* * *

The afterburner mode of the Aegis is the subject of a very long and inconclusive reflection that brought me many questions, few answers, and a whole mountain of headaches. The nature of this technique, while dangerous, allows you to ignore a lot of life's adversities, but it also requires quite a lot. As practice has shown, if you are trying to shut out these very adversities not only yourself but also several allies, the demands also increase. Not exponentially, fortunately. Otherwise, I would not be able to think coherently and ask myself questions but would start eating with an audible slurp the souls of everyone I could reach.

It was not my willpower or even my heroic awesomeness that saved me, but the banal nature of the attack, which was not even an attack. Much can be said about the devil's signature technique, even if it's hard to find any good in it, but for all its dubious nature, the fleur remains an extremely effective tool for influencing any animated consciousness. This is not mentalism or hypnomancy in its purest form, no! A perfect combination of the subtlety of influence, its ability to overcome resistance, the monstrous power of this influence, as well as the speed of influence on the victim and the massiveness of this influence. How many of you will be able to remember the classes of seducers that can compress their signature techniques and methods in time from months to a couple of minutes and then begin to hit them on the area? If there are such, they are very few, and Hell always has plenty of such specialists.

It's axiomatic that there's no defense against the fleur.

That is, you can ignore it, you can block it, you can stop it with an amulet, a prayer, willpower, a ritual circle, a class skill, or anything. There has not yet been found a way to create a reliable defense available to every soldier or citizen that will remain economically viable. Either, figuratively speaking, throw gold bars at the enemy, keep a huge number of benefics and clerics who will provide protection, or rely on some cunning plans, but a reliable and affordable way to protect at least an army from the fleur has not been found.

The more devils there are, the more powerful their collective fleur, the stronger they are, the more subtle its pressure. The most pernicious thing here is that even single strong devils can add subtlety of influence to the general aura of Vice, even if there is almost only one small thing gathered in the crowd. Subtlety and strength which do not mutually exclude each other, as in the case of the usual mentality and related offshoots, but, on the contrary, complement each other. People can only choke on their tears, spending stocks of the rarest consumables to temporarily cover themselves from Hell raiders or watch the sad picture of army units being converted entirely without a single hit.

It doesn't matter the Aspect of the particular raiders, for Agony, Despondency, Fear, or Pride always operate on the same principles, which is what made the Fleur so notorious. Force the endowed or even monsters and monstrosities to fight such invaders, getting used to acting and striking back. When Hell invades reality, no one will chase unprepared army units at them, only get all settlements out of the way of the invaders and evacuate civilians, taking them out of harm's way. Only after the preparation, when they gather a striking fist of Сlerics and other support classes, reinforcing them with shock troops, they will give a fight for devils.

Divine miracles, which the gods do not skimp on in such cases, powerful auras, attacks with strategic magic. If the creatures managed not just to organize a cult but to break into the human world with a whole raid, then all forces are thrown at their destruction. The problem of the devils is not even that their elite fighters are, on average, superior to the elite of the endowed ones. They have their Heroes, their pets Summoned, and artifacts, of which the creatures always have less than the creatures themselves. The elite has something to meet the enemy and something to repel the aforementioned fleur. The problem is that the fleur, which in its pure form is not very useful against the Guard, leaves the Guard alone against the enemy and yesterday's allies.

So, there were a handful of warriors of level forty-five and a slightly larger handful of level forty. They were facing a roughly equal number of comparable-level creatures, a huge crowd of low-level creatures, and an equal crowd of seduced guards and soldiers who didn't have high levels, amulet, and artifact defenses, or personal blessings. Not a good situation, especially when you consider that, even if they reflected and leveled the effects of the fleur, this handful would spend their strength on countering, which would make them weaker, slower, and simply unable to give their best.

The fleur is strong, powerful, and deadly to endowed or at least sentient beings.

But when Fleur encounters Aegis, all of his sophistication, weightless subtlety, and almost cheater-like ability to ignore standard mental defenses turns into a pumpkin. It's still possible to push through Aegis with a fleur if you can create something extremely powerful and cunning with it. But only a few of the devil's brethren will be able to create such a thing. And even if they know how they won't always be able to do it in time. In the case when you are hit not by the influence directed by someone's will but by an unformed stream? At such times, a shadow adept sheltered by Aegis from the highest point of the world does not give a shit about the power and density of the impact. It would be like trying to bury a steel bunker under a mountain of feathers and fluff - whatever the total mass, it would not be able to concentrate the necessary force.

Thus, it is easy to see that the consequences of the Repeated Depravity were not something I feared too much. Instead of a temporarily harmless fleur, my essence was compromised by something else. As was always the case when it came to the use of Aegis. It wasn't hard to endure the blow, but it was harder to bear the burden of my defense, its crushing loneliness. And if I could still hold my share, even if only for a couple of seconds, it would be harder to bear the joint payment for the whole company.

Just a little.

Slightly.

It's a speck.

I thought I heard the crunch of my bones, though I knew with my mind that there was no such tissue in my body now. But there it was, quiet and thunderous, accompanied by a kind of wrong pain as if it was something you didn't have and never had. Along with the crunch came a lingering sensation remotely reminiscent of that which occurs when blood is drawn at a donor center or when you have a severe arterial bleed. It was as if something was pulling out of you, like a thread from a cloth, gradually leaving you, and along with the leaving, everything else began to fall to pieces.

And, of course, the damned hunger and emptiness in me, without which I had long ago been unable to think of using potent shadow techniques. The soul that was slipping away into the insatiable maw of my soul bothered me much less than usual, while I seemed to embrace the fires of other people's souls, invisible in any spectrum, but felt with painful clarity. Something that always came out of the depths of consciousness at such moments growled and screamed, shrieking and cursing, trying to convince me to let go of those lights and give them up instead of me, instead of us.

I hear.

I listen.

But I kept pressing those lights, pressing them into my existence to a metaphysical crunch, refusing to give the Shadow its prey because, for this scum, there is no concept of sufficient quantity because it wants to take everything. There was no heroism in my stubbornness, nor any sung loyalty to my comrades, nor was there any nobility or self-sacrifice. Only a huge mountain of donkey stubbornness and almost childish unwillingness to part with what I had clutched in my hands. The only difference was that instead of a cute plush dinosaur, I was not going to give away the souls of those who entrusted these souls to me.

...the pure and peace-giving immensity, together with the song of the deadly blade in the most robust frame, that this immensity shall direct...

...the thick, enveloping noise and distant beat of something unfathomable, vast and unformed, sneaking and lurking.....

...the rustling of branches and the creaking of gravel underfoot, behind which you can guess the chime of the finest and weightless threads that permeate all things....

...enchanting grace, behind which lies the sharpness of honed steel, simultaneously deadly strong and weightlessly false, as if it did not exist at all....

...the touch of falling leaves under the distant glow, the feeling of being ancient and yet young, as if unable to grow old...

That's probably why I was able to hold them back. Any nobility is nothing before the face of all-devouring Hunger. Friendship, or loyalty is extinguished in the clutch of Loneliness, anger, and hatred of the world and myself, quickly replacing principles and life guidelines. In such situations, these things save where everything else will not work - stubbornness, stupid whims, stupidity, and unwillingness to admit mistakes. And also one's anger, one's hatred, one's hunger, which can (in a hundred cases out of a hundred) both become the basis of your fall and turn, against all statistical probabilities, into a thin barrier, a barrier that will clearly distinguish you from someone else, someone who will have to appear in your place afterward.

So while I was figuratively holding the souls of my team in my hands and trying not to fuck up my own, I didn't have the resources to control the situation. And that's sad because if I had, I would have noticed, and I should have noticed earlier, that not only devils, victims, and cultists were present in the ritual hall. In my defense, the thing was very fortunate to be in the distance, hidden behind the streams of fluorescence and the fleur of the main freak's assistants scurrying back and forth. It was a lame excuse, but I couldn't notice it, having given myself to maintaining the disguise and deceiving the enemy's premonitions.

Golem.

The most trivial golem, the size of a grown man, was not even manned, unlike the huge machines from Stone. It was the only one that could easily cover the price of a couple of dozen mechas with their staff and pilots. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been here. The machine was not even combat (which does not mean defenselessness!) but an auxiliary support unit for the ritualist, able to close some of the contours of the ritual. Those of them, the retention of which, for living or quasi-living entities, is fraught with many troubles, among which scattering into atomic dust is far from the most dangerous threat.

A helper, a backstop, and, of course, a bodyguard.

Devils or cultists, but the original structure of this ingenious creation, which was no longer an artifact but something more with its level and status, had been heavily modified with modifications typical of Hell. It was a very significant enhancement for a creature that could not be upgraded in any other way than through modifications to the vessel of its essence. The worst news - for me, of course, the worst news - was a clear but delayed realization: despite the pile of tainted artifacts and imposed effects, this thing was still a goddamn golem. That is, something immune to fleur to an extent far greater than any undead!

You can't say it's impossible to corrupt a golem with a fleur because a well-powered creature would defile even the very fabric of reality, not to mention soulless magical constructs. The key part in this statement is "well-powered creature" because now the people inside the ritual hall were hit by the simplest possible, even if insanely strong wave of Vice. Another golem would have been utterly destroyed by this micro cataclysm, a storm in a glass and a storm in a bottle, but not this specimen, considered powerful enough and of high quality to assist Soft Touch here, in the center of its power.

