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Has it ever happened in your life that you want to shout in your voice about how cool you are, that you have done something outstanding and in general you are the coolest guy in the neighborhood, the region, and perhaps even the entire continent? And then, at this very moment of realizing your own exceptionalism comes the head of the dormitory and kicks a little inadequate and a little drunk you out of sweet dreams, threatening eviction and subsequent expulsion, after which only the native army awaits? I agree, this is far from the sensations you would like to experience twice in your life..... or once, for that matter.
There was no moment of returning consciousness as such because you can lose your brains and fall into the mode of a furious hamster-kamikaze when trying to stand in line at the post office, but if you fight with a cursed creature of mythical grade and three-digit level, you'd better kill yourself right away. My reason was not pushed deeper into my subcortex, on the contrary, it became concentrated to the maximum, stretched to razor sharpness, and only at the same time concentrated on a very narrow list of tasks. And if it wasn't for the high concentration, as for the one characteristic I didn't pump in, I would have been torn into a hundred small Konstantines without the devil's direct participation and even despite his active opposition.
The trick I pulled, figuratively speaking, was taking all the techniques I knew for safe work with planar energy, wiping my horror-stricken ass with them, twisting them into a tube, and shoving them back into the same ass. No, I realize that I am a fan of throwing out a frankly idiotic act, taking a mortal risk even where it is not necessary, frankly useless, or even harmful. But even the show-off of Pypysh's name during the confusion in the Library seemed the height of adequacy against the backdrop of my latest clowning. I can't even count the number of times it could have been the last one because I'm going to lose count. It's a very familiar wording, and I lose count all the time. Either I count badly, or I take too many risks.
Planar forces can't be mixed. It's a fucking axiom of "don't stick your fingers in sockets and your dick in a vat of molten metal" level, but when did Kostik ever think with his head, or think at all? We are isekai, summoned heroes, powerful 4chaners. The laws of not only the Criminal Code are unwritten for us but even physics, logic, common sense, and common decency! This idea, which came into my head not spontaneously but finally formed from disparate pieces of the mosaic at that moment of final tension, was very interesting, requiring further research and experimentation. I would catch this idea by the tail and then develop something digestible out of it.
In the end, it came out the way it did.
One can't help but think, as a man picking his nose, "How about building a nuclear reactor at home so that my electricity bill would be lower?" And instead of long calculations, calculation of risks, preparation of precautions, and leveling of inevitably arising dangers, this man simply sent the girl to the cellar for a couple of kilos of good weapons-grade plutonium. Immediately, at once, without thought or doubt, as if it could not be otherwise. Probably, if it wasn't for this reinforced concrete confidence in my strength, reinforced with mifril studs and adamantium plating, I would have died in the first second. Or rather, it wasn't even confidence. It was just the absence of even a shadow of a thought, a single hint of the possibility that I might fail.
Thus, I got one more reason to look for information about what the Hero phenomenon is and what its influence on the probability of certain events is. But it is definitely not today, not now, and not like that. I was killed neither by the devil, nor by my efforts, nor by the rollback from the use of an almost unfamiliar and hastily, without mercy to my essence, pumped class skill, but the delay now will kill guaranteed.
Poets' Square had turned into something even more shattered than mere ruins, becoming a natural soup, a mush of stone crumbs, the honeyed rot of Hell's sprawling matter, and the Shadows coming and going through the established cuts. In the last moments of his existence, Sovereign, may the Shadow be his torture chamber, tried either, to remake himself on the fly or discard the affected areas like a lizard shedding its tail, but he was just textbook. The dying Touch swelled and turned inside out, dumping out its giblets hidden in multidimensionality, but the remains of the gentleman were the size of the entire area, even if you do not count its dying petals. I'm a hundred and forty-six out of a hundred sure that those guts were part of him, too, a separate organ, like a turtle's shell. Maybe a little alien to the main body, but still integral.
It was a natural mess, and being in the epicenter of it would be a ticket to death for anyone. I have good resistance, but I can't survive even a minute in such a background of fleur and energy storms without protection. The protection is there, working in the background, being a perfect sphere of monochrome with a radius of three and a half meters, a piece of the world on which someone has manifested the laws of Shadow. To others, such a capsule of salvation would not seem a powerful enough frontier, but I knew and understood how reliable this armor was. As long as I did not give back what I had torn from reality, no power in its raw form could penetrate this sphere. There are plenty of ways to counteract it, I was shown these ways time and time again by the late asshole, but there's no way to sell such a trick just by increasing the amount of energy invested.
My head did not immediately remember how to think in its normal state. When the enemy was dead, I stared at the place where the devil's embodied vessel had recently sprawled into slices, turning its multidimensional receptacle outward in a surprisingly disgusting display. I would have sat like that for an hour, but my intuition kicked in, telling me more and more intrusively how unwise it was to sit and wait for nothing.
A hint of a thought, a decision just beginning, but even that hesitation, the barely perceptible contraction of muscles in a body reeling from shock and overload, was enough to bend in a violent spasm. Coughing and not even vomiting, but a real seizure, as if you were about to vomit out your stomach, not to mention its contents. The first thing that came out was the undigested food, which after so many changes of form and the transition from the energetic to the material state, was not left in the intestines. Streams of black and unhealthily hissing blood, bubbling with evil power, poured out of me like a fountain, as if I had drunk a cola and eaten menthol dragee, making my frozen body shudder with pain that cut to the very gut.
Pieces of equally black glass, shards of devoured mirrors that have wasted all their reflections to the end and still above that limit, are almost invisible in this mess. The glass cuts my throat, scratches the sky, but mere wounds are complete bullshit against the consequences of my adventure. The use of the essential shell that coated the mirror blanks like a layer of caramel soft filling made it possible not to tear myself apart by planar displacement, but that's only half the battle. In the Shadow Form state, as well as simply by overuse of the planar saturation, alchemical skills, if not disabled, then weakened to the point of obscenity, forcing one not just to make caramels from the mirror shell but also to create caramels in advance in such a state that they could be manipulated even without access to alchemy or the essence vessel.
For all its qualities, the Vessel is a structure tied to the human body, and in the form of an eternal hungry fear-beast it, of course, remains available and feels the same as before, but those parts of the essence that are responsible for working with the Vessel of Essence you no longer have. Or rather, I'm saying it wrong again. They are there, but they are completely different. Different every time. Different for every Form. With such inputs, it was very difficult to interact with caramel in any meaningful way, so only the simplest manipulations remained.
The hardest thing was to activate the prepared mirrors, Dream embedded in them, without stopping the battle and being in the state of "more Shadow than Kostya". Without a layer of essences, any activation would immediately activate me, and I would become an activated isekai, similar to activated charcoal. The same kind that sizzles and disintegrates into dust right before your eyes. The use of higher alchemy as a cushioning layer between two planar techniques, of course, stretches to the analog of the local Nobel Prize, but I'm sure that even if they gave it to me, it would only be by hitting me over the head with it.
The feeling of imminent blows began to change from a whisper to very loud cues or even to the cries of a guardsman, a concentration camp warden, or a kindergarten teacher building his charges, hinting to get away as soon as possible. I stare at the almost black petals, which now look so much like melting wax skyscrapers, gradually falling into the stone-igneous slurry that the square and the surrounding area have become. And above me, the stolen sky lights up purple, as if someone were pouring into it not the poisonous passion of purple and violet but the bloody rain of primal rage. And is something wrong in this rain, something not as Hell should be!
