* * *

"Don't take this as an insult, Tomm, but it's pretty boring out here," I tell the old guard confidentially, taking a sip from the jug of not-the-worst wine, and convincingly imitating a slight drunkness. "I'm all right, as long as I've got booze and chicks, I'm all right. But our ladies had sworn that if they could not spend their rightful share of the spoils on a wardrobe upgrade soon, I would not live to see the spring."

"That's right." The man nods, taking a sip of his ale as well and carefully feigning sobriety. "My sweetheart's no adventuro... avenue... adventurer...and if she ain't got the market and her rags, she can be unbearable. So I understand you, Tin. And since I understand, I'll organize a place for you in the convoy. But I'm sorry, it's not free."

"I didn't offer it for free!" I answered joyfully and drunkenly, already anticipating the success of my endeavor.

We talked about how our glorious Five (and Ygra, who was secretly walking in the distance) could be attached to a convoy of guards. A convoy to the much larger city of Tavimark, which even has a connection to the imperial teleport network. Normally guards are not changed in winter but in spring. This squad is carrying some important documents. That's why they won't take any ordinary guys off the street with them. We would have gone into the snow ourselves, but there's so much suspicion we would have raised if someone had bothered to send word to Arenam, we would have had more trouble.

My willingness to follow a guard who is carrying valuable information, which is potentially a bomb in the hands of a saboteur, might seem suspicious if it were not for a few small things. The most important of those little things is the fact that there is nothing important in those papers. The convoy has only been dispatched because the First Assistant to the City Guard of Arenam urgently needs to see his younger brother, who's in some kind of trouble. That's why there are a lot of soldiers, so they can speak on behalf of the commander of a squad of brave soldiers rather than a lone provincial. A reassurance, especially since no one would let him really put up a fight, but the kind of reassurance that easily helps to resolve conflicts and survive trouble.

The documents did not contain strategic information or even tax statements, which would certainly not have been released from the walls in winter and without a really serious reason, but the usual correspondence of big boys, noblemen, and other fraternities. Not that they could not be used if they fell into the wrong hands, but their value, in the eyes of the Empire, was next to nil. But if a letter could be sent at public expense for next to nothing, why not? They were accustomed to entrusting the most delicious correspondence to bindings, either with amulets (expensive) or to their own people. This is a pampering and frivolous project.

And everyone either knew, heard, or guessed about it, so they didn't hesitate to put their man in the convoy if he needed to go on business. Tomm knew, too, and so he even suggested this way out of town when I started complaining convincingly enough about the women pressing in on me. Not a bad man by Alurei standards. The kind of man who wouldn't hesitate to pick up someone unattended but wouldn't brazenly steal and take the last. On Earth, they called him an asshole, but here he was hardly a saintly associate, even if with reservations.

I hardly had to make any financial investment to get into the convoy, except for a dozen silver coins and a couple of jugs of booze, which didn't work on me anyway. Much more had to be done to organize the dispatch of this convoy, causing trouble for the brother of a respected guardian and prompting the guardian himself to intervene personally.

I'd say I was ashamed of such a set-up, but that brother - also in the guard in a very bread-and-butter position - was responsible for his own problems. Or rather, he'd made sure he knew where, to whom, and how much to charge, but if he was involved in selling illicit goods to the Tavimark Mage Guild (the poor and vagabonds), he'd be prepared for anything.

Like having your men cover their slavecatcher partners from prying eyes and noise as they drag two desperately roaring and very petite girls somewhere. The three boys from the tannery were even slapped on the sides so they knew who to open their mouths at. Ottis Tauram did not even pay attention to this situation when it was reported to him by his men (the same ones who first "did not see the violation" and then kicked those who saw it). Well, there was a screw-up, so he pay everyone a long time ago. And the girls? If he hadn't taken the money, someone else would have - there are a lot of officers in the Guard, but not much money. And who counts those poor men anyway?

That's what he thought, and he was quite right.

If they were ordinary girls and not the two daughters of one of Tavimark's biggest businessmen, who had the toughest temperament among similarly wealthy men. Daughters who decided to sneak away from home, just like in the book they read, to find the treasure buried under the city gates. Because where would one look for them anyway, if not under the gates? By the way, the enchanted snakeskin pouch containing almost three dozen high-quality rubies would really need to be retrieved from under the gate one day.

I swear on the holy Internet that I had nothing to do with the first part of the misadventures of the two idiots, who will only be brainwashed by a rod and time in equal proportions. On the contrary, I also saved their lives when they got into a legitimate mess. So when they had fallen into the hands not of the rank and file - the same vagabonds who were already on the payroll of the slavecatcher, but of the more intelligent bosses to whom the captured goods were flocked, it would have been a disaster. If they quickly realized that the girls were too well-groomed and that their "disguises" were limited to clothes stolen from the servants' children and faces smeared with earth, they would begin to be questioned.

And if they found out whose daughters they were, they would be buried out just for safety. And they would quickly leave the city. Some of them might even have survived, for the girls' father, despite his temperament, was not the Emperor of the Ages, but simply a rich and skillful merchant. I had a little perception of the slave catchers who had arrived for the season, not allowing them to see the obvious. They got distracted and foolish, and that happen without the help of isekai. They'd been in town for a while, just when they'd had enough vagrants and poor folk kicked out of their homes, and it wouldn't be long before they were caught up in the cold, frozen somewhere. They have two seasons when it comes to cities: early spring and mid-winter are the favorite times for "legal" slavers or those who pretend to be slavers.

In winter, according to unspoken agreements, no one stops them from catching vagrants and homeless people because they are going to die anyway. And in slavery, at least, they have a chance. As if most of them weren't going for meat for mages or beast breeders. And as if such creeps don't rake in quite a few of those who don't think of freezing or even having a home, just out of the house at the wrong time. There are, you know, such monsters, which you can put under the saddle of a rich knight, but if you don't want to wait ten years until it grows up, you're welcome to feed it with the meat of reasonable species. Well, in spring, those same merchants buy up the city's poor for their surplus children. They have more chance because they're seldom used for meat, for they have useless levels and stats, are useless in rituals, and do not have much meat on their bones. Servants, laborers, or gladiator schools for the toughest. Sometimes they are bought out to the army or something else.

They did not examine the girls, nor did they listen to their screams - all of them screaming. They were probably the ones who were not going to be sacrificed for rituals and other blackness. They were not willing to get involved with outright blackness, fearing if not law enforcement, then elimination from their customers.

Nor did they hold back their words, hiding their names and nicknames and locations - not my influence either - because all the necessary papers had been bought by them. If the two snot-nosed girls had been the daughters of wealthy parents, they would have gotten away with nothing more than giving the girls away as a reward from their parents. At worst, a fine.

My influence began when I stirred up the memory of a shop tanner about how his older sister, whom he never saw again, had once been kidnapped in exactly the same way. She went out to empty the slop and disappeared, and the guards "didn't see a thing". I rekindled the memory and took away any brakes that might have silenced him for fear of his life. I didn't have to influence it too much either, just a little.

The girls only had time to tell them that they lived in the Iron Quarter, so named because of the high iron and steel fences, or, more often, just stone fences with iron prongs on them. The guards didn't let many people in, and if they tried to get in, they might give a beating to an artisan who'd lost his edge.

