*

  Stepan left the vilge without looking back. He turned it into ashes, first summoning the spirits of fme, then skillfully burning everything hiding in the fire traces of the battle and changes in the energy of the pce. The fmes weren't the most ordinary ones either. Specific spirits, in the essence of the fme, who had entered by the will of the shaman, burned the energetic and spiritual trace. It would be clear that something strange had happened here, even the weakest gifted person would feel the burned-out background, but it was still impossible to hide the traces of the battle. So the young man decided not to try to hide the fact of the event, wiping out all traces with maximum demonstrativeness. And he didn't want to remove the monument to the inhabitants of Bzdy, and it alone would give away the abnormality of this pce like a parachute dragging behind a spy. The picture of his preparation was completed by the spirits of wind and smoke, which simply carried the smoke in parts to far distances so the column of cinders going into the sky was not visible, this column was not formed.

  The young man, tired mentally and physically, went away with another teleport based on an air sphere. He literally scattered with a pile of small tornadoes and gathered six kilometers to the southwest, right next to the beacon prepared in advance and sent by the world of spirits. The only evacuator with sufficient stealth, range, and control even during the battle. Only one disadvantage, too, but a cross-cutting one: you have to stand completely still for at least five to seven minutes to activate the transference. After another trip through the spirit world in his own body, albeit under the cover of the spirit that was dragging him along, and after admiring his newly grown experience bar, he called to action a new group of concealers of trace and impressions and began to move away from the burning Bzds in a hurry. He didn't fear for the forest and the fire, knowing that the self-destructive and maximally impersonal circuit he'd prepared would keep the fmes from spreading beyond its boundaries and that he'd wipe himself out in the fmes.

  The further path was extremely utilitarian and even routine. The shaman was not engaged in pumping or searching for new spirits, only summoning and renewing the contracts of concealing entities. The assignments were exclusively tiny, with penny rewards, and therefore, for the most part, rejected. Stepan did not see the need for those rewards and did not want to pull an extra load. Two new items from the System Store fshed by in passing, both of which he skipped without buying or bookmarking. A potion from the Autogoddess that caused a very rapid Source enhancement, ensuring that he, with his current stats, would reach at least twelve to fourteen units just by training, without regard to level-ups or other rewards, managing it in about a year to a year and a half. As a side effect, increased suggestibility, slightly increased vulnerability to charms, and permanent and unheable in any way until at least twenty years have passed, a distortion in the aura that causes a near-trance and very docile state whenever after sex. The second item was not Autodivine, but also unnecessary. A reagent, again of the kind that was too valuable for an ordinary offering, but too heavy for Stepan to summon something for which such a reagent would be worth spending. A few grains of sand sealed in a tightly insuted fsk, which was itself a relic, were literally filled with the elusive and all-pervasive power of Time. He had no one to sell such a thing to, as with all the other items, and he would simply not be able to use such a gift of the System properly.

  Stepan stopped only when he came to another natural magical source, this time of light orientation with a mixture of aspects of nature. There he performed one more small assignment, to subdue a very territorial and aggressive spirit, which guarded this source from foreign cims, reliably subduing and binding it. Not forever. He didn't really need this spirit, who would lose much of his usefulness in separation from the source, but for the time Stepan was here. He took his time and covered the small clearing with flowers and shimmering glimmers of sunlight visible to the simple eye with protective amulets. Then he repeated the same thing but with masking amulets. Called a few guardian spirits, one more spirit, of the strong, which sheltered from unconventional methods of search on the spiritual imprint, and only then lit a fire with previously collected wood and began to fry sausages on that fire. The sausages tasty squirming on the fme and giving off an incredibly tantalizing aroma, were bought through the Store and made from the meat of animals raised on a strong source. They were fed with special alchemy and conducted through the necessary rituals.

  According to the descriptions, for the next couple of weeks, he was practically invulnerable to weak curses and mental influences, and could also go without eating for about the same amount of time without the slightest side effects or fatigue build-up. Then, having pleased his gluttony, the young man y on a bedded cloak and passed out for a day and a half, simply sleeping through the whole time, without dreams, reveries, or nightmares. When Stepan woke up, he y down for another half a day, until nightfall, staring at the starry sky and thinking about the fact that he was so tired of constantly getting into some extraordinary ass. Development remained put on hold. Quests forgotten. Even progression didn't really matter to him right now. He didn't even want to think and analyze everything that had happened, no, he just wanted to rest, to let himself tune in to his own condition and get ready for important decisions.

  He didn't reach for Sylvia's doll, and he tried not to think about it too often, though it didn't work out so well. He'd shit himself phenomenally, of course, in every sense of the word except the most literal. Yes, he could say a lot of things in his defense, about the fact that the creature had begun to affect him almost as soon as his blood had spilled over its hiding pce, feeding the bound prisoner and opening a pathway to his head. He could argue that he had been busy, that he had dealt with the enemy first, then the trio of hunters, and then assimited the added knowledge and dealt with the deed. He could even admit to himself that he was very seriously and powerfully hurt, that the situation with the forced mass burial had gotten to his heart, that his morality had cracked when he had buried that pair of ghouls who had been killed by his own hand, who had turned out to be small children. After all, in normal situations, even after the massacre at the call clearing, he preferred to postpone promotions until the moment of maximum convenience, rather than rush headlong into the maelstrom.

  But then it was he who was threatened with death, everything depended on him, he was saving himself, and he had to deal only with the enemy who had come for his life. To bury people who were not involved at all, who could not be saved, and who fell because the enemy of the shaman was too strong and prepared.... it was something completely different. So different, in fact, that he wanted to press the system message and immerse himself in absorbing knowledge, just to avoid remembering and thinking about this shit.

  All of it, together and separately, affected him enough to make him forget his caution, to start making small and stupid mistakes, to get hooked. Then again, the vampiress herself was affecting him, pressing through his blood, shattering his confidence, and lowering his cognitive abilities. In a different situation, he probably would have reacted differently and started sweeping the vilge for traces at once, finding the captive as well. She would have been able to convince him not to kill her, but she certainly wouldn't have been able to get out of a very strong oath, a contract specific to working with bloodsuckers. In a different situation, things would have been different, but just the same, things might have stayed the same. Stepan was the kind of man who tried to learn from his own mistakes, and at least not fall for the same trick twice. But he wasn't in the habit of daydreaming about how smart and cool he would have been if he'd known everything in advance if he hadn't succumbed to a bad mood, and if he'd been twenty levels higher.

  He had failed and made many small mistakes that added up to a big failure, which an experienced, cunning, and skillful creature with an extremely seductive body had managed to take advantage of, fucking the young man both figuratively and literally. Well, you can only shake your head, imagine what Rodisv Gastoldovich Yanin would say to him on this failure, before sending him for a retest, and also rejoice that he was bewitched, subjugated, and fucked by a beautiful and luxurious, what can be said, woman, and not some pale-skinned handsome man with very progressive tastes. To be gd that he got out of that mess, and then to start doing everything he could to avoid repeating that very situation. After his encounter with Truda and her daughter, he seriously reworked his methods of detecting impurities in food and even the air, then paranoid methodically tested any food and drink taken from other people's hands. After Shera's lesson in the proper attitude to curses, he no longer allowed thoughts of freely dealing with his subtle bodies and allowing other people's energies into them, and strengthened his defenses against curses or other influences, even if they were divine miracles. Especially if it was about them.

  As, but Sylvia Malter seemed to have used not something mediocre, but the best of her tricks, literally the strongest and most practiced trump card. Stepan had had time to look at her aura and memory through the doll. He knew that this bloodsucking and not only “blood” dy could influence consciousness in many ways. He knew that everything would have gone differently, if she had decided to use something else, or even to supplement with this other already existing blood connection. Her scarlet eyes could, in active mode, mesmerize and put him into a trance, but would only meet the spirits looking through his, Stepan's, eyes, provoke attack and anger at the perfidy used. Her voice might sound ingratiating and hypnotizing, but the shaman sheltered by the spirits of winds and meanings would easily filter every word, hear exactly what was needed and no more. The skill of the visions, something like cssical mentalism mixed with the magic of illusions and curses, would stumble upon a single plural consciousness capable of controlling dozens or even more spirits at once, and once stumbled upon, this skill would crash like waves against a rocky shore.

  As, Sylvia was a smart, cautious, and damnably experienced creature. She was well aware that any suspicion of her would lead to disruption and attack from her still-uncontrolled prey, so she didn't use anything else. Only blood, only power over it and the one who gave it to her. Stepan looked for a way to repel such a move with his own forces under the same conditions and found none. He needed to either be aware of the impact, not waste time in internalizing the knowledge or simply not spill his blood for her. In the current state, not knowing about the attack, and even presenting the most perfect possible mediator of influence... no, it was too te to do anything. Which meant only one thing - he had to rebuild the concept of mind defense again, for the umpteenth time. On the one hand, he was gd that he, a failed and captured enemy, was not killed on the spot, but on the other hand, the fact that in this world all sorts of beauties are trying to fuck an isekai right in the brains was a little tense. Or not a little. Tense, yes. It made him think. Not good ones.

  However, thoughts are for thinkers, but he is by nature a pure practitioner. So he intends to correct his weaknesses by practical actions, not to let a humiliating and deadly situation repeat itself. Certainly not the same situation. There were a lot of options for defense. Even more were invented, but the problem, as always, was with the embodiment of the pn. It would be desirable, of course, to create a kind of system guardian, which would track any, even the smallest changes in his mind and, in case of arm, will instantly clean the mind, roll back the impact, and would also transport Stepan several kilometers away from the danger of being mentally compromised. As, it's not that all this is completely impossible, there are ways, and if not, they will appear with further pumping. The problem is that such a rge-scale and powerful defense will not be used all the time. Aura will get tired, forced to be in constant tension, powerful spirits on the most brutal contract, monitoring the integrity of gray matter, will begin to negatively affect the spirit of the shaman, if they are really powerful. You can't, you just can't stuff yourself into a completely impenetrable cocoon for too long.

  But that doesn't mean you can't try, does it? Instead of something monolithic and absolute, and therefore absolutely impossible, it is worthwhile to approach it from the other side, to remember that back on Earth it was customary to eat the elephant in small pieces. To select defense modules for a specific impact, to regurly change this defense properly, to adjust it to the conditions of the situation and the possible enemy - nothing is impossible even at the current level. This works not only with mental defense but with any other kind of defense. It's just that brain defense is the most problematic and demanding because you can't just put your brain in absolute stasis, otherwise you won't be able to think. That's why, creating a rough pn for the upcoming changes of defense contracts, Stepan divided these defenses into groups - tracking the impact, early warning, blocking hard blows, putting obstacles for weak and gradual blows, complicating the reading of the aura, and mental body, finding the key through this defense, regur reshuffling of defense yers, disguising the defense as less complex. He had time to think about a lot of things, and even though Stepan couldn't do everything right off the bat, he made notes and pns, entered them into his system notebook, and was determined to put them into practice.