In that bloody color were the clang of weapons striking shields, the crush of infantry, the mud, the screams, the shouts, the shrieks, and the rivers of blood that had been and would continue to be spilled for years to come. Somebody objectified their Miracle right within Hell, and all the vices retreated, unprepared for such a confrontation. I really don't want to wait until the one who's so eager to come here gets to Eternal because my reputation isn't up to par, and I don't have the right alignment. The mental rigor had already dissipated, the new tasks and goals were being digested, and my brain was starting up again, but there were too many things I had to do before I could escape.
The easiest thing was the summoned Armada, right now eating its most delicious buffet that could be set up and served. Even without really listening, I could feel what was left of the dead creature's domain trying if not to push back the affected areas, at least to keep the cuts from growing into the Shadow itself, which was exactly the number of petals of the deceased devil. Strangely enough, I wished the devil luck. I didn't want to wait for the bastards to finish eating the tidbits and move on to the easier food. I didn't want to wait for the bunches of defenseless and ready-to-eat souls to be the sweetest food for them, but they wouldn't refuse mortals they could get their hands on, either.
The mechanism of the breach-call I created is such that I can know relatively clearly who exactly and in what quantity these breaches let through. Having estimated the quantity as well as the quality, I can say only a few angry swears, then some more swears, and a strangled squeak in which one can hardly recognize the phrase "pot don't boil." There were more than two dozen Highs alone, and something much stronger, more evil, and more Ancient was slowly being pushed into reality in three examples. If I had originally created a single mega-crack, even a mythic would have crawled into such a hole in one second, but thanks to the fact that the Armada rift was divided into several surgically precise cuts, the number of relatively weak creatures has grown avalanche-like, but the really powerful Shadows get through reluctantly, very reluctantly, which makes them even more furious than usual.
Of course, the rift created by the active perk imposes on the Shadows the obligation to obey me in return for the wildest force of strengthening benefit, at the same time leveling the ejection effect of the real world, but the more powerful the creature, the angrier and hungrier, the weaker the effect of the contract. People in general, and the Eternal in particular, were saved by the exceptionally high nutritional value of the almost gutted Domain's coffers. Against the backdrop of this feast, it was simply stupid for them to search for and kill ordinary humans because they were already well-fed. But the real fun will begin the moment they finish eating the remains of the petals and their creator, and the remaining creatures in the Domain will cut off access to their guts.
Oddly enough, I wish good luck to the devils and the Heralds arriving right here, or even the Incarnations, so they can kill my beast and die in the process while I munch on popcorn on the sidelines. Correction, I'd munch it if I wasn't right in the middle of the fucking carnage! And if I had popcorn.
I stop my motionless sitting, sharply shrinking the monochrome sphere, merging it with the Aegis that never stopped working in the non-forced mode, turning it into a kind of dense armor around the body that has not yet recovered from throwing up the spent mirrors. I don't feel well, but my reserve is relatively full. My strength is enough, and on the border of my consciousness, there is a kind of rope, an iron anchor chain that binds me and the feasting Armada, allowing me, if I wish, to claim a part of my tribute simply by the right of the Overlord. This will not only restore the reserve but also add experience, devoured attributes, or something else "good," which I am not going to do and even categorically do not want to do.
In general, the Armada connection is the very last resort, and for now, the situation is not so catastrophic.
As soon as I narrowed the sphere of Manifestation, I nearly fell into a vat of shit, souls, and Shadows because it was the sphere that kept me afloat. Reflexively using the Leaf on the Wind zeroes in on the weight, allows me to glide through the rippling doughy mass like a water viper on a water surface, only the surface is very shitty. A quick look around reveals only a few very important things I personally would like to bring with me before escaping.
The only part of the environment that stands out above the general mess is the marvelous fountain, for which Poets' Square was beloved, which survived the whole massacre with nothing less than a real miracle. However, the fountain's construction has turned into hints that throwing coins into it is no longer about luck or a long-lasting buff but about a lethal dose of fleur. On the other hand, I told the team I wanted to throw a coin...
Oh, who am I kidding?
When has a sign that says "don't get in, it'll kill you" ever stopped me?
The Shadow Theft on one of the already disintegrating souls, whose light was dissolving into the gradually blackening mush beneath his feet, was almost unopposed, even easier than on ordinary, possessing bodies of the reasonable. The abomination that ran through the connection literally tore the soul apart, killing it for about a minute and a half faster than it would have extinguished itself, a wide, as wide as the body of the fountain, a stream of rot and honey was rushing upward, and I was already rushing to the place where I had last seen the late faggot Eternal, whose name I never learned... If you think about it, I never learned any of them by name, and I don't know if there are any of them left. They don't take care of themselves at all, even though they're not students anymore.
T.N. It's a reference to this.
I didn't need the prince's body, which was still alive, even if it had its soul removed, as well as his cheater armor, even if I wouldn't give it up. But the blade, that incomprehensible two-handed weapon that even the mythical devil feared, or even outright feared, and which, apparently, is capable of killing anything if you hit it more than once - that's the one I'd like to have. I have just here one mythical monster, which does not give me a break and brazenly seeks me with a bad purpose. It would be more useful to me than to a dead man or his family because they are also dead.
I can't find the sword right away, and if I can't find it in ten seconds, I'll have to run. I can only retrieve the blade drowned in this filth if no one interferes with me for at least a couple of hours. There's so much background there now, so many multidirectional currents mixed, so many disintegrating souls and Shadows eating them, that my sensors resentfully tell me terrible things. Impulse by impulse, the shadow sphere, and clairvoyance work together, but they only fill my brain with nastiness and veneer, which I have to burn out separately.
Dream might help, but I don't have time to find or create a mirror and turn it into a support and a disposable search altar. Not to mention that switching from Shadow to Dream would leave me without the protection of Manifestation and Aegis, which could be a frustrating experience under such circumstances. And I have enough experience today as it is as if I had a cat working in an experience factory, and I don't even have a cat! I've had enough of the risks I've been taking. Now, I need to run away and do it with all the skills I have.
But the opportunity to get a mythical pickaxe, which I dreamed of from the very first day of my arrival on Alurei, which is really mythical in its awesomeness, I want to tears in my dry eyes. In my life, there are too many of those entities that only such a pick could kill. However, there are enough, and those against whom and pick will not help. I don't want to miss the opportunity to get this weapon because I won't be able to get a second one shortly.
In one swoop, I put my reserve and will into the execution of the Call, slapping the chains of my power on the nearest Elder Shadow, which looked like a headless eel, eating another portion of the sparks that had almost disintegrated in the fleur-shadow bath, immediately throwing the second and third leashes. I can't intercept the whole horde. I can't change their vector of action. I can't even dream about it - there are too many of them, they are too close to the source of saturation, and the source itself is unrealistically tantalizing against any background. They will ignore my order at best, pretend not to notice it, and if I risk to press further, they will try that order for strength. And all of them will be able to crush my strength, forcing me either to retreat or to fight with my own Armada.
I could, of course, try to break the mechanism of my buff, which levels the back pressure of reality, allowing me to not fall back into the Shadow and weaken away from its deeper layers. But with the souls devoured, it wouldn't matter if I could close the breach or break the contractual blessing because, with that kind of feeding, they'd have a good chance of not feeling my actions, losing whatever vestiges of control they still had left. It would be very likely the Eternal would be destroyed by a different kind of creature if I didn't feel with my liver and failing clairvoyance that reality was cracking from the effort they were putting into it. Whatever was going on outside, the rescue forces were already rushing in and would be here soon. Whether they will rescue us, kill us, or loot derelict valuables (in the process, making derelict those that still have owners) I have no idea, and it will take too long to find out. I don't care because my angry face is not going to do me any good when I meet those rushing people.
