Chapter 8

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"It'll be easier!" If sarcasm and venom could be translated into a tangible form, Taria's words would have already flooded the whole damn dungeon to the brim, and it would have spilled out onto the city as well. "The defenses are destroyed! The only thing left to do is get there! I can fucking see how much more there is!"

To tell you the truth, I understand my companion. I can see that she doesn't want to make a fuss but is just scared shitless for herself and us. Why the fuck shouldn't she be, considering the depth of the asshole we were in at that moment? I would have shit myself if I hadn't switched to a partial Shadow Form to increase control over the citadel and feed it with my reserve. And even that was just enough to keep from failing on the Trails and moving forward without fearing for said asshole. Apparently, when they sealed that thing up, they worked long and thoughtfully, gradually laying out the route, not as I do now - stronger shield, straighter route, and if there is a barrier somewhere, it's not my problem. Honestly, it would have been better if I had taken Ygra with me, for, with her strength and temperament, breaking the walls and stone would have been another fun.

"Taria, calm down, please," Losius answers her as the only one not engaged in anything, not counting Hestia, who has fallen out of the conversation and is not a master of consolation at all. "Your excitement is understandable but of no practical use."

He's the one who's not panicking now because he's getting too freaked out by the Shadows squeezing right up against him. The fact that the Shadows are diligently protecting his aristocratic ass does nothing to relieve the strain on his perception or the desire of those Shadows to devour his protected ass and soul. In general, Losius was in a state where panicking just doesn't work because you're already in an endless state of misery.

"Calm down?" Looks like the poison rank has increased several levels of toxicity all at once. "I'm calm as a fucking rock! Can't you see where we're going and what's going on behind the barrier? I'd rather be out there cutting grass in a downpour than standing here for one more second."

Though she didn't stop panicking completely, she pulled herself together after such a firm rebuke. She responded more because of her temperament. For her to end an argument without having the last word was almost physical torture, even if it was moral. Even now, she's already got her nerves a little calmed down. I would have cheered her up, but, with the Form working, my voice might serve not as an encouragement now, but as an excellent remedy for constipation, with the side effect of graying and stuttering.

"Shut up! Shut up!" Hans, on the other hand, is certainly not going to be polite or understanding, for the man's nervousness is not childish, and it is seasoned with the awareness of what he has to do shortly.

Taria was confused by this rebuke, but it was only natural - our tracker was the only one in the group who was more open-minded than she was. And anyway, they both live on the same wavelength since they both came from the commoners, both of them are the same kind of wreckers, and both can't stand officiousness and high style of communication. Maybe that's why she was silent - Hans didn't interfere in the altercation and didn't even ask to stay out of the way, but literally yelled at her. And the man had always treated Taria with a light touch of tutelage, rarely getting serious with her. Losius, especially at the beginning of their acquaintance, was not shy at all about putting the bandit down, riding on all her shortcomings with typical noble snobbery. Hans, on the other hand, had only yelled at her seriously on a handful of occasions and always in such situations when there was no need to be offended, for it was necessary to save the skin. It was this association that flashed through her mind, triggering her reflex of going into fighting mode.

She had been prepared for combat before, but being in such an environment, when nothing depended on her and her skills, and all she had to do was go forward, under the protection of scary and very unpleasant creatures, straight into the jaws of the anomaly. It knocked her down pretty badly. If there was even a far more dangerous creature, albeit legendary, but which has clear boundaries and a body from which you can either run away or shoot, she would not even raise an eyebrow. The girl had seen enough fear shit to not be frightened by another one. What frightened her was the unfamiliarity of it, the very foreignness of what was confronting us. It was frightening because it didn't confront us at all, it was just there. Its existence alone was the end of the alien existence, the existence of any entity whose existence intersected with the existence of the anomaly.

After defeating the Keepers of the Seal, it seemed at first that all the difficulties were behind us. That is until we began to move toward the last tier of the catacombs. It had no number, for space was so wrapped up that these tiers were divided into several new ones, then merged into one, then disappeared altogether. There was only my clairvoyance, gradually beginning to reverberate with long-forgotten shades of headache, and Hans's skills, which allowed me to find among the thousands of constantly changing, multiplying, and breaking off paths the one that we needed. Leading to the heart of the anomaly, to its beginning and its end.

It was already very close, so close that I could see the fuzzy and deformed remains of a ritual outline beneath my feet. It had once been carved into the stone floor, poured with silver and a dash of mithril, and sprinkled with the blood of several hundred victims. Now all that remained were barely discernible lines and threads, one by one fading away completely. The remnants of what kept the anomaly from changing metric and position in space too much were dying before our eyes.

We were in the central point of the catacombs, a huge underground grotto, more natural than man-made. I can only assume that originally it had an oblong-oval shape and was about three hundred meters long with a considerable height of the ceiling, lost in the darkness because of the scattered dust of ancient lamps and lamps. What shape it had now, no living soul, even one who by nature is supposed to know all sorts of interdimensional bullshit, could tell.

The spheres were shut down, and I disconnected myself from it as much as possible so as not to strain my already strained brain. The walls of the dome became almost impenetrable, barely transparent, hiding from us most of what was going on in the surrounding reality. But even what our eyes could see would be enough to splatter our brains all over the walls if an unprepared person looked in. We weren't unprepared. We were soaked in potions that increased mental stability and reduced the damage to consciousness. But even so, Taria was hysterical, and the rest of us weren't too far behind her.

I can't tell exactly how much of the distance to the center node of the already vanished circle we've walked or if we've walked any distance at all. I can't tell if we've been on this path for minutes, hours, days, or years. I just know that I must lead us there. I must walk leaning on Hans's shoulder, and my stubbornness. I must bring us to the right point and put an end to a heroic adventure that had exhausted me to no end.

And, at some point, we did make it.

"Fuck." Hans, tiredly wiping away his sweat with the sleeve of his quilted shirt, didn't even break out anything more emotional. "Whew. Give me a minute to breathe, and let's get started."

We were standing in a kind of eye of the storm, rapidly shrinking. Only a few meters in the center of the entire hall were left of the contour, but that was where the center of the anomaly was located. The formation was being chewed up, taking away its last seconds of existence, and with them, the imprisoned essence was being released more and more.

Right now, we're safe - even the citadel can be shut down if I choose to do such a foolish thing. But once the eye of the storm is gone, and for the first time in centuries, the Trail Spawn will give us a chthonic blender. I can't be entirely sure, but somehow I have a feeling that after a long "stillness" this shit will try to "shake out," so I don't envy the future us the moment we try to survive this sipping sleepy bear.

"Look, I can get us all out of here right now." I wanted to say it in a conspiratorial and penetrating way, but I was no longer strong enough to maintain the right tone, especially mentally, especially after being in the partial and sometimes full Shadow Form for so long. "There's a clean patch of reality here. I'll dive deeper, and then we'll fly. Yes, it won't be a pleasant journey, but I guarantee your cover and survival. At the most, Losius will have to be treated, with his attitude toward the Shadow and its inhabitants."

I suggest quite seriously - if my comrade doubts his strength for even a second, I won't even listen to the answer. I'll just knock him out and evacuate him. Then I'll have to go back on my own and work out a backup plan, which is connected to a possible breakthrough of the shadow plan. The city, of course, will shatter with a guarantee, but the casualties should be less than from a wandering legend. In theory, of course.

"Nah, I can do it." His answer doesn't sound so sure, but there's not much empty bravado in it, either.

"Can you justify it?" Politely and trying not to show disbelief, I ask because the madness going on around us looks very impressive.

"Yes, I can." And, without waiting for me to start beating someone over the head for giving rhetorical answers, he continues. "You just can't feel it, but this shit is, like, hanging by a thread. So thin that if you kick it, it'll burst. If we hadn't crawled over here, if it had broken free, I'd have been the first one out of here to change my pants. Am I an idiot or what?"