The Golem withstood the pressure of the confined abomination, even if not without difficulty, after which its algorithms had a clear goal - to eliminate the source of sabotage, while all other allies, including even Touch itself, were in a weak state. Nothing so terrible in another situation, but, surprise surprise, at that very moment, we were also in a bad state, and I was, so to speak, knocked out of the game.

All of my abilities, all of my premonitions, all of my immense awesomeness had no time to react to the change of situation when this android decided to radically solve the issue of leather meat sacks. Short, very thin, with surfaces gleaming from the glow of runes and ritual signs, he stared at us with his face, which had only two eye mechanisms and nothing else. In the depths of the eyes, small parts and gears moved with great frequency, like some strange clock, and two huge sapphires glittered above, serving as focusers.

He had to kill us, perfectly timing the moment when we would fall out from under the Aegis but not yet regain consciousness. There were simply no other options, but the mechanoid himself had been blasted by the flare, though not damaged, but inhibited. He still came to his senses faster than the overstressed Kostenka regained his clarity of thought, even if for a few decisive moments, but faster.

Anyway, it's time to get your ass kicked, isn't it?

Turns out that's not the case.

Aegis's blow to my brain was too strong for me, but there was something good about it. The rest of us were hit just as hard. Feeling your soul being held in the clawed clutches of the Shadow. Even though they were not hurt, they were also temporarily incapable of functioning at those decisive moments, and no matter what their will was, no matter what pumped statutes they had, still "the stun passed." No immolate impruved, honestly!

But, gentlemen of knowledge, attention to the question! What plane helps the best to endure shock, horror, and other vicious emotions, embodying direct and maximally aggressive moral damage? The blue of heaven is by no means a panacea, and it is quite possible to break through its armor as the same defaming Hell, as well as crazy Darkness, and in general, a lot of aggressive or, on the contrary, insidious-soft planes. But still, the calmness granted by it has such a peculiarity. It helps those who have been hit by a mental or psychic blow to come to their senses faster. Or not to be hit at all.

Losius still didn't manage to ignore the experience. Even so, he woke up a little before everyone else, even me, even Tia, even the fucking golem, not to mention the devils. If he had fallen under the fleur, then Losius wouldn't even exist anymore - there would be nothing to wake up to after such a thing, even if your soul is very strong. A really powerful Heaven user could survive such a thing, preventing the fleur from touching his soul, shielding it with a serene armor of blue, but Losius still hadn't reached such heights, even with alchemy. It was not about strength, not about the power of spells, but about the depth of affinity with Heaven.

But the guy, who was barely conscious after the experience, didn't need all his strength and skill, only a minimum of common sense and a working speech apparatus. I could not hear what he said, but I could see the consequences of it. It was at that moment that I became alert enough for my brain to fall into place, and my eyes, strengthened by my Inquisitive Gaze, reflexively recognized my failed murderer, at the same time provoking my clairvoyance to a certain amount of belated but necessary information.

If it were a pure combat construct, he would have had to master reincarnation techniques if his soul had somehow managed to go to rebirth and not to the devil's pockets. But against this super-secretary for a professional ritualist, used by Losius was enough. I only saw the golem for a moment because, after that moment, the golem was blown away at such a speed that I'm not sure if I would have been able to react to Losius's pitch. No, I would have been able to, but without premonition, without prior preparation, with a pure reaction, I would have probably missed it.

The Golden Needle, a legendary battle-type artifact, discharged its ace ability. A beam of all-burning energy combines both Heaven and Sun in equal proportions. This beam, like any technique, combines more than one type of planar energy. It exists for only a few moments until the chain reaction begins and the subsequent explosion or its analog. The legendary artifact could not prevent such a thing, but the creator of the Needle was not after combining incompatible things.

The beam, an extension of the blade, stretched out over many dozens of meters and was powerful enough to slice through an entire fortress. That was exactly what he had done in the recent past when the previous owner of the artifact had tried to reproduce me with it, using the amoeba method, breaking the Stone and damaging the base of the spatial fold. The artifact did not prevent the planar conflict but created a kind of super-strong vessel, directing the flow of energy to the right point. A kind of lightsaber, but not a saber or a light.

Even in normal mode, the blade could slice through artifact steel if enough physical force was put into the strike. Some activated techniques allowed to change the type of planar damage from Heaven to Sun and back, selecting a more suitable "refueling" for a given target. However, the use of the strongest of the techniques available to the owner of the artifact, merging both planes at once, increased the output by almost an order of magnitude. Probably, the Golden Needle was not particularly cool because there were even epic artifacts that were as good as or even better than the sword in terms of damage. The ability to shuffle Heaven and Sun was certainly useful, but only two planes, even if they were very close to each other, could not cover all possible situations.

And only when it came to the final ability, which among all of us could use only Losius, as the owner of the highest rates of fencing skill and one-handed blades, the legendary of the Needle revealed in all its glory. It was indeed a weapon capable of extinguishing siege shields along with a fortress, sweeping entire tribes of giants off their feet, and bringing young dragons down to earth. Maximum power and speed of impact, multiplied by the cumulative effect of a combination of planar forces. It was probably kept in Stone, too, solely as a means of preventing something huge and bad from breaking into the fold.

I'm all about the fact that a direct hit with this ultimate ability can really do a lot.

And nothing would say more about the inordinate strength of the hapless golem than the fact that he was not killed by this blow, at least not immediately. On the mechanical body of the android, which is not for calls, flashed all the runes and sorcerous signs in a cluster, creating not even a barrier but a conceptual closed field in the shape of the golem's body, simply nullifying any damage values. But the inertia was not so good because the sword, which was lengthening and lengthening, and the glow of which made his eyes water, continued to lengthen, literally hammering the automaton into the wall.

For a moment, his body resisted the impact of the Golden Needle on one side and the pressure of the ritual covering the walls on the other, but only for a moment. Too brief for the golem, already somewhat damaged by the wave of fleur inside the ritual hall, to do anything about it. Deceptively slowly, his defenses faded, and the armor covering his body began to sag inward.

I didn't have time to see the ending, launching into my own attack.

Despite the difference in levels and actually being in Soft Touch's personal domain, I recovered a little quicker. The little thing was coming back to the real world astonishingly fast, but holy imageboards, if there was anything that could give me an even greater advantage against a Lust Devil of his level, I couldn't imagine it, let alone find and use it.

I attacked from a lying position, once again ignoring the bad feeling deep inside my long-suffering and slightly swollen self. There was no time for any structured shadow attacks, and I wouldn't be able to deliver a strong enough pitch. Not against such a fattened creature, not in the place of his power, not in the state I was in today. Once again, I turned to Form as the most adaptable for rapid close combat, in a fraction of a second, going from the human state to the ultimate amplification.

The nearly four meters separating us is not a jerk or even a shadow step. I literally devour the distance separating us, ignoring all the defenses and powerful rituals, simply manifesting Shadow on reality and making reality Shadow. Touch froze in place, small, low, deceptively puny - at that moment, it seemed to me and the Shadow that had almost taken me that the devil didn't stand a chance, that the devil had already lost.

It wasn't a fighter but a ritualist, even an impossibly powerful ritualist. Ritual defenses could twist me at any second and stop any attack if the creature had time to even want to use them. Yes, there were automatic defenses, working both on foresight and on captive souls monitoring the situation in the area. In a different situation, those defenses would have been enough, but now the situation was exactly as it was at this moment.

The use of Repeated Depravity on Giver of Caresses had created such a disturbance that even the most advanced defenses, the most attentive sensors, the extremely subtle rituals, and the most loyal of captive souls... no, they didn't fail. The same rituals, even infused with Vice, made to Hell's mold, remain marginally vulnerable to pure fleur. The storm had knocked them out of tune, slowed them down a bit, and, figuratively speaking, ruined their aim.

That was enough for me to get close enough to make my strike.

It didn't make sense to use the huge form I'd flaunted in the battle with Dreamer. Instead of an enormous scarecrow with dozens of jaws and limbs, I had become a surprisingly humanoid abomination, only a little taller than me, but as thin as a silhouette made of cocktail straws. You know how kids draw a typical stick man on paper? It was funny, frustratingly fragile, and completely non-threatening, but the saturation of the shape was such that if it weren't for the protection of the ritual hall, I had a good chance of cutting the fabric of the space with an awkward movement.

Five thin straws of the extended straw arm reached Touch, pressed into his passive defense, and, almost without resistance, began to sink into the flesh of his pseudo-body, which was bleeding with such a desirable and delicious power. I felt with all my being how close to me this nutritious broth of ground souls was. Touch was in every sense decomposing these souls within his sonm, turning his body into an essence factory. In pure essentialism, it was far stronger than I was, and the techniques it used, for all their ugliness, left my vessel of essences far behind.

The straws stuck into the body, breaking through, sprouting, and branching deeper and deeper inside that body. Meter by meter, the straws divided like a multidimensional fractal and should have long ago pierced through the creature a dozen or two times, but Touch was noticeably larger inside than outside, and the basis of its sonm was hidden somewhere in the depths of a huge essential cauldron, within which even now hundreds of groaning souls were being systematically cooked.