The late prince's armor doesn't entice me as much as the desire to seize the blade. I'm tired of hiding from Weaver under a figurative bed, and without a trump card of this grade, that veteran of labor and defense will eat me up without choking. With him, though, he'll eat me too, but that way, at least some chances will remain. One fight with, in fact, not the strongest myth was enough for me to realize my place in the food chain. Even with the support of the whole Chosen One, the fucking Prince of Ages, and another allied fearshit, who reeked of such concentrated misery that it made the Shadow Form's teeth whimper, we barely broke him. If this horny shit hadn't missed my trick of opening the Armada gate and not another flying shit, which inexplicably sees a clear connection with Losius, the devils would have celebrated the victory, not me.
One of the Shadows I've been exploiting to keep me from enjoying my meal has managed to find the blade with its tentacles. I immediately take direct control of it, literally killing the beast and turning it into an extension of my body. My reserve is sagging, and I'm feeling worse, but I can't risk it. After all, any Shadow hates me a priori, working only on fear and fear of getting hit, and with such a tool in its "paws" it can try to scratch me with it. Not that it would think of it, not that the artifact would work in the "hands" of the creature, but I didn't want to check. I'd already experimented enough for today to make me sick.
Shadow crawled out a little ways away, dragging the blade through its body, and I immediately intercepted it, wrapping it in my cloak and letting go of Shadow's control. The Shadow, for its part, died silently without a peep, but if I didn't know with absolute certainty that there was no consciousness or thought there anymore, I'd think it was looking at me a little judgmentally. I didn't dare to dive for the armor. The prince's body was sprawled with rot and honey foam, and the kit had disintegrated into its individual elements, sinking deeper and deeper. I was watching the blade with all my might because I needed it so much, but I couldn't keep track of every piece of armor in such a mess of energy. I needed a sensor much stronger than a tired and wobbly me.
But the other trophy, on the contrary, I didn't need to look for the surface of the fleur literally pushing it out, preventing it from sinking to the bottom, but I wasn't very sure about the need to even pick it up. The remains of the old man-martyr caused an underlying desire to burn them in the alchemical flames. The only thing that stopped me was the realization that I couldn't create such a thing quickly, and my current resources wouldn't be enough. The single link of the chain seemed to be the most ordinary, only blackened and partially corroded. Even the Hero's gaze did not help much. The casket that had fallen to the ground after the dedugan's spraying appeared to be stored not in the pockets missing from his tatters but right inside the mangled body. A very, you know, strong argument for not messing with shit, an exemplary argument!
But an old man helped us.
He helped me at once, without a second thought, without counting on anything, only wishing to die, but he helped me, helped me to the very end, and if it hadn't been for his voluntary sacrifice, I wouldn't have had enough time. I can't say it was exactly a request. We had neither the strength nor the time nor the desire for such revelations of will, but until the last moment, there was a hope smoldering in him that I would do something about his legacy. It's obviously a trap for the curious, a cunning curse, which I don't even doubt. It doesn't even need intuition, just a pinch of knowledge.
And my dear Tia, tyrant ears, worse than the teachers in all subjects at once, quite an accessible language explained the nature of cute Demons, their strengths, and weaknesses, as well as the reasons why no one with a drop of brain in his head will not mess with them. Neither for enmity nor, even worse, for friendship. Another victim, another unfinished and not-ending terrible fairy tale in which the beautiful prince, his princess, and their white horse have already died, but some served the prince and princess.
Dead Gods and dead Faith are scary not because they will betray you, deceive you, and devour you, as devils do. What is scary is that you can fall into their arms, even just by touching them, by sharing even a little of their indelible burden. I know, even though clairvoyance has far from heard everything in those moments when we all, four doomed lunatics against one myth, were bound together into one whole, what exactly is in that box. And I also realize that even knowing the danger, I dare not ignore this request.
Someone has to finish the scary tales.
Especially if this tale, a couple of minutes earlier, prevented someone from finishing my tale.
With a quiet, on the verge of hearing, hiss, from which all the Shadows in a considerable radius became nervous and began to eat faster and more greedily so as not to be taken away, I tear off from my belt the rest of the vials, from which all the magic and essences had already evaporated, leaving only pure glass-insulator. So many transitions to the Form and back, several almost complete destructions of the main body, and regular pumping of raw power to obscene values. All of this threatened the remnants of the compositions hanging on my belt, which could not be used against Sovereign anyway. The alchemy had to be used in another, much more suicidal way.
But it is the insulating glass I need, which I crumble in my flesh-returned hands, covered in golden mist, using essence manipulation to glue them into truly closed containers. I take the chain and the box not with my hands but with the paws of the Form, throwing aside the pieces of flesh affected by other people's Sins. Until I have sealed both relics in separate hermetic capsules, and then I seal them again, already in a common box for both vessels. There was not enough glass for the last one, so I had to use pieces of stone and floral crumbs lying under my feet. No matter how paradoxically silly it might sound, the fleur, thickened by essentialism, being an abomination, did a good job of isolating the influence of the cursed objects. Yes, yes, Konstantin Yurievich invented to isolate radioactive materials in a container of pure dimethylmercury, sprayed with the famous "Novichok" for a pleasant smell. I recognize myself, damn.
I hang the resulting bullshit on my cloak, which covers the family double-edged sword that I honestly stole in payment for saving the Eternal, remembering sharply the old proverb. I mean the one about the need to run away quickly after you've done another good deed. Kindness is the kind of thing that requires quick feet and the ability to avoid being caught on camera...
I shook my whole body, which for a second took on a shadow appearance, like a cat after a sudden and unwanted bath, and sharply accelerated. The body strengthened by the Form allows me to push off from the area of space subordinated by the Manifestation, starting with the speed of a racing car and without much acceleration. As if waiting for my actions, there comes a feeling of... I don't know how to describe it. The closest analogy I have with that bouquet of experiences is when you are relaxing in the bathtub, diving into it with your head, and then someone throws a firecracker into the bathtub. Or, say, you climb into an iron barrel, close the lid, and a kind soul from the neighboring yard smashes the barrel with a stick!
Someone not only knocked on the door of the stolen city, but someone almost kicked the door open with a decisive kick, being at least a local God, and well, if only one. As if the already existing problems were not enough, there followed a stirring of space, as if someone scraped a huge nail on the glass and chalk on the blackboard at the same time - a sound inaudible, felt rather by his magic and sensitivity to energy, but no less loud. It was the Ancient Shadows who were entering the party who realized that the very Gods could try to take away their food.
If up to this point, the mythical creatures of my "favorite" plane had not been in too much of a hurry to get through the breach I'd left, sticking individual tentacles into the remains of the petals and subduing individual shadows and making them carry soul lights for themselves, now they were getting nervous. And they were hiding pretty well, bitches, pretty well. I wasn't paying much attention in my haste, and they (two of them, apparently, as well as a third, weaker one, still just trying on the breaches) had managed to figure out how the Armada contract worked, deliberately not coming here completely. Instead, the Ancients had almost entirely subjugated the little things, temporarily making the little things part of themselves, squeezing out most of the honestly devoured, strengthening their own essences, and driving away the Highest, smart and quick to recognize the danger, who were simply not profitable to subjugate in such a crippling way.
They were also trying to take control of the rifts, to imbue them with the power pulled from the souls, to make rifts their own, not mine! To retain the ability to level the penalties for staying in the material world, but to get rid of the forced contract of obedience! If I used the skill granted by the perk correctly, creating a single huge cut, they wouldn't have been able to do it... so quickly, taking at least half an hour and much more effort, so much more that it's easier to accept the contract. Only I wouldn't have been able to create a single rift because the bridge between the Shadow and the Hell without any "almost" was the petals and the supreme devil himself - there was no room for a full-fledged Armada gate.