"Do you want an honest answer, Hans, or can you guess?" Taria did not miss such a moment, having had time to come to her senses, although she would not miss such a moment in an inadequate state.

"Oh, who's to say?" The man was grinning kindly, though, into his mustache. "You might remind me who ate too much the orcs' honey, and then, that very evening..."

"Silence!!!" The scream of the furious fury in the woman's body made Losius flinch, and even Hestia, who had time to start meditating while we were discussing here, flinched in surprise. "Ahem. Yeah. You didn't finish the explanation there. Here."

If I hadn't been so lazy, I would have strained my clairvoyance to get the story in front of me, but I don't remember any of it. It must have happened while I was on my next outing. And anyway, my head hurts too much after laying the route to waste the remaining "clairvoyant stock" on such insignificant details.

"What's there to say?" Hans was either intimidated by Taria's cries or just pitying her pride, but didn't continue. "It's scary even now, like my great-uncle's mother-in-law. When that seal of yours collapses, it will be twice as scary. One Walker can't kick that shit out. Neither can ten. But the second it drops the chains... it's vulnerable. It's still painfully harsh for me, but we've got a barrel!"

He said the word "barrel" with a kind of aspiration as if he were talking about some sacred relic rather than something so mundane. And he also made a face, you know, spiritualized, as if an official who had repented of corruption or a roadside thief who had decided to live a righteous life. A silly face, all in all.

"What the fuck, Hans?" I'm running out of words. "I've told you three hundred times that it's not a fucking barrel, it's a flask, just a really, really big flask, but it's still a flask!"

"Tin, even I know that flasks are not the size of my two heads. This uneducated individual bluntly dismisses my objections. "So it's a barrel."

The subject of the dispute was the composition assembled on my knees and smelted, with the help of essentialism, out of the nearest boulder. The composition itself I created by using as reagents ready-made potions, my own imagination, a few suitable reagents that I had not yet used for potions, and, of course, a lot of profanity. This weapon of mass destruction had to be poured into a container fashioned out of ordinary vials. It resembled not some vulgar barrel... but the three-liter jar for preserving cucumbers, which was the source of my inspiration.

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"First of all, not two heads, but at most one and a half, or even 1.2 heads." Calmly I object, drawing peace from my inner reserves. "And second, it's not a barrel!!!"

"Oh gods, Tin, nobody gives a shit!" The dancer intervenes, for whom this topic has recently become a trigger and a berserk button at the same time, for she has listened to a hundred times more arguments on such an important subject than she would have liked, and she wishes she had not heard them at all, not even a single time.

"Okay, let's move on, Hans." I'm calming down, not because I admit defeat, but simply because the wisp of the storm's eye is getting smaller by the minute. "And you, Hestia, get that flask out. You didn't lose it, did you?"

Instead of answering, Hestia silently pulled out a large glass ink-black cylinder from the backpack entrusted to her. The color is not accidental because I had to darken the glass so no one could observe the multidimensional whirling that was going on inside this jar. The transparent liquid is pure enough to make the jar seem empty. With prolonged contemplation, dizziness and hallucinations occurred. The purest spatial chaos trapped in the bottle. Storm in a glass in all its glory.

In essence, this compound is a weapon. It can penetrate even a good shield, but luckily it doesn't react immediately, giving you time to move away. Well, it's also a hedge in case Hestia drops it on the floor. The glass there could withstand a crossbow shot, but with our luck, it would have been fired with a ballista.

"If move on, then move on." Dutifully, the man agrees as he continues his explanation. "If you twist that crap out of the bar... flask, right into the heart of that shit, and give it a good push. Your brew, it's a little bit like all that shit. It's a piece of Trail, too, but liquefied, like moonshine. So when they're all bubbling together, I'll have a second to push it in the right direction. And it'll all move."

"It is too easy to hear the unspoken "but" in this heartfelt speech." Hestia, who is tired of being a silent listener.

"And how without it, our misty one." With a slight irony, agrees the Pathfinder. "The workload will be so great that, without potions, I will not take it. Not without very good potions. The very best. And if I can't do it in one heartbeat, I'll be fucked up in the second, like that groundhog who ate a briquette of explosive clay."

"I want to know the background to that phrase," I say even before Taria, who was about to say the same thing. "That's a story you didn't tell me, or I would have remembered."

We take a little time to describe another ode to the army's fuckheadedness, thanks to which the soldiers fed the unfortunate animal with the explosive substance. The poor creature burst right during the parade in honor of the arrival of some bigwig from the capital. The story seemed funny, and Hans laughed while pouring into himself an extremely toxic set of enhancers until he remembered the not-so-funny details. Seven guys hung up, of whom only two were guilty, long days in the brig and the other pleasures of medieval military service.

He'd taken off his mask, so I could easily see the dark blue veins through his skin. He was blinking strangely, too, as if he had to make an effort not to fall out from Reality on the Trail when before he had strained to get on it.

"You're gorgeous." Taria's comment was accompanied by a raised thumb, a gesture not only international but also inter-world, immediately mirrored by me and, after a pause, by Losius and Hestia. "Kick that shit properly."

I, meanwhile, began to restore the dome of the citadel because, during the short heart-to-heart talk, the piece of stable territory shrank to a ridiculous two meters. Here it is still there, and we are standing, huddled in a tight group, inside the gradually strengthening cocoon. Here the floor under our feet grows dimmer and dimmer until it becomes completely black - the top and bottom have simply ceased to exist, and the Shadows have created new support in place of the missing one.

And then several things happened at once, merging into one brief moment, into a series of blurred and inseparable events. Events that decided the fate of this city.

The restraining formation broke without any external manifestation, and in sensory perception, it was also inaudible, unlike the easily discernible destruction of the Seal. Either this moment could not be caught at all without affinity to the right plan, or my deliberately coiled senses missed it in the flow of the chaos that had overwhelmed us. The only way I could recognize the fall of the last nail that prevented the coffin that Tavimark was about to cover from opening was through clairvoyance, but even there, I reacted belatedly.

But Hans, flashing more and more often, faster and faster, had time to understand the situation and act much faster. The Shadow Dome didn't even move, letting his figure into the chaos outside. It even seemed to me that the Shadows, though they wanted to devour him, as they always did, didn't mind watching the pathetic little man get twisted in the meat grinder.

As he blinked once more, it was as if Hans had been photoshopped into a still image, flat, ridiculous, and pathetic against the backdrop of the panopticon going on. And then it poured with power, power, and some kind of directionality, something elusive but at the same time very powerful. The Walking the Trail put all his reserve into a single blow, for a second becoming something more than just a man, even if he had a high level and an unusual class.

And then he hit.

For a moment, too brief to be discerned by ordinary perception, the whole space, the whole spiral of madness, spinning madly and going into itself, was frozen as a motionless statue. A moment passed, and all this unnatural abomination, something intangible, having no physical or energetic manifestation, stretched as if it were the thinnest fabric. It stretched and rushed downward toward the spot where Hans had poured my compound.

The frames were changing one by one. The Shadows that made up my citadel were tearing out of the monolithic fortification. They weren't being killed or torn apart. They were just being carried away by something. It was like the universe's creepiest drain in a bathtub full of water, only scarier.

With the last spurt, when the anomaly dragged even two Elder Shadows, the world was back to normal, and even the effect of my potion was gone. Though, just the latter should have lasted a couple of hours at least. I was even prepared, if necessary, to flood it with shadows to stop the effect of the composition, but I didn't have to. I was glad to hear that because the reserve wasn't depleted, no, but the subtle bodies were tired from the constant strain.

In addition to the good news, however, there was worse news.

Hans had disappeared somewhere.

To be honest, I didn't immediately understand exactly what had happened. Still, I was too used to the constant smile of Fortune for me and my companions, too used to the fact that none of us were ever in such a mess that there was no way to save ourselves. Even when Taria almost died of intoxication, I was clearly aware that I had a way to save her, and if I didn't screw up, she wouldn't die.