  Later.

  Because at this point, he was fully prepared for a much more important and even momentous action. The choice of specialization of the main css. After stretching, drinking water, eating porridge made from the bought and still miraculously survived cereal, and looking at the indifferent heavens, the young man resolutely looked into the depths of his essence and pressed the corresponding image, initiating the choice of the subcss. He was very much afraid that this choice would become automatic because his most developed side was and still was precisely charming bullshit mixed with vulgar brainiac tricks - all by the will of auto-divine gifts. To his deepest moral satisfaction, the choice was not automatic, but the chooser himself was given several options. Stepan was lying rexed on a bed of insuted cloak, id on top of loosened and dry earth, drinking a fruit cocktail. In fact, it was alchemical, strengthening auric nodes, but the main reagent was exactly that magic fruit, and there were no side properties. Time after time he utilizes the reference, trying not to miss a single moment, not a crumb of information.

  There were six options in total, which, from the shaman's point of view, was not just good, but even excellent. He was afraid that this option would be the only one. And all six options, even the one offered by the Autogoddess herself, were at least not bad, and even good, excellent even. Thoughts were spinning in circles. The help had not revealed anything new for a long time, and the shaman continued to think intensely, choosing, pondering, changing his mind, and coming back to the same one again. His choices were much harder this time than they had been on the very first day of the hit. He didn't understand much then, so he just chose the one that seemed the most suitable for him. However, he had rejected a special css specifically for the other Stepan. And the longer one lives in this world, even survives, the more often and more persistently one thinks the world deserves its Fatty.

  The first option was “Spirit Caster”, an advanced version of an ordinary, albeit Senior Shaman, which was firmly and qualitatively connected with witchcraft practices. Choosing this direction would automatically increase his main witch skill, that is, working with the territory, by one point and additionally open some other, also specific witch-shaman block of knowledge, and at once at the level of advanced base. In addition, will be added one witch property, which will not give characteristics, but, otherwise, will be only slightly inferior to elite properties for levels divisible by ten. Reduced requirements in the characteristics to pump witch skills, will open whole groups of previously hidden talents, which can be safely pumped in normal mode. To all of this will be added one random witch's minor knowledge, and if it becomes the caliber of “locking paths”, it is already very good.

  The main thrust of this css modification is just honed in on a combination of witchcraft, territorial magic, and cssic shamanism, but shamanism obviously still comes first. The reduced requirements for witch knowledge and properties are certainly welcome, but it's not directly that great. He'll just be able to bring witchcraft to advanced proficiency, much like shamanic calls, with all the same characteristics. In fact, this subcss simply puts shamanism and witchcraft on the same level, with the prospect of either bancing the importance of both or leaving shamanism behind and moving on to witchcraft altogether. Given the fact that his most powerful attack is personal, and not through a summoned entity and that it retes to witchcraft in no small measure, the power of this direction is understandable. Yes, witchcraft is sluggish. Unless we are talking about something from the category of minor knowledge hammered to the maximum skill. It takes a long time to harness. It is demanding to the conditions of cast and costly to reserve if those conditions are not observed. In defense, again, it often slips, especially in the early stages and without the ability to lean on its territory. But it is also extremely flexible. Its attacks are difficult to repel, and if you have that very support and long training, you can do wonders, producing a level that high and refined cssical magic with comparable strengths can not achieve.

  It could not, obviously, do without the disadvantages of this choice. First, Stepan will have to properly invest in another direction, instead of deepening shamanism. This isn't a bad thing, because the synergy of knowledge isn't going anywhere, but for a while, before he develops witchcraft, the increase in levels won't enhance it as much as it could before. That wouldn't be a problem, though, because he'd already reached the limit of his characteristics in the main branches anyway. He'd have to choose a new direction. How is witchcraft worse than others? This is where the second thing comes in. Witchcraft is almost always very territorial, and the root skill of this direction, thanks to which Stepan got access to this subcss, is completely tied to the territory. This is a constraint and limitation, because without the ability to create a pce of power, witchcraft practice loses a lot, becoming more of a nice bonus than the basis of power. Of course, he had already created a pce of power for himself with his own hands, even if not literally, but it was one thing to create such a structure near a small vilge, and quite another to work near a rge city where he wanted to move.

  What's also important here is that a totem clearing can be quite compact, even if it's treated with territorial magic, but a witch's bond with earth control... covers a lot more territory. For those who can look, it shines noticeably brighter. Agent work allows you to hide the capture of territory, to blur the presence of your will into a ghostly haze that you can't find unless you look specifically, but it's still a problem. A problem that can be partially or even completely solved by investing a talent or two in agent methods, but the fact itself cannot be ignored. There were other obstacles and other bottlenecks, but they were just trifles, which are not difficult to overcome by methodical work or banal training.

  “Caller of Spirits” offered even more, but demanded no less. This subcss specialized in summoning and treaties with very powerful entities, focusing not on a crowd of small and strong spirits properly selected and reinforcing each other, but on powerful elders or even higher spirits. The cap for spiritual dialog was lowered, allowing you to move up a rank before time, one shamanic property of the pre-elite type was added, one additional knowledge tied to working with strong entities, and work with contracts was increased by two points at once. As a bonus, two random minor knowledge contracts with elder entities, and full contracts, not like the gifts of Her Milfness. However, the tter was not surprising, because contractual interaction was almost the root of specialization.

  Yes, this choice opened up quite real prospects to summon even the highest spirits even before becoming a master-higher himself, but the fee for such a thing also increased, and the rate itself increased. As every erudite gifted person knows, in a usual situation a shaman, as an archetype, speaks with spirits from the position of an equal, holding a bargain. Yes, it happens in different ways. Someone can be kicked to work, paying with the fact that he will not be killed. Some will have to give you what you've asked for, and some may cheat you out by putting you to death or trying to eat you while you're bargaining. When choosing the specialization “Caller”, obviously, the shaman will have to yield much more strongly, not as an equal with an equal, but falling into a subordinate position, even if the degree of that subordination is very variable.

  The subcss emphasizes that the deals made impose on the shaman reciprocal obligations, regur sacrifices, certain tasks in the spiritual reflection of the higher realms, and so on. For example, every few moons it will be necessary to go on a deep raid through the spiritual world, supporting the spirits of allied aspects or destroying those whose aspects the patron-high does not like. All sorts of rituals, certain types of calls, various concessions, prohibitions, or mandatory actions for specific situations. It's not yet priesthood as such, rather like a contract job, where the office clerk of a rich uncle is the shaman himself, not his spirit. In payment for the same opportunity to call as a higher entity in case of dire need which is comparable if not to the request to strike a radioactive yaoi, then with the call of the attack squad of missile carriers from the deck of the nearest aircraft carrier. We should also not forget about access to the summons of a considerable number of smaller entities allied in terms of aspects and spheres, which will go to the shaman's call with much greater willingness, almost without requiring payment.

  With the same Old Root, a mutual agreement of respect is almost guaranteed. Even in spite of the dark and nasty nature of the supreme spirit of dark nature. But it is much more difficult to break such contracts, even after paying all the penalties. Especially taking into account Stepan's mania to take as little responsibility as possible and to pay for all possible support in advance, knowing in advance what he can and cannot afford in case of need. It was probably the most unsuitable option for an earthling, even if it was not to sign a contract with a terrible shit, but with an entity of a kinder and calmer nature. He, thank the admins and the system, knew perfectly well what the higher spirits were, how different and alien they were, to get into a network of obligations in their respect, even if those obligations were three hundred times mutual.

  “Enchanter of Passions”, as it is easy to guess just by the name of the subcss, appeared in the list of options by the bors of one Greatest Milf and it was, in fact, not so bad as it might seem. Automatic increase of charms, suggestion, and puppetry by one rank, pre-elite property as a gift, lowering the threshold for charms and suggestion with the ability to raise them above the advanced master level on the current characteristics. As a bonus from Her personally, five small contracts knowledge to senior spirits, and those senior spirits had a very broad scope of the contract, albeit one that necessarily involved vulgarities and brainwashing beautiful women. As a very special gift - another small knowledge with the contract of the senior spirits, albeit also all the same direction. The description of the subcss was completed by new branches of talents, unlocking some of the branches of the old ones, and increasing the effectiveness of the charm practices in general.

  In fact, despite the grimace on Stepan's face, it was not a bad option or path. There was even a certain concept that required a focus on illusions, and mind blows, as well as minimizing direct combat contact. Pick a target, pick the keys to the defense, open the defense, and hit the target. You can not even lewdly, but just to death because the same curses will also reduce the requirement for stats to pump. In principle, if it weren't for his personal preferences, as well as the annoying tendency to find himself face-to-face with the enemy, he might have given it some serious thought. A quiet, calm, methodical, and gradual approach was not alien to Stepan, and he would have preferred to gain levels in this way or, if necessary, to eliminate his enemies. But in terms of combat, this kind of training would not strengthen him at all, though it would not weaken him either, and the masters of climbing into other people's heads and hearts have a well-deserved reputation, and everyone around them does not mind to sp them in the face.

  He was much more interested in the subcss, the images of which were formed not only in the “Comprehending Spirit”, or “Spiritual Master”, for this direction opened a lot of interesting prospects. Automatically increased “spiritual operation”. The restrictions were removed from it, allowing one to pump it up a bit more right after the promotion: not an advanced skill, of course, but still very tempting. No less tempting was the discovery of another knowledge from the branch of controlling one's own spirit in the moments of calls and interactions with other entities. Also with the promotion to the advanced base. Complementing this was the promise to improve one of the current properties, namely “spiritual transformation”, although not adding stats, but improving control over modifying the spiritual body, expanding this control and modifying it in every way possible. In addition to this, another minor knowledge of a random type, as well as lowering the characteristic limit on those skills that deal with out-of-body travel and methods of fighting spirits in their native habitat.

  The subcss, in fact, emphasized working with one's own spirit in and out of the body, as well as working with the indwelling of other entities within oneself, which were in many ways reflections of the same approach. This subcss promised a very serious power boost for direct face-to-face conflict. Now that he had been in a few trouble, he was no longer categorically negative about this approach. Practice had shown that it was not enough just not to pn to fight with someone, others needed not to want to fight with you. However, the “Spiritual Master” was not only good for fighting. It also accelerated the work with the remaking of his spirit, allowed you to interact with the spheres and travel through them better, as well as, importantly, did not cut off the existing directions. Stepan wouldn't mind being able to fight off strong spirits himself or put a senior spirit inside himself to use it to tear his enemies' asses on the British fg.