He passed the guards on pure luck. Yes, luck, as if it were an obsession that everyone was looking the other way instead of laughing at his efforts to sneak around unnoticed. And then he made an even bigger fool of himself, telling himself second by second that he was an idiot. But the image of his sister, faded but still filled with warmth and tenderness, kept him from acting logically and forgetting about the two, surely already safely hidden, fools. Especially since they might not have been living on the block, just bragging or trying to bluff their way to their captors. And no one gave a shit about the servants and their children (the tanners themselves, being a little tipsy, had also bought into the "disguise" of being the children of ordinary workers) to search for them.

But he just couldn't bring himself not to at least try to report, at least to tell. At the first house, when asked if the two girls were missing, they simply said him to fuck off without listening. In the second, after listening to his explanation, they added the same medicine that the guards had already prescribed, and only by some miracle - yes, yes, miracle - there were no guards around to hand him over to throw the bastard out. In the third, fourth, and fifth, they did not even open the door for him, thinking him a beggar.

And in the sixth, as soon as he asked a question about the girls, almost desperate not to succeed but to get away with it, he was nearly killed in the heat of the moment. Twenty minutes later, when the angry mutant hog-like merchant still bothered to listen to the poor man without being interrupted by threats (very poetic!) of what would be done to him and his masters for such maneuvers, my plan was over.

Daddy, the same mutant hog, was a clever man, so he knew very well what the slavers would do first when they realized exactly who they had accidentally snatched. With his hair graying on his ass, he began to act strictly as was expected by the invisibly watching me. Twenty minutes later, fifty of his personal pocket army (because a rich tradesman is always trying to steal and rob!) were already moving in the direction of the place where they "didn't notice" the slavers.

The guards who tried to stop them (not the same ones) were beaten and all their limbs broken, without killing them, just in case the girls were rescued. And if they were not rescued, it would be better for them to be killed themselves (that's why they broke their limbs so they wouldn't be killed) before Borei Tzahorski came back for them. That this was a provocation, he was not too worried, having checked Tanner's words with his class skills of detecting lies

An hour later, healed and gifted with a purse full of silver and a ring from Boreas' finger, the tanner was escorted to his room in his home quarter, and his attendants, on Boreas' behalf, cleared him of absenteeism and absence from work. It was day, after all, and the three of them had received a beating from the guards and the slavers the previous evening.

The girls cried and fell into a deep sleep, and his father, who had sworn in the name of Takij the Coin Jingle, to whose temples his whole family had brought gifts for five generations, that he would never give a hand to a slaver (he was very fond of the tanner's sister story, especially given his experiences), began to look for someone to blame. It was in Tavimark that Boreas had his winter residence, but otherwise, he was a man of the capital and work with so much money that even very influential people were happy to do him favors and uncomfortable to cross him.

Her uncle, who traded mainly in furs, fabrics, quality booze - but not wine - and sweets, was also thinking of buying up these extra children. His people bought the same skins for furs, which then went to his personal craftsmen, in remote villages and small towns, where there were plenty of such children. And competition with existing merchants he was, of course, wary, but moderately wary. Now, I would bet my teeth that he would not get involved even at the point of a crossbow.

And all because he was guided to the right path by such a sweet, kind, forgiving, and magnificent man as Konstantin Yuryevich, in all my splendor. You can put a holy halo on my head, but it would burn me, damn!

We left Arenam two and a half weeks after the battle with the bloodsuckers - the same problem of having normal caravans. Ygra had managed in that time to gobble up all the game around the town, which was already not very plentiful, and in the spring, the hunters would wonder why anything bigger than a chipmunk had disappeared.

The bloodsucker was up to the task, not without its rough edges, but with considerable enthusiasm, multiplied by cold-bloodedness, experience, and sheer ruthlessness. I could not order the creature to have human feelings, for that would require at least being a God with suitable Aspects, but not poor me. The order was obeyed by her in letter and spirit, but, Holy Randomius, she did not change a bit. On the outside, of course, she looks like she'd make a dead man booner, even if he had to grow a new one, to begin with, but underneath... I can consider myself a really good sensor and therefore, unfortunately, saw what she was.

I had kept my word for a fortnight without seeing her face to face. I was just afraid that I was going to kill her. The difference between monsters and behemoths was, pardon the pun, monstrous, but the difference between behemoths and creatures was unimaginable. The thing that pissed me off the most wasn't that the creature was hiding behind the pretty face of a human woman who had only pale skin and perfectly camouflaged fangs (if she wasn't smiling, of course). No, what pissed me off was her attachment to my persona. Just imagine being genuinely and wholeheartedly in love with you, with a very special kind of love, a serial maniac, a cannibalistic killer, and a necrozoopedophile.

I am, of course, the most tolerant of all, but it was too much for me to tolerate around her. No, if it hadn't been for my sensory powers and clairvoyance, she would have been good enough to pretend to be a normal woman, just a fangirl. But I would always know she was pretending! Hestia contacted her instead, giving her a few dozen special potions in case of a critical battle and covering her, now only her, nest with her mist.

The latter, incidentally, was suggested by Hestia, deeming it necessary to strengthen the creature even further, to test her abilities on something stronger than ordinary orcs. And as clairvoyance revealed, despite her attempts to hide it, to gain additional power over the bloodsucker. Not that she doubted her loyalty to me, but she genuinely felt the need to have additional sources of influence on the mosquito.

I had to contact the creature through the mirror - which reflected her perfectly - in her bathroom (even non-living creatures need to wash away dirt and stains). My new order for an extra supply of potions, at a cost greater than her entire nest had seen during her time in Arenam, she took exceptionally well, even if one excluded the influence of the Ring. The offer of a new enhancement, albeit slower and more unreliable, was also welcome news to her.

The fact that I wouldn't be the one to subdue and change her didn't make her very happy - the very thought that someone could plant thoughts and desires in her head that would threaten me caused near-bloody hysteria (their equivalent of berserk rage). I had to salvage the situation by informing her that Hestia, like her, had also received the same treatment. This immediately reconciled her to the situation. True, clairvoyance told her that she was completely and utterly a thousand percent sure that Hestia would turn her into a submissive puppet. Simply because she, in the same situation, would do exactly the same thing without the slightest doubt. A worldview of creatures, what do you want?

Hestia would certainly be willing to put a few bookmarks in the bloodsucker, but no more than that because she didn't need it. I was in the middle of a conversation with the creature, and I was sure I'd be the one to tell her what I wanted her to do. It was a total submission, as ugly as its inner self.

Hestia did not cover the entire nest for fear of the servants and the thugs that served the bloodsucker, confining herself to the creature's room. The concentration of her power on such a wretched scrap was staggering, and when you consider that the bloodsucker didn't even fight back, almost helping to change itself, prompting and guiding, the process was accelerated many times over.

Hestia would only return to the tavern floor we'd rented for dinner and a short chat, devoting the rest of the time to melting down her "ally". Taria tried to make a joke about bedmates but shut up when she caught the furious - in phlegmatic as rock Hestia! - the misty maiden's gaze. I thought she was going to hit Taria, not with her fist, but with a slap. They both calmed down pretty quickly, and Taria apologized sincerely, but the cat ran between them for a long time.

"I stay out of her mind beyond the minimum that Mist does without my control." She explained, moving her hand thoughtfully, depriving it of a joint, then recreating it again. "More carnal desire, more pleasure, more desire. I won't hide it I've left anchors in her mind in case she goes off the rails... But manually ruling that mind is beyond me. I'm afraid, I'm sorry to say, but I'm really scared that this filth might pass on to me.