The Ancient creatures think differently. Their hunger and hatred are all-consuming and immense, but they are not stupid in any way. And when they saw a chance for themselves, they took it, managing to do so in secret from an arrogant Overlord who thought too much of himself. Now that they were out of hiding, I could sense and feel their hateful contempt and envy. Their desire to punish me for the very thought of them submitting to my will. To do what they were ordered to do. In a normal state, I could have closed the breaches, could have worked my way to the bottom, overpowered the will of the Ancient, and forced them to retreat into the Shadow.
One.
The weakest of the three.
Probably.
There were some chances.
Small one.
In my current state, beaten and tired, I'd only make them laugh, so I pressed down the angry desire flared in my heart to punish the creatures who thought they were nothing, to show the right and will of the Overlord, which were described not by level, not by attributes and not by reserve, but by the things that made the hungry scum bow their heads long before I got at least the fortieth level. I pressed down and gritted my teeth in a gloating grin. The Gods would come, as would their Heralds, and if the former could still slack up, the latter would be in the assortment. And whoever wins in the coming battle, I'll be the winner. No matter how hard the Shadows try, the ban on devouring civilians is still in effect, as well as the basic directives of the Armada.
They had subjugated all but the Highest, but the desire to devour more lights, to outrun the competition, to conceal their actions had prevented the contract from shaking loose enough. God's armies would come early, forcing the creatures to grapple with the natural enemy. There will be casualties, of course, but I force myself to believe that the celestials will try to level them as well. Without the slammed Armada loop, the creatures eager to fill the void of their Loneliness could start a guerrilla war, running from the Heralds and eating defenseless mortals. But the loop was still there, and the Celestials wouldn't let them work to break it, forcing them to fight rather than eat just to survive and not get beaten.
A chuckle erupted from deep within, a laugh that turned into the shrill laughter of a hungry hyena worthy of the Shadows who heard it. They are silent, only rustling, hissing, and eating, tearing and tearing at the chains of the Ancients that bound them, and the Ancients are silent, too. It was as if they heard in my laughter all that I had told them, conveyed to them, told them in the heat of cruel mockery. They deceived me, outsmarted me, left me on a fool's errand and pointed out the place, questioned my very right to be the Overlord, answering this question in absentia by my actions.
And they were right.
But with my laughter, my mirthful anger, and my sense of superiority, which I did not really feel, I made them believe that they had not deceived me but themselves. That I had calculated everything from the beginning, had constrained them by deceit, and compelled them to play to my music, my laughter! And they, who saw the approach of the celestials, who understood the inevitability of the battle and the fact that they would have to do as I wished, who felt the nonexistent chains of will already on themselves, believed me. Had it not been for the laughter, for their faith, they might have twisted, deceived, changed their minds, retreated at last without entering the battle, breaking the chains of the contract. Now, I realize in a prophetic trance, they can't. They won't have time to change tactics.
Congratulations, Kostya. Now you have three angry Myths besides Weaver, who will very, very much want to take revenge for the humiliation they've suffered. Of course, they are not so dangerous, and they can't block my Shadow the way Weaver closed Dream, but they can make my life difficult. From eating up all the summons I've made or will make contracts with (I don't need rituals, sacrifices, and entreaties for every evolved creature. An ultimatum like "work or I'll make a stuffed pony out of you" will suffice), to trying to catch me swimming in the depths of the Shadow, or even trivial answers to questions posed by mortals interested in me. Well, if there are those among these Shadows who work with mortals, and there certainly are, I can see the contractual stamps of mutual oaths on some of them.
It's kind of embarrassing, but I'll be rooting for the angels to get all three.... or at least the two strongest myths get fucked without lube.
The Ancients watched my departure away from the remains of the square and the remains of the archdevil in silence, restraining their shrieks and furious yells, which frightened far more than their weaker kin. The level of self-control that even the High, who had once been summoned, did not possess. Though, to be fair, I did not put them in such a rough position as with that unlucky Legend. That's why they are angry. I pressed them, fucked them, but did not push them to the edge, beyond which anger is buried under a layer of fear. So I walked away, until my stealth and distance, as well as the busyness of the Ancient creatures, overpowered their attentiveness, hiding me from the Shadow's gaze.
My clairvoyance was working as hard as I was. It was obvious that it would take me a week, maybe even a couple of months, to recover from today, but as long as I could fight and run, I had to take advantage of it. If I survive, I'll let Tia beat me in the skull as a giant woodpecker about my safety and self-preservation instead of sawdust. In the meantime, I have to take advantage of the fact that I can do something and nobody cares about me.
There, a huge mecha made according to Hell Inc's blueprints continues its leisurely battle with a comparably huge golden snake, above which hangs a cheerful one hundred and thirteenth level, from time to time rising by a couple of points, then falling by the same values, ten times a fraction of a second. Unstable levels happen, of course, but I've never seen anything that unstable. I have not met anything similar to this cute snake, which reeked such unnatural greed, desire to possess, the desire to take payment, the intention to close the deal, that instead of the Snake, one can involuntarily imagine some Toad or even Hamster. A huge golden hamster would look much more conceptual, I think.
The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
T.N. Toad/Frog and Hamster it's some kind of Avatars of Greed in modern Russian culture.
The thought of trying to poke both of them with my trophy blade flickered, but it was just a flicker. Even aside from the fact that I'm far from normal and being slightly out of shape. The other day, four of us were trying to take down Mythos alone. And we had both the sword and its wielder, who, to be honest, was stronger than me in direct combat. I could still try to help the Golden Serpent, whatever that thing was, but the blade would probably be of little use against the News Bringer.
It's not the armor, which in many places is thicker than the length of the blade. A scratch would be enough, and then another. The problem was the essence of the mega-creature, its modularity. The Archdevil constantly changed itself and was what and how it wanted to be, but at the same time, it always had a basis, a core of essence, which took the role of the leading link. The Golem, on the other hand, has no such foundation at all, permanently, and I am almost certain a blade strike would only destroy part of the Bringer's structure, scorch a chunk of his flesh and the souls that comprise it, but not destroy it. Not in one single swing, that's for sure - and I can't even get enough of a return swing to turn me into a pickle. It'd work against the Ancients, but they'd have to wait to attack, too, so it'd be up to will. Would I be able to restrain Shadow for even a fraction of a second and get to its flesh or not? And if I could, wouldn't the abomination be able to discard the base of the body, leaving only a piece of it to grow back into a whole, just as I had done with the devil? If I can do that, the Ancients are no strangers to such tricks.
The Golem, as I had noted earlier, was almost unconnected to the deceased archdevil and, therefore, did not suffer any consequences from his death. He continued to fulfill the assigned task, while those who could have changed this task were preoccupied with their survival. The death of the invasion commander not only deprived the coordination. It not only weakened but also opened a wide field for settling scores, for attempts to take revenge or subjugate, to take what was theirs or return what was someone else's. The devils of high levels, who were least affected by the rollback of the disconnection, were no longer interested in humans, but fights with each other among them happened regularly. They did not descend into total anarchy and mutual extermination, but that was only because they had to escape from the city being pulled back into reality and also because of the hordes of Shadows who were happily using the remaining dead bridge. They would have crawled through Sovereign's body into that Bank by now. If not for the resistance of the higher creatures, the Domain still had.
The city was indeed being pulled upward, and the sky was slowly changing color in the opposite direction. The blues had not yet appeared even in dreams, but the purples were becoming less and less rich and fleshy, lightening to the hues they had been just after the dome had appeared. The devils, weak and strong alike, tried to get rid of their pseudo-bodies and leave the material carriers of possessed flesh as quickly as possible, returning home and starting to divide that house. The elite needed time to retreat so they wouldn't lose most of their sonm on the path. And since mortals were not in a hurry to give them a five-minute break, the elite scattered like rats, hiding in corners and starting the process of transition from those corners. Sometimes they succeeded, sometimes they were found with their pants down, and often it was not people, but their kin. Sometimes, they died and sometimes changed their position, but no one was willing to fight for the Eternal. Even the cultists, for the most part, were killed by the devils, replenishing their sonms and compensating for their expenses. The bank was closed now, and there was no one responsible for transferring souls from there to the sonms, but they needed something to fill their pockets.