Now I just didn't see it coming. Trails are very hard to see, even after my successful prophetic trance. And Hans had stepped into them himself, of his own free will. If it had been a sudden strike of that power, I would have been able to grasp the event before it happened. Maybe not too accurately, without specifics, but I could still do it. Alas, even a legendary clairvoyant cannot fully see all paths, especially if one of them, the most dangerous one, and so closed from any insight. Especially if one chooses that path for oneself.

And I knew that. I knew it was a risk, but somehow I couldn't bring myself to assume that the dice wouldn't fall in our favor this time, that we would lose, even if we won against the thing we'd started the game against. Thousands of thoughts swarmed in my head, my heart racing faster and faster, my insides going into shadowy form, and my clairvoyance accelerating to speeds even beyond my grasp, trying to find, to find my companion, my friend. To find, to push through, to cut my way through, to break the shaky nothingness of the Trail, and to impose my will on them - something I could do, perhaps at the highest level.

But I didn't find anything.

Hans disappeared into the very center of the whirlpool, diving in after him, thus hiding from my view as well. Or was it the other way around? It was the effect of the entity that hid Hans from me, depriving me of even the slightest hope of pulling him out of the jaws of nothingness. There was no desire to weep or a pang of the heart, but something in the depths of my soul seemed to growl, to burst forth, unwilling to admit defeat, unwilling to lose one of the few people for whom I was not just another nuisance, not a threat to their well-fed life, not a suicide bomber.

"How can this be?" Taria is all gray, and I can see it, even though I don't turn to face her.

Clairvoyance, as if apologizing for its impotence, feeds me just a mountain of useless information, unable to get hold of the thread that would help me break through the chaotic whirlpool of paths.

"It is... a dignified end." Losius, it seems, can't quite believe it, can't quite accept the fait accompli. "Even among the most worthy, this end will be a dignified one."

Hestia is silent. Not because she doesn't care, though the behemoth's character and her own indifference prevent her from truly feeling the sense of loss, but because she doesn't know how to comfort or sympathize. The former officer realizes that any words she speaks will seem too far-fetched, unnatural. That is why she is silent.

A second of silence is followed by a minute of silence. We should all run away faster and cover our tracks, but it seems to me, it's not clear why, that the first movement that breaks the shocked mourning will be a betrayal. It will become a symbol that I have resigned myself to doom. A fate worse than doom. Beneath the mask, my face resembles another mask, only already bloody - clairvoyance on such a scale, and even more controlled than random, loads even more support already dissolved with the world of the citadel. The shadows, characteristically, didn't even try to catch on in reality. In fact, as soon as I let them go, they took off at full speed, as deep and far away as possible.

I wish I had a mirror right now, but I only have a few pieces with me.

Even if there had been, I doubt I could have found anything. Hans didn't just fall into the other realm. He'd fallen in the arms of an entity of legendary rank, whose nature was almost perfect for confusing any visionary. All of this I understood, but there was no way I could bring myself to stop trying. In the back of my stupid isekai soul, I refused to believe that the old rascal would die like this. I just wouldn't admit it.

"Fuckyouyoufuckingbitch!!!" It was an answer to my thoughts. After which from above, from the very ceiling of the ennobled underground grotto figure wrapped in familiar clothes, whose sleeves were stained with green paint, plummeted down. "Whythefuckdidn'tyouguyscatchmemotherfuckers?"

The smash was very loud and crunchy - the height was quite high, and the tracker had no strength left to convert his fall into a non-traumatic one. How did he have the strength left to swear, after where and under what conditions he had been - that is the really interesting question. Just call in the experts.

"Hans!" With a wild squeal of a girl getting a gift pony for her birthday, Taria hung on the shoulders of the struggling man, who was up on one arm because the other was twisted at an awkward angle. "You're alive, you old grouch!"

"Fucking ribs!" He answered her, almost squealing in pain as those ribs, which had suffered a couple of fractures, unkindly scraped against his lungs. "Ouch, cocky [censored], fuck my ribs. They're broken!"

Losius did not give up on words, adding his embrace to that of Taria, traumatizing our dear friend and comrade even more. Amidst this warm and, between us, very dangerous display of warm feelings, I made a slightly different move, limiting myself to a silent clap on the shoulder, with which I took all the poor man's physical injuries upon myself. As long as I'm in the Shadow Form anyway, the usual injuries on me heal almost faster than they appear. And I could easily pay the price of another wave of madness and hunger - it had been a long time since I'd known such a mental upheaval. Nor had I ever had such a useful lesson in my life.

For the future, Kostik.

Every fucking time in your plan you have a moment that depends solely on luck, you fuckhead, don't play dice with Destiny, but make sure the moment goes from uncontrollable to controllable. The ones you can influence in any way - by clairvoyance, personal intervention, tossing pianos, puppets recruited through Dream, alliances, or contracts. Anything, but don't let it happen again. Otherwise, I did not like the experience of this one at all.

Hans was now suffering the same thing that had once nearly killed Taria - a severe intoxication of everything. How else to let one man with a barely adequate class kick a full-fledged Legend? Though he's still standing, thanks in large part to the two legendary titles he's snatched, which have dramatically increased his survivability, he won't be for long. I need to get to the room we rented, where we have thoughtfully prepared everything necessary to evacuate any of our company, and then treat the poor man. At the very least, I can take over even the most severe injuries, as I did with Taria, and then heal myself by killing some critter or simply by changing into the Shadow Form for a while.

It was after the Stone that such tension could kill me, but now I feel relatively fine. If I hadn't overextended my clairvoyance, I might even say "not bad". Anyway, I'm not going to be here much longer, and neither are any of us. We've made too much noise - we couldn't miss the fall of the Seal or the release of the anomaly. If we're lucky, everyone will think it just got tired of being locked up and crawled home.

Now I'd better not get caught in the crosshairs. The local bigwigs have a whole bunch of artifacts that track the state of the Seal. And me is not me if they haven't all turned to dust and ashes today. Now, according to the same clairvoyance, even in my present state, I am enough for such trivia - it is a dark night, though we were descending at noon. Time in these catacombs also behaved surprisingly disorderly and unnecessarily.

But before we ran away, I did pay attention to something that I should have checked from the beginning, but because of the near-death experience and the miraculous rescue of our comrade, I missed it. In the place where the center of the ritual circuit used to be, there now remained something that played the role of the core of the ritual. It was originally a kind of artifact, resembling a pile of concentric rings covered with multi-layered runes. Something like a puzzle, turn one circle even a couple of degrees, and the overall effect immediately changes. It is a perfect thing if you need to quickly go through thousands of variations of the possible position of the signs, picking just one, but the right one.

Now, after all my adventures, the thing looked like a perfectly shaped gray sphere, not a scratch on it, but not polished but matte steel. Even a normal person would have noticed that there was something deeply wrong with this lumpy piece of iron as if one were looking at a bomb about to explode or a lurking predator. I was helped by my Hero status, which enabled me to know at once, without too much trouble of identification, what the adventure had brought us.

Trail's Generator (Legendary)

This artifact was born of a ghostly iron sprinkled with blood and torment, once the heart of a mighty Seal that held back the spawn of the Trails, preventing it from leaving the cage it had created. The Trails took the spawn back to where its home was, taking with them all that remained in the heart that had lost its power. But sometimes, by taking, the Trails can bestow in return. And so, in this case, such unusual material was able to absorb a bit of the Trail's power, becoming something more than just ghostly iron.

Properties:

Hard to Destroy: the item is very hard to break due to increased resistance to physical and magical damage.

Legend: it's a pretty cool artifact, be proud of it.

One who walks, one will pass: this artifact will not submit to everyone but only to those who belong to the Trails, having known their secrets and dangers.

Granted abilities:

Short Trail (active): as long as this artifact is in the hands of the guide, as long as the guide has enough strength to keep the artifact under control, any road will become shorter and easier, and it does not matter if it is a road of looner, a small squad or an entire army. The extent to which the path is shortened depends on the strength invested and the personal skills of the Trail master.