  No, except for jokes, if he could work so fully with the indwelling, to easily withstand the neighborhood with a specialized senior spirit, specializing specifically on fighting in the body of a shaman, then the fight with vampires had all chances to go very differently and certainly, the small loli would not be able to open him like a fish with one swing of her bde. It requires reserve, diligence, and self-control, as well as control in general - you can hand over the task to the spirits and not worry about it, but then why transform yourself so deeply?

  An honorable fifth on the list was the introduction of the Master of Totems. If you summarize its imagery as much as possible it promises at once a dual increase in totem mastery, a boost in one rank of puppetry, territorial magic and working with sources, and another property, as in past cases, pre-elite. On top of that are two random minor knowledge from the specialization branch and a general reduction in the upgrade requirements for a number of talents. A direction from the ones that offer quite a few, yet are almost immediately rejected after realizing exactly what they offer. The lion's share of the strengths of this subcss are revealed only after you bind yourself to a single pce that will be the backbone of your power, and this binding is even tighter than that of the Spirit Caster!

  Working with totems, envolts, territory, and magical sources was at the top of the list in this case, allowing you to turn yourself into a nightmare, even if not too mobile. On the other hand, why such mobility, if with sufficient support you can safely take and start hitting even on another continent, even on the guest who came to the gates of the private house? Distant influences did not increase when taking the subcss directly, but the limit of their development also increased, and the requirements decreased, so bring the knowledge to the level of mastery, create the necessary configuration of totems-lenses, and shoot over the horizon, right until the enemy is not over. The transformation is not just a rocket uncher, but an entire military base, which can neither be pulled down, nor moved, nor even frightened, unless you apply much more strength than a lone shaman has at all.

  The disadvantage, as usual, stems from the advantages. The strictest attachment to the territory, at the level when outside of it you become stupidly weak, is not necessary, but without it, most of the bonuses from such tactics become homeopathic. Maybe, if Stepan had the opportunity to buy himself some magic tower on a rge and ancient source of magic, he would not refuse such pumping. But, as, the world today is such that to buy himself a tower will not work, not for money or not for their own, but those who want to take this money will run from the door and to the horizon. The only thing that remains is to try to squeeze the pce of power, well, force, but even if this happens, there will come those who will say their weighty “no fucking messing around here”, and already with them earthman can not cope with so far. It is possible, of course, to enter society, to take someone's position, to gain the support of the tower owner's enemies, to intrigue like a Machiavelli-reading politician, but, to tell the truth, it is easier to try to find a wild source, to destroy or subdue its keepers, and then to build a new city there by his efforts.

  The st, sixth, section of this attraction of unheard-of generosity was “Talented Senior Shaman”, which embodied the most universal approach possible. It increased four random knowledge, gave two more random small knowledge, reduced the characteristic requirements for all talents by two or three characteristics, increased the overall affinity with high spheres, and did a lot of other small useful things. In fact, this subcss simply improved the existing one, without any clear distortions in development, without requiring special approaches or radical changes in tactics. The young man was absolutely sure that this subcss would be offered to him in any situation, no matter what talents he developed.

  However, this choice, which Stepan had been looking through the reference longer than any other, was not as good as it might seem. It did not give cardinal improvements, all its bonuses remained not very rge, small, or useful, but limited. If Stepan didn't want to change anything in his development, if he thought that he was developing himself perfectly well as it was, then this was the subcss he would have chosen without a second thought. As, he couldn't say such a thing about himself without twisting his soul, but there was no objective reason to put aside such a good option.

  "All right, all right, let's go by the method of exclusion, shall we?" The young man, feeling like a donkey from a parable, muttered, “We'll choose not what we want, but what we don't want."

  And the first such option, even ahead of the Autodivine direction, was “Caller”, simply because of the excessive density of contacts and obligations that will have to hang on themselves. Yes, to receive a number of useful and necessary calls is great. Open the way to work with the higher spirits, while remaining just a senior shaman? That's great! Getting analogs of sphere marks, only customized for a specific retinue of a particur spirit of a particur type and sphere? Also not bad. But for all this will have to pay, to answer for the gift, essence, and soul, and such responsibility is not for Stepan. He's still young, call an adult. No, if you put aside the jokes, the subcss is very good, if the young man was a local shaman, without a system and prospects, he could well think about it, to look for an entity lighter and not particurly hungry for human flesh. But, having all the opportunities to reach the level when you talk to the higher ones from the position of more or less equal, it is foolish to leave such a path for the sake of immediate profit, especially if the entrance costs a penny, and the exit will cost a suitcase full of green papers.

  The second option discarded was, amazingly enough, the Enchanter of Passions, and not because it was a choice that would please Her Milfness. May it have improved his opinion of her. Let her have saved his if not his life, then his personal freedom, but it was the only option that didn't suit him at all. Too specific an approach to development, relying on those spirits, which are difficult to imagine in battle or other useful activities. Yes, these spirits will help to hide and not be found, but hiding alone will not work, and the moral issue remains quite active. To seriously and thoroughly pump up within the subcss, one would have to work at least some profile, and this profile is not to Stepan's liking to the extent that it would be better to switch to hand-to-hand combat and beat enemies with boots on the teeth.

  In the third pce, the shaman refused the “Master of Totems”. The young man thought about this option for a really long time, but, having finished thinking about it, he crossed out the option without any doubts. All this time he avoided those types of influences and calls that would bind him to a certain pce. He saw no reason to change his pns now. Looking around and realizing that there was no elf queen with big breasts who would offer him a piece of nd in the elven nds, access to a strong source, personal practice, patronage, and other “rice bowl plus cat-wife”, he sighed sorrowfully at such injustice and crossed the option off the list of interesting ones. It was simply stupid to agree to anything less and start binding. And no one would give him what he wanted without putting a colr around his neck, even if it was soft and had a lot of rhinestones.

  After much deliberation, and not without a squeak of his greed, Stepan rejected Talented Senior Shaman. It was a very middle-of-the-road choice that gave nothing but a one-time boost with a few random bits of knowledge. He could achieve such a thing on his own in just a few months of practice, and lowering the requirements for the same spirit from twenty-two units to nineteen was still ridiculous. He still had to pump and pump his magic muscle to nineteen. If this subcss had allowed him to choose one or two talents where the requirements were reduced in a really significant way, he would have grabbed the option with all his limbs. But if his grandmother had a dick, she would have turned out to be a disguised grandfather or just a non-binary person.

  SpoilerT.N. There is a proverb: If grandma had balls, she would be a grandpa. Used when someone says they could do X if they had Y.

  [colpse]So Stepan was left with two options, each of which was quite suitable for him, but at the same time quite specific: “Caster” and “Spiritual Master”. Well, or decide by tossing a coin, if you have something to toss. The young man had time to cook dinner once more, to reject in passing a minor assignment from the Autogoddess, to gather herbs growing around the source, to meditate on the source, to renew a couple of contracts, to conclude a couple more, to summon a too brazen spirit, which tried to chew off a piece of Stepan's face and aura, to disembodied that spirit with a blow of the protective circuit and a flock of pre-called defenders.... a lot of things, in short. The decision was hard, but evil and heartless logic came to the rescue.

  The Witchcraft direction was good for everyone, even well-pumped already, but required binding to the area and some problems with camoufge. All of this could be overcome quite successfully, that was a fact, but at the same time, the second of the remaining subcsses had no particur problems at all. Again, let him involuntarily forget about spiritual travel, but only for the time of travel, but when he settles down again, he immediately starts resuming this practice, very useful for a shaman. This decision was made, Stepan took a nap, meditated, had a snack prepared himself morally, and then pressed the appropriate image, accepting it - the whole and to the end. Since he was ready and collected, the process of acceptance and getting under such a familiar wave of information wave went noticeably easier, and calmer.

  The first to rise was the root for the subcss “advanced practice of spiritual operation”, having reached advanced development, opening previously either unknown or inaccessible facets. Working with one's own spirit at the level when one no longer creates cws and tentacles, but a web of fine threads. Methods of transition from form to form, countering blows to the spiritual basis. He could now literally shed pieces of his spiritual body like a lizard sheds its tail to deceive even extremely serious spells cast on spiritual bodies. Now he is quite capable of healing the damage he has received quickly and without repercussions, without suffering serious injuries that would knock him out of action for a long time. The number of avaible working limbs has increased, and it is now possible to calmly and confidently support several additional cw tentacles without losing concentration.

  The synergy with the “methods of spiritual wandering” made it much easier to get out of his body and back into it, much easier to do his favorite trick of partially leaving the meat shell and taking control of it. It became easier to manipute the spirit body directly, to give it arbitrary shapes, to simply let it out over the body of the ordinary as a kind of shell. Not protective, no, but helping to heighten sensitivity, to catch a curse on an area or thing, to subdue a magical source, or to deepen one's control over it. It will be even easier to use your spirit in combat, primarily against other spiritual entities of course, but against material opponents as well. In the battle with the vampires, he hadn't risked releasing his cws, the pretty loli would quickly strip him of his extra limbs. Now, now he could count on throwing a couple of punches and kicks from beneath the protection of the anteroom without getting himself mangled in the same instant.

  The connection with combat skills revealed a significant number of methods of using knowledge in direct conflict, since many opponents, even quite experienced ones, would not expect from a seemingly ordinary shaman a spiritual transformation, which borders on spiritual chimerization but is natural and not the result of some ritual. The sensitivity to spiritual images has increased, positively affecting the dialog, and call too, the distance of control of spirits has grown even stronger, as well as the degree of pumping of forces to this distance - a more flexible and controlled spiritual body is easier to conduct force and more resistant to the conducting resonance. Totems are easier to control without the need for concentration. So it is now possible to activate the desired images and orders by literally touching the surface of the item with a spiritual cw or paw. Working with territories will also become easier, and new facets of working with one's spirit and its influence on the reflection of spheres in this or that order will be revealed.

  Charms and suggestions, of course, were not ignored, finally bringing the shaman to the level where he could brainwash at the level of a strong and experienced adept of mentalism or charms magic, even without using summoned spirits, only with his own powers. By repeating after his spirits, up to and including the strongest spirits, he could rewrite brains in almost any way he wanted, and he would be able to achieve each result in several separate ways. As a bonus, he would have a much easier time with interrogations, live lie reading, and creating one-off agents out of poor people. The masking of his own aura and subtle bodies, as well as the degree of control of the Shroud also increased allowing him to handle gift property quite freely. Now he could repeat with the shroud a few of the tricks that before he was able to use only outside the body. Outside of these limits, respectively, he could even more, but it is already worth checking more tightly and a little ter, as he will be able to get out of the captivity of the flesh to breathe fresh ether streams.

