here everything.

Oh, wait a minute!

Quite the opposite!

The first sight we saw at the new place was a classic tentacle monster of extremely unpleasant level, occupying half of the vast hall, which had at least a dozen transfer pentagrams in addition to the one we used. And this mega-tentacle, oozing slime and other suspicious liquids and semi-liquids of all colors of the rainbow, was performing precisely the tasks that one expects from such a creature - to fuck magick girls. And magick boys. And even magick grandfathers and magick grandmothers. And in general, fuck humans and non-humans of all professions, levels and genders.

There were prisoners who had been given to a near-legendary creature or were threatening to take that legendary status at any moment, and future servants who were now being mind-washed in a very subtle way for such a crude approach, as well as proven cultists or devils who were not only enjoying the caresses, but were also being restored, healed, and given positive effects. If Giver were of a lower rank, she would have felt free to relax in the tentacles of Sliding Embrace after a difficult task, but now she had not yet completed the task, and her level was too high to allow her to relax this way without losing her authority. Plus, the effect of the Ring didn't and couldn't dull her lust, but it did redirect it in my direction.

So, while I kept my cloak on, recovered from the transfer, etched out the energy that had seeped through the defenses from myself and my companions, trying to suppress the urge to fill the place with shadows and sprinkle salt on top. Giver was pushing diplomacy, accomplishing the task at hand. A forty-third-level Passionate Freak, resembling a huge hunchback of three meters in height with a cock longer than he is, clearly wanted something from my "ally," and not good.

It was reckless to use clairvoyance, but Giver shared the images with me, who'd cut off all my attempts to probe my surroundings, sending them directly through the soul of one of her beholders wrapped in the flesh of the Garment. The soul suffered as the new garment literally ate away at its fragile essence, ignoring the fleur of Vice, but it did its job.

Devils do not speak like the entities of the real world - they are creatures, even if they are very clever. Devils, especially if they are powerful or even contracted in the real world, are perfectly capable of talking, pretending, and lying, but they have a different way of communicating than other planar creatures, like Shadows, Astral spirits, and the like. Something more akin to the exchange of images than words, but even here, the fiends stand out.

They, due to their affinity with the hosts of souls and familiarity with the society of endowed or simply material creatures, have adopted a lot from them. So, the exchange of images in their ranks is easily combined with words, flattery, threats, promises, and other pleasures. Somewhat similar to the manner of elven High Speech, only more chaotic, devoid of static, and constantly in change. The same word can have hundreds of meanings for both elf and devil, but for the elf, these meanings are often clearly defined from the beginning. Hell Speech depends on the speaker's position, status, level, species and subspecies, date and place of conversation, environment, mood, and generally any whim. Yes, high speech can do that kind of thing too... but not to such an extent that even absolutely the same truths, expressed in similar situations, can change their meaning to the exact opposite.

Absolutely.

Nonhuman.

Psychology.

They had to not listen to the surrounding sounds, especially considering the mega-tentacle and its victim-friends, and decipher only the final result and the "radiograms" sent through the captive soul. The cultists, due to the nature of their gifts, understood much more than ordinary people, but this understanding defiled and corrupted even more. Lust seemed to be in every word of these creatures, every gesture, every stance, every movement - no wonder these bastards were so easy to brainwash and recruit. The very nature of Vice is that it is a vice that everyone desires, and there is no way to remove the vulnerability to it because it is inherent in the nature of every living thing.

The power of the fleur was not pure energy, not at all. Just the planar power of Hell was surprisingly neutral, not too dangerous, inferior even to Astral-based techniques... theoretically. Because for a devil, there is no such thing as neutral energy - any particle of power that passes through the filter of the devil's essence becomes a fleur. It is a funny situation when the main thing of the plane is firmly tied not to the plane itself but to its inhabitants, actually not existing outside the essences of these inhabitants.

The pure energy of Hell is like an imaginary number in mathematics, a theoretical unit that is simply unrealistic to touch or measure. It is necessary to look for research on this topic, preferably conducted by some class tied to such an ambitious plan.... but such studies are sometimes dangerous even to read, and not only because interest in this direction one can be burned to death. Ha-ha. Literally.

Giver of Caresses was cool by the standards of her domain. She was in the small percentage of the elite that could look down on almost all the other devils, but that wasn't the top. She had her own bosses, both much more powerful in level and in a favorable social role, which made them look at her like shit. The Humpy Dickbearer (for whom the Oglaf huge dick was quite a working weapon of high grade) belonged to those who were not allies, as far as it was applicable to devils, for her, as she was not a part of the retinue of those whom Humpy served.