There will be a door (active): that allows you to connect two places for a short time, provided that neither of such points is covered by protective barriers. The guide must personally visit the place where the door will be opened. Distance is irrelevant, as is the fullness of the reserve, but for each use, the guide must look at the Trail, passing a test of will. Cooldown: one month.

You won't find me (active-passive): the protective skill of the barrier type. By setting the Trail Generator on a chosen point, the guide creates an area of stability around which trails and paths distort unpredictably, preventing them from reaching a stable area. The strength of the distortion is great but depends on factors beyond the guide's control, varying from case to case. Cooldown: Three days.

I smirk silently, and then I throw the received system massage to our only "guide", and all the other companions, too, at the same time pointing to the legendary artifact lying on the floor and almost abandoned by us. And, I note, it is much stronger and more extensive than the previously obtained sword, which is a Golden Needle and Valerium. More dangerous too, but it does not cancel the usefulness - an accelerator, portal to any distance, and a protective dome of a high order.

I'll even say more - this artifact is much more useful for an army than for a small detachment. The ability to get a couple of legions deep behind enemy lines without raising the alarm is worth more than you can say in gold. I doubt anyone would even want to sell such a thing, and there's no way to buy it.

If the Shoreless Eye in Melareth is at the bottom of the mythic bar, this artifact fits right in at the top of the legendary grade. If the local bosses knew they could get such a trophy from an anomaly, they wouldn't be too lazy to do what we did. They might even have sacrificed the city, though there's already some doubt. And we took the trophy as the only ones who cared. Surprisingly, karma works once in a while, even if only as a statistical margin of error.

"That's..." Losius had just realized the scale of the bun, and Hans, forgetting the gradual intoxication, rushed to the sphere and then shoved it into his bag, the size of which was only a little larger than an orange.

"I got some fucked-up shit, too." He grumbled, turning to all of us at the same time. "What am I, like a fool, walking around alone without the legendary shit?"

And then I took the tracker, who suddenly remembered that he was actually dying of intoxication, and we quickly started crawling out of there. I shifted my mask and poured into myself all the available potions to enhance clairvoyance, relieve the effects of overstress and temporarily increase resistance to kickbacks of mental abilities, and then began to mop up the traces we left behind. I was not sure what was going to happen, but I was going to look for the reasons for what had happened with the whole crowd without the usual slacking.

To my unspeakable surprise, I could have avoided torturing my body with potions at all since all possible traces were simply sucked up along with the essence that had returned to the Trails. We left no trace on the outer tiers, and in the parts of the catacombs where we had already had to fight, we were now left with only the bare walls of a labyrinth that had changed and rearranged for the last time. Even the battle with the Army Corps had dissipated, though that was where all sorts of Shadow traces, alchemical crap, and who knows what else were extremely plentiful.

I had only to mop up, hide, and sever the threads of our stay here since the legend went missing. It's not an easy task either, but it's doable. The stones that heard our words, our sadness at the loss, and our joy at the return of our comrade, are now silent and will not speak. After the disappearance of the anomaly, all events and all threads of existence disappeared with it. There is nothing to look for, even if you are connected with the trails - you have to ask the anomaly itself, and it, I remind you, has remained a legendary entity.

New events, imprints of them, were fixed on the empty stones, but they were just as easy to remove it. I only sent these connections to all the others, to the not yet fully closed passageway to the Trails. It worked very well. I would have dragged us all through the Shadow, but by feet was not only safer, but it left fewer traces.

Toward the end, we had to literally carry Hans. He was already losing consciousness. The crisis was far from over, but the result was alarming. For a change we had managed so far, the situation was not considered critical. For even more variety, we quietly made our way out of the catacombs through one of the oldest, forgotten, and seldom visited passages.

* * *

There was quite a stir in the upper levels of the catacombs. People, monsters, and creatures were going crazy. The former referred either to those who had lairs in the catacombs (nightmen, smugglers, and cultists) or to the yet timid visits from guards and personal errands of the magistrate's bigwigs. The second and the third were stirred by the storm of energies that swept through the dungeon, frightening them and making them frantic. By the way, they went upstairs, too, and there were people down there!

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It is good that Hestia, unlike me, does not forget such little things, and then gives me a reminder. Before I went, so to speak, "on the job," I was not lazy to work on the Dream, and to work well and very, very stealthily. Both so that the absence of our company would not be noticed and they thought that we were drunk all this time, and for other, not less important things.

A few low- and mid-level oracles had gotten vague visions of monsters crawling out of the ground. The large monster-rat packs that crawl into poor neighborhoods once every ten or fifteen years had long been commonplace, so they were surprised by the clarity of the visions and their synchronicity, but they didn't assume any outside influence. Especially since the magistrate had a couple of quite professional visionaries, and they, too, sensed the events.

The second point was the slight, almost absent influence on the Head of the guards. The man was in a shitty mood, so he suddenly wanted to give everyone a drill. Without my help! And a slight hint of an idea allowed him to come up with his own idea to turn the usual "rat slaughter," where rats are purposely lured to the blood of a couple of still-living sheep by ritual reinforcement, into something else. By the beginning of the "H" hour, the chief guard of Tavimark was personally pestering everyone and everything, going back and forth with an inspection.

Instead of a couple or three roadblocks in convenient places, where they invite the most low-level and a couple of elite guards to watch, they blocked all known passages, raised all the guards in blades, and even issued special equipment. In general, it was not a simple duty but a preparation for war.

The adventurers, without my influence, decided to pick up the banner and train the youngsters, and give the veterans a good kicking, so they wouldn't have to stick their asses in the tavern stools. In general, next to the intimidated and cursing guards, a little less intimidated and a little louder cursing adventurers began to walk.

At the very least, a little conjecture and personal paranoia made the local thugs think that all this drill bullshit was no drill at all but preparation for a sudden hit and slaughter of them all. Very well prepared, for all the informers, as one said that it was just Ser Ponmentor who had caught the reins under his tail again. But you can't fool us! By the time trouble began, all blades and fighters of the Nocturnal Masters were in their underground bases, armed and ready to fight the guards. Unlike the guards, they weren't expecting an attack from below, well, or almost not, keeping a minimum of precautions in case they did. But I do not care about their lives and their goal - not to let a wave of underground dwellers to the civilian population - they will fulfill simply out of lack of choice.

It was the same with the cultists, even if they were the least affected. They already had their ritual rooms deep in the catacombs so they wouldn't be found by accident, so they were almost always ready for an attack. The Night Guilds regarded them as mere smugglers, hiding particularly valuable goods (which were indeed stored there, among other things, so they wouldn't idle their earning power) and so paid little attention to them. They tried to pinch them once, got a slap from the professional guards, and then negotiate and parted peacefully.

And what about the general population? And they, watching all this commotion, assumed all sorts of bad things. From the imminent announcement of a siege of Tavimark (I wonder who by?) to the impending gang war and so, they locked themselves in their homes and decided to give themselves an unscheduled day off. Those who could not, too, remained cautious and ready to flee, to hide in the workplace, or simply to defend their lives.

Such a mysterious chain of coincidences meant that the whole town was more ready than ever before to repel the wave of frightened, rampaging meat from the tunnels. We didn't interfere or help while we were running to our inn- the guards could handle themselves and let the thugs and cultists die.

We made it without any bloodshed at all, except for one small, by comparison, sixth-level rat, which flew away from the kick of a speeding Taria. It squeaked in a very hurtful way that sounded suspiciously like, "I got you, bitch, remembered."

Only when we got into our rooms were we able to catch our breath.

Hans was sick but in a good way. At the very least, he was vomiting cleansing potions instead of dissolved viscera, as Taria kept reminding him. Hans would have liked to say something back to her, but he was, as you can see, too busy to speak freely.

I felt sick, too, and the headache was so powerful that I was afraid to move it. In all seriousness, it felt like one move would make my brain detonate, splattering all over the walls, the ceiling, and my companions. They didn't need a brain shower yet, not at all.