  It will become easier to tear contracts out of oneself or someone else, many ways of circumventing or cheating oaths will be revealed, for the knowledge of which one will be ready to kill, but there will be little use in that killing. The whole secret is in the flexibility of spiritual bodies, which allows you to literally flow out of the cage of imposed conditions, without leaving a shred of aura on it. Well, figuratively speaking. There are different ways of fixing the vow, not all of them will be helped by this method, but the possibility of accelerated recovery from damage to the spiritual body will work against them. Other contracts can be deceived so that they are still considered unbroken during scanning, although, it should be recognized that really serious billets cannot be outsmarted in such a way, as well as normal scanning cannot be deceived. The other thing is a cursory check, and sometimes a couple of minutes of someone else's looseness will be enough.

  The next knowledge increased almost immediately. Stepan didn't even need a few minutes of rest. Good training, meditation, a couple of soft potions from the system store, and a connection to the source allowed him to stay fresh. The casual knowledge within the specialization of the css, improved immediately to an advanced base beckoned the young man, and beckoned strongly. Operating, the main subcss talent, was by no means ordinary, elite to a degree greater than the same charms, even than remote control.

  Received: 'basic methods of controlled spiritual indwelling'; 'advanced basic methods of controlled spiritual indwelling'.

  The acquired talent is added to the overall Pyer Status.

  He'd never used it much before, though he was constantly using it at certain moments, strengthening himself, speeding up when needed, getting rid of fatigue, and even helping himself in battle. But, apparently, to fully understand and acquire this knowledge, it was necessary to engage in such training more regurly and actively. Well, or seriously rely on the indwelling in a deadly dangerous battle, in which you can die if you screw up. Stepan did neither of these things, but in his defense, it could be remembered that the local twenty-four hours were a little more than twenty-four hours, but not so much that one could find time and reserves for all types of training. Moral, physical, and magical reserves - indwelling does not eat up the source's reserves that much, especially in the initial and not too-active phases, but when actively using the abilities granted by the indwelling spirit, you start to get tired and melt your brains even sooner than the reserve shows the bottom.

  With the new knowledge, this problem could be avoided, as well as many others. The root, the basis of the knowledge was the ability to use the subconsciousness normally in the extremely active phase, to go into the afterburner, using the abilities given by the spirit, but at the same time not to lose control neither over himself, nor over the flows of energies inside the subtle bodies, nor over the spirit, which might not even rebel, but simply act within the limits of its reasoning. This alone would have been enough to spend two talent points on this knowledge, had it been avaible on the free choice list. This knowledge alone took Stepan's medium close-range combat abilities to a whole new frontier. He still wouldn't risk a close encounter with a gothic bloodsucking lolka or her parental lover. No, he wasn't a moron. But if it did happen, he would have a chance to hold on for a while, to surprise his opponent by the very fact that he could keep up the pace at their level, and then to break the distance and hide behind his shields again. However, this is subject to the presence of the appropriate pnted spirit and time to summon, instill, adapt, and boost synchronization.

  Then came the synergies, and they were no less beautiful than the skill base, making him drool while wishing he could afford to stay near this source for a month or two to experiment properly. In the first pce, he could now combine the spirit body and spirit transmutation, all those tentacles and cws, literally binding the transpnted spirit to himself and letting him use the transmutation properly. Create your own spirit paws, wings, tails, and other fanged jaws. No problem! Cover the entire body with a yer of spiritual armor, as if to manifest around the body of the ordinary body another body, but already spiritual? You can, and this armor-protection will have a resistance coefficient not in one, like Stepan, but more, exactly as a pnted spirit! And even more successfully fixed in the body and therefore almost immune to exorcism practices, except for very specific and sharpened specifically against such a trick or just very strong, at least at the level of a master, but better still, even higher.

  His combat mastery, as well as the practice of calls with a combat bias, suddenly became much richer in terms of the use of repopution. Where before it was a situational skill, which was much more competently applied either in advance or at all on some poor person through his puppet, now.... let's say, now it makes sense to pnt in yourself something strong and dangerous, but carefully controlled, even in a battle against an opponent of equal strength and knowledge. Agents' skills added not so much to the trickery and framing, though not without them, but to the ability to hide the fact of pnting in yourself from scanning or scrutiny. And yes, the shroud is not a panacea. Even if the aura is perfectly fine, it would be hard to miss the fact that the body temperature of an ordinary passerby over fifty degrees, nails sharpened, the pupils of the eyes became vertical, and the hair blows in the non-existent wind. Such things, both noticeable and not so noticeable, a keen eye could and should have noted, while Stepan would have been obliged to hide or disguise these very trifles.

  Healing himself with the indwelled spirits, removing curses with the same means, and creating a guardian-observer of the state of mind inside himself, which will be able to react to the threat to the brain or too uncharacteristically changing thinking. Here Stepan, remembering the recent disgrace, immediately made a stand. Well, if he would be summoned and hooked at the moment of that threat because it would be impossible to walk in such contact all the time. The aura, the subtle body, and the spiritual entity would get tired. Many ways to ensure the transition through the world of spirits, when the spirit will drag the body after himself and then carefully pull this body back. Methods of pnting an allied entity not in a physical body, but in a spiritual one, for the sake of protection during out-of-body travel. A kind of bodyguard, like his jellyfish, only now they would be with the summoner at all times, literally inside him, intercepting control if necessary.

  You can also impnt a spirit in your own body, left and dumped, but, of course, on a very strict contract and under tight control. Crawls in suddenly some assassin cunning to cut the throat of the shaman while he is in the world of spirits, and the body suddenly opens eyes, and tears off the brazen assassin's legs up to the neck. For some reason at that moment, Stepan imagined a cross-shaped pupil, which sent shivers down his spine, though he did not understand where this image came from and what it meant. It was a risky approach, and the spirit might try to cheat him out of his contract and possible penalties: it was a very tempting prize. The body of an elder shaman, which you can try to make your own. And may not deceive, but simply foolish, wrong movement to cause harm to the bones and guts, wrong sorcery to damage the auric nodes, but for this, you just need to pick the right spirit, experienced and able to walk in the bodies of shamans and even cast their spiritual tricks.

  The methods of suggestion and bewitchment, strange as it may seem, can also be used in this way. But then Stepan would have to let in specialists to work with other people's brains and feelings. It's very amusing, indeed, but caution in such an approach is even more necessary than in the case of a simple battle entity. Still, the one who can, sitting in your body, brainwash some beauty on the topic of the usefulness of sexual svery in the subjugation of isekai, may well try to convince the isekai of the usefulness of self-sacrifice of all himself to the power of such a useful spirit. It is, as they say, two sides of the same coin, and therefore, if Stepan has to do something simir, he will prefer to use cssical appeals or his own forces through spiritual operation.

  It took a long time to learn all the little tricks and details, but the Earthman did not follow its progress, only constantly checking that his body did not get stiff or dehydrated. Sweaty clothes could not be repced by fresh ones for obvious reasons, but the cleaning by the forces of summoned spirits helped, as well as the constantly operating “air conditioner” quietly giving the cold in those moments when the shaman was thrown into a fever. But that was over too, leaving the st of the knowledge that should have come to him for his css specialization, and that knowledge was minor.

  Received: “exile from the reality.”

  The acquired talent is added to the overall Pyer Status.

  Again a very specific attack, now based on the shamanic approach. But without direct summoning of strong spirits. And again an attack of the kind needed to fight a single and dangerous opponent, not a crowd of weaklings. Just like st time, Stepan didn't mind this arrangement, because he had enough weapons to kill the weaklings. However, like st time, he would prefer another shield rather than a sword. But here one should not look a gift camel in the teeth. Minor knowledge itself was weaker than "locking the paths", he could not argue with that but it consumed a much smaller share of his reserve, and it pyed on principles that made it very useful against those who would not be affected by locking. The same vampire in charge could be surprised, surprised to the point of losing his undead status and becoming a regur corpse.

  In spite of the name, it was not an exorcism against any kind of spirit-type stuff to send it home. Stepan had conducted such things without a little knowledge. No, it was not the spirits who were the original inhabitants of these high spheres that were expelled from the material world to the spiritual world, but just the opposite. In the sense that the material enemy, or just something alien to the world of spirits, like a demon or ghostly undead, which has not even begun the transition to the spirit from the sphere of death, kicked out into the spiritual world. Being unprepared for this and not knowing how to navigate in such conditions, like a shaman. Of course, even a cssical magician, if he fell into the spiritual world somehow, instinctively, using his own aura and gift, will be able to start pressing on reality from the underside, reflexively pushing himself back. And this is not counting quite working methods, which can be professionally trained and practiced in training, from which they are times and orders of magnitude superior to instinctive floundering. But this is if such attempts are not prevented, breaking them, cutting them off at the root, and not even allowing them to start counteraction.

  The trick took its origin in the indwelling of the spirit, combined with the spiritual operation and those sections of the spiritual dialog, which were responsible for the subjugation and breaking of the will of the summoned entity. The shaman merged with a small spirit, and not any, it is desirable to choose special aspects and spheres, connected with Paths, Space, and Direction, merging their spiritual bodies, literally opening the poor entity, dissecting it, removing all the superfluous and filling the rest with his spiritual imprint. And then, this spirit, which has become a mixture of a leech and a fishing hook, is sent back to the world of spheres, right during the battle, swimming up to the enemy, so to speak, from below. Due to the affinity and imprints left in the body of the entity, it is quite possible to call through this creature as if it were a part of your spiritual body. For example, by creating a breach in the enemy's defense to literally turn inside out, falling into this breach, behind the enemy's shields.

  And then, due to the same connection and control, this fishing hook, divided and multiplied into dozens and hundreds of fishing hooks, clings to the body, matter, aura, to the very essence of the fabric of reality around the enemy, starting to push him out of reality. If everything is carried out correctly, you can quickly and decisively send the opponent to learn the depths of the spheres on his own experience, and the hook-exile also acts as a marker-bait, calling all kinds of shit for a free dinner. You can interfere with this trick. You can also get out yourself, even from retively deep yers of other spheres, especially if you manage to burn the bait before it summons those who want to eat. Only it will take a lot of effort, and a weakened enemy, especially if it falls out somewhere near the dueling pce, and to finish him off is not difficult. The thing is actually useful primarily when the enemy is not ready for it, or not against cssic mages or witches, but against dangerous and unreasonable shit like a monster that Stepan almost met on his way through the woods (although, just it could have gotten back out and on its own). You should also remember that such a hook will still be a part of you, which means you can use it not only to pump power to strike and create a breach in the enemy's defense. The opponent can also try to hit on this connection, especially if he knows something about Maleficism, so you should not yawn and remember to make one-time impressions fairly impersonal. Oh, and it's a good idea to keep a couple of dodge-catchers for enemy curses at the ready, too.