Taria is silent, sulking resentfully at all of us, and at herself in particular, for not holding her tongue. Losius and Hans are generally sleeping off the brothels (all four of them, though they just looked at the cheapest one from afar and left without going in), leaving the three of us behind.

"Perhaps only you, Tin, could have thought of such an idea." Issued the aristocrat-turned-behemoth with a completely uncharacteristically broad smile, which would be the equivalent of Homeric laughter for her. "To turn a creature, a real, old, experienced, churned up, into some kind of paladin... That's something. Perhaps this has not yet been written about in the annals, though my tutors had claimed that under Sisters everything was repeated."

The dancer starts giggling, realizing the comicality of my decision. She has the hardest time perceiving the concept of creatures and how horrible they are, but she can appreciate the irony. She also tries to sweeten the deal with Hestia. Worst of all, it wasn't the hint of her lying with the creature that offended the ex-military expert, but the very carelessness and tactlessness of the townswoman, which made her frankly angry.

"What did you put into it, and what will you put into it?" I asked, preventing another spark of irritation from erupting in Hestia's soul.

"I haven't touched the effects of your submission." Immediately she turns on the report mode to the senior officer. "It's too complicated and generally dangerous for me, so I worked almost entirely on her body alone. Enhanced and twisted the skills and aspects of her that she already had. Her ability to release light pheromones was enhanced and expanded. Not to the level of your ogre, but only slightly lower. The hypnotic look in her eyes has become more powerful and far easier to inspire lust. Fangs can inject not only decomposing enzymes but a range of compounds, not all of which are related to lust. Also... I've supplemented her diet a little, if I may say so."

Before the last sentence, I listened quietly, not paying much attention to what was being said, but after that, both Taria and I choked on the air, then looked at each other, and then the girl was very careful to clarify:

"So she's not sucking blood now, but... exactly what I'm thinking?" If she laughs now, Hestia will definitely knock her down, but I won't judge Taria, for I can hardly contain myself.

"Blood is still needed. It's just that the semen can give it just as much of a boost before the battle." Annoyed and somewhat embarrassed (?), Hestia replies to us. "That said, the effects of both types of food complement each other... I didn't expect my talent to be so fixated on that particular change! Although now I realize the thought is asking for it, not everyone is given to such twisted thinking, Taria! Tin, you too? Say something to her, Tin! Stop laughing!"

We left the town quietly and without any pomp. We had already had our final party before, but we hadn't had time to make any real acquaintances yet, and we weren't going to. We did not plan to stay in Arenam, let alone make any plans for the town. The whole bloodsucker venture was, to be frank, my own fault, for which I myself had to answer and do a lot of unnecessary work, ensuring the survival and "status quo" of the new agent.

It was only after working with the brains of the few who could give the Ring-trained beast trouble and waiting until Hestia had completed the rebuilding and strengthening of the bloodsucker, allowing it to drink more than just blood, that I could, with as clear a conscience as possible for me, begin to pull the plug. The brief affair with the slavecatcher had come at just the right time, allowing me to arrange and expedite our journey to the capital as quickly as possible.

The Eternal Library awaited me, and all the secrets that were hidden there, locked away with a thousand locks and buried in all the same centuries in which the unshakable Empire existed. The pompous thoughts did not prevent them from maintaining as realistic a behavioral mask as possible, pretending to be an already-fashionable band of adventurers. If anyone had noticed the aftermath of the almost complete cleansing of the local nest, they could not connect that cleansing with us so fine. I would certainly have noticed the latter.

I hope so.

The rangers who had been sent to reinforce the improvised caravan suspected something was wrong. Among them was the owner of a low level - only sixteenth - but a real rare class called the Snow Hunter. Not a fighting one, to be fair, but his rarity allowed him to earn a fair chunk of dough every season, simply at the expense of class bonuses. Basically, this kid, a week into his second decade, was a regular hunter on steroids - reading trails, making snares, tracking animal trails, that sort of thing. Nothing out of the ordinary, except for the fact that class bonuses increase to obscenely high levels if it's winter, snow, and blizzards.

Not at Hans' level, especially since he was a Pathfinder at his base and not a Hunter, but still serious enough to notice some details that were simply unavailable to ordinary people at his level. I'm talking, of course, about Ygra, who had been following the caravan and remained invisible the whole time.

He could not see her, for levels and skills were not comparable, no matter how suitable the field of action was for the boy. Nor could he see her, but he could see the traces of her nearby - the disappeared and devoured beasts the ogre had fed on. No, she'd known without a brain enhancement that traces of her meals had to be hidden, but the mere presence of empty dens where the beasts had recently been was a hint. The boy was going to lead out some fighters to the lairs, to get some exercise, earn a few coins, and with any luck, get some EXP. The typical tactic. He'd been making a living at it for four years now, ever since he'd earned a class. He provides bread, butter, and even a little red caviar for himself and his family, a career that's the coolest thing in the world for a mere peasant

So.

The Ogre was undermined by her tendency to perfectionism when it came to her favorite subject of hunting - not a single trace of the battle or the death of a victim was left behind. While a mysteriously disappearing hare could be overlooked, several open dens from which the pedobears had vanished without leaving a single trace behind is cause for alarm. Because if there is something nearby that could drag such a carcass far away unnoticed by a professional tracker, what would prevent this mysterious shuffler from dragging a gaping sentinel away?

Someone else would have been sent away with such a panic and also knocked the peasant in the teeth so as not to dare to make a price and frighten the valiant guards with some tales. But he had a reputation and a very bad temper, which made him very unlikely to be rude.

He was an ordinary boy. At the age of six, his father was eaten by a rare Snow Leopard. The beast had no planar powers but developed some strange magic, becoming the local scarecrow, taking, at best, two or three human lives every winter. There were others of the same species, but they were weaker, timider, and foolish, time after time finding themselves hunted down and turned into fluffy carpets. The few settlements nearest Arenam, and one small town, were not the usual hamlets but populated almost entirely by fur trappers - not that there were very many, but enough for not the most dangerous territory. Those who hunted prey were known among the hunters as the elite, regularly confirming their qualifications.

The Snow Leopards, if they appeared near the settled areas, either did not live long or matured and went to places where there were fewer people. On the other hand, Whisker, nicknamed by the peculiar colors on his face, did not leave but even paid visits to these places, as gamers would say, to improve his skills. For decades the old bastard had been avenging a den ravaged by poachers (or were they honest hunters?) and a murdered mother, becoming a local legend of sorts.

Little Tark, whose father was not even a hunter, was not bothered by the worries of the beast but by the grave of his beloved father, his surrendering mother, his stepfather drinking and beating the whole family, and the chronic poverty. So the boy got himself a simple hunting bow and a dozen arrows and went into the woods for meat - alone, in winter, and without any professional skills. In fact, this act was close to suicide in its recklessness, but there was nothing to eat at home, his mother was ill, and there was even less hope for his stepfather because for a drink he could seriously sell even his little sister, but certainly not to go to work. Even if there was a job.

Whether by grace or mockery of fate, the boy did not freeze to death in the snow, nor did he fall prey to wolves or get lost in an unfriendly biome. He returned with a skinny, old rabbit with not much meat on it, but he came back. He warmed up, ate, got another beating from his stepfather, who was unhappy that he had bought food and not booze for selling the pelt, and headed back into the woods.