Hestia lay motionless as a doll, breathing barely audible and barely resembling a human, despite the disguise works. She was in no danger, just that the damage from the loss of so much of her misty body was recovering faster. And the pain, of course, also played its part. According to the woman, it felt like a mixture of a stab wound and an acid burn, and without a clear place where the pain was felt. Since she is no ordinary sack of meat, but a real and mighty Spawn of the Mist, she is now in pain all at once.

The city is bustling and boiling, but it shouldn't affect us. At first, the same adventurers won't even think to involve muddy newcomers in the cleansing of monsters, then they can't get to us fast enough, and they have no free messengers now, and after that, they won't need any more. The monsters under the ground lived numerously, but they never fattened up to really strong unless you count the Errant ones. The farting shit I killed during my night walks through the city was in the big leagues there. At that rate, all those monsters running straight out to the blades, stripped of their usual conditions and surprise effects, would only be a means of boosting those whose level was around the tenth. Those who are higher will no longer get a freebie.

The only negative thing is the minor damage to our reputation because we "drank" all the fun. However, this damage is more cosmetic than real. The fate of the city did not depend on our appearance, and the very right of adventurers to lose their hard-earned gold in a blaze of debauchery and revelry is an immutable law. If the guild thought seriously to blame us, not during martial law but in peacetime, their subordinates would eat them up with all their ambition and shit.

At most, they'll tell a couple of jokes about us, saying that our ranks come out of the rooms, and there's smoke everywhere, the smell of blood, the howling of monsters being killed, and we, hungover, stand there thinking that we've missed all the fucking fun. And Grzegorz Brzenčiščiakiewicz should not be afraid of jokes about himself. Let them laugh. The main thing is not to be taken seriously.

Kostik is an idiot.

Kostik is a fool..

Kostik is a big-aged dickhead!

Imagine what kind of reaction all the burgomasters and their cronies, the aristocrats and the rich moneybags, who know exactly what's sitting on a chain under the city, will have when their detectors that show the state of the Seal die? Assume for a second that they're going to start spearing everyone and yelling evacuation, taking people out and getting ready to burst through the spatial distortions, saving their lives. And then remember human nature and ground your assumptions by a couple of orders of magnitude.

These motherfuckers just ran away! And not with their feet because that's the risk. It is possible not to have time to leave the city, and then the anomaly could crawl in the same direction! It's such a risk! In short, they activated the teleport to the capital and ran to "report the emergency" further damaging the already useless structure of the artifact after the past machinations.

That means, attention, our company will be in the city for at least another month, if not more! If I had known that the situation would turn out this way, I would have walked to the capital. Judging by the trend, I would have made it even faster than I am now. One good thing is that because of all this panic, the big bosses, the deputy big bosses, and their deputies could not get their hands on Tavimark's "victory" and "salvation". The deputy deputies, along with the competitors of the ruling elite, who were not "accidentally" allowed into the portal, managed everything. They couldn't wait, you see, because they were in a hurry to make a report.

And here is such a setup. All the issues have been solved, all the nightmares have been put to rest, and all the horror described by the big shots, from which they had to retreat, wiping stingy and angry tears from the realization that they cannot fight evil in a common formation, have been overcome without the help of deserters. Shortly, Tavimark will clearly face a personnel reshuffle, with a redistribution of spheres of influence among the obscenely thinned-out criminals. They have fulfilled their mission by protecting the city's population from harm, but they have also paid a very heavy price, hardly manageable. Several Fathers have died or ceased to be Fathers due to the lack of people to obey them.

There was even a man - the owner of the local gambling houses, i.e. the fattest piece - who miraculously survived after all that had happened, being literally covered with corpses. They dug him up and fixed him up, and, no kidding, he considered the event a sign from God and involuntarily changed his class from Rare Godfather to Epic Penitent. The local priests of Grimmentrei, the bearer of Retribution and defender of Equilibrium, quickly accepted such a promising cadre into their ranks, even forgiving his past.

All the finances he had, which the holder of Tavimark's most cash-strapped plot had nowhere to go, he gave away to charity. A few of the murky personalities who tried to pocket the charity, he instantly figured out and sent them to trial. God's trial. The fact that two of them were high-ranking priests of his new patron didn't stop him at all. Colleagues of "a little carried away, but still very decent" clerics would probably have nailed this "incomprehensibly rabid beast," if not for the silvery blue aura that manifested - and had not disappeared for three days - around the former criminal, giving off such a background of Heaven that small evil within fifty meters would die by itself. A more direct hint from their own Big Boss was not required, even by the very stupid.

No less sensational was the story of how the daughter of the head of a large china factory - the largest in Tavimark and the surrounding area - who was trapped in an unfortunate alley and almost torn apart by a stream of monsters, was saved by a homeless man who happened to be in the same alley (he was sleeping there after drinking his brew). He got level eighteen even sooner than I predicted at our last meeting.

The father was ready to kiss the smelly homeless man right there, and the lady herself almost fell in love. Almost because the smell and appearance of the bearded beggar somewhat prevented such a turn of events. By the way, if he had demanded his hand in marriage as a reward, it is not certain that he would have been refused. The local industrialist was more worried not for his youngest daughter but for the set of promissory notes she was carrying to the family executor. That's why there were five guards instead of one or, at most, two, as usual.

So for saving the lion's share of his financial well-being and his beloved daughter (and only in that order!), he was indeed very grateful. And the homeless man, if washed up, mind you, sparkled with a rare class and level eighteen. One of six daughters, and even the most goofy one, the reward might be excessive, but not by much.

Good thing the homeless man didn't know about these opportunities, or he would have choked. Instead of a hand and a heart, all he asked for was more booze. Overwhelmed by such an uncomplicated reward - his colleagues would not have understood him if he had given little, while he was willing to pay much more - man dug out an artifact of rare grade in the bunkers. A bottle of wine - not bad, but not too elite and extremely strong - which never runs out of said wine. Pour even muddy water from a puddle into it, and it turns into a clean and delicious wine. And if you don't pour it in, it will condense on its own, just not very fast. If, of course, to count for a feast for five men, but for one vagrant - just right.

After such a gift, the homeless man was ready to save this girl forty more times, and time after time, defeating in Her (the flask) name even a whole legion of Fiends led by their Lord. He could eat rot, grass, and tree bark without consequences for his health and well-being or even not eat at all for a couple of weeks, but, alas, he could not provide himself with the ability to get drunk at will.

Until this day.

Now nothing Alurei could throw at him would stop or intimidate this ascetic. A man was serious about moving outside the city walls. Even in the bitterest of winters, he could survive and find food there, and he had been able to for a long time. What kept him in the city was the booze which was impossible to find in the countryside, and it was too difficult to make his own brew from berries and roots. He could also go to the dungeons, where it was dark and damp, but no one was ever there. The weak monsters didn't scare him too much, and the strong ones had been knocked out recently. He could only wait until all the commotion had died down before he could move on.

The city froze in anxious anticipation of further events.

The investigation team arrived fairly quickly - on the fourth day. By that time, we had only just healed Hans, who, because of his age, had developed some side effects from the medications he had taken. Slowly we started to go out of our rooms again and to socialize in general. We listened to a couple of jokes about how we drank and in general.

The mood in Tavimark was high. For an event so ghastly as an avalanche of monsters, the death toll was not so much low as ludicrous. The civilians had to dig a dozen graves at most - just an accident, just a series of lucky accidents. The only ones who grieved were the bandits. Terrible loss of human recources and a lot of lost finances, which the new Repentant did not donate voluntarily, after thermorectal diplomacy, to the other Fathers, but wasted on the construction of a couple of orphanages and help to several hundred sick poor and middle-class people. The houses, of course, have not even begun to be built yet, but after the fate of the previous people in charge, they will definitely be built, and not stolen. That is, they will probably steal, but within very narrow limits.