  The technique is situational. If it is about a magical duel with an equal opponent it requires attention, caution, and calcution. But a very good preparation against golems, monsters, and all sorts of oversized undead, like huge cadaver monsters. Knowledge will have its use, and even if not, it is better to have such an argument than not to have it. Or you decide to go for bread again, and there, in the bread shop, instead of a saleswoman sits an ancient lustful demoness with thousands of years of experience and a great desire to grab a shaman by the balls and not let go. Stepan would be amused if it were not for a very recent situation, during which he received his twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth levels. He had just walked into an ordinary-looking vilge with a funny name. Stepan would always have someone to use complicated and cunning dueling tricks against, no matter how hard he tried to avoid it. He is not conflictual at heart, but the others do not care much about his peacefulness, unlike his material values or even just life with blood.

  Before allowing the System to modify one of its trump properties, Stepan pyed a little with his new acquisition. Instead of specialized spirits with the most appropriate aspects, he used the first pest thing he could find to get a sense of the principle, and he exiled not hostile mages under monolithic protection, but stones, pieces of firewood, and a nasty bloodsucking fly that tried to nd on his forehead. He'd done something simir, sending material offerings directly to the spirit world, but there it was a smooth and cautious action to make a contract, whereas with exile the slingshot principle worked. You hooked it, activated it, put in the reserve, and looked wistfully at the rapidly disappearing traces of a micro-cut in the fabric of reality. In this very micro-cut, the targets of the attack disappeared, including the fly that had no time to drink his blood, and let the spheres rest with the fragments of its essence, which is guaranteed to be eaten by the inhabitants of the deep yer of the spiritual world.

  Received: “profound transformation of the spiritual body.”

  The acquired talent is added to the overall Pyer Status.

  The modification of a long-familiar and habitual property, elite and super useful, obtained at the tenth level, took much longer, plunging Stepan into a half-dream, from which he would only occasionally awaken to sink back into the same state. In some ways, it was like the moment of regaining one's original property. It was as if you were being pumped with water, like a floor cloth or a sponge for washing dishes, and when the limit of the pumping was reached, the water, absorbed by the aura and spirit, began to separate into thin threads and weave into the essence of the recipient. Only now Stepan felt at the same time both the old threads, which were moving again, and new ones, a whole pleiad of them, supplementing the previous ones, strengthening them, and changing his spiritual body again, anew. He switched off at about the very end when the sensations had subsided, and when he woke up, he just y there for a few hours looking at the setting sun again.

  Further experiments showed that his ability to control his spirit body had increased even more. The number of avaible tentacles and the degree to which they were filled with power increased. Now he could seriously turn himself into a spiritual analog of an octopus, or even a giant squid, controlling a dozen tentacles or other limbs at once. The potential for the symbiosis of one's own spiritual body and the spirit pnted inside has grown even stronger. Even less concentration would need to be spent on it. Once, when he had just chosen an elite level ten trait, the ability to imbue himself with a battle spirit and fight like this had seemed like a real trump card, a means of winning a dangerous battle. Then, as he developed himself, he was less and less inclined to such a thought. The flexibility of thin bodies and the ability to shape them properly allowed him to call and negotiate with spirits much better, and a well-coordinated retinue under direct control was much more useful than a single shaman with a spirit pnted in him.

  Now that the problem of concentration was gone, he could once again rely on indwelling as his main argument in battle, while still being able to control his retinue. Worse than normal, the more powerful the subjugated spirit, the worse, but still with a fair amount of effectiveness. As a st resort, he could always summon a mighty team of battle spirits and tell them to sort themselves out, then accept the spirit and start punching faces. Combined with the multiplicity, this tactic found its logical conclusion, achieving an optimum, equally effective in defense, in attack, or the usual call. The only thing left to do was to find strong enough entities, much stronger than the current selection, that specialized in indwelling, perhaps even signing an absolute contract with them at the level that would be reflected in the System.

  Another important detail was that his spiritual body had grown rger, more voluminous, and more powerful. The young man who came out of his body for the sake of the experiment could quite easily maintain the old scale, but if he wished, he was bloated, as if he had suddenly become a two-and-a-half-meter tall hulk, and the three additional arms, as well as the battle cw and shield-like wing, had also increased in scale. However, if he wished to shrink in those scales - as far as the world of spheres could define the concept of scale - he was able to become as small as a ten-year-old boy, and then he gave himself the form of a fish-like goblin. Having experimented with the limits of the flexibility of the new modification for some time, Stepan, by a heroic effort of iron will, ordered himself to become more serious and continued his normal analysis of the new possibilities. Some aspects of the spirit had increased noticeably, some barely, and some remained unchanged, but on the whole, the leap was quite tangible. It would definitely become easier to work with calls, not to mention out-of-body influences. He had already pnned to summon the older spirits before, but now, with the new changes, this issue could be considered solved, the only thing missing was a new pce for the call base, not even a clearing, but something else.

  He spent the next couple of days in a slightly less rexed state than he had been before taking the subcss. He rested, roasted some sort of partridge-like bird, sprinkled it with a considerable amount of spices bought through the store, and found some quite valuable roots, one of which was even conditionally edible if the poison was properly removed from it. Methodical and unhurried tests of new abilities passed with a kind of careful and attentive ziness when doing something frankly boring, but caution is not lost from it. Gradually the working rhythm took over again, the tasks set for himself required more and more attention and effort, and the period of rest and ziness was completely forgotten.

  The tiny assignment completed in passing didn't even stick in his memory, but he remembered another, small one. It required careful cultivation and securing of the captured micro-source. It was not a difficult assignment, but it was one of those assignments where it was hard to understand where the boundary of what could be considered a thorough job was. The source, of course, is not outstanding, literally one of those that no one ever subdues, so small are they. If the task had been tiny, he wouldn't have bothered, but it was a small quest, with a serious reward in the form of a random small token - not an Autodivine token - and a small amount of experience, as well as a systemic promise to upgrade the source to a stronger one. Not directly very strong, but somewhere around half the level of the same hill shrine where he'd done the higher-ranked assignment.

  Stepan agreed because of the token. He wanted to get something like a summoning renewal, but he also wanted to see how the System would ignite the source itself. His thoughts on how to invest the three free talent points were temporarily forgotten as the shaman enthusiastically set to work. The assignment, he was not mistaken, was not difficult, but very variable in execution. He immediately, even without thinking about it, came up with about a dozen variations on how to accomplish the task while staying within the bounds of what the reference and its images advised him to do. If he had thought about it even a little, he would have come up with about five times that many. There are a lot of ways to work with sources, especially with such weak ones. Another thing was that not all of these options were suitable for something complex and advanced, but that's just the specifics.

  The first thing Stepan did was to make an agreement with the spirit, frozen between small and very weak strong. This natural with aspects of the stream and herbs, was a being quite intelligent, by the standards of spirits, and also very correctly understood the degree of difference between himself and the visiting shaman. The entity wouldn't have resented it, but the shaman exchanged a series of images with the spirit anyway, enlisting its maximum support and enthusiasm. Guardian of this very source. Why not make it another yer of defense and protection? Having reached a consensus and concluded a contract that was rigid and maximally favorable to the shaman, the enthusiastic Stepan began his work.

  He searched for stones himself sending the appropriate spirits, who delivered them dragging the stones through the world of spirits. He began to process these cobblestones fumigating them with incense and covering them with drawings. He painted them with a special brush and no less special paint. The first one he had bought in Lyady through the Store, and the second one he had prepared already now, having purchased the compound reagents through the System. It was much cheaper to make the mixture from ready-made parts. It also brought more experience. The scarlet paint left on the stones was still the same shit after which the simple brush that had served him well had to be thrown away: the scarlet marks left by the brush, glowing in the darkness, had streaked half a centimeter of the stone, as if he had used a red-hot awl on wax instead of a brush.

  Each of the boulders, of which there were exactly twenty-nine, clean and washed with fresh water, became the basis for a rather primitive totem. The young man did not even hide from himself the fact that he was inspired by the work of unknown witches, which he had seen at that unfortunate shrine, though he had supplemented the work and modified the method to suit himself, changing it almost beyond recognition. The boulders that had been stacked around the circle plunged sharply into the ground to exactly half and then began to rapidly cover themselves with mosses, as well as vines of a very unusual ivy. The seeds of the tter, magically active and quite capable of becoming the basis for a protective amulet on a druidic basis, he had not purchased but sprouted from his stock. It was a reward for one of the closed small tasks.

  In the center of the marked circle, right in the middle of the clearing, another stone appeared. This time it was a full-fledged boulder, but not purchased from the system either. This very boulder, which had been lying for many, many years on the top of a hill a few hours away from the clearing with the source, year after year absorbed the daylight, the rustle of leaves, and the ctter of raindrops. It was an excellent billet for a weak altar, but Stepan had to modify the boulder before he could make it an altar. The top of the boulder, about one and a half meters in diameter, which has a remotely spheroidal appearance, he literally cut off, leaving there a hollow, in which the rainwater will be collected, soaked with light and natural power. Then he again takes a mixed mixture of the purchased reagents, a greenish slurry with a gray tint, dips into this slurry a quality steel needle-point - by the way, it was quite a weapon, even a little enchanted - and begins with the tip of the needle to draw another portion of signs on the inside of the hollow.

  By the time he was done, the third needle was a little more than halfway through, but the marks were literally burned into the stone, immediately sprouting moss right in the hollows where the drawings had been left. Having destroyed the remnants of the crap that threatened to eat a hole in the vessel reinforced by a couple of spirits, and having breathed normal air - not filtered air, free from the harmful vapors of acidic stuff - Stepan began the second phase of his pn. Either the sub-totems or the overpumped spirit houses from the ring of boulders and the central altar-boulder itself were filled with the necessary structuring influences, turning them into a future line of defense. The spirits-guards, gathered under the command of the current guardian, could use them themselves, without the shaman's help and guidance.

  The third stage of the assignment was the summoning of these guards and their dispersal, the creation of a control network, and the basis for a segmental protective field. All in all, he summoned about half a dozen small spirits with the necessary guardian specializations, another five small spirits engaged in the purification and constant stabilization of the source, as well as a spirit quite strong, which had to sleep simultaneously in each of the cobblestones of the formed ring, feeding from the source and awakening only to fight in the case of a particurly aggressive and dangerous enemy. This amount for a small source was frankly excessive, even if we take into account the feeding from the structure of the totem stones, but Stepan counted on the subsequent strengthening of the source, once the task was completed. Then the spirits would have enough to live on and actively work on improving their own dwellings, as well as on giving charges to anyone who trespassed on their supply trough.