Аж гордость берет, право слово!
I don't get distracted by the battles, especially since people mostly win them, only occasionally giving out single and meager shadow arrows, needles, or pins, saving those who would be guaranteed to die and didn't deserve to die. A daddy with a couple of kids and an unconscious wife, who he knocked out with a punch to the jaw because there wasn't enough sleep grass to put the kids to sleep, and the fleur made her crazy. A twentieth-level preacher with a mace covered in holy symbols, in the company of five shabby guards and the same number of militant townspeople, defended the entrance to a small church shelter, where non-combatants were crowded in like sprat in a jar. A lone adventurer, drinking expensive wine from a collector's bottle, right next to the bodies of his team, which didn't live to see the final battle for a few minutes, not noticing the lurker cultist creeping up from behind.
There were many more. There were many more places and people where my help would be vital and where, without that help, there would be no life, but I had chosen my measure of altruism for several lives ahead of me, so it was time to do the honors. I was much more concerned about my companions, who had been scattered to all corners by the late bitch in the imperial rank with the activation of some insanely powerful artifact of spatial orientation. No, I understood that the defense had benefited from it, but I'd only gotten one fucking problem.
As I walked, I returned my partial shadow body to human shape, shattering another mirror that came to hand, grabbing a handful of shards, cursing at the lack of a cloak occupied by the stolen blade, and trying to put them on my belt instead of potions. It didn't work well, but I managed, and with the first shard, I hovered in the surrounding space, trying to find my lost ones. Hans was the first to be found, but I wasn't happy about it because my call search was noticed by Giver, who was next to him and directed me to the right spot. Now, the old tracker will have to be checked because there is not much trust in the deviless, despite the obedience. She could easily throw something for the sake of the opportunity to get to know my person better or to gain authority in the eyes of the tracker. And well, if only for the sake of it, limited to questioning or reading memories. To forget about the nature of the devil is stupid, and to kill her now, bitch, is unwise.
The two-story house, with the whole family now snoozing in the basement stash, was only slightly damaged in the battle, though on this street alone, a quarter of the buildings were razed to the ground, and half were damaged. Both of them are there in the company of some athletic-looking cultist with a Brether class and a body covered in lewd and disgusting tattoos in equal measure. The giver looks somewhat transparent as if losing density, leaning over the unconscious and seemingly completely devoid of any vestiges of reason. Apparently, she intends to change the pseudo-body into a controlled possession and in a gentle style. As Bane of the Library did so outwardly, there are no visible marks and no waxed canvas of flesh.
When I appeared, Hans just waved his hand tiredly, suffering from a wicked migraine that had been partially transmitted to me through clairvoyance. He had used his legendary artifact too much today. Giver looked at me with such a look that I was involuntarily ashamed and confused. So much disbelief, defeat, happiness, passion, and other incomprehensible emotions were there. She certainly didn't believe in my return on a dime, and I had killed her last boss, which, even without the effect of the ring, would have earned her respect, interest, and passion. She's silent now only because she's too busy flowing into her new vessel, which is aided by the numerous nonexistent threads sticking out of her body, and she's also well aware of my attitude towards her. She's getting high on the latter, too, of course, which pisses me off even more. My mind is already tired, and I've seen and felt the thinking and nature of Lust's devil during the battle with Sovereign... I'd say to the point of nausea, but devils made me sick long before that battle.
However, even without Giver of Careses, there were things worth paying attention to:
"Congratulations, Hans." The most life-beaten wielder of the group's only regular class no longer possesses it, having replaced Pathfinder with Master of Trails, effectively, as I see with my third eye, the Caster analog of the already-available Walker on the Tail. "With the promotion, or whatever it's customary to say."
"At the very least, it's customary to throw a feast, no less than a wedding." Judging by his voice and slightly slurred words, he was really tired, and it would be better if he didn't strain his reserve and body too much, or he might even get question marks in the Status. "You just didn't see what the blue one was doing while you were out there partying. And the look on her face when their chief died was like a balm to the wound!"
Giver hissed so expressively that if I hadn't intercepted the impact with a shadow theft, Hans, in his current state, could have easily passed out from pleasure and pain and then spent a long time cleaning the laundry from the effects of the hiss. Well, yes, of course. He hinted that she didn't believe in my victory, setting her up for my anger and frustration, looking for an opportunity to shake her position and climb up herself. With her brains, not stupid brains, she realizes that people think and act a little differently, but it's hard to get her instincts under control, especially under this kind of stress and pressure.
Giver was silent and bowing her head in shame, and expressing guilt for her unwitting attack with a hiss, returning to the partially interrupted work of acquiring a material body, though I could feel the bitch's out-of-control desires physically, almost without clairvoyance. She really, really wanted to take a moment and fix Hans's memory so he couldn't tell me about her doubts. I mean, not doubts, but the absolute certainty that I would die in a (un)pleasant way and would be the end of the story, and she would never taste me in any sense. And now the wildest joy and jubilation in her is mixed with shame and horror that she allowed herself such thoughts - if it were not for the need to hold on to reality and create a billet for a new vessel, she would have tried to rewire her brain as a punishment and a reward at the same time.
The power of the Ring is frightening after all, and in the example of such a perverted mind as Giver possesses, that frightening nature of it becomes simply unbearable. Any standard submission is simply doomed to failure when dealing with a deviless, especially one of such an aspect of Lust. Just too shifty, a depraved mind capable of changing itself at will. She could easily rid herself of the effects of the Ring, even if not immediately, but gradually and measuredly, but she could. Blur some directives, slightly distort others, and change attitudes and perceptions while remaining within the limits of her invested desires. She could make them into something else. At the same time, she would not stop believing that she was doing everything for the benefit of the new master, even under the harshest interrogation!
The key peculiarity of the Ring is that after its touch, Giver desperately and infinitely strongly did not want such an outcome, even feared it. She wished to avoid it by all means. I'm not talking about the "can't want to get free" method, which is used by all kinds of brainiacs, but exactly the deep reluctance, not superficial, but sincerely belonging to the deviless herself. For each victim, the artifact selects ways to ensure loyalty and even such an unstable entity continues to be subject to the Ring. Giver in a subordinate state is in every sense a standard of herself, on this subordination her personality and will are built, she, even knowing a thousand ways to rewire herself, to gradually break the shackles of a naive mortal, will kill with the cruelest destruction anyone who tries to her even a hint of such actions. And it would be good if she just killed, but not if she used her fantasy in all its versatility. The search for pleasure, its new facets, had already partially ended for her, giving her absolute ecstasy in submission, and devils would do anything for their pleasure.
I shook my head, shaking off the prophetic obsession, assessing the situation, and came to the decision to leave the couple here and look for the others. If I can drag Hans with me, the deviless is busy. It's too early to kill her. She can be useful. And it's dangerous to throw her away like garbage because she knows a lot. Her fate will be decided later when we all get out of this madhouse, if at all. Even though I was still wrapped up in nothingness and didn't give away my thoughts in any way, the creature relaxed when I made my decision. Or maybe it was just another stretch of tension. Its body became even more transparent, and its fingertips began to crumble with flower pollen into the lungs of a measuredly breathing body with a scorched mind and defiled soul.
"I'll get the others." I tossed it to both of them briefly, eliciting zero emotion. A tired nod from Hans and an incomprehensible range from Giver. "I'll drag them here, but don't fight."