Exchanges of pleasantries, words, and sub-thoughts boiled down to hundreds of different promises, suggestions, indications, or concerns. The freak wanted to know where Giver had gotten the elves from, at the same time hinting at the possibility of pointing out to her superiors that her troop was losing too much, putting his opinion and the opinion of a few of those he could persuade to speak in the right light. Had you not lost the forces entrusted to you by chasing after the sweet souls of the firstborn to gain favor with Sovereign? And if you have, then share it if you don't want trouble.

Push.

Respond.

Reference to the order.

Ignore.

New cycle.

Intrigue in any domain of Hell never subsides but always comes down to the fulfillment of Sovereign's will. Simply because any creature living in a domain, in an artificial world objectified by hundreds of thousands of souls that belonged to Sovereign and were assembled by his will, belongs a priori to that Sovereign. Not even brainwashing for absolute loyalty, but controlling the laws of reality, rewriting the universe, against which every creature always fights, striving to throw off control but remaining within the established rules. Only the strong are worthy of partial freedom from the domain's influence, but they always use all sorts of tricks against themselves, methods of maintaining obedience, so that the chain dogs remain chain dogs because Sovereign may turn out to be a new one.

It was not to say that the loyalty instilled by the Ring would fall apart if Giver spent a couple of months in her native domain or simply fell under the gaze of the creature that ruled that domain. She was strong, and her personality could resist a lot of influences, but still, the processed deviless was going to die, but not to get into the domain. All for the thrill of being mine, that mere existence alone pleased her beyond even her imagination. There was no point in risking Sovereign's gaze if it could be avoided.... or die, but without losing the source of her submission, staying by his side until the end.

In such conditions, it is quite difficult to intrigue. One must simultaneously keep one's own goal in mind and not put the common cause in a vulnerable position. One of the favorite tactics of the devils was to provoke a competitor to an unwise action by putting his back or, on the contrary, by pushing the one who had been put in his back. Quite often, by the way, it was the one who allowed betraying profitably who was punished, not the one who betrayed because no need to be the smartest.

Or Sovereign was in such a mood.

Or something else.

It depends on the situation, and there are more shades of it than there are petals in a field of daisies. In another situation, Giver could have acted in many ways, but right now, she didn't care about the consequences, trying to fulfill her goal without revealing herself too soon. But that early time never went farther than a couple hours, so the rudeness she allowed, the refusals to share, the broken strands of commitment or broken contracts were very unkind, but, at the same time, silence.

Yes, she said she'd give the long-eared ones, the blood of Stars and Life, straight to the head ritualist (who at this point was a devil, not a cultist) and his assistants, not to her patrons, so that they'd already made the gift by charging for it. It's war, and they're all in a hurry, so her arguments are not ignored because she's not crossing the common cause. Some, almost all, will assume the deviless has some kind of treaty with Soft Touch and his retinue, that she is betraying now according to a prearranged plan. After all, it is easier to believe in the cunning of a rival for the attention and approval of Sovereign than in the fact that their trick with an infiltrated agent was used against them.

It's easier, yes.

However, one should not lose caution, keeping minimal pauses, answering questions, and giving room for imagination. So as not to be suspected, for example, a cunning agent of another domain, who managed to lure Giver by promising new souls, a new sonm, and connection to another soul bank, at the same time confirming his guarantees so the creature would believe it. Domains are at war with each other, albeit, most often, without leaving Hell so no one would reject the option of sabotage, and they would check even their own, just out of paranoid caution provoked by innumerable years of experience.

No amount of experience will help against the predictability of human stupidity.

Elves are the ideal sacrificial material, as is generally accepted among all the witch doctors of the world and among creatures outside the real plane of existence. There are races, ritual killing of which can give more output under certain conditions or even in any conditions, but there are practically none as capacious as ordinary elves, as widespread and relatively easy to obtain. The matter is not in planar connection, in fact, there are races with it that are not weaker, the matter is in the very nature of the firstborn.

Their souls and energy are as pure as a baby's tears.

Not in terms of holiness or anything like that, no. Rather, these souls have the maximum distillation, the ultimate filtration, so it is always easier to assimilate what is received from such sacrifices, carries fewer risks, and is many times higher in terms of effectiveness. The doctrine of any elf's training hinges on self-control, separation of self, and the imposing influence of class. Here you can give dozens of theories, each of which is surprisingly plausible, make assumptions, or some other bullshit, but the main argument will be banal statistics.

If you slaughter a bandit of the twentieth level on the altar complex and then do the same with a young elf of at least the tenth level, the result and the amount assimilated will be surprisingly different. Where a greedy creature or a cunning witch doctor would get one free stat from a human, the one who took the gift of the long-eared will be given at least five times more, and the consequences in the form of question marks in the Status will be given ten times less, if the ritual is conducted according to all the rules, and not eat directly through abilities like Grip.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg!