  It was completed by an even tougher deal with the guardian spirit, and then the endowment of the spirit with systemic characteristics, so that it would match the strength of its rank, otherwise it would not be listened to, if not by the ordinary defenders, then by the expert in protective fields and amulets sitting in the stones. It reinforced the target quite well. Not the full twelve units, but no less than eight or nine, and a good portion of those gift characteristics went to the Source or the stat that spirits have for the amount of reserve. With such a boost, the entity would be able to do much more. She also has the right to consider herself a strong spirit, not a small one. This is also important because it is a matter of hierarchy and command. After strengthening and checking the work of totems, Stepan began to tweak the weak points in the issuance of commands and algorithms of action. The st thing he needed was for his summoned entities to start killing random passersby.

  No, these spirits would guard this pce quietly, at most chasing away those too impudent. Even more than that: the spirits may well have the right, and Stepan did not forbid it, to receive some offerings from those who wanted to meditate here. Stepan was not going to come back here, so he created a kind of analog of a public drinking fountain, in case someone decided to use it. However, he had left a couple of surprises for any goblins and other bloodthirsty things that would try to either flood the pce with blood from sacrifices or seize control over the source. Mostly on the conscience of the strong guardian spirit sleeping in the stones, with the spheres of earth and light, with aspects of line, prohibition, and blood. If an individual thought he was the smartest but wasn't smart enough to see the trap, he'd be in for a surprise.

  The st stage was to cover his tracks and sever ties. The Earthman consciously severed his power over this pce, erased the contracted images, and forced the spirits to “forget” who had summoned them. Instead, he soldered them even more firmly into the structure of the altar boulder and the sound of the source, preventing exorcisms, subjugating calls, any spiritual stupefaction, and attempts to put the spirits of the guardians to sleep, even if only with a well-chosen offering. He doesn't need anyone to link this source to his identity, whether fake or real. The young man didn't see much harm in someone recognizing his call handwriting, but his habit, albeit an alien one, given by his agent skills, demanded that if possible all traces should be erased to zero. And if it was impossible, then at least try very, very hard.

  At this point, he wiped his forehead, exhaled, and admitted, to himself first of all, that he had completed the quest and, miracle! - the System agreed with him. A bit of experience increased affinity with spheres, improved interaction with sources of magic, and a single three-use token: “small artifact repair” that did exactly what the image said. Fully repairing any damage and replenishing unrecoverable durability reserves for any type of magical items, be it standard staffs and wands, no less standard amulets with shields and amulets, or some exotics like altars and far-seeing mirrors. As, since the token was “small”, it would be impossible to find some broken relic from a thousand years ago and restore it from ashes and splinters: the rollback period was exactly three months, and the artifact itself would return to its state exactly three months before activation. If at that moment the artifact was already broken, discharged, disassembled, and not working, then nothing will change for the user of the token.

  Stepan's study of the token almost made him miss the moment when the source seemed to blink, shimmer, and bze with renewed vigor, four or five times its previous level of power. If the shaman hadn't created his creation with the original design for the source's rapid amplification, all his preparations would have been washed away by the increased energy flow. And again Stepan didn't understand a damn thing: no change in the structure of the spiritual veins, not the slightest trace of a shift in the etheric currents, just in an instant reality changed its state, making the pitiful and small source not so pitiful, not so small at all. Some freshly certified adept would be frantically happy if his house was built on such a source, especially if the entire flow of power would go to him alone, instead of being distributed among the inhabitants of the house or even a third of the neighborhood.

  "I'm such a good boy." He concluded with a satisfied look, allowing himself a scant praise for himself, because no one would praise you if you didn't praise yourself.

  Shrugging, he picked up his belongings, finished cleaning up his footprints, softened the earth so that it would swallow his campfire and sleeping pce, and then went forward. The spirits had already scouted the path. He intended to meet the new night on the same knoll from which he had stolen the boulder. He would have stayed in the clearing, especially since it was now a very fertile source of magic, but... Stepan scratched the back of his head in bewilderment and was ashamed to admit it, but he had, to put it mildly, overdone it. In his intention to clean this pce of his presence as best as possible, he had not only succeeded. He had succeeded one hundred forty-eight percent out of one hundred. The spirits did not recognize or acknowledge him, unobtrusively following their guest and fully prepared to defend their home by force. The shaman, who was pleased with such militancy, was sorry to ruin almost a week of his bors, so he did not stay near the pce of the assignment.

  Although he felt like an idiot, of course.

  *

  He left his second rookery, also properly protected and fortified, after a week and a half, and spent a lot of effort cleaning up the tracks. There were no serious quests with powerful rewards this time unless you counted Absomilfnoy's jokes, so he devoted himself entirely to pumping. The three talent points had been waiting for a long time, and it was only natural that they would finally arrive. He put them in one by one, with pauses, taking time to practice new skills and assimite the material, without hurry, marathons, and information avanches, which would make you want to lie still for several days at least.

  The first two points went into spiritual operation, bringing him to master rank. At the moment, the maximum allowed by his stats, as well as in the recently received practice of indwelling, brings it to advanced knowledge. He wanted to improve advanced mastery call practice which is the root of the css. And he could try to strengthen the mark of the spheres for the third time, it was just going to be an incredibly pleasant result. But, once he started investing in his subcss, he had to take it to its logical conclusion, didn't he? He held back all three points just for the opportunity to invest in a previously unavaible skill. He did, it's a silly argument. Did he get the opportunity to develop the previously caped Spiritual Transformation and Spiritual Operating? He did, no arguments here either. The development of these talents, if not elite, then close to it, gave a very significant output, no less than from the pumping of call practice. It did, no doubt about it. So what else does he want?

  The “advanced methods of controlled spiritual indwelling” raised by the first ones were taken surprisingly easily. Perhaps it was the choice of subcss and the passed modification of the elite property, or, perhaps, the knowledge itself at this rank supplemented the missing, rather than gave new vectors of development. From the most important one can take into account a whole range of methods to support symbiosis with the summoned entity during active calls and work with other spirits. This is what the shaman cked most of all before, because of which he could not apply the subconsciousness in full force. Of course, he would need training, each of the elite underlings would need a long time to master, to get used to sharing body and spirit with another entity, but, if performed correctly, he would retain at least a third of the concentration reserve, while staying in close connection. This will be enough, if not for new calls and invocations, then at least for control and direction of already summoned spirits. Especially if they are called in advance, let them incarnate, and then direct them and feed them with the reserve when needed.

  There are many variants of synergy with paired invocation, in the sense of paired, that both the shaman and the spirit impnted in the body call at the same time. For example, you call to the light aspect of the sphere of the sun and healing properties, and then put him in yourself and start to call smaller spirits. These small spirits, or even spirits of the same rank, feeling that they are called simultaneously by a shaman and a colleague, simplify their call by almost an order of magnitude. Half an order of magnitude, at least. And that's not counting the lower prices and more flexible bargaining power. Not to the limit, because the same fellow will not let twist the kindred spirits of their false legs, but still very noticeable and with less nervousness. However, if you bind to yourself with a contract and let inside the thin bodies of a securely constrained dark and evil spirit, which itself is a very big and not always necessary risk, he, on the contrary, will oppress the younger brethren, literally in the style of “work and live a little more, or else I'll eat”, receiving a small percentage of the knocked out discount at his disposal.

  Stepan had used simir methods before, when you summon one stronger spirit and rely on its help in summoning further spirits, you can remember the same silkworms, which he used to cleanse the cursed temple, but the effectiveness is literally multiplied if the spirit calls not separately and together, but literally from within the shaman. The power of the call then multiplies each other, as a ray of light multiplies, caught between mirrored walls and reflected again and again. This may not be a combat trick, but the benefits of such an application will be almost more than the combat manifestations of the cssic sub-settlement. Especially if combined with a reliance on the terrain, with already prepared lines of defense, with closed and self-enclosed arrays of amulets, as well as feeding from several separate and duplicating totems. Agent skills also yielded their own synergistic results, especially in terms of discreetly pnting a spirit not only in oneself but also, for example, in some unwitting kamikaze agents. Or in someone whose doll had managed to be made and synchronized. The same Sylvia, her body was able to withstand even another senior.

  There was no need to talk about combat skills. The expanded pool of summons, including those very specialists in sub-settlement, as well as more complicated tactical schemes, multiplied by the skill of the third rank, gave a slightly intimidating result. Stepan still did not allow himself to be proud, for that was enough only to remember the fatal wound left by the bloodsucker lolita, but he was well aware that he had already become a fearsome opponent for almost anyone. Especially, if he was given time to prepare and gather information about the enemy, if he was allowed to attack first and in his own field. But even in a surprise fight against an opponent ready to fight, he was already capable of much, albeit more in theory. For practical application, it was necessary to perform a lot of calls to make new contracts, subdue them, and, preferably, work out the interaction with them.

  The “masterful practice of spiritual operation” was based on the increased strength of the elite property, allowing him to use the very same transformation correctly and as efficiently as possible, pying it like another instrument. With the right approach, he was able to tear apart a strong fighting spirit himself, both after leaving his body and without leaving his body. Tentacles that change to bdes, cws that are covered with spikes and hooks, flowing from one form to another, less and less like humanoids. Also, the ability to keep thinking and reasoning intact even during such a transition. It's the actual analog of spiritual werewolfism, literally the exit to a separate subcss. Yeah, well, actually, if you think about it, a “Spiritual Master” is exactly what a spirit shapeshifter is and a specialist in controlled body-splitting with someone else. And yes, if a young man sets a goal, he is quite capable of becoming an ordinary werewolf, both permanently and temporarily, up to free juggling of forms. A month to be a wolf, then a bear, and then a moose, you can even be the one from the joke, always saying good evening to everyone.

  Not quite what real shifters do, but no worse and far more effective with the right approach. Even now, he can embody his animal form in several different ways. Through the pnting of animal spirits in the body, it is possible to take a weak essence, feeding the transformation by its own forces, and a powerful elder, which will take everything on itself, but also requires more, and press on the brain will be harder. Through the totem-anchor, connecting with this totem and, preferably, not going too far away, but much more reliable and without a number of side effects, albeit with the risk of breaking the connection when destroying the totem. Well, or if this connection would be traced and blocked, or even twisted by curses, mental control, or spells. If Stepan, with his knowledge, can do it, then the hypothetical opponent can do it too. You can use the doll method, molding yourself-envolt in the desired manner, and then forcing the doll to become an animal, changing after it. It's very reliable, and very cheap to use if you don't count the cost of creating the doll, but it takes a long time to make it and you'll spend a lot of rare consumables. And getting a beast doll into the wrong hands is still as unpleasant and dangerous as with ordinary dolls.