After a year and a half, he was already earning enough to provide for his family at a 'middle-class peasant' level with the meat and furs he sold. A year and a half later, his stepfather mysteriously disappeared in the middle of another winter blizzard. He had drunkenly lost his way and frozen to death, which was quite obvious, but his body was never found. And the tracks? In such a blizzard, only an elite tracker, the kind you don't find here, could find them. Someone (the whole village, to be fair) suspected Tark of the disappearance, but they did not press charges; not many people liked him.

And seven years later, having procured alchemy and even a few magic trinkets from the arsenal of professional beast hunters, the boy went into the woods for a known purpose, which the whole village discouraged him from. Many people followed Whisker, but far fewer of them came back. He came back limping, with a huge scar across his chest but with a level twelve and a makeshift sled, on which were neatly stacked very professionally stripped hide, ripped claws and fangs, and heart and liver in special wooden barrel-shaped containers.

The boy was lucky in that he was not killed for the booty. Very lucky, incredibly lucky, for the kind of money he had on that sled would be an insult to any noble lord. What saved him was that it wasn't just trophies from an old and dangerous beast, at a cost fucking huge to the common man. It was the pelt of the very Whisker, who had more blood enemies than any other nobleman whose lineage was as long as a highway.

By the time the urgent news of the fur trader, who had lost his father-in-law and two sons to Whiskers, arrived in the village, the house of the insolent boy, who had no respect for his elders and was an ungrateful bastard, was thought to be torched, with no regard for the trophies. They really wanted them, but level twelve, even for a frail and wounded teenager, is still level twelve. Eight of them had to be buried, and many more were crippled.

The trader bought back the terrible and bloody trophy not at full price but at a decent price. He also encouraged the family to move out of the village, where they were no longer welcome. It's hard, you know, for people to bury their loved ones because a little rat didn't want to give up his unwanted junk to respectable people. They helped him so much! They helped him so much! They shared their leftovers with him two or three times, and once they lent him some firewood for the winter so that he would not freeze to death. The stepfather had done him a 'favor' here as well, which made his family's attitude toward him tainted as it was. If he had spoken better and not been so spiteful, he could have rejected the greedy amicably.

But the boy had not forgiven the hungry years, the taunts of the older children (two of whom had caught the arrow with their foreheads), and the constant contempt of those around him. Come to think of it, he was also guilty of being an outcast. He was too mean, greedy, and rude to ask and was unwilling to compromise. The fact that he lived in a village inhabited by a lot of bastards did not change that.

What's the case, guys? The local peasants were typical members of their kind, with all their vices and virtues. And they would have stood strong for someone of their own, but the people of Hollowhead just didn't think the whole hunter family was theirs. In addition, accustomed to buying up the lad's booty for next to nothing, who, due to his age, could not contest the price and, due to the lack of alternatives, refused to sell, they were unaware that this time the lad might not be willing to act in the usual way.

Why did I bring up this story, which was pounded into my head through clairvoyance? Because the boy's authority, despite his age, is very strong, and few people are willing to argue with him. And if this kid says that there's some bullshit around that can kill a savage bear and drag him away without leaving a single trace, he will be listened to, not ridiculed.

In general, we need to think carefully about how to quietly remove Ygra from other people's attention and generally convince everyone else that they were imagining things and that it was just "Venus' light reflected off the marsh gas". That would be smarter, more correct, and simply more true to the situation at hand and our disguise.

"Oh, for fuck's sake!" The gray-haired, life-weary man in an arena guard uniform bared his teeth. "Why the fuck did I ever get involved in this shit? Do I want the bonus? I wish s-sir M-mauri would drag his kin out of jail! That's not what I agreed to!"

The second man - not a guard, but a trusted errand man for the minor tasks of one of Arenam's lords - did not grind his teeth. Either he was bolder, or he was wearing warmer fur, or his jaw had clenched shut so tightly that it spasmed. Probably the latter since he didn't even utter his answer but mumbled or muttered it.

Shut up, or your chief officer will hear you and give you a salty bite that will make you sing like a bird." In another situation, this man would not refuse a little provocation, aimed at getting the guard to say more so that he could have blackmail. "And you distract him."

"Fuck reprimand!" The guard didn't calm down. "I-I almost believed I was going to die in my bed, not in a snow-covered fuck-bench, eaten by some strange beast!"

"Shush!" The third member, the deputy to the big shot who was about to save his brother, intervened in the conversation. "Shut up and keep your eyes open! Bitches, you're distracting the motherfucking deck! I can't see enough in this blizzard, and now you leathery lovers of backdoor love! When we get to Tavimark, fuck all you want, but right now, shut up, bitches, shut up!"

In theory, he should have also punched in the face for his boss, the simpleton who had decided that insulting his superiors was an acceptable norm. Alas, he wanted to punch the superior in the face, sharing, on the whole, the views of the two negotiators. Because the trip was really unsuccessful, and in fact, all the plans of the respected Unemar Maury went to one known female organ, and after that, they were covered by it.

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It all started with the very remark of the boy hunter that something big and dangerous was wandering around. After that, the night watches were increased, the patrolmen were given prophylactic kicks, and they calmed down. Dangerous beast or not, it was not a wilderness, and we were nearly a hundred and fifty men who knew how to hold a weapon.

The next morning, the carcass of a rather large moose was hanging from a tree overhanging directly above the tent of the venerable Maury. Or rather, it was not a carcass but an empty and bloody hide with a torn muzzle. It was as if someone big and scary just took and scooped out all the guts through the mouth of the killed animal, almost without damaging this installation.

If you're a little nerdy, swamp ogres can create such pictures even without a direct order from the isekai guy. For example, they enclose with peculiar "milestones" the location of the camp where the youngsters grow up. To tell the truth, everything is not so picturesque there, as ogres do not take much trouble with skins, confining themselves to simple skulls with pieces of the vertebral spine - that way they lose less meat, and it will not rot away for a couple of days in the humid swampy climate. Separately, I note that ogres don't do anything similar in adulthood. Their minds don't understand the need to frighten future prey. For ogres, "milestones" are a way to scare predators away from children and adolescents who can't yet stand up for themselves. That is more a protective mechanism, pure instinct, than part of their primitive (embryonic, let's be honest) culture.

The "Tanner," as they call it in Melareth, or "Kisser," as they call the monster in the Empire of the Ages, is another matter. The monster is a disgusting creature, not at all suited to settled biomes-not that it can't eat people, but it's not very good at satiating itself with them. The Kisser must hibernate in winter to escape the devastating cold, but good nutrition can fix that vulnerability.

The creatures look like whitish humanoids with disproportionately long bodies and limbs, which allows them to move both on two legs, aided by hands that grasp trees, and on all fours, resembling some pale spider of monstrous size. The unbelievably long hair, so silky and delicate that it is used to make wigs for the especially rich and especially bald nobles, falls from their head behind. True, the color is always the same - blue-black. But there is no problem with combs because such hair does not get tangled, does not get dirty, and even twigs do not get stuck in it. The Kisser himself can also manage them in a limited way, braiding the victim with peculiar ropes in order to "kiss" him afterward, confirming his nickname.

Instead of a mouth, the monster has something resembling an elephant trunk, only with teeth and spines, and also with the ability to secrete a caustic enzyme, thanks to which all its insides are immediately sucked out through a straw, and the skin is left on the nearest tree, frightening any witnesses. The creature is picturesque and rare but by no means unknown. So, if the caravaners panic and start looking for answers, they will find them: not hibernating Kisser, chasing tasty humans, but not risking to attack. In such cases, these creeps prefer to scare their prey in the hope of either making the dangerous group split up in panic or forcing them to get away. Another thing is that it is not clear what this abomination has forgotten in the settled lands, but that is another matter.