I realized too late that the little asshole is not the real body of Touch but only a projection of him. A manifestation of the essence of him, a boil on the flesh of the universe. This entire ritual hall is not just an extension of his will, but literally it itself. Even so, the small body and the entire ritual complex are just the tip of the iceberg, the bulk of which is hidden in Hell. Even if every single devil, one way or another, has a partial connection with Hell. They exist there and here, at the same time, but among the representatives of their bleeping species that I met, only Touch is not a standard devil but a living factory and assembly plant in one compact bottle.

And if the mighty but so tiny creature my sudden attack could still destroy, then against what Touch turned out to be, this attack would not be enough. And understand this sad truth Kostenka deigned to understand at about the same moment when the shadow tubes sprouted a good forty meters in all directions and even in a couple of extra dimensions, but did not reach the vital organs or what this abomination has instead of them. Or rather, they did. However, there were too many of these organs, which duplicated each other reliably, overlapping the loss of individual elements. I managed to tear apart a few dozen important structures. I let a hundred or two souls captured and almost digested in Lust fall into oblivion, but I couldn't reach the sonm. I stay vulnerable to Touch's retaliatory attack.

Realizing that I didn't have time to deliver a fatal stab with the poisoned Shadow pin, I stopped maintaining my super-dense Form, letting the power invested in the blow go free and hit the creature's insides with an energy battering ram, hoping, if not to kill it, then at least to hurt it enough so that the devil's retaliatory blow wouldn't multiply me by zero. I managed to do it at the very last moment, but it didn't help much. His touch shuddered with a maddening pain that even the nature of his Viciousness could not quell. It shuddered, not outwardly, for the little childlike runt did not move, but inwardly, as if the whole cauldron, as it was, had been shaken up, and the essences boiling in their juice had boiled even more violently.

And then I got hit back.

Apparently, to control the ritual Touch still needed to have a material body. His outer shell, a small genderless humanoid, served not only as an antenna but also as a kind of calculation module for the rituals, linking all these magical patterns with the contents of the cauldron, like a video card in a computer. To tell the truth, I could have guessed it earlier, but somehow I didn't have the time. And Giver hadn't told me because she knew so little about Touch and its nature.

It belonged to a completely different "social stratum." That could be understood already by the level of the creature, being subordinate only to the Sovereign directly, so that they could only know about the nature of the essence of Touch from the stories of the employees subordinated to Touch himself. He was not just an elite but one of the first deputy chiefs of the entire domain, accountable to no one. Giver, of course, knew of his power, but among the scattered scraps of information she had collected over the centuries, it was too difficult to discern the truth.

So.

The body, the outer body, was the antenna, and the ritual hall was the receiver. The power hidden in the drawings covering the hall was such that it could smear three Kostiks like butter on a bun. But, at the moment of my attack, the creature was forced to cut its connection to the ritual. The boiling cauldron of essences could unwittingly sow instability and spoil the delicate wiring of the ritual threads through which the essences flowed into the necessary points of the ritual. It was a simple reassurance, completely natural and understandable because even in Hell, they had heard about safety and did not like to take unnecessary risks. However, by separating itself from the ritual, the creature lost, even if only for a split second, until it stabilizes its gut at least partially, the opportunity to use direct reality control and make a big zucchini out of me, and out of our entire woeful team.

Thus, I managed though not to kill but to noticeably wound my opponent, depriving him of the most terrible weapon in his arsenal. The trouble, guys, is that the other tricks in the creature's deck were not much weaker than the claimed domain control. This thought came into my head at the same time as Touch's blow, which was delivered right at point-blank range. The essence in the cauldron seemed to crystallize around several souls, deliberately stacked in the right order, like water freezing around oxygen bubbles. And now this construction, though composed of material surprisingly nourishing to any Shadow, was no longer devourable but hard, sharp, and fatally saturated with particles of souls that still held some of their former power.

Direct conversion of essence into battle charms, even if it was done literally inside its own body..... it sounds silly, but it wasn't funny almost immediately. The charms, this crystalline and multidimensional abomination that wasn't even magic to the fullest extent, struck the Form sprouting in the middle of the vessel, instantly annihilating the fuck out of it. Neither durability, defense, nor resistance helped. The damage done inside Touch's body was only the final chord of this technique. The crystallized essence's main job was to shift the constants of reality within range a bit. For one heartbeat, the Form's defense was, if not nullified, then drastically reduced.

If my gripers hadn't been literally shoved into the multidimensional guts of the devil, I would have had something to respond to. I could have strengthened the Form even more, used my Manifestation to stop reality from distorting, or even just used Aegis. In another situation, it would have been different, but all I could do now was exhale rumblingly as I felt my arms taken from my shoulders and the rest of my body flying backward, hitting the far wall of the ritual hall while bleeding inky-black blood that was beginning to eat away at the thousand-fold magic-strengthened stone of the floor.

The Shadow Form can regenerate such injuries that the user of this skill could easily be mistaken for a distant (or near) relative of Alucard. Not to the level of regenerating from a piece of nostril, but I was likely not to even notice the usual amputation of limbs. New arms would grow faster than the old ones would fly away. Simple steel and magic wouldn't scratch the Form, but even very powerful sorcery, having inflicted damage, wouldn't be able to stop the process of renewal of the shadow body. It was useless to chop the shadow, useless to tear it apart.

Touch's blow was not powerful sorcery only because this technique was pure bullshit elevated to the hundred thousand-five hundredth degree! I felt as if my arms up to my shoulders had been annihilated at some deep level, after which no regeneration could restore them. If my mind hadn't dived into the embrace of the plane so deeply, I would have died on the spot from the pain, so to speak.

Black blood continued to ooze out of me along with magic and life, pain threatened to flood my consciousness with agony, and a creature greedy for everything and anything, sensing my weakness and eager to seize control and claw at my hated enemy once more, was tearing at me from the inside. Realizing that the count still goes on seconds, and I spend them not reasonably at all, I begin to move my ass in order to save my ass. Remembering the nature of my opponents, it is necessary to save my ass in multiple senses at once.

Shadow Theft works with some interruptions. The atmosphere in the hall was too intense and wicked to rely on subtle techniques under such conditions. Where subtlety didn't work, brute force worked well. By investing rivers of magic into shadow theft, I deprived the technique of the stealth that characterized it, and in return, I gained the piercing power and ability to literally burrow into the shells and souls of cultists. If a standard theft remains invisible to the victim until the very end (or until the technique is dispelled, which is much more often), now even a chump completely devoid of any premonitions could be aware of death tugging at his heart, cold fingers creeping under his skin.

I should have taken human form first and only then tried to treat my injuries, but given the situation, I would have died instantly in human form. So I just poured in streams of power, spending enough reserve in a second to cover an entire fortress with powerful shields or send that same fortress into a shadowy rift. I wasted it without doubt and without pity, giving those who were caught by the technique my wounds just as ruthlessly.

I gave it away.

I gave it away.

But I couldn't give it away completely.

It was no doubt having some effect, because the pain was easing, and the blood was not flowing like a poisonous stream, though it hadn't stopped. And the trauma, the void in the place of my hands, was gradually leveling out, and the Form was starting explosive regeneration.... but it was slow to do so! Layer by layer, the loss was returned, and, believe me, the sensations of this process were not pleasant at all. A handful of cultists, the most human and the least mutated from their masters' gifts, were falling in stacks. No one had taken much care to protect themselves in the middle of the already protected hall, and if they had any amulets, the explosion of ecstasy had removed them completely. The cultists were just enough for my purposes, and the pure creatures or possessed were no match for my self-healing. I was lucky that even those had kept their souls and shells relatively intact; at the moment of the blow, they were in a separate segment of the ritual hall, enclosed by their own conceptual barrier, powered not by Touch but by an artifact.

There was no time to wait for any significant recovery, so without changing the Form of the drawn man, I tore apart the humanoid with a faceless mask instead of a face (I think that mask tried to show the face of someone familiar, but the creature had no chance to get into my brain and pull out the desired image) and another devil, jerking closer to the one who had hurt me so badly. One thing made me happy. Although the devilish ritualist's response to me was bad, I managed to do badly to him in return! And, to be fair, I can't say that I was much worse off than he was. And that's taking into account the devil's characteristic racial ability to enjoy even the most horrible tortures because the liquefied Shadow in his insides would be too much even for these guys. Actually, it is Shadow that turns out to be too much for them time and time again - it's a class debuff. You can't go against it!

The closest description of what happened to Touch was exploded. His body remained small and light, but around this body, the space itself was covered not even with cracks but with bleeding wounds. From these wounds, an unstoppable stream of disgusting pseudo-flesh, even less material than the usual bodies of devils. As well as rapid streams of essence and some other fragments that had not yet become essence but also had no right to be called souls. It was as if he'd opened the belly of a gluttonous beast, and the half-digested mess of last night's meal was coming out of the torn intestines.