  In a fit of excitement, Stepan tried to take especially funny forms of the spiritual body, starting with Slenderman, continuing with Alucard, ending with Pennywise, and performing various actions with his own spiritual body. To put a curse on a piece of earth or stone, to remove it, to heal broken wings and legs of an insolent bird that tried to shit on the shaman's head, and let no one ask who caused these fractures to the bird, to mold a few charms, a contract anchor, a couple of camoufge clips with averted eyes... The shaman was literally doing a job he used to leave to the spirits. It was more difficult than with the spirits, more effort was spent, and a significant part of the exotic properties of his retinue could not be repeated, but it was still impressive. The Earthling even wondered if he would be able to come to other people's calls or even summon himself at the ter stages of such training. He would differ from a powerful spirit only by having a physical body and human consciousness. Although, the tter is already very controversial. All powerful gifted, not only shamans, at ter stages of development think not only as humans. Adepts of wild magic here are ahead of adepts of high magic, but not to say that very much.

  The knowledge bestowing general erudition asserted that high-ranking mages were still human, with all their human vices, hobbies, and desires. It was just that they could now contempte and realize their goals in ways that mere humans could not understand. How can a simple man, as Stepan himself was so recently and, it seemed, so long ago, realize the immensity of the underside of the material world, its depth, which embodies the answers to all the questions that were once or will be asked? How can the uninformed understand the beauty of the intertwined knots and threads of higher charms that absorb any element, any manifestation of energy essence, merging into a tornado of fire, a stone rampart, a protective dome, or a starfall of magical arrows flying in a dense wall of rain? Who but a mentalist would realize how unique each mind, each thought, from a shit cleaner to a king, is, how different and yet simir they all are in their fragility, in their defenselessness before the power of another mind capable of acting on this pne? Such thoughts bring a somewhat philosophical mood and involuntarily inclines towards some kind of mago-fascism.

  The rgest yer of information, the most ramified, requiring time to digest even more than the increase of spiritual operation to the rank of mastery, was accepted by Stepan in the st pce, on the st talent point. In principle, he could have promoted the indwelling by another rank, pushing him to the advanced developed level, but he invested in agent work after all. “Skillful methods of agent work” turned out to be no less useful than increasing combat skill, in many ways even more so. Because they helped either not to bring it to the battle, to avoid it, or to reduce it to the first and fatal blow. The original talent revealed a set of habits and tricks of a seasoned secret service agent in a fantasy setting. Skillful, experienced, long and diligently honing his skills, but still acting within the limits of his skills, temptes, and competencies. These frameworks, temptes, and competencies were multiplied by “3.14” due to the synergy with every single piece of knowledge in Stepan's sprawling status.

  The increased knowledge transferred the baggage of tricks from those for only a very experienced agent to the category of those very rvae of James Bond and Jason Bourne. Not a working horse, but a real trump jack, and developed comprehensively and with all the same synergies. Skills of doing business in the cities and beyond, tracking and hiding from it, training and coaching teams of newcomers, and the best ways to multiply such a team to zero with a mentor. Eliminations and assassinations, liquidations and demonstrations, training agents and creating entire networks of influence, methods of interrogation and questioning using shamanic techniques. Ways to conceal one's interrogation from the target and those who would be examining the target, full-blown infiltration operations, uncovering multi-yered defenses, or their lengthy and thorough analysis. Methods used to obtain samples of blood, hair, and other body tissues for the purpose of casting a spell or curse, tactics and techniques for removing auric impressions without attracting the attention of the target's orderlies or bodyguards.

  Ways to slip someone a poisoned apple, a cursed ring, or something simir, bypassing vigint defenses and no less vigint defenders, the ability to frame someone else for the evil deed. Deep remodeling of personality with triple and more yers, when the first yer of bookmarks and mental activators in other people's brains are deliberately made to be noticed and removed, leaving out something less noticeable, more carefully hidden. Switching to a subordinate mode with memory wiping by a command spoken aloud is much easier to notice and uproot from someone's head than, say, a slight increase in gullibility and suggestibility only in the phase of a new moon and only in reaction to a very rare type of jasmine perfume. Contacts and methods of summoning the appropriate spirits able to perform such and other tasks, especially if you are still unable to pull off such a thing.

  Wiping out traces, concealment, and interference, creating deceptions and numerous traps, the ability to py cat and mouse with pursuers, so in the end the cat was you and not them. Strong and senior spirits of concealing, masking, or other specializations, which will be useful in agent work of one sort or another. How about an entity that gets pnted in the victim's body and does nothing at all, being physically incapable of doing the slightest harm, completely undetectable even if scanned carefully enough? Except, this entity can watch and listen, memorizing sounds from the victim's ears, images from her vision, and even thoughts and hunches from her head. And then, coming out of the body, - it can be as invisible as it was pnted, or even killing the victim in the process - this spirit will readily retell everything, allowing literally by seconds to sort out all the interesting moments.

  Or, if we are talking about influences on consciousness, a spirit-attendant, coming in dreams, in moments of weakness or happiness, capable of imperceptibly and invisibly following the target for years, gradually leading her to the desired thought as naturally as possible, so that the influence is not even mental control, no. Analogous to the usual persuasion, whispering in the ear, but inaudible, and therefore will not be able to challenge what is said, until the monolithic principles and faith do not begin to crack at the seams. The most loyal knight-cavalier will stick a dagger in the liege's back and get a ringing purse for it with a pce at the court of the new lord. A respectable and reserved old butler with puritanical views will lose all his money in a gambling house, getting into deepest debts, from which he can be helped to get out for services. A young and in love man will forget about his foolish love and quietly marry the one whom his parents point out, or he will fall in love with the imposed bride no weaker than in his first love. A faithful and loving wife who is waiting for her husband, who has gone on a long journey, will become a promiscuous cheater in six months, loving the fact of cheating and humiliation of her husband, who still loves her, but more for the thickness of his purse.

  Tough shit. The elder spirit was even stronger than the Sleepwalker, and certainly more skillful, though he had a long lifespan and crazy requests for a contract. However, it is possible to call someone else, no less strong and developed. For example, a master of cleaning up traces, not only and not so much auric and spiritual, but also physical. You give the spirit an image and a goal, and it takes and begins to erase this goal from reality. Those who have not seen the victim for a long time will gradually forget about it, records in travel documents or tax returns will spoil and disappear, portraits will fade, personal diaries will decay, and everything like that. Obviously, it is better to use such a thing not as revenge on some foe, but on oneself. And everyone, including Kirik, Meld, and other individuals, will forget about the strange shaman Pann. Not at once, not in the same hour, but in half a year the memory of him will be completely erased. Stepan put this spirit in the mandatory contract, even if it was not activated yet. The shaman was in no hurry to erase himself from reality, because he had not left enough legacy, and he did not want to erase not only himself but also everything he had taught the boy. But if he had to leave somewhere without saying goodbye and without unnecessary eyes, such a trick would come in handy.

  The only thing stopping Stepan's enthusiasm was the fact that this spirit was not just an elder, but a full-fledged higher one. It would be a hell of a lot of trouble to summon him, let alone negotiate with him. Stepan was almost certain that he would be able to summon and make the spirit appear, but as it was customary in shamanism, as in any other kind of summoning, summoning an entity was only the first third of the process. of the work, probably the easiest. The second third is to avoid being devoured or mutited by the entity called, and only in the st third can one move on to getting something from the entity. Often this “something” is reduced to the fact the entity simply leaves without killing anyone in the process. Yes, shamanic practices are not demonology. Stepan rejoiced that he had nothing to do with demons because you have to be a complete moron, even if there is system support. The entities of high spheres are retively adequate and not always evil. The same demonologists, if they are magicians working with demons not servants of demons, have to live with a clear understanding that they fucked up at the stage of choosing a profession.

  That night, when he had finished learning and then passed out, falling into a dreamless sleep. For the first time in a long time, vague and indecipherable visions came over him again. Stepan did not allow himself such a luxury as a ck of protection from evil dreams, so he did not worry too much, giving himself to the will of dreams. The dreams were so crazy, against which the old farmer-tractor driver with the number three hundred on his back, armed with pitchforks and a six-barrel machine gun, fighting off giant killer mice, the size of a small barn, was the pinnacle of adequacy. The farmer by the way, successfully fought back, having spent the st ribbon on a huge mouse queen, which almost managed to take off half of his face. Having stuck the pitchfork into the ground, throwing the machine gun on the corpse of the defeated enemy, the farmer limped off at a senile run in the direction of the trine standing in the distance.

  He dreamt of a middle-aged man walking along a gray and dull street, reading some documentation and making notes in it. The world around him was like an ordinary world, reminiscent of the earthly one, but at the same time it was definitely not it, and there was something strange, scary, and magical around. The date also did not coincide, because in the documents it was the four hundred and eighth year from a certain Arrival. The scene had changed, and now the focus of the shaman's perception was tens, hundreds of thousands of identical cat-girls in seylor-fuku, ominously yanking at the st man in the deserted city, telling him that it was useless to resist, that humanity would be occupied and assimited. The man just clutches his armored slipper tighter and says that nothing will make him change his mind because this is his Vyborg.

  SpoilerT.N. This is a reference to a scene from The Matrix. Vyborg is a city. But at the same time, it sounds very simir to Choice. Also, "slipper" is a word that means mistakes or other remarks from readers. And when readers point out typos or errors, they say they're throwing in a pair of slippers. Then this joke changed into armored slippers.

  [colpse]Other dreams were embodied by whole scenes, fragmented and divided, memorized partially or completely. Some magical boratory, in which an elf woman with the aura of a master healer with a bias towards aura healing, covered with shields of the highest category and standing in a protective ritual circuit, was silently strengthening this protection to even greater, almost absurd strength. Dressed in the best protective artifacts, covered with so much of her own and other people's magic that it was not even funny, she nods calmly and importantly to the half elf boy standing on the opposite side of the protective contour. The guy, vaguely familiar, as if a long-lost retive, obviously shyly does something, after which the elf, without changing the focused expression on her face and full readiness, unces the heavy and enchanted protective armor, exposing her snow-white breasts, moving her shoulders for a few seconds to shake them properly. She evenly and calmly, slightly apologizing, but with full dignity, says that she would let her breasts be touched, but she cannot destroy the protective circuit, it will take a long time to rebuild it. On the half-elf's attempts to prove that her actions are caused by the activation of the token by something incomprehensible, she only waves away, asking not to talk nonsense, because she is fully aware of her actions and took the chance to motivate her interlocutor, before starting to seriously try to protect herself from the unknown impact.