The problem was that there was no one in the caravan who knew about the habits and skills of this kind of monster, except for our company, which, for obvious reasons, was not going to enlighten anyone. Though everyone, and even the eternally indifferent Hestia, had a classic face-palm for a long time, watching the uproar I'd caused.

As if they understood real humor! I, however, also do not understand, but at one time loved to tell horror stories around the campfire. And here is not just a scary story but also an interactive quest. See, how Kostenka works for the sake of unfamiliar and unpleasant personalities. Immediately visible heroic nature.

The first moose pelt, after which the sentries tripled, and they began to take a break at night to have time to establish a normal defense and to gather a lot of firewood, went a bear pelt, just the same suspended, though not over the tent of Maury, but over one of the patrol points. The sentry, who found the gift in the morning, began to stutter a little and lost sleep - he must have been happy.

After that, it was clear that things were not going well. We are alone, in the middle of winter, with no way to quickly retreat or call for help. Caravans do not travel at this time. It is impossible to speed up the advance without further risk. Our supply of provisions is not so much limited but not endless. The only option is to go to the nearest large village and wait behind the walls of the palisades, but it does not suit the option of the most important big boss. He goes to help out his brother. And he does not care about the possible casualties if it were not for the risk of being a victim himself. So, without his brother, the family will lose a lion's share of influence and profits, and with the loss of these, it is not certain that he will hold his position. His position may be technically lower, but he works in Tavimark, not Arenam.

So, they have to go.

But it's scary.

But they must.

Ygra was frankly amusing, having found, thanks to the increased ICQ score, no less, its vocation in watching the frightened people flounder. My team kept poker faces, saying that we'd beaten more than that, but in fact, they wanted to kick me, and Kostik increasingly wished for the fame of the best horror writer in the wild west and continued to play on the nerves of those around him.

The over-pumped ogre was perfectly capable of deceiving the guards by sneaking a new ikebana into the center of the camp, but that would have been a misguided strategy - you shouldn't scare too often or too much, or they'd stop being scared. So after quite paranoid precautions, the new trophies stopped showing up... But only inside the camp.

Every night, in one way or another, another example of Alurean-style postmodernity graced the neighborhood with its presence. The situation heated up, and people panicked, though there had been no casualties so far. But the very fact that something had managed to deceive a seasoned tracker in front of the permanent patrols evoked understandable emotions. This is fucking Alurei. There's no such thing as hidden cameras and yells of "itsaprank". If something under this sky seems like a deadly, hungry, and evil shit, there's a ninety-nine and nine-tenths percent chance that it will be a hungry, dangerous, and scary shit. The rest of the percentages go to those situations where it turns out to be even worse than it initially seemed.

The first disappearance of one of the caravans almost led to a full-fledged rebellion.

* * *

Anriano Commory, despite a name and appearance more befitting an exalted aristocrat, was known in Arenam as "Brown," and was in charge of more than a hundred thugs that had the city's thieving underbelly by the balls. Yes, the slave catchers were visitors, at most paying tribute to the imposing old man, the hired assassins did not care about his presence, because they had their godfathers in the capital "branch of the firm" (rumor had the Assassins Guild had direct patrons, if not bosses, among the leadership of the Eye of the Emperor, but no one published direct confirmation), and the market of amulets and antiques was firmly occupied by bloodsuckers. But Commory remained the city's strongest criminal authority, despite all the attempts of his rivals.

He had a few subordinates, but they were too cunning, and there were fewer and fewer of them. Ten years ago he was only one of many "night fathers," even if he had the support of a few colleagues. Now those who hadn't died an accidental death went to him to report on their work... as a job, in fact.

Even though I had corrected his perception a little by not letting him pounce on the weakened bloodsuckers. He realized, by implication, there were at most three, if not one or two, of the five bloodsuckers left. But he couldn't act out of character at all, for I hadn't rewired his brains that far. So he sent the man to Tavimark instead of attacking with his visor open and fought through the night to the sound of knives.

There were no assassins of sufficient rank or skill in the Arenam's department of professional killers to try and "execute" a bloodsucker, even a lone one. And the assassins had been bought with their guts by the late nest patriarch, so they didn't have much to report upstairs about having a whole cube of creatures in their vicinity. You don't send someone to a place like this for loyalty to the Night Fellowship, and the Patriarch masterfully played on the greed and resentment of the exiled murderers. Of course, he did! If the murderers had bit their teeth, the bloodsuckers would have to move - they could not survive a conflict with this structure if they were to be taken seriously. Simply because the murderers might tell the truth.

In the past, Commory had not been eager to beat his rivals, fearing both the creatures themselves and the stab in the back from his not fully put to death rivals and comrades-in-arms. Nor did he have anything he could use to outbid the murderers. All he managed to do was to get mutual neutrality. He sent his man to the big city, not for new curtains to the mansion, but to have this man talk to the higher assassins, bypass the Head of the Arenam Guild. And even supplied that one with documents and gifts to be listened to and not brought back in pieces.

It wasn't so much an intrigue against my bloodsucker (and not just blood!) as it was against an overzealous and overzealous assassin. He didn't care if they acted brazenly, he had a right to, but the fact that they were buying amulets directly from the creatures was going to cost him. Not by trading with them but by assuring their neutrality on behalf of the guild. He's not so much a "take a gift and not kill on sight" kind of guy. The Nightblades could be considered cruel bastards, but they were smart enough not to have any long-term alliances with the creatures. It's not safe, you know. They might have ignored relatively peaceful creatures in distant fucktards like Arenam, but they never helped them. Otherwise, before you know it, half the guild is already made up of people who aren't quite human or not human at all. And not even the endowed ones.

In short, the shit would have hit the bloodsucker, too, even if not in the first wave. She would most likely have had to flee the city simply because letting her stay within Arenam's walls would have been a blow to her reputation. Small, barely noticeable, but not fucking important to criminal bosses. And the creature itself had nothing to pay for the cost. Well, unless you count the direct use of the ring, Hestia, and a lot of absorbed essences, but that's an extreme case.

The man was sent.

The man disappeared in the middle of the night.

And in the morning, the man's empty skin was hanging in the middle of the camp again.

"Forgive me, Maester Maury, but we're all used to fighting the Greenskins... At the very least, we can handle the inhabitants of the Grey Mountains. For a simple adventurer, even one with a high level, you don't come across anything so strange. Frontiersmen, the kind that raids deep into the unknown, might help, but where would you find them?"

There are no lies in my words, but there's not much truth either. We don't look particularly frightened, but that's easy to put down to the fact that we're just used to danger, and we have a better chance of repelling a surprise attack. Maury was not lazy enough to order our company to guard his person all the way to Tawimark. We could well refuse, for he was not our commanding officer, especially since he paid only the standard security contract rate for our declared levels.

We could have sent him with his hire, and he could have sent us away from his caravan. And a small group has much less chance of survival than a large one. Anyway, we agreed rather calmly, arguing only for the sake of decorum and reputation. I politely, but understandably, sent him to the farm for butterflies: an unfamiliar enemy and not our specialty. Fuck as you want, and we'll stand aside.