The pain of loss was still there, but it was slowly receding, and I was not happy about it. The coming cold and emptiness were closing in on the last bastions of will, and I had stolen the shadows of all the cultists who had survived the flare explosion, giving them as much of my own suffering as I could. The Hall of Rituals was a huge structure, and it was also divided into sectors, separated by all sorts of barriers. Even though most of them, the most unprotected part of the creatures and servants, were covered by the first blow, even though some of the barriers could not withstand the expulsion of the deviless who had fallen under the Repeated Corruption, some survivors were only slightly affected by the blow and the rollback of the ritual that had gone wild, and who recovered quickly. They are our doom. If they coordinate their attacks and give Touch time to react. Our song will be finished on a ludicrous note. They are my personal salvation, my desperate hope to be able to throw off the harmful effects, to steal their lives and destinies instead of mine.

Touch still stands between me and salvation, but I, by some miracle of Fortune's own will, am once again ahead of him, attacking desperately, without attempting to restrain myself or conserve reserves, seeking if not to slay my enemy, then at least to sell defeat at the most favorable rate possible. A confluence of circumstances and blind luck allowed me to first hit something important inside Touch, and afterward, catch a steal of shadows from a group of nearly untainted cultists who had just fallen from beneath the collapsed barrier but were unaffected by the fleur. Two rolls of the dice, two thin straws. One of them held back the creature that was trying to stabilize its damn cauldron, preventing it from carrying out a reprisal, because Touch was clearly aware of my pitiful condition and knew how terrible my wounds were. The second one gave me a much-needed opportunity to push back death, moment to moment, in the moment of my most desperate need.

The dice are thrown.

And so, instead of dying, unable to keep the Form under control, I rush into a new attack, and the creature is again unprepared to repel it. It simply does not have time to defend itself, to use at least one of the whole deck of trump cards collected in its cauldron for a long, very long existence. Soft Touch, the oldest creation of Sovereign, a creature-domain placed in the main domain, a nightmarish matryoshka doll with equally nightmarish contents inside, a nurtured instrument not of battle but of a victorious feast, a court cook and executioner in one role, one who dissolves in himself the servants of his Sovereign who have failed to live up to his expectations, creating from them the basis from which Sovereign will raise new ones...

Clairvoyance is maddening and driving me mad, coaxed by the bits of my shadow flesh still floating within this abomination. I am so close to it now, so aware of its nature, that no defense can help hide the truth from me, but I'll be damned if I wouldn't wish that knowledge out of my head and unseen it! Though... frankly, I've been damned long enough without such a statement.

I suppress the Shadow's instincts to claw at the enemy again, to torment and devour him, replenishing his strength at the expense of the already prepared essence, recovering faster than receiving wounds. One can dive in, seep into the cauldron through the ripped space, and then devour Touch from the inside, simply not letting him repeat his trick with crystallization. Frankly speaking, this plan is even more workable than any other. It really won't have time to digest me-us before I-we eat, take, take too much. Alas, but it won't be possible to keep my sanity in this case. Along with the broth from the defeated souls, I'll eat myself.

Instead of close, ultra-close combat, it was a ranged attack, even though there was still a distance of five paces between me and the rift-covered Touch. The cracks around it widened, reaching up to the ceiling and seeming to touch the ritual construct. It saw me but didn't have time to do anything again. It's only widening its wounds and trying to create some kind of barrier while addressing the ritual signs around it. The creature had enough strength to control its torn belly. To hold its punctured cauldron and even to heal itself quickly. The barrier and attack through the reality control in the hall didn't even have the full will of this one.

Never before had he worked such intense magic so quickly and ruthlessly. And ruthlessly, not to my enemies, but to myself! Shadow Control was just the trigger to start the process, and then Creation, Manifestation, and even Form took over. I had already had a lot of flesh ripped out of me, and then I continued what Touch had started. The blood and remnants of my body became the basis for the spells, allowing me to create not the small Shadows that were at my fingertips but myself. Did I mention I was in pain before? Forget what I said because this is when it got really bad!

The attack took the form of dozens of drop-like balls the size of ping-pong balls, each of which was a kind of pocket in space leading directly into the Shadow. And already there, in the Shadow, it was not a drop, but a huge lump of structured shadow power, packed by Manifestation into a miniature formation. The filler in all balls made the same - hundreds and hundreds of shadow ribbons with primitive, not even self-consciousness, but rather an algorithm of actions. The task of the ribbons, once inside the cauldron, was to cause maximum damage to the devil, aiming to hit not the essence or the souls floating in it but the insides of the creature. If I haven't had time to grope them, my spells will.... that didn't sound good.

Almost all of the drops dived into the rifts, opening up there, which Touch obviously did not feel good. This shit, by the way, is much worse in turning the damage received into pleasure, even if compared to not the strongest representatives of their tribe. Some kind of restrictions are related to the nature of the devil, which is an artificial domain to a much greater extent than the devil itself. There were no cries, nor was there any response, only a shudder of something hidden behind the small outer body of Touch. It was just a small, barely perceptible convulsion and trembling limbs, but I could feel it convulsing inside itself.

I came even closer, changing my Form again. Now, I'm no longer a drawn stick man but a worm in a spacesuit - a segmented body with closely adjoining rings-parts. Kostenka is not very smart, but he always learns his lessons quickly. Each segment can be instantly thrown away without unnecessary injuries and regrets, saving the essence hidden behind such a peculiar living armor. Again, I used Manifestation along with Form and Creation, only not as painfully, again without really understanding exactly how I managed to create what I did. Discovering new tricks right in battle is undoubtedly very pleasing, especially if the tricks are necessary and to the point, but the bell itself is alarming beyond belief. If you manage to use new tricks before you understand their nature with your mind - it indicates too close fusion with other creatures' instincts. I have done such tricks before, but never before have I been eaten up so rapidly. I continue to cripple myself without stopping, without having the right or the opportunity to do so.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Not fully regenerated, continuing to disappear without being able to steal another's shadows, worms-arms, worm-whips, bursting out of my back and shoulders, splitting into dozens of separate outgrowths, making me myself look like the epicenter of spatial rifts, only not in flesh color, but in black. Two rifts collide, and my limbs continue to torment space, tearing it deeper and deeper, trying to exhaust the barriers set by the weakening ritual cling to the breaches leading to the contents of the cauldron. From the jaws at the ends of the worm-me poured venom, liquefied and concentrated Shadow, as if dragged into reality from the deepest layers of this plane.

Tentacles tearing pseudo-flesh, spilling essence, turning streams into rivers and rivers into waterfalls, widening rifts, making the living factory of Touch literally turn inside out. And, of course, a flood of the most powerful charms I can give out in this position, without thinking about the reserve or possible damage to the brain. There are no simple spell techniques in my arsenal. It's just a combination of all my class skills, sometimes, all of them combined. The pain grows, and the wounds continue to bleed, making the Form lose density, but I only let the blackness flow out for another attack, filling the hellish cauldron to the brim.

And it's paying off. It just can't help but pay off!

Touch catastrophically unlucky, so unlucky that it becomes a little ridiculous. It could have destroyed us all a thousand times, but the events were formed by the only order that gave me the victory. For a moment, I realize it won't get up. Yes, the creature is still alive. Its talents continue to patch its insides, trying to etch out the shadows infused into it, continue to crystallize essence, trying if not to save itself, then at least to arrange at last a very powerful explosion and a death curse. But if earlier I felt behind every action of the enemy a malicious and concentrated will, a thirst to get up and give me a beating. Now, these actions have lost coherence and purposefulness. It began to resemble the convulsions of an agonizing organism. Even if each such "convulsion" remained an extremely sophisticated technique of mastering internal essences, they had lost the very guiding will. It was like the workings of the peripheral nervous system when the brain was destroyed.

At the same moment, he realized that Touch paid for its multitasking and power with some vulnerabilities that were uncharacteristic of ordinary devils. For example, if you damage the creature, not even the sonm (which this abomination did not have in the form in which devils used to embody it), but the central organ of its cauldron, the effect would be comparable to a very cruel lobotomy. The creature, unfit for direct combat, was not meant to fight, though it could do so. The ritual hall was so well protected for a reason. When it got within striking distance of me, delayed my defense by the ring trick, and finally mistakenly thought I was mortally wounded, it signed its verdict: the autonomous and not-so-autonomous spells already inside it would be enough to finish off the mindless Hellspawn.

And all I had to do was scream as fiercely as I could, shrieking and laughing and tearing apart anyone who had the wit to get too close to me and carry Hell's markings. Touch had only misjudged my ability to fight when I was mortally wounded, but there was no doubt about the lethality of my injuries.

Trembling and continuing to spew, the ball of flesh remained in place. The ritual circles and contours were rapidly becoming out of sync, and I, for the first time since the massacre had begun, was able to look around without focusing all my attention on my only opponent. And immediately, without a chance to think, I start a new massacre, not even trying to hold back the laughter and shrieks of the Shadow sitting inside me. There is no reason, no desire, and no strength, perhaps, either.

I jerked, slithering along the floor glistening with symbols. I changed shape again, becoming almost flat, or even without the "almost," and let a dozen attacks pass over me. Rays, clumps of energy, several energy blades, each of which contained a captured soul, a couple of nets, and one very powerful battering ram were hitting somewhere behind my back, hitting their allies, while the distance between me and other people's insides was shrinking at a rate that made the owners of those insides very nervous.