But nobody gives a shit about bandits except the bandits themselves, do they?

Such a series of coincidences would have alarmed many people, and it did, to be honest. I can feel even now the residual waves raised by the whole circle of visionaries, sifting the picture of events through a fine sieve. To hide me, my comrades, and my actions from such a toothy crew, only slightly inferior to the Melaretian brethren, even if they have simpler toys instead of the Shoreless Eye, I would be able to do it. Not without difficulty, not without preparation, but I could.

I did not have to, for which we need to thank the same anomaly, which was so lucky to give us a legendary artifact. It is one thing to assume that our faults and mistakes are permanently wiped out but to be sure of it is quite another. The usual methods of the search will not find us without extreme efforts, such as a screening of every resident of the city at least by a legendary specialist. Even the Eternal Empire doesn't have enough resources for such tricks, not to mention the fact that not all of the Empire is concerned with us at all.

We even allowed ourselves to go on shopping, go to taverns and brothels, and other traditional adventurous entertainment. There was little more chance of meeting the investigators who had established a base deep in the last tier of the dungeons and the city magistrate just by walking down the street than sitting owls in our rooms. But there was far less suspicion.

In fact, we never met them - after a couple of days in the dungeons, they found everything they wanted to find and ordered the circus to disperse. However, they had time to give away the elephants to the uninvolved, punish the innocent, praise the incompetent, and just remind everyone who has the biggest dick there.

I had to work hard to gather all the necessary information about the investigation without arousing any suspicions. But there seems to be no adequate, reliable, and mass protection against Dream. Unless there is a high level and natural resistance, along with willpower. It is harder to get into the dreams of such individuals, and it is not so easy to direct the dream in the right direction, and it is difficult to leave something new in their heads, and it is trebly hard to do all this without being noticed. But my own level is good, my talents are terrifying, my power is immense, and my modesty is divine, so I have had success in my research.

What to say?

My very first version, which was "the creature had had enough of sitting around, the creature broke the chain and escaped," turned out to be prophetic. That was the main version, and the invited ritualists and space mages even gave out a very plausible version. According to it, the creature in the Seal was able to synchronize the soul signature of the Army Corps with its own beating. As a result, the Seal stopped working the way it was supposed to and instead began to help its captive squeeze its way home.

The funny thing is both I and Hans, who quickly joined in the discussion, are sure that it really could have done so. If it had a couple of hundred years, just as long as the souls of the martyrs would finally connect with the Trails and, most importantly, the intention to do just that. The entity was too close to natural phenomena to feel any discomfort at all from its imprisonment. Or to feel anything at all.

The official theory did not cancel the suspicions of unofficial ones. The city had survived all these events with suspicious ease. The way Night Brothers were framed for the attack was suspicious. It was agreed that someone in the Magistrate had seized the moment with a common prophecy of several oracles. There was even a candidate, the same "oppositionist" who had been left at the mercy of the legend, by the Mayor (I painted the magistrate in vain). He definitely loses his position. Only he did not expect the legend to flee, but simply a very powerful influx of monsters. The uncle's intuition enhancement perk and some ties to the local urban bottom, though, unprovable also fit in here.

And this man did not take long to dissuade the investigators of their suspicions - they not only did not harm him but also added points. After all, formally, and in fact, he did not do anything that would be contrary to the laws of the Empire, and even his opponents are not framed - they have managed to bury their careers.

The guys were left with a sense of completely solved intrigue, for which I mentally congratulated them and wished them good luck in the future.

In the month it took to recharge and rebuild the overloaded portal again, we diligently did nothing. I was determined not to get caught up in another story. There were still opportunities, the cults, for example, and so I had no doubts about my abilities. I was as bored with feasting as I was with resting, so the group was taking on some low-grade work for the new adventurers.

They would have tried to get us involved in something more serious than hunting a depleted population of monster rats, but there was really nothing to do in Tavimark this winter. We had to crawl down to get the obligatory reports on completed contracts - the guild does not tolerate idlers who take advantage of the preferences given but give nothing in return.

Instead of crawling through the tunnels, setting traps, and scattering baits, we got into a particularly distant and rarely visited corner and had a picnic there. And I caught rats with the shadow sphere, and all I needed was their tails, as if in some game from my pre-isekai life. The tails from these beasts not only served as proof of destruction but were also a good alchemical reagent. I guessed that the heart, liver, and eyes also fit, but they were too cheap and weak to bother with.

For fun, I brewed a weak booster for plus five to perception, even with noticeable side effects, out of these organs taken from the murdered on the quest of fifty rats (can be a little more, a little less, there are no computers, so full accuracy is not required). And let the local alchemists bite their elbows in envy!

In addition to the rat quest, we also helped in the raid on the distorted wolf that came to the walls of the city. He was spotted from the wall but did not shoot in time. Besides us, on this mission were three other groups - who, like us, had nothing to do. So we had to work within the framework of the classes and levels we had announced.

The wolf was found quickly at the behest of Hans, who, even with deliberate restraint, outmatched his fellow trackers, and one of his temporary allies, who specialized in archery, took the wolf down with two well-aimed shots. The first wounded and slowed the wolf down, and the second, already leisurely, pierced the wolf's head through. Quickly disassembled the loot for trophies, we returned to the city. The beast was not too dangerous, despite the sixteenth level. The beast hadn't yet gotten used to the new abilities that made it more than just a beast, so it was a level twelve at most. Plus, we were very lucky to track it down and get in position to shoot it without disturbing the poor thing-it was clean.

Ygra, while we were still kept within the walls of the city, was already finishing destroying the existing targets that I had pointed out to her. In the spring, someone will clearly notice a decrease in the number of aggressive creatures, and those who have ties with the bandit gangs will sound the alarm. I'll be far away by then, so I'm not worried about secrecy, especially since Grzegorz's identity, which was annoying enough to be asked by everyone if he knew a certain Szczepan, will also be scrapped.

Personally, I'm thinking more about whether to try to drag her through the portal with us or leave her here and let her catch up with us on her feet. It wouldn't be hard for her, but it would be fun. Well, normal pleasure, not the kind she gets from hand-jobbing. Lustful green fool, motherfucker!

Originally, of course, the plan was to send her on foot, but now I really have plenty of time and thoughts of varying degrees of idiocy. I'm thinking quite seriously about sneaking her under the scanners. And yes, the scanners in the portal rooms just can't be absent, and neither can the gates. I'd even say those scanning fields are an order of magnitude better in the portal rooms. Everyone passes through gates, and portals are used by the wealthy, who are a priori more interesting, and who know how to hide that "interest" from the scrutinizing eye.

And yet, even before, I did not doubt that I could fool these scanners for the whole group. But it's one thing to have a humanoid, albeit with the essence of a behemoth, Hestia, and quite another thing is Ygra. Ygra is three and a half meters of green muscles and boobs multiplied by an equally green ass. I don't think I can prove it's my pet. If I were declared as a Monstrologist and a legendary class in that branch, I might be able to play from that version. True, given the Swamp Ogre's appearance after my (Ring, but who knows about him?) treatment, my class would just have to suspect elements of a Transformer and some kind of Bimbomancer.

I wonder if there is a Bimbomancer class on Alurei?

After the Whoremancer, I am not surprise about anything, but can I believe in the best?

A quick check through the minds and dreams of the local men in the known, of those who specialize in gathering information on all sorts of classes, as well as the ways to use and/or obtain them, confirmed - no, I can't believe the best, and yes, there is such a class, too. Epic (in some cases even legendary), by the way, is very, very rare and highly respected in the aristocratic milieu. All its holders try to keep it under control and oaths even more than ordinary Slavemancers. In the capital and near-capital circles of the Empire of the Ages, these guys are in steady demand.

It's not even about handling slave girls. It's about much harder and more complex missions. These guys are some kind of elite mental assassins who change a mare's horseshoes at a gallop. That is. They turn the target - most often a woman, but orders for guys are not uncommon - into lustful, submissive, and in love with the customer, preserving skills and abilities.. Or not in love if the goal is not to get someone in bed, but to shame that someone.