Both could probably comment on the last part of my statement, and it wasn't even clear which one would have been more indignant, but I wasn't listening anymore. The clenched shard of the mirror had fallen into disrepair but managed to connect me to a tired as hell and barely able to make the psychic connection, but apparently alive and not dying Tia, who was not alone in finding support in the form of Hestia. I had to run very fast, no longer even in human form, turning into snake-like shadow moray eels, slithering between the battle-damaged buildings. Sometimes, it was even necessary to dive into the lower layers of the newly reappeared Shadow under the dome, falling out of reality to get through the hottest parts.
The two girls had set up in a remote area and had chosen a nice little inn, which looked like a restaurant, perched on a small hill. The view of the failed invasion and the final battle was indeed picturesque, complemented by the crimson sky and the glow of the many fires. Both of them, I had to admit, were arranged beautifully, with a share of pathos and even somewhere majestic. Only two walls remained of the tavern, and the roof had not fallen but had been torn off and carried three hundred meters away, but it was even better that way - instead of a small window, albeit covered with real glass, there was a wide breach with a good landscape.
The ladies sat down at the only surviving table, obviously custom-made from a special type of wood, having found a couple of chairs, a few glasses, a bottle of wine, and some cold appetizers from the cellar. Cheese, hard-smoked slices, fresh bread baked just before the fall, and a huge smoked leg of a shrouded striped horse, which on Earth would have been a close relative of the good old zebra.
Tia, pale and, judging by her slightly absent eyes, a bit concussed, was silently watching the landscape, not even trying to cover her face with a mask, holding a glass of wine, while Hestia, sitting next to her, was eating quietly, cutting small slices of meat with a knife. The picture was a bit surreal, especially if one knew the degree of professionalism of Tia, who would never allow herself to do such a thing, even if she was dead tired. Open face, open touching, snacking right during a battle - it feels like she's been hit by a fleur and somewhat reduced critical perception.
"It was her idea, I hasten to inform you before your outrage." Before I could inquire, or at least take back my human form, the elfess nodded at a contentedly smiling Hestia putting aside the cutlery. "I was hit with something very unpleasant that I cannot recall now and even remember for fear. The honorable Hestia has erased the memories of the last forty minutes, and every time I try to find the lost again, it immediately gives me a headache to the point of a splitting migraine."
I swear quietly, starting to prepare something from the shards for mental and psychic scanning, since that's what I'm expected to do, most likely. Judging by my gut and Hestia's relaxed demeanor, the situation is under control, the crisis is over and the druid's brains aren't going to compost anytime soon, but the scan is vital.
"If you try to tell her what she did in the withered moments, immediately the control is renewed." The Mist Maiden was tired, too, but in a different way, exhausting the mind for lack of a way to exhaust the body. "I didn't risk influencing excessively, and the minimal impact was only enough to temporarily block it."
I can see that without her, as I can see the reason why Hestia organized this tea party. The table, chairs, and infernal candlelight dinner itself is a kind of trigger and suggestion. The part of Tia's subconscious mind that is enchanted by the fleur believes that she is not in combat but in a peaceful setting and, therefore, does not attempt to deploy again by overriding control. Any attempt to go into a "combat" state would force Tia to harm herself, cutting off her flesh piece by piece, starting with her breasts and intimate parts, and dying of blood loss. I'd love to talk to whatever devil had gotten to Tia's brain with his contrivance, but that devil was already dead. He was killed by Tia a fraction of an instant before she started killing herself.
"I can't be silent about the fact the sensations of the tentacles of the mist creeping into my ears and my mind going blank are hard to call pleasant." Tia clearly has experience or specific training, or more likely both, but she's doing a good job of not thinking about the white ape while finding the boundaries of the thoughts and knowledge that will reassert control. "Perhaps I should be deprived of the ability to move?"
Instead of answering, I activate the mirror, pulling perception onto it and causing the bookmark to unfold. The elf even manages to grab the table knife with a fighting grip, intending to cut both pairs of lips, but the effect is immediately transferred to the freshly created illusion reflected in the mirror. The druid, with a look of disgust on her face, puts the knife aside and shakes off the relaxed, almost light trance she had put herself into without standing up or making any sudden movements so as not to disturb my work. The gallantly smiling reflection slices itself to pieces as I set the mirror aside, casting Dream out of my body, using Shadow Theft, dragging the now obviously discernible crap over myself, dissolving it into shadow energies.
"Done." My words cause a very noticeable relief in Tia, who immediately puts on her mask, adjusts her robes into battle mode and sprinkles everything around her with small, semolina-like seeds that eat away all material and energy traces, including even part of the psychic imprint. "Time to go."
As if to confirm my words, the dome takes another blow, and then another, forcing it to lighten even more, cutting off the devils' tap of available energy more and more firmly, forcing them to speed up their escape. And them, and us, too.
"Well, thank you very much." Hestia stretched out with slight resentment. In her hands, Tia seeds, finishing off a cut piece of meat from the ham she was about to bring to her mouth.
"I apologize." Without a shadow of remorse and rather hastily, the elf replies, distracted only to cover the mirror with wood chips, in which her reflection continued to mutilate itself. "But we really should be going, shouldn't we, before the... the eternal Stars!"
I felt exactly the same as she did and at the same moment. Everything seemed to be, no, not normal but within the bounds of what I was used to, and a new scenery came into the horror and bedlam of the capital's shambles, entering the existing picture of events with a barrel of twisted paint. Somehow, it reminded me of my adventures in Stone. That very feeling of tearing space, as if hundreds of glass blades were screeching against each other, inaudible and invisible, but damn scary. I wouldn't have been surprised if such a premonition had come from the side of the broken dome, for it was justified. Only the spatial metric was already stirring here, under the still purple sky, making the real world around the center of the capital a mesh of transparent cracks. Right in the very neighborhood where the anchor of the Eternal Library was located.
I remembered my sensation of the presence of something very nasty sleeping in the altar room, all those details I'd pulled out of Pypysh's memory about the rules of behavior in the Library, where silence was a prerequisite, and it was closely monitored and punished, up to and including execution. The likelihood the entity sleeping in the depths of the all-stone structure, watching over each of those who dared to enter under the shadow of those walls, breathing invisibly beside any librarian, would wake up at the sound of a loud clap of hands was very small, almost minuscule. But all the same, everyone who has lived in those walls for more than a week, without any training and fines to the salary, acquires the instinctive habit of not making noise. Also, as the same Pypysh knew, the adepts, even the most disenfranchised ones, tried not to be awakened suddenly and abruptly, letting them sleep and using alarm clocks in the form of various charms, rituals, and self-insertions.
Because the wrong entities could have woken up.
Because there, deep in the depths of the stone stronghold, was no Dream.
But someone in that altar slept, dreamed, and looked at the world through the eyes of those who swarmed in his sleeping body.
If the presence of Sovereign, like that of the News Bringer, overwhelmed me to the point of shameful trembling and the desire to weep at my inferiority, just a small glimmer of its power paralyzed me, Tia, and Hestia, who turned into a cloud of mist. It was as if not a small, harmless arch-devil-matiz, but a huge Belaz loaded with coal and rubble was coming at you without slowing down, ramming into you. It seems that both of them when colliding at full speed, are guaranteed to kill a fragile pedestrian, but the sensations are still very different. Whatever it is, it can wipe the floors of its Library, squeeze out the rags, and throw them on the dustbin of history.