At the last meters of the distance, the group of devils, who had managed to gather themselves into some semblance of fighting - as far as this concept applied to specialists in rituals - star, directed their attack downward, covering the oncoming murder carpet with rainbow shimmers of their perverted magic. Unfortunately for them, the colorful illumination proved to be the only result of their labors, for the strength of the ultimate Form did not depend too much on the size of the adopted Shadow. At least that disappointment was the last of their existence as I unleashed hundreds of thin ribbons, piercing through their bodies and somersaults while beginning to give another batch of wounds.

Torn, desiccated, rotting, and molasses-sweet bodies just beginning to fall to the ground, and I'm already changing my appearance, continuing my dash, and leaving my victims behind. I can still take a lot from them, I can give them more. I can replenish the reserve of magic at the expense of their perverted life would not be superfluous, but I dare not stop. If I stop, the glow of the soul-releasing sonms torn apart by my blows will be unbearable, and the last thing I want now is to test my composure against hunger.

Again, the humanoid appearance, again the hands that never stop bleeding, only now every touch of these hands deprives the enemy of his limbs. It is no longer a spell but a theft, saturated with power and therefore almost irresistible in its brutality, devoid of the usual elegance. The first is a touch, hitting the few fighting creatures, preferring their deaths to those of less dangerous specimens of the infernal host. Following the touch, theft, and return gift from my side are full-blown enchantments, rich and straight as a stick. My speed is too high now, and the creatures have not fully recovered from the fleur explosion, so they simply do not have time to use the souls prepared in the sonms that could save them from such blows. For the few that did manage to drop the steal or fend off the first attack, I gave them a second, more subtle and plastic one, simultaneously enveloping a small area of reality around my victim with Manifestation, preventing them from retreating, raising their defenses, or snapping back.

I spat the hooked spear straight at the giant who was charging at Taria. I did not pay attention to the fact that he, covered by one of the souls, was caught in a net of dozens of shadowy threads, each of which ended with hooks embedded in his body. The soul took only the blow of the spear, which turned out to be hollow inside, and the barrier of manifested space, which separated one layer of attack from the second, did not allow the conceptual barrier to neutralize both layers at once. I lengthened the third claw that had sprouted on my back, turned it into a whip with a mouth at the end, and with that mouth clawed into the void, where a moment later, the Trail led the flaming devil. I habitually gave him a part of the injuries, pouring through his mouth almost a barrel of shadow poison, and not without pleasure to state that this bastard was not Touch, and he died much faster.

I rushed past Tia, who had already dissected several creatures, hitting several of her opponents with my limbs and charms, nullifying their attempt to coordinate blows, and without waiting for the elf to take the chance, I finished off an abomination wounded by Losius, who resembled a slime girl from some manga. The only difference was that it was a slime boy, but its goals and somewhat obscene appearance were similar to those of Japanese culture. Another spit of a dozen blades drives away from Taria, another beau who was about to put some crap into her brain, and then his sonm suddenly tears the creature from the inside. The circuit of attention shifts to the merrily chuckling Giver, who is now surrounded by a dozen former associates, tearing up the associates of others. And there's something about the colleagues she's subordinated to that makes me want to check her status and the abilities she's been given.

I burst through the barely-holding barrier around the five cultists, unaffected by the carnage, relieved to transfer my pain to them with unbearable and frightening relief. I spend at least a second preparing, raining down a full rain of primitive but powerful shadow magic on the entire hall, continuing to drain the life out of the cultists and being careful not to activate my Grip. The slightly restored reserve immediately sagged as the patterns of the ritual flashed around me. Two more groups of cultists, supported by a couple of creatures, stabilized a section of the decaying structure and struck at me.

One of the creatures explodes again as its sonm detonates, and the second becomes erratic, beginning to tear through the focused ritualists. The third group is hit by a poisonous seed thrown by a Dark Druid, and the leader, who has time to bounce, catches a throwing dagger in the throat on a very crooked path. I manifest reality around me, dampening the already unstable ritual, which, without Touch, has lost its former irreversibility and ability to directly break reality.

I gave out a shadowy battering ram in the direction of the still agonizing freak, noting the danger to my team at the same time. The essences continuing to pour from his wounds, having found themselves outside the cauldron, began to conflict with each other, not to mention the fact that even just touching such a cocktail with bare skin is fraught with very serious injuries. What was it like in there? The floor is lava?

I created a few shadowy ribbons, taking out the struggling creatures dragged to the ceiling by the misty tentacles. The Mist that surrounded them was slowly but inevitably taking away their strength, energy reserves, and even the souls of their sonms, but they could do serious damage to Hestia by fighting back. One almost managed to blow himself and her together in a paroxysm of masochistic pathos. Hestia, having lost the most dangerous victims who had almost escaped from her grasp, finished the remaining captives of her cold embrace with a single effort and, without changing the appearance of a misty cloud, rushed downward. The ceilings were high, so she managed to hug a couple more wing-wielders and a levitator on the way.

After that, she attacked my position and Taria, who was distracted by another devil wounded by Losius. I used the same Manifestation to close the distance between me and one of Hestia's winged foes. The blade strikes exactly in the center of his chest, piercing the barrier and forcing him to use some kind of tricky blink. He never let go of control of the instantly subdued by some very tricky one-time contract against the adepts of the Mist sharpened. But before the tentacles of his frozen ally could reach me, he had already begun to spread rot. I managed to feed the beholder of his sonm the deception, putting him right under Tia's blade. And he had almost no seer in his collection. Either he didn't get them, or he accidentally disembodied them in spasms of pleasure.

Instantly regaining her senses, Hestia did not venture further into the hunt for fear of another surprise at her already weakened will, instead nestling herself to the floor, wrapping herself in a ring around Touch's death throes. Without even attempting to attack or even touch the creature with her mist, she began to siphon off and give the Mist an entire pool of essence. Judging by how quickly the mist began to thicken, the benefit of that action was more than just the ability to walk safely across the floor. Essence was the essence, but it came out of the gut of a devil as old as mammoth shit who had worked with it.

Again, I rush into close combat, breaking open the remaining segmental barriers, fearing the moment when the enemies will run out, and only my comrades and miraculously alive victims will be left among the shadow theft recipients. The devils had shielded them from their fleur to the highest standards, not wanting to spoil the material before its time. So, if there was anyone in this place who was almost unaffected by the fleur, it was the sacrificial lambs. Well, the most valuable and, therefore, the most protected of them because the simpler ones were covered worse, so not everyone was unaffected.

The pain from the wounds had eased, and I had a right to cherish the hope of a favorable outcome, were it not for the crushing madness and the creature in the depths of my being that had gotten too close. Toward the end, I even went out of Form to reduce the damage to my psyche. By then, there were almost no enemies left. Giver, and more specifically, her subordinate dolls, helped a lot, as much as I hate to admit it. It was possible to use Theft on them without hurry, giving wounds not hastily but slowly and with a spacing. She didn't even need to say anything. She brought her toys closer and removed all the protection from them.

Up close, I felt the strangeness of her subjects even more strongly, but when I realized the reason for this strangeness, I did not flinch solely because the creature inside me was eating up all my attention and mental strength. Fear had no place to settle. The communal roof was overcrowded as it was, and it had a long way to go.

Her gift - and it was clearly a gift, for at her level, she would never have such abilities - allowed her to copy her personality and record it on a new host. Each of the creatures she subordinated was, in fact, a copy of her, only with different bodies, sonms, and sets of techniques. Is it worth mentioning the complete retention of all original memory, skills, prowess, and combat tricks? I'm not even mentioning the ability to directly adjust the memory of her copies or those simply affected by the talent bestowed upon them, even to the point of taking the embedded personality back, leaving in its place a third one, completely rewritten from the original.

I'll be honest, if Giver catches me without Shadow Form and Aegis, I won't even be able to react in time under that attack! And she was obviously using it really fast since she was able to enslave half a dozen of the tastiest victims in a quick battle. This trick of hers is even more incredible than Hestia's Mist! At least, because it is perfectly complemented by the other talents of the deviless, entirely well supporting this gift.

Catching my attention, she only smiled, not hiding her thoughts and her loyalty. She wasn't going to use this technique on me to change me to her liking. But the very fact that she had the ability at her disposal, that she could make me do anything for her, make me anything she wanted, was giving her a whole carload of smugness. As if she really hadn't decided to use her new talents just to "play around and get things back to the way they were."

I turned my face toward her with a barely audible but echoing hiss in every shadow, realizing that she'd let that thought out and allowed her sonm to form it into an image on purpose to taunt me. No, definitely, her desire to get me to react in any way she wanted, whether it was sheer hatred or equally sheer disgust, had become even more infuriating and unbearable after reapplying the Ring! And if you think about it, she was the second most important contributor to the battle, and if you count the effect of the ring on her, she was probably the first.

"Tin?" The slightly awkward and tense silence was broken by a cautious question from Losius, who, thanks to his class, had an excellent sense of the abomination bubbling inside me.

"Is this an appeal or a question?" I can't stand it, letting sarcasm into my answer, but the sarcasm is lost behind the barely audible words as if I'd torn my voice, smoked it, and hurt it at the same time. "I feel bad, really bad."

And, confirming what I said, I sit my ass right on the fading glow of the floor. I have about three-quarters of my reserve left, but only at the expense of constantly drinking the life of my opponents. That kind of recovery is useful in battle, of course, but it doesn't add to my health, either physically or mentally. The potions in my blood barely react, as their effects have been literally washed out of my body by my actions. The only consolation is that, along with the potions, I also got rid of all the intoxications I had, transferring them to my victims along with my wounds as I went along.