Some of their work takes several years so that no one suspects the influence of the slavemancer on the consciousness of the target, which, quite often, is well guarded and generally monitored. Such a specialist is called when you want to turn the bride (or groom) imposed on you into your plaything, although the spouse herself is not going to be a follower in the couple. Or if you want to make a rival in a magical guild, which received a grant, for which you wanted, a public "token-whore" so she was kicked out in disgrace, and you took her place.

In a few years, slowly and gradually, without arousing suspicion, they can turn, say, a high-ranking adventuress into whatever the customer desires. Has the too-smart bitch hurt your high-ranking ass? At first, she starts to read less. Work starts to fall out of her hands, and her head will hurt from her thoughts. Then simpler words will gradually creep into her vocabulary, then words-parasites, then she will stop stressing over small things, and at some point, it will turn out that from a brilliant scientist-ritualist only the former glory remained, and the scientific genius was replaced by concern about cosmetics, clothes, looks and carousing with subsequent debauchery. They say the girl got to the capital, began to live a metropolitan life, and fell out - it happens all the time. Add here the same gradual changes of the body, too, not causing suspicion in its smoothness, and you get what you get.

Hm.

And if you think about it, isn't that the kind of specialist who worked on Hestia for At'orovai's mistress? I'm not so sure about that, but there was a minimum of change, and the smoke was a lot lighter. They could have been punished for undermining the Stone's defenses, so if there was any influence, it was much less and not crippling to a valuable specialist.

To summarize - such guys and girls (note: in this class, which is uncommon, the number of men and women is equal) are feared because their effects, for all their slowness, are very difficult to track, easily mistaken for mere fatigue, a thirst to unwind and this and that. In addition, the former state is practically never restored by any conventional methods. By the time someone hits the alarm, the onset influences are already part of the personality. Without the same rollback of consciousness through Dream or another technique of comparable caliber, reversing such changes would be problematic.

It is not even level or the planar connection that will protect you - long preparation and tuning to a particular personality allows you, up to a certain point, to bypass such sharp corners. It is a well-developed intuition, not a sense of danger or other clairvoyant skills, that saves the day. Actually, against targets with such skills or classes, Bimbomancers either don't work at all, or work with great caution and reluctance, or use partners who can see to jam. And, of course, they try their best to get skills and perks for non-existence.

The name, by the way, came from one of, who would have thought, Summoned. And not a Hero, I might add, but a true Chosen One! The annals still keep a record of him (yet another reason to visit the Eternal Library) and his exploits. The old geezer, a level twenty-seven Scribe in the Magisterium whose memory I dug into, had scarcely scrutinized that biography, sadly. But even the references are enough to feel and rejoice in the fact that this bastard has long rested in agony.

Few people have managed to process an entire elven enclave in such a way that they honestly believed that learning the particularly advanced practices of seducers, banging their husbands and sons into a vegetable-like state (Hestia is not the only one who respects this trick, it turns out) and demanding that the brazen man declare all elves of that enclave his harem (with quite real leverage from such social status) was their own idea. Twenty-five years of preparation and painstaking work, but the result... Such a kick in their swollen pride the elven race doesn't get very often.

This guy gave rise to all the classes of the Bimbo branch: he actually organized an order-school-guild whose splinters still exist today, no matter how hard they try to destroy them. And before him, there were all kinds of masters of subtle, long-lasting, and unobtrusive mental influence. Even my Lord of Dreams and Reflections is capable of such tricks, among other things. Brainiacs, Charmers, Web Creationists, and Re-educators, there were plenty of examples. But it was the Hentai King who shaped the image of the Corrector Class as one that was solely dedicated to debauchery and sexualization, but in which it reached true heights.

It's a good thing the elves were able to kill him, albeit at great cost (which one was not specified). Because the man was clearly one of those who had lost their brakes in childhood and only accelerated from there. However, I would not rule out the very high probability that the story was distorted or, at the very least, did not tell the whole story. Because I, if you think about it, am also a bastard, about whom the annals will not leave anything good if they leave anything at all.

Indeed, it is worth seeking information about him. I'm curious, and his powers were obviously some pumped-up version of what Hestia does, only slower and even more invisible.

In the course of my research on the fellow isekai, I checked out the couple, which consisted of the young and odd-tasting heir to de Mallikat and the love of his life, Doreah Raig. Their relationship developed within the confines of the script I had laid out, in which the life-beating heartbreaker Seductress grew more and more attached to her victim. She was even willing to put him into the deepest trance possible three times to interrogate him about his sudden feelings.

The woman was far from romantic and knew better than anyone that sudden feelings and desires might not quite be yours. In the days when she still cared, she was pretty determined. If Adrian had told her that he was influencing her, say, with some kind of passive aura, she would have been able to overpower herself, suppress her feelings, and wring his neck. But the boy knew nothing, and then Dorea herself had come to terms with the fact that she seemed to have managed to fall in love with her toy and then decided to let her desires free reign and think about problems later.

To mutual satisfaction.

After looking through the gorgeous mirror in her bedroom at the equally gorgeous scene in which this lady was jumping on top of a motionless boy, I left them alone, with only a few adjustments and additions to the construction in her mind. By the way, the guy still had never had regular sex with her. When she wanted to relieve the tension with something harder than her favorite toy's tongue, she would plunge him into a trance, forbid him to cum, and ride him until he was exhausted.

It wasn't that Doreah was so obsessed with controlling a guy and his release. She just wanted the first time she let him take her to be something extreme and without any seduction techniques, triggers, or behavioral constructs. She had a very specific notion of love, and I would have felt sorry for poor Adrian if he hadn't enjoyed his position more than his "mistress".

I bet the other day she'll talk to him normally, without mind control, and try to ask his opinion about all this. She is aware of his attitude toward her and her control, but she would still like to hear confirmation that he consciously lets her do what she does to him. Although, if he suddenly changes his mind, I doubt she'll just let him go - her feelings aren't going anywhere.

I'll have to check on this couple from time to time.

I was going to have to check on Taria now, and I don't want to leave the recovering Hestia out of my sight, either, or she might take offense. She wouldn't allow herself any remarks, but she'd look indifferent-offended, as strange as that might sound. And I am not so sadistic as to offend a poor and unhappy (because of the fact that she got in touch with me) woman... albeit a behemoth.

The month went on and on, and I continued to do nothing. I wandered around Dream, visiting acquaintances and trying to create a permanent characteristics booster from the reagents brought to me in the tavern dishes. So far, it wasn't working, even though I was really trying. My companions, when they found out what I was doing and what I was transferring my food, stared at me for a long time, shook their heads, and walked away in silence. I think I heard the sound of the skull banging against the wall in the distance, but I can't say for sure.

I taught Ygra the vocabulary, but it wasn't very effective. No, at my present level of skill, I could easily cram the entire vocabulary into her skull in a couple of nights. But this child of nature simply did not want to use even learned words, sincerely considering them banal unnecessary, and superfluous. She can say more with one "Y!" than I can with three dozen phrases.

It would be easy to change this attitude toward learning, and surprisingly easy--she trusted me so much, so used to letting me into her dreams, her soul, that she wouldn't even resist when I started to change her. Except it would be the same murder of personality as the work of some slavemancer. My triggers, set before the Kraj, have altered her enough to strengthen her addiction to pleasure to the point of being almost narcotic and to sprout in her mind so that to uproot them would be worse than to break and rebuild them.

I had to let my very first victim of the Ring decide for herself what she wanted out of life and how she would achieve it, if only on the scale of what I let her do, only in the direction I was going myself. Typical me - first make a mess and then sit on the sidelines and start watching everyone else clean up after me. That sounds familiar.