The cracks widened a little more, causing a barely perceptible shudder in Tia's shoulders, a twitching eye under the mask in mine, and considerable interest in Serpent and Bringer, who interrupted another fight, breaking the distance between themselves and the center of the city. I thought it was going to explode, but it didn't: the rift shrank and collapsed, deflating and shrinking to about four times its original size before my eyes. My clairvoyance works very unpredictably. Even the mirror doesn't help, as if my attempt to create a stable image had run into television interference, but the desperate and selfless actions of the librarians, who had been sitting in their hiding place for the whole mess, were obvious to me-they spared neither reagents nor prepared charms, nor even themselves, trying to keep the spatial lacunae from closing and the sleeping shit from waking up.
"They seem to have managed to counteract the effect, thank the Stars." Tia comes to her senses even faster than a particular isekai, and Hestia, in her misty state, can only get shocked if she consciously wishes it. "I don't mean to sound like I'm panicking for nothing, but we really should hurry. The coming of the god's army is not the only event I wouldn't want to be caught unprepared for."
We open the channel of image exchange, and I'm almost drenched in the bubbling soup of everything Tia would like to say about my suicidal tendencies, but there's no opportunity to exchange pleasantries. Just an unspoken and, therefore, much more sincere congratulation of me for accomplishing the impossible a couple of times in a row. I don't know what struck her more - my recovery to a more or less adequate state or the fact I had defeated the archdevil? The former, in fact, could hardly be considered merit, whereas the latter had been accomplished in the very difficult company I'd endured as the last survivor.
"Glad you made it, Tin." Deafeningly and as if from all sides at the same time, Hestia. She can't work with images yet but has a mountain of feelings. "But..."
"You realize I can't promise not to do it again, right?" I wondered, shoving the still intact mirrors into my pockets, at the same time dropping images of where Hans and Giver were hiding. For both girls simultaneously. "Even if I really want to?"
"Then next time, I'll go along with you." Ominously, as if passing judgment, Raimel assures me, and as soon as I'm close enough for obvious and understandable explanations, objections, or convictions, she ends the argument immediately. "And, if that is my fate, I will die with you. You made me who I am. You became what kept me me. And if I have any right to demand anything, I ask you not to decide for me anymore. Not like this. Not like this. Otherwise, it's no longer caring, Tin, but simple hypocritical selfishness on your part."
She was obviously very hurt by what had happened, just as she was hurt by the helplessness, the realization that both she and I were rapidly losing the endowness, or her illusion, that the end was near. And that I had, even at this moment, gone to battle without her. Just as then, in Stone, where she had become Mist for my victory, waiting for me until the very end, only hoping that I would come. That was why it was so painful for her to wait now, to wait for me from the new battle, to which she could not come, could not help, and again remained to wait for the inevitable outcome, as it seemed to her and me at that time. It was a distant realization that that was why Tia had remained silent, why she hadn't spoken her mind, that she couldn't have hurt me more than Hestia.
Somewhere again, it creaked, rusty gears rattled, and ached where normal people hide their conscience and guilt. Not in the brow, but in the eye, Kostenka. There is some truth in this accusation, maybe a small, barely noticeable, but very bitterly recoiling share of truth. To some extent, I really left them all behind, not only because they had no chance in the battle against Sovereign but also because that little shit part of me did not want to be without the personalities dear to my heart.
Not for their welfare but for my peace of mind.
I disagree, not completely so, but there is some truth to it.
"I..." I don't know what I wanted to say, but I went on much more confidently. "Fuck such life!"
My wild yell was reinforced by the same wild yell of my sense of danger, as well as by the newly revived clinking of glass knives, which it was impossible not to feel, even if you were not a mage. I couldn't be sure, but some melodic and singsongy utterance in pure Elvish that Tia, who had slipped behind my back and under the table, was definitely profanity. Even refined elves speak with such intonation and in such situations, and it can't be otherwise!
The space broke again, cracked, and began to twist backward, all over the city, in various parts of it. It was the mutual amplification of distortions from the broken dome and the Library itself because, in these breaches, I can clearly see. I see some halls, corridors, spell chambers, living quarters, storerooms, and even a decent-looking latrine. A breach a couple or three meters wide, leading into this corner of marble-carved brooding, opened up a hundred meters above and to our left, followed by a wave of distortions and new cracks that threatened to whip us all like cream with a mixer.
My shout came at the same time as the gentlest and densest Manifestation possible, which covered us and the ruins of the tavern with a monochrome sphere that the wave of distortion crashed against like the tide against the rocks. A couple of cuts went a little further, gnawing their way through the not-so-dense monochrome, which I couldn't make too hard without preparing a proper defense for both women. Hestia, however, dealt with the cracks, spreading out again in a thick misty cloud, literally devouring both cracks in its depths, which fell into it as if they'd been sucked up like pasta.
Hm.
They tried to kill me with a toilet spatial distortion. This, even after the fight with Sovereign, is somewhat surprising, almost awe-inspiring. Conceptually, however, Alurei is trying to kill me, and not just keep trying after trying, but with fantasy! It's obvious that I'm not to this universe's taste.
The situation had stabilized again, and moreover, the cuts had not only stopped expanding, they had resonated with the dome, helping to direct the divine blows so that they would not just open the city's gasping defenses but would not tear it to rubble. One of the Library's ritualists is a real genius, even if he's a bit crazy... I'd have to talk to him if I had the chance, just so I know. Even I have a lot to aspire to in terms of being badass and making dubious plans on my knees.
Here and there, new charges of spatial whirlwinds erupted from the various rifts associated with the Library. In another flash of insight, I realize that all these blasts are coming from the most useless parts of the Eternal Library! Bedrooms, blind corridors, unused laboratories, or warehouses with not-so-expensive products and provisions. Ritualists and masters of space use these places to relieve pressure. If such a term is even applicable to such a matter. That's why these rifts appeared in different parts of the city because they were deliberately placed in a wide front, covering the thinnest and most problematic areas. Well, now someone will definitely be a prize, and detractors will not say, say, bookworms all the mess sat shaking in their hole. Or rather, they will say that, but they will be poked in response with this ritual, pointing out that the capital was pulled out in one piece only by God's will and the grace of these bookworms. I do not doubt the city will be successfully pulled out, which, by the way, is not good for me. There'll be more traces. Although, they'll find them anyway, even if you don't count the information-eating altar.
The shithole rift again accumulates another distortion, preparing to release another reset, but I don't wait for it, grabbing Tia and Hestia, who had quickly regained her false body, with shadowy tentacles, growing a dozen legs, a wolf-like body with insect features, and launching myself into maximum acceleration. Even the acceleration through the Moment was not too lazy to use. It was very flexible, much more flexible than before, after those strange balls that had nearly killed me, puncturing my entire personality from heel to ear.
The toilet destroys the poor and miserable restaurant, along with the table that's been turned into a miniature druidic bunker, but we're not there anymore. Tia yells in my ear, shouting over the sound of the wind in her long ears and the screech of tearing space, giving me Taria's coordinates, which she managed to catch a glimpse of when the Emperor's artifact triggered and scattered her companions to different corners. And all this before the massacre in Poets' Square had even begun! By God, the battle itself was relatively quick. Although I was sneaking up for the first blow in the back for a very long time, almost dying and boiling a losing endowness in the process. It still affects me despite the subsequent insight, which, if it didn't bring me back, saved me from falling.
I send back an image of gratitude. Tia may have only caught the point Taria was originally moved to, but searching from there is much easier than sifting through the entire city. Especially since, in Shadow Form, I can't use the shards to search... I mean, I can, but I'd be chutzpa to do it again. Whatever limit of patience Ms. Fortune chose in my case, I have overcome it forty-two times. I use pure clairvoyance, at the same time, trying to ask the shadows glittering in the purple lights what they can see and touch. It's not my favorite trick. It is seriously inferior in smoothness and quality of results with comparable effort to mirrors, but it has its charms. For example, the ability to use such a technique in conjunction with active shadow class techniques, as well as the ability to ignore some of the defenses that Dream can deceive.