The basis of the essence of the starborn is such that it can be used in almost any situation to strengthen almost any altar, and even now, despite the availability of pre-selected materials, a few extra eared ones will not just be superfluous - they will be surprisingly useful! For a good master, it will not be difficult to add such support, to throw a new piece of wood into the flames of the hell furnace without damaging the basis of the extremely strong and stable ritual, which has become even stronger since its launch.

In short, elves are a super grease for the mechanism of the City's transfer. Their presence is not necessary, but it will not be superfluous, for which Giver of Caresses was ready to vouch with her own existence, as well as for the fact that the probability of rejection of such a "gift" from the side of Touch is minimal. No one would be willing to help her get over her own decisions that had made her come directly to the ritualists until they'd milked her dry, and then it wasn't certain that they'd support her.

At the moment, the cult had lost only seven points of ritual concentration, among which only two were anchor points, one of them on my absent conscience. The situation is not the most dangerous, but still, the creatures have gradually pulled all their forces into a fist, waiting for the time of the Eternal's "let the whole world wait" not to lose a couple more. And the endowed ones didn't have much chance to break even small points during this time, let alone larger ones.

Nevertheless, the very fact they have pulled these forces together means the possibility, the existence of a probability in which the destruction of another ritual support, even if we are right next to the support, will allow us, if not to destroy the mechanism of the ritual, then at least to slip through the crack that has opened.

In theory.

The journey through the territory occupied by the creatures and their servants was a strange sight, to say the least. It was a mixture of porn, bloody horror, war drama, Giger's paintings, and other little things that wouldn't make you go gray just because your heart would stop before you did. The desire to kill was growing exponentially, and for once, I had no logical reason to restrain it. Well, except for the obvious "if I snap, we're fucked," but I'd been living with that fact for too long, even without the Hell invasion.

Lust ruled here, ruled unconditionally and mercilessly, and resulted in hundreds of orgies, very few of which were useless, but many of which were bloody. Some spectacles, such as prisoners being broken down and reshaped right in front of his eyes into another distorted something, caused not anger or disgust and not even the occasional attraction that slipped through all self-control but banal amazement. How could one think of such things?

Lust ruled here, but near the central ritual complex, which the monsters had quietly taken over with the Golden Feather Guild, even Lust gave way to discipline - patrols, barriers, sensors, hundreds of little devils scurrying around, tasting our disguises, the exotic abilities of the guards and the artifacts they'd brought in. I couldn't say that the protection here was on par with that of the Library, but it wasn't just me and Losius I had to cover.

The door leading to the ritual halls reminded me of bank vaults because there was so much enchanted steel, gold, mithril, and other exotic materials in this construction that its sale would cover the annual budget of some province of an outlandish kingdom. It was at least a meter and a half thick, shining with runes and sigils, and felt completely inert to all influences, a door that could be sent for a deep swim in the Shadow or left in Dream for a couple of days, only to be retrieved, wiped clean, and put back in place.

There are things and materials even more durable, but the main feature of this construction remains the complete isolation of all external influences and energy flows. At the previous points, even at the very first, accidentally found, there was bound to be something similar, only lower level, but here, looking at this creation, I realize that even I would have to lay out almost the entire reserve to break this armor. Still, it's good that we didn't go for a direct assault. It's very good.

Giver is merrily and cheerfully dropping hints, letting herself down on all sorts of promises and making guarantees she has no chance of backing up because they are false from beginning to end. Her battle now is even harder than my fight against the sensors, and the importance of that battle is even greater. We should not be allowed in because it is not the scale of a forty-seventh-level Giver of Caresess to be allowed inside with a creature working on such an important task. In other circumstances, she would have gotten an audience without much trouble because she was elite! But it took time, contracts, deceit, intrigue, scheming, backstabbing, and corruption, without which a society of devils simply did not exist, and they would have let her in alone, unaccompanied.

Deviless has been playing her part, trying to make herself look like a skillfully tricked loser who somehow got tricked into trying to bite off more than she can chew. That's why she's eager to put the elves in the hands of the Soft Touch, hoping to gain his favor and change one entourage for another, only to do so with a bunch of mistakes and small defeats will only lead to collapse, loss of status, cutting off the conduit to the soul bank, lowering her admissions, and depriving her of most of the sonm she'll have to give up for survival.

She pretends, hides one mask behind another, playing the trump card of surprise, supplementing it with the greed of Touch, who does not need a foolish servant, who let herself be fooled, entangled in the web of her intrigue, who lost everything after she managed to return with a magnificent booty. And her interlocutors did not realize that what she needed was not profit but only a moment to attack, a chance to be inside the ritual room, in the dome of the closed space.