"We're shitting ourselves, right?" Taria, too, like myself, jokes absently, forcing herself to be habitually cheerful. "It didn't work to open the passageway to the outside."

"It didn't work out." I agree, barely holding back a sudden burst of anger at her, for her misplaced mirth, at myself, for failing, and at everyone else, for failing too, and, of course, at my fucking life. "It didn't work. It didn't work. Touch was the key and the heart of the ritual. It was the ritual itself. Even the hall was part of its essence. As it died, it activated the fuses, shutting down the entire structure. Bitch."

My anger was especially strong, and I gave in to its impulse and changed the shape of my hand, turning my fist into a clawed grip and punching with all my might at the unbreakable wall of the ritual hall, releasing the resentment that had built up. The wall wasn't so unbreakable, for it was dented, much larger than my fist. And then the indentation deepened as I kept hitting the same spot, hissing angrily as I did so, and the volume of shadows that had grown since the ritual had broken down was picked up by the rustling of the shadows as the glowing sigils flickered and faded.

Tia's hand on my shoulder stopped me, clutching it tightly, wrapped in armor made of withered leaves clinging to my skin. It was that armor that brought me to my senses, or rather, to the realization that the elf had to use protection to even touch the Form that was gradually covering me. The long-forgotten feeling came again. I had to remember what it was like to have a normal human body. The flesh that had been turned by the Shadow did not want to take its original form.

"I reviewed the ritual." The druid speaks calmly and deliberately, showing no fear or apprehension, but I know well what it takes for her to stand calmly beside a walking disaster who can barely hold himself together. "Not much has been revealed to my eyes, still less have I been able to realize from experience in the craft of drawing, but you have been able to understand the hidden things. There are no doors here and never have been. This ritual is not a door but a chain that pulls us all down."

Right.

This does not mean it was impossible to at least try to break through the cutoff, breaking the fabric of the universe at a weak point and diving into the resulting rift. But it would only be possible to do this if Touch did not interfere and it had clearly said its word. If only there had been a different boss here, more simple, understandable, and not this bullshit ...

"I didn't know." Giver sensibly does not approach me or my companions, standing a little apart next to the trio of her latest toys. "Touch has always been there... and always stood apart. I did not know its nature. Or I did, but I was ordered to forget. I don't know, I can't tell."

I don't even turn around, silently trying to figure out what I should do next.

"Anyway, we came, made a mess, tore out the nostrils of the bastards like auditors, but to little avail." Hans summarized, taking off his leather breastplate, which had been burned by some bad magic. "How are we going to get out of here, or are we going to try to stay locked up? There's no way to break in here."

We can't wait.

"We can't wait." My thoughts were echoed by both Losius and Tia, but only the elfess continued. "The path to salvation must be sought in the temples of the Ascended. They are gathering defenses there, and there can be no doubt that they have at least some communication with reality. We have all recognized the coming of their Servants, and where there is a place for the Servants, there will be a way back that is as good as the way they came."

Either Tia is overworked, having switched from fatigue to her usual high style of speech, or she deliberately speaks that way, making me think about the meaning of what she said and not listen to my predatory instincts.

"There's a huge crowd out there, and we'll have to get right over their heads." Losius objected, unobtrusively preparing to cover Tia from a possible blow from a distraught Kostenka. "And even if we get through, they'll hardly open the door for us."

"And if they do, that door will lead to a place you'd rather not go," Hestia added, growing a tentacle out of the misty cloud, the end of which took the shape of her misty body, while her base continued to give the Mist tons of essence. "Alternatively, I can try to guide you myself."

Hestia only giggled in response to the puzzled stares from all sides, including even me, who had almost stopped freaking out. It was uncharacteristic of her personality.

"I'm almost breaking from the power at this moment." She explains the obvious truth. "Even a small vial of low-quality essence is not easy to obtain, and there's a lot more of it here, and it's of higher quality. The Mist Takes. I get a fraction of what I took, not much, but I'm giving her a lot now."

I, as well as Losius and Tia, who were the most enlightened, probably had standing hair on our asses now, except for Tia, because she hardly had hair growing on her ass. I thought Hestia was just using her body as a portal, throwing the dangerous essence out like garbage, but the technique she described was suspiciously similar to my Shadow Grip. It's not so terminal, but it's very similar, and accepting gifts from any plane in return for sacrifices can quickly change your Status to something else entirely.

I glanced at Tia, and only now did I realize that I hadn't noticed what she'd done, as if her real actions were hidden in the fog, lost somewhere behind the wall of indifferent mist. And I wasn't the only one who screwed up! Tia, too, was only now realizing what had happened!

"Oh, stop making those faces," Hestia said, still having a good time. "I realized as soon as I saw those rivers that there might not be another chance. I'm not human, and if it distorts me too much, I can be subjugated again by that very artifact. And if you start playing the champion of purity and endowment now, Tin, I will take serious offense. It's too late to react... too much of this... too much."

"How much?" I squeezed the question out of myself through the force, unwilling to recognize and accept another's sacrifice.

"A little over two hundred character enhancement gifts and almost two dozen more free elevation points." As if it were a small thing, Hestia admitted. "And my own talents have taken a few boosts."

There was a lot I wanted to say, but I had to focus again, going through another bout of inspired hunger and anger, quenching the raging essence, so the chance to yell, "What the fuck, huh?" - I missed a little bit. Instead of me, it was Tia, as the chief expert on rituals and questions in the "consequences of a missed endowment" style. Well, the main theoretical expert, because the practitioner in my person was ahead of the whole company anyway.... was, until now.

"How are you still even remotely like your old self?" The surprise, sincere, and almost childlike in Tia's voice does not prevent her from very quickly moving Hestia from the category of allies to the ranks of the creatures preparing to attack, which is now distracting us with the conversation, having in fact long ago lost herself on the road to power, only pretending to be a shadow of her past personality to extinguish suspicion.

"Surprisingly, almost effortlessly." The mist maiden replies, pushing the tentacle with her body a little farther away. "For the spawn, such gifts are far less dangerous in that regard, and the effect of submission serves as an excellent anchor. I can't say I don't feel the change, but it's far from complete madness and turning into a dumb creature. And certainly far from losing my loyalty."

Tia doesn't believe her on a dime, just out of habit, though she hasn't really believed her before, except on that very dime. Ever since the monster's nature was revealed, the elf has always kept a note of her companion's danger in her head. I, on the other hand, picking up on her feelings with clairvoyance, was inclined to believe. Hestia's peculiar nature. She a spawn on the edge of the creature, which makes it easier for her to apply the analogs of the Grip and the monster, whose nature gave her a lot of resistance to even greater changes, coincided here. The picture was completed by an inherently perfect anchor of self-control in the form of an unnatural and ultra-strong loyalty to me that had once already managed to save her from complete dissolution into the Mist. The finishing touch was the presence of a perfect, three hundred thousand times perfect source of strength that could be given in exchange for strength. And it was perfect for the spawn of Mist because I had not once noticed the amusing relationship between Hestia and essences, and any essences at that!

In a situation like this.

With that.

I took off my mask, then ignoring Tia's attempt to hold me back, walked right up to the cloud of fog that covered Touch and, without even letting myself think about my idiocy, stood almost right up to the monster, which raised the danger level to a whole new level.

"I believe you, Hestia," I speak with absolute sincerity, without wryness at all, and without being able to look into it with my clairvoyance weakened by the fluctuations of mental pressure, relying only on my own opinion. "And I believe in you."

The word "thank you" remained unspoken. Unspoken because what she had done was far beyond gratitude, regardless of whether she managed to get us out or not. Nor did Raimel say a word of thanks for exactly the same reason. I turned sideways toward the cloud of Mist, falling on my ass and then on my back, staring at the ceiling with a blank stare. For some reason, just when it seemed like a good time for another attack to begin, the madness pressing in on me snapped at me one last time and then went silent. It doesn't go away or disappear. I'll have to pay for this useless battle for a long time to come, and I'll never pay for it because I've already given away something too important, but still, the madness subsides.

Canvases of messages fly before my eyes, but I ignore them. I toss them aside, not reading them, not wanting to see what they say. In my heart, I suspect what I will see.

"Ten minutes to organize ourselves and finish Hestia's dinner." Indifferently and somehow too tiredly, I issue an instruction. "Then we'll break from here to the nearest temples."

Next to her, after a few seconds, Taria sits down, grinning cheerfully with a white-toothed smile. Only a moment later, the rest of the ruffians join us, and after a while, Hestia takes human form again. Touch is left lying there as a big mountain of flesh, with slits in its depths that lead somewhere inside the already dead subspace. Dead and devastated, except somewhere at the very bottom, there were still some reserves of a product rapidly deteriorating without proper care.

I looked down at my arms, now bare to the shoulders, because the alchemically reinforced clothes had been shredded to shreds by the dead creature. And they weren't my hands anymore. My pale skin had turned parchment-white, covered with a fine mesh of black veins. Every single one of my fingernails was radically black as if I'd gotten some kind of gothic manicure or light-absorbing paint. And the hands themselves, though they retained their human proportions, now looked like something else, as if their bone structure had changed, more sharp angles had appeared, and their joint movements had become different.