You can laugh with me, but if the Ring's binds come off her right now, she won't even notice it - my actions and her craving for pleasure have trained Ygra enough to keep her from becoming my enemy for sure. Except that, in that case, she would be much more active in trying to drag me into the bushes, either using her abilities to do so or simply brutalizing me with pure physical force. Hit with a stick and into the cave.

The work with Cassi-Who-My-Friend had almost stopped because I had taken all the available information from him, and neither he nor his sources knew anymore. And the necromancer himself was busy right now - pumping through the undead and creating new undead to replace the lost ones required him to be constantly present, albeit only mentally. He even had almost no time to sleep now. He had to work for several days in a row, break for a couple of hours of sleep and then work again. Some specifics of the necromancer pumping, but he saw a great opportunity to take the new and useful title right now, so he didn't want to be distracted.

Instead, I watched the drunken monk, who was getting pretty tough, but still hesitant to take even kefir in his mouth. Since the second time I went under his disguise, he had never been in a situation where he had to use a "drunken attack". But he had managed to get into a relationship, and when I say "get into a relationship," I mean it.

His paramour, the swordswoman with the huge collection of strange hats, to whom I had once sent erotic dreams, had taken the signs of her consciousness for something important and had decided to let "this fool" win her heart. Especially in view of the fact that the dream I had sent her (she was running after him with a sword when he woke her up!) had managed to latch on in her mind and was now, at times, repeated in different variations without my help.

The main misfortune of the monk named Josef was that this beauty sincerely believed that relationships should develop as in love novels. If I hadn't seen it in her mind, I would have thought it impossible to have such a weird binge, but come on. I don't understand women well at all - it's not for nothing that I used to sit on the 4chan.

Flowers, the theater, cozy restaurants, and taverns, the requirement to memorize poems and read them to her under the moon, and other stuff became Josef's constant companions. Contrary to public opinion, she did not push him around or take advantage of him, but this did not make him any less miserable.

Flowers were all right, for he made good money at his level, very good money but the poems, theaters, and other crap that rich and educated people invented to punish themselves for being rich and educated, made him want to go look for a Bigfoot forest. That monster, though scary, but you can hit it on the head and, in theory, kill it with these blows. And you can't even burn a book of classical poetry because it's borrowed!

Well, at least she's beautiful.

The merchant from Ostmark - the Weaver's creatures had already left without finding anything - not only sucked on her assistant, but she was working her way up the ranks of Ostmark's elite quickly and with great determination. Yes, a small achievement, for she was nothing in the capital and remained nothing, but the fact itself pleases her. So are the profits, the lucrative contracts, the connections that come with them, the expansion of her business, and, of course, her assistant so good at relieving tension.

In the days since the assassination attempt, she has learned perfectly well not to think about who her unknown savior is, why he saved her, and how he affects her mind. It's not that she doesn't enjoy sucking her assistant's dick, but it does get her mind off things and keeps her from working properly. Not for her, not for him.

The only reason I visited these guys was to check on Ostmark itself. And, to be more precise, the traces left by my enemy's beasts. Alas, this was a complete failure, for the creature was excellent, fantastic at cleaning up the aftermath of his actions. The only thing I could do was to sigh, bypass a few alarms left by his pack just in case, and crawl back to myself. The only positive things I could do were to check on the health of my wards and to quietly eliminate a few of their ill-wishers. So far, they were not planning a murder, but they were messing around with administrative resources.

Since they could not be called good people physically, even without the occasional practical application of ritual black magic, I nailed them. Quietly and inconspicuously, they died falling headfirst against the wall several times in a row. Both of them. And the guards also found the last unfortunate victim, who was sitting in the basement. And when they also found a camouflaged ritual circle that had been soiled for years, they immediately forgot all about the cause of death, turning their attention to the search for a possible cult. Kraj, if anything, is very close.

The conclusion said something about a possible sweep by the more skilled warlocks, but everyone glanced at the enigmatically grinning merchant. No one dared ask, however, not even the guards, who were also beginning to fear the aunt. And return the money to "start" on her case about all the same black magic. Only to her, unlike the deceased, the ritual dagger was going to be planted.

On second thought, Ygra was still sent on foot. Although, he abandoned the cunning plan at the very last moment. For an ogre, even such a distance is two or three weeks of leisurely running through forests, fields, and marshes. With such stealth can only accidentally notice her someone developed to a level comparable to mine, but such characters alone without an entourage do not walk, and certainly, Ygra will not rush on too strong guys. She'll make it in a week if she's up to it, but what's she going to do then, near the capital? It's fun, and at least it's some kind of pumping.

And I had a good plan, a good, strong one!

And I had a good plan, a good, strong one! Well, the plan is a slang word for MJ in Russian.

To process an entire branch of the Transporter Guild, which is engaged in the delivery of all sorts of unique cargo. A kind of Statham on steroids, but without a car. So, to process these guys, convincing them that in the capital, some crazy aristo ordered a specially for his home zoo a piece of swamp. That is, a thousand-and-fifty-liter pool filled with water, slime, and waders, and make sure it comes straight from the swamp!

And so these guys, scowling menacingly, will drag this container to the portal. There, they'll scan it in all the spectrums and read the bill of lading, which the Transporters will make themselves, believe it to be real, and let us through. Because, you won't notice a marsh ogre hiding in a piece of swamp, especially if you cover it with a steal of shadow. And in the capital, this pool will be delivered to some inconspicuous corner, where the ogre will get out, shake off and go hide in the nearest park. Swim in the pond, catch ducks, and all that. In the meantime, I'll fix the porter's memory, so they'll think it's some froufrou peacock who took his order and paid for it. I'll even pay!

Unfortunately, the team did not understand my plan and began to talk me out of it with their joint efforts. It seemed dangerous to them to keep Ygra inside the city walls, where there were a lot of alarms, barriers, and closed fields, not to mention the regular artifact and ritual scanning. Even Ygra could be spotted, especially in the park, where even members of the imperial family sometimes stroll near the ponds. They would be surprised to see a new inhabitant of this closed ecosystem. They also pointed out the necessity of feeding the ogre and the fact that I don't give her people to eat, and no derelict cow carcasses are lying around anywhere in the city. Ygra is a big girl, she needs to eat a lot, and she can get her food, for example, by robbing a grocery store, but that's a risk.

In general, they talked me out of it.

They lost the spirit of adventurism.

The money was paid, the scan was passed, and the disguise was preliminarily maximized because I feared that the scanners in the portal rooms were more powerful at the entrance to the Eternal, and I might temporarily lose control of the disguise after I left the transference. For the sake of this, I even had to use Creation on my companions for the first time.

One, maximally processed and dissected Shadows planted in the shadow of each of them. One more, to cover Valerium and Generator. There are as many as six separate ones on the shining sword, constantly alternating between them so they don't burn. These creatures are so devoid of their usual instincts, so twisted from the eternally evil essence of the Shadows that they will last only a couple of hours. During that time, they can perform the only function for which they were killed and re-created: to maintain and rebuild the structure of stolen shadows, interwoven with the same Creation.

It should work because all my premonitions do not see any trouble in the future.

And if not, I did the best I could.

With these thoughts, I stand in the specified place on the slab painted with many separate ritual circles, which merge into a single arch-complex structure. I nod to my comrades-in-arms, and then I only have time to inhale the air, which has become strangely stuffy - from the magical energy that filled the room to the ceiling - and close my eyes.

The transfer through the portal, I mean normal transfer, through a normal portal, was much easier and more pleasant than my amusement with entering the Stone Room. The familiar feeling of glass scratching against my shell didn't disappear, but now the glass wasn't deadly sharp but smooth, like glass balls. The disguise, however, was damaged, a feature which was obviously deliberately reinforced, and if it hadn't been for the Shadows that had been created, it might have been disabled for a couple of moments. I didn't prepare it for anything, not at all.

The world flashed and re-created itself.

The air was still overflowing with magic, but it was different now.

And the city was different, too.

Well hello, Eternal.

Let's see how long your lauded eternity lasts after you meet me.

* * *