"But at least you must have some idea!" Already losing politeness and patience, almost shouted the man. His plans threatened to crumble into dust, along with his patience. "You claimed to be men of the blade, but you act like a bunch of peas... uh... li."

The last syllable of his remark, the big boss wheezed because his throat was clenched in the tight embrace of the bowstring of the Snow Hunter, which managed to slip around the neck of the screaming man a second before the grim-raised Losius began to rearrange his face. And that's because Hans was about to strike from a sitting position.

"I apologize to you, gentlemen adventurers." The young man, younger than even Losius, uttered a phrase he'd obviously learned in his years with our brethren. "We shouldn't slaughter each other under the gaze of a hungry monster."

He wasn't too worried about the dozen or so guards who had already grabbed for their weapons. Mainly because behind the hunter stood at least a dozen and a half hunters and mercenaries who served the city's merchants and buyers. To them, the boy was literally a hen that lays golden eggs, and for him, they would fit even against such an important bump as the first assistant to the head of the city guard. Especially if that aide was nine out of ten likely not even to make it through winter.

"Ppp... peasant..." The attempt to press with authority came out frankly weak, weak enough that he would have been better off if he had kept quiet.

The guards would have stuck up for their chief far more actively if they hadn't been terrified of the situation and the unknown beast roaming behind the wall of fires and incredibly furious at the fact that it was the chief who had brought them under the fangs of that beast. It is one thing to take a small (or not small) amount of money for a business trip to a major city with the opportunity to have a good time in that city and quite another thing to actually risk dying for the same token payment.

If Maury had been more restrained and less frightened by the unknown monster and the prospect of a career pit, he might have been able to calm his resentment with promises of more pay or other benefits. Even if he wasn't going to give them, he still could. But he was pissed off and pissed off and scared out of his mind, so he started acting weird and dumb. Well, or acting like a refined aristocrat in the company of black-footed slaves who wouldn't carry his palanquin.

In general, his men were in no hurry to rush into action for their commander.

"Survive first, Maestro Maury," Calmly, but with a touch of that morbid schadenfreude, the hunter retorted.

Still, this guy is a piece of shit, even if his difficult childhood partially justifies him, but only partially. His tearful story and tender love for his family don't change the fact that this hunter is a total asshole, mean, evil, and only strikes when he is sure of impunity. Something broke in him the night he confronted his father's killer.

Whoever went to kill Whiskers was a true warrior, brave, determined, and fierce, ready to tear the target with his teeth and fight to the last drop of blood, unwilling to accept any other outcome than his victory. But with the wounds, with the blood flowing and the heat leaving his body, the boy's fervor was gone. All that was left was bitterness, resentment, and anger. There was no more excitement and courage, only calculation and cunning, only the desire to achieve the goal no matter what.

Somehow that hurt a lot more than it would have if the guy had been an asshole in the first place. He couldn't stand his own test of strength, breaking down at the finish line.

When we were all leaving, having exhausted the conflict and prepared to stay up all night once again, shuddering at every rustle, the hunter and I crossed glances. Mauri, who had pulled himself together, managed to smooth out the conflict and restore some of his authority, citing bad sleep and general panic about the situation, apologizing sincerely to our group (but not to the hunter). He really didn't want to escalate the conflict and didn't want to have a team of not weakest adventurers as enemies either, especially since he had already hired them to protect his back.

The eyes crossed, but there was no spark of understanding - even if the asshole understood the reason for my thoughtfulness and could see the contemptuous pity for what he had become, which was unlikely, he wouldn't have cared. He had made up his mind a long time ago and was not about to change. Somehow I had the feeling that the other Tark, the one who had risen from a beggarly beggar whose mother had seriously considered selling her body (who in the village could buy such "goods"?) or hanging herself on the nearest tree, that Tark could burst forth like the brightest flash of a supernova. He could become the hero of his own story.

In its place was a cold, frostbitten even, piece of burnt corpse and the rot that grew on it. He was no better or worse than the standard inhabitant of Alurei. Instead, he had become just like them all - gray, indifferent, and caring only for himself and his own. The metamorphosis was a convenient one from the point of view of local morality.

Right one.

I hate this reality precisely because this is the only option right here.

Somehow my long-drawn-out prank lost all its sweetness and seemed to be exactly what it really was: the "he's crazy with boredom" kind of nonsense. Damned clairvoyance was not sleeping, and it was trying to spoil my mood in any way it could. I bet that if everyone received similar abilities, all people would turn into complete sociopaths, misanthropes, or, at best, introverted homebodies. However, it was still necessary to end the farce I had raised.

Show must go on.

"How tall is it supposed to be?" One of the city trackers snarled, assessing the drops of blood dripping from the throwing needle.

The needle itself was stuck in the trunk of a mighty tree, along with three more of its sisters and a couple of arrows stuck up to their feathers. To this trailblazer, firmly pulling on his tenth straight level, the picture looked crystal clear. Not clear enough to suspect the falsity of the picture but clear enough not to arouse suspicion on deeper inspection by far more talented individuals. Well, not counting Hans, who is an interested party.

That night an obscure but notoriously dangerous creature not only planted a new trophy in the form of the bloody and relatively intact skin of a trusted agent of the esteemed Maître Commory, but it also managed to stealthily carry away as many as two other guys who had taken a piss at the wrong time. Not many people knew these two liked to share a third-fresh girl bought from brothel mothers. And the fact they became victims of the monster precisely because of this passion knowing only one isekai and his company.

I actually have nothing against those who like old, saggy, toothless ladies, but they literally shared it. Not in the sense of ménage à trois, but literally shared by two. They shared it with a carpenter's saw. For two. And each loved his half. It's such a conceptual pastime that I didn't even feel disgusted. I felt only sincere and crystallized amazement.

I didn't forget to kill them by Ygra's hands, though, because, as one holy father used to say, "Fuck that!" - after which he still ran off into the sunset.

Returning to the subject of our nocturnal incident, the trained lurker in my face was able to discern, hear or see with his ass a vague shadow when the greedy creature tried to drag away two of not the lightest men at once, and threw a few of needles on bare intuition, in the hope if not to kill, at least to light and force the unknown beast to set up under the blow.

The beast walked away without dropping its prey but still received a scratch from the blow of the successful mercenary. The blood on the needle, which is already poured into a small vial to show the experts from the city guards or road patrols, belongs to the real Kisser - although personally I am tempted to call such an animal "green elephant". If you know what I mean. And any alchemical analysis will confirm. Moreover, if this analysis is not conducted by the god of alchemy himself, the blood will be considered fresh and untreated, straight from the wound.

In general, the version of what happened has already been prepared in advance for all who are interested. For the first time, the creature was repulsed and wounded and decided not to risk anymore, leaving the caravan alone. Classic, however.

And Kostik, who's really sick of it, can stop torturing the shadow sphere and dragging pieces of bodies, skins, and other stuff back and forth. This Tark is such an asshole, ruining my mood so much.

In a different situation, I would just have fun in my dreams, but lately, I only go out there for another exchange of information with Cassie-Who-Has-No-Friends. Judging by his character, this local Mengele buried all his friends himself. For highly scientific and majestic purposes, of course.