I was just in time because the dancer was just finishing slashing the throats of some cultists, who were maddened by their losses and the ruinous backlash and who were almost more damaged by the destruction of the central figure of the invasion than the devils. The latter was strange, though. Usually, the creatures' toys were less imbued with Hell than its original inhabitants, and the connection to Sovereign himself was illogical. Looking deeper, I realize that this rollback didn't belong to them but to their guide-devil, who simply threw the mental damage at them, ripping out the most valuable souls for himself and fleeing in the process.
Taria would have done it herself, having already finished destroying the enemies, only sometimes helping with Valerium's shots, in which even the tip of the barrel was glowing. Obviously, the strongest active skill of the artifact was used at the moment and twice or three times if it cools down so slowly. The three of us interrupt her entertainment.
No, seriously. A six-meter Form accelerated to the speeds of the best racing cars, if not the bullets fired, attacking from stealth and quite suddenly on a group of yesterday's civilians pumped with borrowed power, among whom only two had passed the twentieth level, and hardly a quarter of them had combat classes if any at all. I felt like a truck driver and the truck itself, which had met a small cloud of midges and butterflies with its windshield, but not more than that.
"Wow, they're sputtering." Unlike all the companions I had met earlier, Taria, in particular, didn't seem too surprised by my survival and victory, either simply not understanding the depth of the phrase "mythical creature," or trivially believing in me to the end or again masterfully playing the chosen role. "You owe me a new dress. And a hunting suit. And lingerie, silk, of course!"
Right at that moment, I couldn't help myself and exhaled with all three mouths, simultaneously lowering the elf and the monster from the back, and even the shadow speech turned out to be not just angry and harshly cutting the consciousness with the rustling of blades on the throat, but also sincerely indignant:
"You didn't even get any of that blood on you!" Realizing that expressing indignation in that voice was more like a prelude to dismemberment, I turned back into a humanoid. "Only the walls and the sidewalk are splattered!"
"Nope, nope!" Instead of trying to hug the miraculously surviving me, or at least being startled by the first part of the scream, Taria mischievously points to her shoulder, where a small, dot-sized drop of blood can be discerned, which has been absorbed without residue by the layer of dust and dirt the dancer had to squirm in while surviving in Hell's invading territory. "There! The costume is ruined. It's your fall. Period. I don't know anything."
From such an exchange, Tia, who was watching it, only audibly puts her palm to her face, removing her mask and trying to wipe her tired face. Too tired to believe that she was absolutely fine.
"Overreacting, friend." Taria also noticed the elf's unusual emotionality, stopping her from playing on my nerves. "Are you all right? Does your head hurt? No desire to organize the chaos of debauchery and the heat of a high orgy?"
"Fleur didn't hit me that hard." Negatively, she shakes her head but still doesn't have a good look. "Potions, battle, and a few insidious web techniques that lay upon my mind this day are the three pillars of my ill health. AS inseparable is the trinity of exaltation... I'm sorry, my speech is slipping. I'm starting to slur my words. I'm fine, but I'm going to spend the next week in a healing trance, preferably drinking something calming and dampening carnal passion before bed. We can talk about that later."
If she openly admits that she's a little off, she's definitely not a little off. If she's jumping from combat speech to high style without her noticing, then things aren't really going well. On a superficial scan, when I extracted the behavioral bomb from her, I didn't really see any serious problems other than the bomb itself, but here, apparently, dozens of small influences had simply exhausted even such a robust mind.
"I guess..." Again, I don't have time to finish what I said, and again for the same reason as before, switching to swearing. "Fuck such a life!!!"
Again, the monochrome sphere of Manifestation. Another spatial cut, only more sudden and more dangerous than the first. I thought the Library's ritualists had spotted us and had decided to eliminate us in such a clever way! Several new rifts-portals leading to different parts of the continent's greatest book-and-not-just-book repository sprang up across the city, also producing waves of distortions and secondary rifts, and the sky grew even lighter, taking away most of the purple but not returning to its former blue, only adding a sharp, almost transparent, golden streak.
Obviously, this rift did not lead to a latrine of any kind but to a vault of very serious artifacts and rare volumes, which were simply dangerous to keep near other books or ordinary exhibits. Both are dangerous for the inventory and possible visitors. That's why this wave of distortion caused so much trouble, as it was joined by the blows and effects of the vault's protective charms. A few curses of all sorts, some black suspension, not directly threatening, but putting a mark on a possible thief or intruder, a couple of semi-intelligent closed fields that tried to deploy themselves on the other side of the portal, automatically enrolling us and a couple of losers hiding in the basements in the enemy elements.
I held back the blow, staggered, and felt the blood flowing under the mask from his nose and bitten lip. I'm sure this blood started to turn black again, which is not a good sign, even if I was filled with optimism. Some of the cracks, like last time, were fed to Mist by the misty cutie, but the rest of the gifts I had to accept personally, at the same time pulling the harshest consequences of being in the manifested zone on myself by stealing the shadow, because I had to manifest it much more powerfully and sharply. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to hold it.
I redirected the curses to myself and burned them in my own energy. The blackness marks dissolved into monochrome simply due to the conflict between Darkness and Shadow. The closed fields seemed to have realized they were going somewhere wrong, only wasting energy, so they rolled back to their previous dimensions and went into paranoid siege mode. But they had to dodge a dozen of high-class defense containers, which were pushed out of the vault due to the effect of stretched space, which snapped like a rubber band, sending the objects in a kind of "lens," purely physically. There were such materials that passing through the not-quite-stable rift did not damage them, and if it atomized a container or two, it was no easier for me.
"Holy shit!" Taria spat, trying to get rid of the smoking boot, which had been spilled on by the bloody ink of some living and evil grimoire that had slipped out of a container that had shattered in contact with the wall of the nearest house. The book had dutifully died from Valerium's shot, whose bullet took on the appearance and incomprehensible properties of a slightly glowing crystal but managed to douse the girl with acidic blood-ink. She closed herself with a material illusion but ruined her shoe. And I know perfectly well without intuition, she will demand new shoes from me, too. She's such a bastard!
Most of the vaults were only cracked but were in no hurry to release their stuffing, and the stuffing itself, though not all of it, was as evil as a grimoire dead in every sense and almost universally.... uh, page-by-page, cursed with all sorts of effects, though not all of them I was ready to identify without a long, hard look. As I knew from my own experience, my heroic analysis was no panacea, and cursed artifacts, as both Losius and Tia had told me at the time, were quite adept at hiding their most insidious effects from scanning. Just as you can fool a hero's gaze and hide your level with your class, a cursed artifact can hide its nature.
A brain-eating, almost unwritten notebook with a cover whose pattern, if you look at it for any length of time, sucks away knowledge and makes you stupider, a tome of fine diction that makes the one who reads it speak more and more mate, the more you read it, a cuneiform tablet that rewards the mania to kill anyone who makes you angry or disappointed, a collection of a thousand stories that are called jokes but turn the reader into a bloodthirsty scumbag with no empathy. .. Some of them are not particularly dangerous, kept only for the interesting method of creation. Others test my brain even with a cursory touch of clairvoyance.
The few treasures that fell out that weren't cursed were either dirt, historical treasures, valuable contracts, or all of the above. Letters from one of the Eternals to his Alishan mistress, an interrogation report from a large landowner on the border with the Empire of Arms, supplying "seemingly burned" ship timber of a very rare and difficult-to-grow breed, a collection of poems by some Tarak Fuckunderthetale (funny name, it would be better if he took a pseudonym or introduced himself only by his first name), quite well written and increasing the skill of poetic skill at reading, Japanese manga hentai content. ..
Stop, what?