"I suppose my face is really ugly?" I specify since it is lazy to look in the mirror and, moreover, to create one.

"Your eyes have darkened, though not to total blackness, but they are no longer brown." Taria, lying on her stomach, waved her legs carelessly in the air. "Also, the lips are black, like they've been smeared with charcoal or this, what's-it-name, hipstick."

"Lipstick." I corrected her absently. "And the rest of it?"

"The facial features have subtly shifted." This time, it was Tia who nailed the truth. "That's what happens when you draw too much power from sources that should only be touched at the final limit."

"And now it wasn't the last one, was it?" The tracker grumbled, checking his worn gear.

"Didn't seek to rebuke." Waved the elfess away.

"Is it so bad?" I ask her, as she is the most experienced and not inclined to spare my ego.

"The shape of your skull is unchanged, which is quite good when you consider what you experienced and your condition a moment ago." She pondered the answer, trying to probe my nature with clairvoyance. "The body shouldn't have warped too much either, for the face is traditionally the first to suffer in such cases. Smile, please."

In response to my good-natured grin, the big-eared dentist only nodded as if I had just confirmed some of her theory. I ran my tongue over my front teeth and realized exactly what she wanted to see.

"The teeth are sharpened, if only slightly." A brief pause, followed by a verdict. "To someone else, I would now prefer to grant oblivion for the sake of his salvation and my peace of mind, but you have clearly been affected by planar contamination before while remaining adequate... in general. I can only advise you to take it easy on yourself for the next couple of years, but I suppose we won't all live that long."

Moment of silence.

It was followed by an explosion of laughter from all sides, even from the starborn herself. It was a sad laugh, except Giver laughed without the slightest bitterness, but a necessary one for all of us. The last chance for escape seemed to be lost, the strength was wasted, and salvation was as far away as it had ever been.

But we're still alive, aren't we?

It might seem ridiculous, but I had the distinct feeling that the creatures and mortal servants guarding the entrance didn't realize that their guarded object had been destroyed. Or rather, they realized it, of course, but not immediately, when they were informed about the fall of one of the main pillars of the ritual from the other pillars, and they were unable to contact the forces inside. It was only then that they realized the extent of the failure and the probable punishment they would receive soon for having allowed it to happen.

We spent some time relaxing and exchanging pleasantries. And use most of the pauses. After all, if the freaks standing outside the gate to the complex wanted to smoke us out, they would not be hindered by the fear for the integrity of the circuit, so they would break into our stronghold without unnecessary delay. Yes, the same gate is terribly strong, but without the resistance of the guards and with the opportunity to calmly prepare or even combine attacks. Breaking through such a barrier is still difficult but no longer prohibitive. I, as practice has shown, would have coped, and there would easily be stronger creatures than Konstantin Yurievich. Both, in pure firepower and general terms stronger.

Hestia fell out of reality as she began to distribute the gifts she had received for the largest sacrifice ever made by a citizen of Melareth, even a former one. For the money needed to extract and harvest as many disemboweled souls as she had given to the depths of the Mist, one could buy, if not all of Melareth, then half of the kingdom or even two-thirds of its total area and a royal family to boot. When I think about how many people Touch had managed to digest and how many centuries this stuff had been brewing in it, I immediately want to kill it once more. Then, resurrect it and repeat it a hundred times. The only thing that stopped me was the inability to resurrect and a clear understanding the second time the creature will unwind my guts faster than I say fuck it, even if Touch was non-combatant at all.

"Sweetness Lovely, fifty-second stage of elevation, thirteenth wing, sixth branch." Giver, at once in three throats (her own and her puppets), enumerated the most odious congeners stationed on this point and apparently desiring our deaths. "Sonm is brimming with Darkness and Depth. She has many recoil contracts. Adept at switching places with affected mortals, instantly and through most defenses. Specializes in close combat, preferring to apply area anti-sensory fields. It's dark, you can't see anything, but she can see everything. One touch and her sweetness is on the mortal."

I listen to her report, more akin to an erotic recording of a porn actress reciting a hybrid of Lovecraft's work and porn novelists, purely on residual principle. Most of my attention is focused on tinkering with my new set of alchemy and updating the buffs on my companions. No one has washed away all the alchemy with a flood of power, but if there's a chance to strengthen them a little more without killing them, now is the time to take advantage of it, and we'll think about the consequences later. The more so because shadow theft allows us to transfer the strongest symptoms to ourselves or the most useless of the remaining dolls of Giver.

Taria and Hans were helping Tia with the rituals since the elf clearly intended to revive some of them and turn them into a minefield if not traps for the enemies and defenses for us. Losius was meditating, trying to adjust the optimal flow of the heavenly blue. As the first to come to his senses, he managed to thin out the devils (in two quick swings of his legendary blade), but a couple of times, he almost dived too high. Now he's pulling back.

He finished that mechanoid by holding the Needle's attack long enough for it to pierce the breastplates, after which the blade of concentrated force burned out the delicate artifact stuffing. The retaliatory blows, delivered by something that reminded me suspiciously of laser turrets and plasma cannons, although very accurate and struck from a distance, were taken first by the defense from Heaven and then taken aside by the Trails. Hans woke up second, even before Tia!

I should be looking at my stats right now, distributing what I've received for the battle, but I don't want to do that. I don't want to. I'm sure that if I distribute even a single stat, even a single skill point, something extremely bad will happen, worse than even the blows I've just taken and the consequences of emergency healing from those blows.

The experience, I know this for a fact, allowed me to reach the fiftieth step, but something was wrong. I haven't looked at my messages, looking for any little thing just to keep from opening them, but even so, I can't stop feeling a sense of lack. There was something that I didn't have right now that I should have gotten at level fifty, but instead, I only lost something far more valuable. A level is dust and ashes. It was something else that mattered, something I was about to lose, and I said goodbye to the hope of gaining it again.

I can't put it more precisely, but it's enough for me just to know.

The next twenty-four hours, if not hours, will answer the one and only question of who I am now, having given up too much to win, to be.

And who I, at the end of my journey, became.

"What do we do with the captives?" Taria, having finished helping our ritualist or simply boring the ritualist with her pranks, came right up to me with that question, managing to get there just in time for me to finish my meditation. "They're almost all either paralyzed, charmed, or just turned off, but there are all sorts of things there are."

I'm happy to shift my focus from my worries to something new. If I let myself dive into a vicious cycle of self-exploration, I will end up here. There are no words to describe this feeling of emptiness in the place where recently, there was something, something intangible in any way but so important.

Better to really take a closer look at the victims while we have the chance.

As strange as it might sound, the victims were lucky, though it was strange to talk about luck for someone who'd gotten into such a mess in the first place. As a matter of fact, the only lucky assholes were those who had managed to leave the Eternal before lunch today, avoiding all the risks involved. As for the rest of the unlucky assholes, we can only talk about different degrees of bad luck, but even here, the ones condemned to sacrifice stood out. Well, at least the ones who hadn't been crushed in passing during our battle.

For the purity of the ritual, it is very important, you know, that the prepared material was as unaffected as possible at the time of the beginning of the ritual. Not always, for many of the victims had been processed for weeks beforehand, but there were also those whom the cultists, under the guidance of Touch, protected from any vices, keeping them spiritually pure. As it was not easy to keep them pure in the Hell-filled hall, the victims were kept in isolated cages.

I had noticed these areas of the ritual pattern before. They created areas of purity in the corrupted space, where even completely defenseless captives could not fear corruption. As long as they weren't dragged out of there, of course. What really amused me was the durability of said areas. Not only were the ritual bubbles assembled into systems independent of the main complex that didn't bend after the base collapsed, but they also survived the fleur and the ensuing carnage.... some of them. The ones that didn't get hit directly.

Already on the approach to the point indicated by Taria, I realized that something was about to happen. I didn't even need to use any kind of intuition, deductive abilities, or excessive attention. In this particular cage lay paralyzed but fully conscious elves and elven women. To be more specific, three elven women and six elves, neatly stacked in a flower-like pattern - heads in the center and feet closer to the edge. And the effect on them was much more severe than simple paralysis. Not devil magic, but a mental network built on unplanar influence, which made its victims forget that they could move, use class abilities, or even speak. The creatures clearly did not want to spoil the sensitive shells of the starborn with planar influence, and their skins were not in a hurry to torment them before the time.

But now it was clear why they'd been so happy to accept Giver's gift of some more ear meat. They were clearly needed in this ritual, and they could have used some backup. The dome of protection didn't protect against anything but the effects of the fleur-de-lis. Or rather, it did, but on a purely cosmetic level, and it was silly to compare that protection to the main type of armor. There was nothing to stop him from simply stepping inside the bubble and taking, taking, taking...

With some difficulty, I gave myself a mental kick, looking away, shifting my gaze to the silent and motionless Tia standing outside the bubble who, in turn, was staring fixedly at one of her 'sisters'. The second most powerful, second only to a battle mage with two epic classes of level forty-two. The martial artist didn't even seem to dignify her gaze, unlike the Hypnomancer and Master of Ceremonies of the forty-second level in a surprisingly beautiful guise.