The study of Weaver's biography comes with a very loud squeak coupled with constant paranoia and distrust of one another. The main reason for the creaking was this type's manic love of mopping up all traces of his being anywhere. Simply a total elimination of any tails. In itself, a series of strange (even if the strangeness is perfectly disguised, but not from those who see my level) deaths, disappearances, and relocations, also serves as a good hint, but the information from this hint is not very much. Maximum analog of the inscription "Here was Vasya", only performed by an ancient creature, which is able to kill not too strong God. The Weaver himself, however, also took out some not-illusory beating, but the very fact that the creature was able to fight with the incarnate Lord of the Mountain Snows Barad-Sanrd, give the god, who had already said the classic "Gotcha!" kick in the balls and crawl out of there alive, hints mildly that Kostenka had some serious problems.

By the way, as I understood from what Caspian said and the scraps of information I found on my own, Weaver is not a name but rather an analog of a profession, a scholarly rank, and a title of nobility for specialists in Dream. Except that because the creature preferred to present itself as such, this form of respectful address has all but disappeared.

The old necromancer had some kind of perfect memory perk because he could actually remember the huge library of his creepy books, and he could materialize the pages he needed in his sleep without the slightest help from me. And he also knew dozens and hundreds of people - or at least their names - who could know more. The knowledge stored in the necromancer's memory ran out rather quickly, so I had to carefully work out those of the informants I'd been tipped on. Many of them had special protection against Dreamwalkers, almost all of them possessed a highly sophisticated anti-prophecy network, and some of them could manipulate the Dreams themselves, which only made the situation more complicated.

If I didn't have a direct lead on these personalities, i.e., names, locations, appearances, and the most trivial imprint of recognition, I wouldn't have found them. Not because of the coolness of their defenses, for with a full strain, I would have found out about them even without any clues at all other than a desire to find someone who fit a list of certain criteria. But to begin such a scan is roughly equivalent to a loud "hello, I'm here, let's fight," uttered right under Weaver's windows.

But now I was getting better at it, and the inconspicuousness inside Dream was getting better every day. If you spend a long, long time trying to hide in plain sight, you can learn this useful skill with a certain talent. The stealth score would not lie, yes.

Few people knew about Weaver. And those who are still alive lived either because they knew nothing dangerous or because they knew the misinformation fed in advance. In the latter case, there were still often old but regularly updated traps for the curious. The third option was that the knower had such power that not even Weaver wanted to touch them.

Mostly all kinds of high and not-so-high priests, especially those gods who had encountered the results of the ancient creature's creation. But here I did not venture to ask straight out - given the involvement of many deities in the creation of Yoke, I might seem even more dangerous to them than an individual who likes to create his own children out of human beings.

I limited myself to what I could take discreetly and quietly, counting the very fringes of dreams and dreams that would not come to mind as soon as the sleeper awoke. Working with the minds and dreams of high-ranking (and not-so-high-ranking) clerics, I was quite nervous. Words could not express it, but I kept getting the feeling that I was not alone in other people's dreams. I mean, there was someone else there invisibly, not just the dreamer.

Not direct interference and constant observation, no, but something that could not be missed, given my sensitivity to such things. And I had not a suspicion, but a clear certainty that if I dared to light up in these dreams, these souls too much, the deity might try to show such a cool atheist exactly what the phrase "lord of my soul" meant. And the more faith there is in the priest, the more likely he will want to, and the more he can do.

In general, I didn't like the priests, their dreams, or what I learned from those dreams.

Weaver disliked religion and the religious even more than I disliked it. First of all, because the deities had more than once given the creature a good fight and ruined his plans. No one understood those plans, and it was not a fact that one could understand such alien thinking, but to break them was, you know, not to unravel them. The creature was wildly vengeful, extremely vindictive, and remarkably resourceful when it came to protracted confrontations. At least a couple dozen small cults were destroyed by it, and a couple of relatively large deities lost a lot of nerve and strength to recover from the consequences of retaliatory strikes.

Burned temples, an extinct and maddening flock, and constant small blows through a bunch of all kinds of proxies, which became both one-time random passers-by and prearranged agents who had behavioral bombs replaced their brains or their handmade creatures. The gods are stronger, but they have to protect their flock, and they simply don't have enough power to protect everyone because the stronger the deity, the more temples, and worshippers they have. The rare exceptions are not taken into account.

Weaver, on the other hand, has no solid base in the material world, so he has nothing to defend. Or rather, not so. His base regularly appears new, but those who wrote archive summaries in the temple of the Lord of the Apes swore by their souls that sometimes the Weaver's lair, destroyed by vigilantes and creature hunters, was not a lair... but a kind of Door, or even an extended upward Antenna, through which the transmission goes. Not the native workshop, but its reflection in the real world, when the real image is hidden at such a depth where even extremely powerful planar enchantments of the strategic type cannot reach, and the divine wonders of a higher order only waste the invested potential.

The Weaver would have been invincible altogether and could have easily weeded out the gods by simply cutting off their oxygen until people were afraid to pray, but it's not that simple. Fortunately. Among the deities, as already mentioned, some worked with Dreams and Reflections on, oddly enough, a divine level. And even if they didn't agree to help in the battle against the Weaver, they couldn't keep silent when the creature was literally losing its shores. And so, perhaps, the great dreamwalker himself tried not to get on the gods first and not to start a full-fledged war of annihilation without a good reason.

Most of the temple archivists I could reach without killing myself on the temple and personal protection agreed that the Weaver had long been a firm believer in the gifts of Sia'Shel'Maai, the Eternal Weaver (you can tell from the name he chose for his persona), considered the strongest of the few gods who had chosen to be Aspects of the Dream and yet somehow answered prayers and cooperated with other gods. Sia'shel'Maai, I note, has few temples or priests, an exception to the rule, rarely grants blessings and refuses to cooperate even with the seasoned dreamers of the Empire of the Arm.

She never stepped in and helped the creature... but she had never agreed to help its enemies either. At least none of the contacts Cassie the Unfriendly had given out to knew about it, and neither did those I had already found information about in the heads of those contacts.

It would seem to be a dead-end line of investigation, but even here, an intelligent brain will draw some conclusions. I am not clever, I won't lie to myself, but when I have to, I am very good at tying facts together into coherent theories. And the theory is such that my opponent is very unwilling to transfer the battle to the native realm.

Or rather, not so

He retreats whenever there is a hint that the irritated deity will spit on the risks and dive deeper into the Dreams to embrace and cuddle his opponent. He has only been brought to such a confrontation on a few (documented) occasions, but one of the conditions has always been met.

Either the god was alone and did not have the best Aspects to counteract the user of the Dream. And then the creature would put up quite a fight, forcing the god to remember that the gods do not burn the pot and that immortality does not automatically make one invulnerable to death. The gods themselves presented the situation from a different angle, but even if they actually inflicted terrible wounds on the enemy, forcing him to retreat, they did not dare to finish him off. And something tells me that at least half of these "stories of the great battle" embellish the bitter reality, for there, at best, was a fighting draw, and at worst, the celestial dared to flee away from the creature. And I do not yet calculate the likelihood that somewhere in the depths of the ages and among the endless kaleidoscope of broken mirrors, there are gods who have not returned from their last battle at all.

The second option was to fall into a prearranged trap, which given a great desire and the presence of divine omnipotence, could be prepared even for a very cool clairvoyant. In such cases, the creature spared neither resources nor energy nor its constructs, striving to get as far away from the conflict as quickly as possible. The infamous conflict with the Imperial Dynasty of the Empire of Arms, as described in the Cassie-Want-A-Friend books, began when the deity patronizing the Dynasty, in close tandem with the elite of the Empire, was able to literally cut out a piece of Dream from the native realm and stitch it into reality. It was as if they had taken and caught a huge tub of fish straight out of the river... only instead of a fish, it came out a hungry shark with chainsaws instead of fins

At the last moment, the Weaver managed to warp - reflect - the ritual contours and shift the vector of the divine miracle a bit, and the piece of Dream appeared not in the center of the trap prepared in advance but three kilometers above the small town where the Emperor's summer residence was located. By the time they reacted and redirected the blows, the milk had run and later came to visit the Palace of a Thousand Golden Monkeys on its own.