In a place where reinforcements can't come, even if, by some miracle, they sense our blow.

Once again, I gave myself a mental kick, thinking about my own mistake. We really should have just pretended to be victims instead of masquerading as cultists. The disguise is melting, the essence is disintegrating under the attempts to break it open, and one creature's words and deception are making it harder and harder to withstand questions and deflect suspicion without letting it even arise. Because she alone, in company with the victims, could still be let in, but there's no reason to let the whole crowd in, even if we set aside all suspicion and paranoia.

How hard it was for her to make the conversation, so we were considered mere porters, and we were sent after her. There's no need for the high mistress to carry the meat herself..... especially if the meat is so sweet to eat it or at least play with it a little. Yeah, I could have tried to turn the dummy ears into bombs to have an additional argument since I had to carry them anyway. I couldn't, though, because a bomb, even disguised by clothing and nothingness, could be sensed.

They let us through, and we went in.

His eyes slid along the walls, ignoring the insane and mind-numbing drawings on every surface of the hall, which was not much smaller than the room with the tentacled shit. Ignoring the suffocating, will-stifling fleur that flooded every available space, empowering the devils, ecstatic the cultists, and trouble for everyone else. Ignoring the multitude of prisoners piled in pre-prepared areas, protected by barriers that cut off the fleur so as not to spoil the purity of the future meat. This place was a piece of Hell, dragged into reality, clawing at it like a harpoon and dragging, dragging it straight into the arms of the domain that opened its cyclopean maw, ready to swallow and digest the delicacy. If the Eternal was gradually falling into the purple sky, this hall was a fishing hook, and the ritual created the line by which the city was dragged.

The safe door slammed shut, cutting us off from the rest of the world and, at the same time, increasing the pressure of Hell on the mind even more. The porters were already approaching us, ready to take the bait and kick us all out of the sanctum sanctorum, and I was only just realizing the obvious. Fighting here wasn't going to work. Not even me. In the concentration of such power, Soft Touch himself is like a domain lord, a little Sovereign, and if he wishes it, we'll all be gone.

Once he exposes us, we're all gone.

All it takes is a closer look, and the disguise is blown away like a lazy pig's house from a fairy tale. All it takes is a wish, and reality will seize our hearts, rob us of our strength and willpower, conquer our souls, and flood them with perfect Lust without the slightest chance of escape. Having come here for the battle, I only brought the seventy-third-level ancient creature a very hearty dinner and Tia, whom he would use for ritual material. He might not eat or play with the rest of us, but he might add them to his important work or enslave them.

The short, literally dwarf-like creature half a meter tall, resembling a very cute and unnaturally alluring child, was a sentence for us all. A sentence that had only a few such short seconds to fulfill. Now he would come up, realize he was being tricked, ignoring all my defenses, and then he would be happy. He had hoped to laugh at Giver alone, having allowed her to enter on purpose, to take what she had brought and send her away under the kicks and whips of her deceived past bosses. And he'll get us right on a platter with our asses already greased with Vaseline.

No chances.

Simple no chances.

I was ready to cry tears of joy for the fact that it didn't even occur to me for a second to come here to fight.

All I have to do is wait for the doors to be locked, which can't be opened from the outside without permission from the inside, and then, for the third time in twenty-four hours, raise my finger with a shining gold ring, point it at Giver and, to her inexpressible happiness, activate the Repeated Depravity by poking my finger into her shoulder. In the process, I can drop the disguise, covering myself with my favorite Aegis, and cover all my companions with it. At the same time, I pray to the universe that the backlash of what is about to fall on me will not eat my soul at once.

One moment.

If the devils in both cases were so intoxicated after using the ring's basic ability, how should they feel about the increased debauchery? Of course, there was a chance that there would be no pleasure hit and no fleur, and Giver would just have new talents in Status, but everything I knew about the Ring said otherwise, as did my favorite intuition.

I made a mistake.

I am a brainless moron, expecting just another, only stronger and more useful reaction, which could be described by the phrase "chain orgasm." I assumed this blow wouldn't even be much stronger, if at all weaker, due to habituation and the fact that the first submission had been imposed on Giver only recently.

Moron is, in my case, not even a diagnosis, but an epitaph on my tombstone.

It didn't blow any less.

It didn't blow any harder.

The wave of pleasure spewed out by the newly rewritten creature increased not even by a multiple, but in cubic fucking progression. And when on the raised by me, right in front of the nose of really surprised Touch, the defense collapsed blow, all I had to do was to say this very epitaph of his life's journey. And then Aegis accelerated on the afterburner, transferring to me the emptiness not only personal but also all my companions, and I was no longer to self-exploration and reflection.

Any.

* * *