I was about to say something profane about having to rescue another damsel in distress for the sake of her eared tits when Tia leaned over and went through the patterns of the protective ritual with four taps of her fingers, completely disabling the physical barriers. Slowly and thoroughly, she got to her feet, walking over to her.... acquaintance? Girlfriend? Mistress? She dragged her away from the rest of the prisoners (but not out of bounds), leaned over her, and poured one of my mind-clearing potions over her face.

The potion was relatively simple, brewed in case of too close communication with Ygra, and I didn't know that she still kept it. Or rather, I knew, but I couldn't understand the meaning of it, except for the banal unwillingness to throw away an expensive potion brewed by the owner of a mythical class. She had found out on the day of that picnic in the swamp, not far from the walls of the Eternal, that she could successfully level the effects of ogre pheromones herself. But even this potion was enough to make the prisoner's gaze meaningful, even if her body still couldn't move. The mental effects of mere alchemy couldn't be removed.

"Greetings." Tia said only that, and then she took the stiletto and stuck it between the ribs of her companion. "And goodbye forever."

The hypnomancer's eyes widened in a startling mixture of recognition, horror, and crystal-clear despair. Tia struck quickly, working the stiletto like a sewing machine, clearly trying not just to kill her apparently familiar but to make her feel the approach of death. The funny thing is there was no hatred, anger, or desire for revenge in her actions. She kills her with the same attitude people use to pull weeds at the dacha as if she were doing a job she didn't like but needed.

It was just that once upon a time, she had made a decision and assigned a list of those she felt should not live. Some of these lives she cut off even before she escaped from the native forests, but some of her once companions, who took a direct part in granting oblivion, which was supposed to heal her wounded heart, were out of reach. I have no idea what exactly the dying elven woman did wrong, and I don't want to find out myself - each of us has the right to our secrets and bad memories that should not be touched. If she wants to tell me, she will tell me herself, or at least she will open the shadow that covers her fate, but if she doesn't want to, let it remain a mystery.

I can't help but notice an amusing fact that speaks volumes about my companion's character. She strikes not with her legendary dagger but with ordinary steel, as if the revenge calculator in her head deemed the hypnomancer's misdeed not severe enough to be killed by a soul-striking weapon. Or was it the other way around, deeming it so severe that she wished to give the departing soul to Hell rather than grant it instant oblivion?

I'm not going to ask, of course.

"Uh..." I won't, but Taria's not gonna be able to resist commenting. "Old girlfriend, huh? "The kind of girlfriend that's you don't need enemies?"

"Taria." The elf's impenetrability hadn't gone anywhere, but a faint weariness seeped through her, either from life or from Taria. "Would you be so kind as to be quiet for a moment longer?"

Taria responded with a gesture of the door closing where her mouth had been, then looked as innocent and harmless as possible. Tia, no longer paying attention to her, wiped the stiletto on the victim's clothes and stretched her muscles with some relief. It looked like she'd been hit a few times in the fight and badly. She had avoided wounds by covering herself with her magic and the enchantments embedded in her armor, but right now, it was better to let her rest. And she kept quiet, the bastard, not wanting to give any reason to cover her more than necessary. Whether it was selflessness or just too used to not showing weakness... No, she just didn't want to slow down the whole group, realizing the value of time. Now that the escape attempt had failed epically, she no longer saw the need to show her toughness.

"I suggest the captives be left here." Indifferently and deliberately, she puts forward the suggestion. "Oddly enough, with the creatures and their servants dead, this place is much safer for them than trying to leave it. To top it all off, they are protected by segmented bubble-type rituals. Without isolation, they, weakened by their captivity and the preparatory measures applied to them, will be taken by the environment itself, even without considering the influence of the devils."

Losius clearly agrees with her words. He, too, would not want to abandon the miraculously survived and failed victims, but he realized that no one would rescue them. And he would not move to save them because they were nobody to him, unlike his companions, but it was awkward to just turn around and leave. The rest of the company also accepted the offer quietly because Hans had come to the same conclusion, but he didn't voice it. Taria, like Asterium, didn't care about anyone and everyone she didn't consider her own, only to an even greater extent, and Hestia was busy trying to maintain herself amid the unexpected power that had been thrust upon her. And surprisingly successful at it.

"Rest is over," I said, pushing the thought of using the survivors for my own survival away. "Let's get ready and try to get out of this place before those bastards break through the wall since they can't break down the door."

My thoughts, obsessive thirst, and hunger are very right because I can really use these lives, exchanging them to the maximum advantage to strengthen myself and others, but I crush these thoughts at the root. Even though I have already crossed a place where there is no return, where people should never set foot, I know with all my heart it would be a mistake to follow my instincts even further. Ridiculous hope, and maybe something more, like the feeling of falling into the abyss, the very first second of this fall. When you have already fallen to the laughter of merciless gravity, but there is still a ghostly hope to wriggle the snake and grab, if not the edge of the cliff, then a tuft of grass growing just below.

The chance is ghostly, the hope foolish but never fading until the last moment.

And that moment has come and is happening right now.

The creatures really couldn't break down the vault doors immediately. They are, after all, masterfully strong and resilient. The enemy forces outside the ritual hall had no idea what we had going on. They knew about the interruption of the ritual, but they couldn't know about complete destruction of the entire circuit. From their point of view, they could still, if not fix what had happened, then minimize the loss by saving what could still be saved.

If it had been otherwise, we would have had no time at all. The creatures would simply break into our temporary shelter, overpowering the defenses with their techniques and blows. Even I alone could break through this safe if I had laid out to the bottom, and among them, there are enough characters not inferior to me or inferior not too much. In general, the only thing that saved us was the awesomeness of the deceased Touch. The creatures concentrated outside the walls of the hall could not fully believe in his death.

Especially since the carcass of this abomination wasn't quite dead yet. The base of the higher devil had been destroyed by my attacks and the Shadows inside it. The limitless supply of essences and nearly dissolved souls were taken by the Mist through Hestia, but the remnants of the... let's call it the peripheral nervous system, even if it wasn't the most appropriate name, continued to mimic the activity. As I said, it was an objectified factory, a giant combine and conveyor belt. Now the combine is left without a driver, without gasoline, without anything, but it will continue to jerk its arms a little bit more before it goes completely silent, thus deceiving its good friends, who, in another situation, would have already fucked us in all holes.

It's not a joke.

There's a whole army out there that we don't have a chance to thin out with our strategic charms. We don't stand a chance in a direct fight because we won't even be crushed. We'll be squashed. We don't even want to fight, and we don't intend to, planning to make a breakthrough at the moment of weakening the hall's defenses right in front of the attackers. It's a long shot, but it's better than nothing. In fact, come to think of it, I had even less of a chance against Touch..... but it wasn't ready to fight, and these guys are gonna be extremely ready.

My instincts demanded to sacrifice everyone, everyone at all, starting with the prisoners, continuing with Giver's puppets, and ending with my team, just to win a chance to save myself. I have a great mission. I can't die here and leave it unfinished, and they will understand, and if they don't, what kind of comrades are they to me? The abomination crawling from the depths of my soul was surprisingly convincing precisely because it was me. There was no inner voice, no split personality, or some demon planted in me that I could destroy with pathos, even if together with a part of myself.

It was just me and the worst that I had in me.

Always had.

The silence wasn't much fun, but somehow the gloom never came. We all gathered in a tight group, sitting in the corner farthest from the slowly yielding gateway to the hall, leaning against the wall, clearing it of any trace of the ritual and drawing a protective circle around it. Even the Giver in her main body stuck to our suicidal company, and I didn't bother to deny her that. We'd all be dead in an hour anyway. Or not, but that would be worse than just dying.

The defenses on the gate were weakening. I continued to chase the dastardly thoughts of my salvation under my imaginary bunk. Taria was polishing Valerium with a rag. Hestia was distributing the gifts she'd received for being taken by Mist. Tia and Losius were meditating, and Hans was just dozing in silence. It was probably the craziest time I'd had in a while, if not in my entire life, but despair never came.

In a way, I almost wished it would overwhelm me, bury me underneath, erase everything human from me, make me make the right choice, and try to save my skin by removing the responsibility for what I'd done. It was the same wish of Giver, who, I'm sure, would have tried to influence me in some way to force me to make the right decision if she had even the slightest chance to convince me of the rightness of such a decision without direct influence on my mind. The deviless' guardianship, like her defense, doesn't always take pleasant forms. Or rather, it never does, I tell you, as a psychic of not the shittiest sort. She wanted my salvation even more than I did. Much more. More than anything in the world.

If she had a chance to get me out, she would sacrifice herself and all the others, but without my consent, she was powerless. If anyone can make the ritual work and get from the Eternal through the depths of the Shadow with the power I've gained from the ritual, I'm the only one who can. I suppose if she attacks suddenly, she can subdue me for a short time, but in such a state, I won't be able to make my escape. And Konstantin Yurievich himself hasn't become such a creature yet, no matter what Status tries to tell me.

I suppressed the urge coming from deep inside me again. Only now, I suppressed my curiosity. I wouldn't open the message tray, not until my last breath. It's a stupid thing to do, but I've done so few smart things in my life that no sense to start doing them now. As long as I still believe, even without faith, as long as I hope without hope, as long as I haven't seen ruthless confirmation of the obvious until then, I am still me.

And fuck it.