But the important thing is something different: the fact the creature was trapped and almost destroyed. And, mind you, they weren't striking from the real world of Reality. No, they first dragged their target into the real world, and only then were they going to burn it with napalm. Didn't they originally hope to get the creature without being able to locate and lock on to it? I don't exclude that possibility.

The last, truly miraculously discovered variant, which was almost entirely undocumented, was a few indirect references to the fact that the creature had never engaged in battle when forced to do so by numerical advantage and corral hunting methods. Of course, everything seems to make sense here, but I have a vague suspicion that it is not just a matter of numerical superiority.

It's not intuition but rather just a hunch, an ephemeral feeling that I'm on the right track.

It's not that there were outnumbered opponents or that they were stronger.

The thing is, the creature was unwilling to set itself up for fear of not getting away in time.

I remember barely getting my feet away from the bloodhounds who caught up with me in the Stone. And I remember that the hunt for me was decided by my speed and my ability to leave Dream quickly. And the creature itself, creating many small creatures with a veritable army of its own creatures... Was too massive to be able to retreat quickly and escape if surrounded. Because no 'face-to-face' battle with the divine entities lasted long. Because it feared even those enemies who couldn't kill it even in theory but could slow it down long enough, like destroyed overnight the Order of the Lilac and Rose Knights, who were famous for hunting planar creatures of all sizes.

Because if it lights up in one place - even if the concept of the place itself does not apply to Dream - then all those gods who are sick to their stomachs, as well as all those who simply agree in this opinion with the previous ones, will find the thing, target it and simply not let it crawl away.

That's why Weaver rarely touches the gods and their clergy. That's why he always takes his revenge as painfully as possible, but never directly. That's why he carefully cleans up all traces of his existence, leaving no clues for possible avengers. Therefore he refuses to either start ruling a piece of Reality directly (or through intermediaries) or simply kill one city a week, wasting the dreams he takes away for his experiments and amusements.

Did the gods themselves know about it? For sure! If even I managed to figure it out in just a month of investigations and with the help of the bare minimum of informants, then the all-powerful and all-knowing celestials knew everything long ago. But they cannot change anything because the creature is always cautious, and if it crosses the line, it swiftly takes off its ropes. The creature is a masterful hider, and the gods have other things to worry about besides hunting their reflection in crooked mirrors.

We were a day and a half away from Tavimark when I finally realized I was an idiot. Or rather, I had suspected such a mishap before, but now I realized exactly where I had acted like an idiot. All my attempts to outplay the Weaver had been a bit of a failure and doomed to fail simply because the creature was, first, stronger than me in direct combat and, second, had been playing these games for far longer than other states had existed.

Really, guys!

A lover of creating nightmares was hunted by bloody deities, both single and working in pairs, threes, and whole pantheons. They played their games for years and decades, sometimes managing to catch a "fish" in their net, but at best being satisfied with a couple of ripped-out scales and thinning out the horde of all sorts of creatures that the "fish" had created in its eternity.

Should I try to outplay the creature on this field?

Well, I respect myself, of course, and I think Konstantin Yuryevich is a very tough guy, but even I understand that it's not my league yet. Then how can I, being, figuratively speaking, a third-rate children's chess player, beat a seasoned grandmaster? Yes, the same way I always beat those who were cooler than me.

Simply not to play chess but to start the game by my own rules.

It was not just pathos that struck me, but rather a picture of a possible course of action. It was mentioned in many documents or collected dreams that the creature was very seldom caught precisely through its "patrons" among the human elite. Primarily because the demands of the "humble old master" never stood out against the tens of thousands of other witch doctors of varying qualifications. They all needed a living good and often a very specific one. And Weaver's orders were not monotonous. They did not fall into patterns and were not calculated by analysts.

Plus, he concealed himself perfectly. The "patrons," in turn, were hiding their actions with all their might. Of course, if you put your mind to it, it is easy to calculate any high-born schemer and then take apart all his actions, correspondence, orders, and requests into atoms to create a whole picture of events. But there are a lot of such intrigues, and if you take each of them, then angry crowds of court snakes will kill you before your resources run out.

And I have, for the moment, no clue as to why exactly, this relic is mad at me. If that reason is at all understandable to me. Maybe he saw the color of my underwear in some vision, did not like it, and is looking for me to say: "Kostya, change your underwear!

But I haven't been in Alurei long, and I can follow my tracks to find the moment, the event, the decision that pitted me against my adversary. And then I could begin to unravel the tangle by finding the treacherous bastard. For he, for all his strength and antiquity, was not accustomed to what I was about to do.

What he expects from the inhabitants of Reality is that he will be sought by the methods of Reality. Perhaps, with the help of weak dreamers and other users of Dream, which will be most afraid of finding him. And from the really strong users of Dream, he is quite well protected. The best defense is that if I start looking for him, he won't be able to ignore my search.

And he will find me.

He'll probably be surprised at such a reckless way to commit suicide, but he'll be glad.

Instead of me.

But.

Look at the subject! I, unlike all possible secret services and temple intelligence, am anonymous to an even greater extent than Weaver himself. And ordinary people won't be able to sense me and my searches unless I set myself up. Also, the old abomination made a mistake not only with me but also with Cassie-Add-in-Friends.

Until this moment, I was in no hurry to ask the Necromancer about the circumstances of his conflict with the creature, but apparently, I still have to, even though the mage himself is very reluctant to talk about this subject. But if I really push with authority, he will tell me what I think. So, we have a three-point work plan.

Doing once - asking questions of an unwitting ally until he begins to answer the answers.

We do two - we look for where and how the necromancer could have crossed the road either to Weaver, which is unlikely or to his still alive "patrons", then we take apart every damn line of other people's files and find the people first and then Weaver himself.

We do three - in an incomprehensible way, we anal disintegrate the invincible relic bogeyman while staying alive.

Is this tactic new? Not a goddamn thing, in my opinion. Surely similar thoughts must have crossed the brains (or other organs) of people much smarter than one former office clerk. And Weaver himself should have had something in mind, otherwise, he wouldn't have lived so long. The only difference would be that now I would no longer be playing defense myself, and the creature itself would still not be able to find me.

Search, search!

I recently wiped away all my fresh traces, and the old and forgotten ones, given my isekai, are simply not in this world. It's a unique situation to have a high-ranked Dreamer who has a chance of winning a duel of the Seers with Weaver himself but who has no connection to the world. It's not even theoretically possible because until you can raise a powerful Dream adept, you're going to make his presence known in one way or another. And me, so unsociable, remained hidden.

My chances are still not very high, and I am mentally prepared to spend the rest of my life with the expectation that any exit to Dream will be my last because of a trap. But now, I would no longer be just a trapped hare but a hunter like myself. Yes, in my case, it's not hunting a hare (me) with a tank and a swarm of drones, but rather hunting a Tyrannosaurus with a plastic pistol, but I already like the fact that the situation has changed.

I entered the gates of Tavimark, almost at peace.

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