  The face of his namesake, recognizable even in his dreams, was still as pimply and insolent as before, and the fat man himself hadn't changed much in terms of build. But it is difficult to call him pejorative nicknames, seeing how his almost round figure, covered with dozens of shields, literally tears like paper, the formation desperately fighting back and trying to at least retreat demonic guards. The long sword in his hands pierces demonic hearts, wide dagger parries back blows, breaks enemy bdes as if they suddenly became paper crafts, and weak and medium creatures vaporize by his mere presence. The strong also vaporize, but they, dying in agony, still have time to try to protect their eternity from their inexorable fate. The satisfied smile on his face becomes greasier and greasier, and now he breaks into the center of the demonic formation and opens the container protected by many seals. Finding only emptiness and the inscription that “his titty princess of angels was transported with another squad”, as well as imprinted on the letter of a woman's lips and the signature of the Demon Queen. Infuriated beyond belief, Stepan the One unleashes a veritable wave of all-cleansing light and grace, literally burning out the remnants of the enemy army down to the st demon. The st thing the demons heard in their suddenly cut short was a loud, desperate, and furious: “Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!”

  SpoilerT. N. In the comments, readers wrote omaks about Stepan the Fat One. He also got isekai. But instead of hentai adventures, he is forced to be a demon fighter and fight real demons. Avada likes it and mentions it as a dream.

  [colpse]Dressed in one light and frivolous nightgown of obviously human cut, an orcish woman more than two meters tall, beautiful, muscur, and at the same time with prominent breasts, hips, and feminine figure, is walking down the corridor of some long abandoned but recently restored underground pace shelter. She had a satisfied smile and was enjoying life, but then she stumbled, turning sharply on her toes. She thought something had just touched her, fshed by her side, but her eyes and other senses, including the very advanced methods of touch with the gift, found nothing and certainly did not see the figure touching her skin again at her back. Dressed in the tight robes of an elite lurker, the pretty assassin continues to discreetly and barely touch her friend's body frozen in tension. Orcess slowly rexed, believing that she just imagined it, and continued on her way, but after a dozen steps, she realized she had huge tits.

  I mean, she'd always known it, but only now, hearing the woman's inaudible and so familiar whisper in her ear, did she realize how big and heavy her green watermelons really were. Bigger than her puny brain, from which all the blood had gone to muscle and all the mind to tits. Heavier than she could hold and not fall. Leaning against the wall, the green-skinned warrior barely keeps herself from colpsing, knocked off her feet by the weight of her enormous tits. She manages to lean back against the wall and slide down it, holding her tits with both hands, lifting them with difficulty, and dropping them back down. She doesn't pay any attention to her nemesis friend who has come out of hiding, she needs, it's vital, to gather her strength and lift those tits, those stupid and juicy tits, until her friend's fingers find the steel-hard nipples and start pinching them, taking the st of her thoughts out of the stupid head of the even more stupid boobed bigwig.

  While the orchid is lying down and barely finds the strength to caress her huge breasts, the inaudible Asian woman leans over her and starts stroking, squeezing, and pressing on different parts of her body, slowly and confidently bringing her victim into a deep trance. She realized the situation to the st and tried to overcome the impossible weight of her breasts and to stand up, to start resisting. Having put her nemesis friend into a trance the snting beauty lifts her to her feet and leads her, and the huge orcess no longer feels neither the weight that covered her nor any thoughts, only complete thoughtlessness and absolute submission, nothing else. Taking her pymate into one of the empty rooms, she begins to stroke her body, pying with it, then causing bouts of pre-orgasmic pleasure, then cooling the passion and keeping the victim away from the much-desired peak. In her mind, there is a glimmering desire to bring her friend to consciousness, but still keep her motionless, to enjoy her impotent threats, changing into humiliated pleas to let her finally cum. But those pns were getting farther away as she rubbed the warrior's muscur body with her dainty palms incessantly, not noticing how she began to breathe more frequently, how her pupils dited and her heartbeat quickened.

  And so, in a moment, she began to kiss her victim, still as motionless and unresisting, at first gently touching her lips to the back and the bottom of the neck, which she could barely reach, even standing on her toes, but gradually becoming less and less restrained. In a moment the kisses become wetter and wetter, more and more like licking, and then, the snting lurker stops even pretending that she is pying with her victim, teasing her with her lips. Her nimble tongue runs over the green skin, outlines every muscle, her breathing becomes intermittent and heavy, she kneels, and simply falls, unable to stand on her tucked legs, pressing herself harder against the hot body of her not-so-victim. In this position, she can't reach her pussy or buttocks, licking her calves, thighs, and feet, forgetting all pride and superiority. Somewhere at this point, when she slips her pink tongue between the fingers of the motionless orcess, she has her orgasm, violent, wet, accompanied by involuntary moaning and screaming. The Asian woman drools, and spurts her juices right into the hopelessly stained clothes, with her st drops of consciousness ordering the orchid to rex and lie on her back, immediately pressing her face into the green crotch, licking and cumming, licking and cumming, licking and licking and licking and licking and licking.

  Scrooge McDuck, armed with a golden plunger, only for some reason dressed in elfish style and with long ears, descends resolutely and inevitably into the depths of Tartarus, knocking down all the guards of the netherworld on his way, kicking mighty defenders and divine charms. He is mighty, he is strong, he is unstoppable, and he knows exactly where to go, and exactly who he needs. The goal is close, and so, in a moment, he reaches the chamber in which the soul of yet another dead man exists, only this soul is out of luck. Shouting, “Did you think it would be so easy to die, you evil debtor?”, he drags the spirit of a dead young boy of half-elven appearance out of his prison, starting to tell him that he has no right to die until he pays back the resources spent on him and recoups every st dime, including lost profits and accrued interest. Desperately justifying the guy says that he did not pn to die, but Scrooge does not listen, he is sure that death is no excuse for non-payment, dragging the kidnapped man behind him, fighting off the guards, and shoving a plunger into the mouth of Hades. At the same time, coins fall out of each enemy when struck, which Scrooge scrupulously picks up himself or makes his partner collect. No one doubts that they will be able to make it back to the world of the living, not even the guards who frantically shout into their intercom amulets that they have here the CODE BROWN, they repeat it over and over again, because it is indeed the CODE BROWN.

  Faces and events were shattered into fragments, reunited as particles of a mosaic. At the same time Stepan, himself and not his spirits, seemed to sense some missing detail, a minor inconvenience, something forgotten, frozen at the very edge of memory. Suddenly realizing himself in the middle of a dream, he tried to figure out exactly what it was that had disturbed him, what made him feel the urge to keep tapping, fumbling for an answer. The dreams became less and less like dreams, finally repced by a swirl of colors in which there were no faces, no scenes, no clear images, when he began to notice, to grasp at the very tip of his mind. needles of his senses, a certain structure. An image, an image at once brief and yet very meaningful, full of strength and power over that of which this image is a part. Stepan realizes that this image has been with him for quite a long time, it's just that until then he hadn't been able to notice it, to catch a trace of it, couldn't understand that he needed to look for something at all, to look for something that didn't just slip out of his memory on waking. No, this image, it was like it was part of something bigger, it was like it was hiding, hiding from the shaman's images and will. And the shaman disliked the very fact that something could hide from him in his own dreams and memory, hiding where he should be master and ruler. He, and not some impudent image, image, image, image, image, image, which in fact was not an image at all, no, not an image, not an image, not an image, not an image, but....

  Name.

  Stepan dives into his own dreams. He uses the control over his own spiritual body, which affects, among other things, the dream sphere, to find something alien, carefully hidden, which also came in a dream and was sealed in oblivion by the dream. Something that came in a dream, but was not a dream as such, was alien to this pce-state and the shaman. He searches, not even for an obstacle, but for a void, as if a part of him simultaneously wants and does not want to find this answer. Perplexity is repced by a kind of irritation and a tinge of incomprehension, even apprehension. He, aware of himself at this moment, should not have trouble remembering something that belongs to his dreams, already imprinted in them, not blurred upon awakening. He shouldn't, but for some reason he does, with some difficulty holding his concentration so as not to leave the detail that hit him in the shroud of oblivion again.

  Caressing rays of light that refract in the reflections of the disco ball, blinding, deceiving, distracting, not allowing to think and hear, not allowing to remember and remember almost caught crosses in the eyes and power in the gaze not to remember to forget not to remember the dream not to remember to forget dream nonsense no excitement to forget...

  An aura of soft and gentle honey, covering with a bnket, persuading to speak, to say, to tell, not to worry, to share secrets, but not to look at the swish of the tail with a heart-thickening look left-right not to think and forget the dream forget everything not to remember...

  A sly chuckle, full of the promise of passion and power over the one to whom you promise, full of hot desire, behind which there is something much more than just vulgarity already almost formed into an image gesture of the hand along the body look forget forget don't remember forget forget wish don't remember come forget...

  Smooth and soft skin, tantalizing warmth of a supple body, repced by a cell of captivating attraction, turning off reason and will, depriving the very will to forget and not remember to want to want to watch forget to remember to dream to sleep to mature to pour out...

  An absolute of pleasure in look and touch, a promise of the most secret fantasies, an assurance of fidelity to the end and beyond, a fidelity that will captivate forever, deprive everything to sleep to not see to forget to not remember to look to wish to forget to remember to forget to forget to pour...

  Tenderness and rexation, an enticing desire to give into the hands of an experienced lover that will bring all the pleasures of the world and those that are beyond the world at all tits scarlet nipples purple nipples look to want to see look to lick forget to forget not to remember to forget...

  This image. The image of a woman's breasts, somehow scarlet-red in color, tender, rge, soft, desirable, and by the mere sight of them plunging the mind and brain into a flood of uncontrolble lust.... It almost breaks through Stepan's defenses. It would have been guaranteed to do so a couple of days ago; he would have done so because in his sleep he could not concentrate enough will to overcome the sleepy oblivion. But now, after another sharp intensification and gaining much more power over his spiritual body, he already realizes what he's doing, and what he needs to do. He also realizes that it is probably not the first time that he has paid attention to the image of the name that was given to him, but the memory of that name was taken away. It was just that in the previous times, he cked no strength or skill, not even attentiveness, not even the ability to realize himself even in somewhat different formats of existence, such as in dreams.

  Now everything is different, and he presses the matter of the dream spheres, looks and feels deep into his beloved self, cuts through the web of deception, tears off from his consciousness the alluring image of red tits, which he is sure is not the first time he has dreamed about, and then, with methodical gloating, puts the image together from the pieces. An image that turns out to be a name. A name in the sense of the word, which differs markedly from human speech. Such name-images are called by sufficiently powerful and conscious spirits who have managed to realize themselves and accept what their name will become. Not even a name - but a Name. And this bel, it did not belong to a spirit, not even to a strong spirit, as might come into a shaman's dreams, it belonged to another entity, no less strong, no less ancient, no less terrible, no less dangerous, and just as much not belonging to the material world even more than it did not belong to the worlds of the spheres.

  Laghan.

  It was not the name of a spirit, but of a demon, a demoness even, because even without the image of scarlet tits and purple nipples Stepan felt in this image the femininity and Lust suffocating all thoughts at once. Now the already tense young man went from mere tension to full-fledged combat mode, went without waking up, still searching in his dreams for something to use as a support. He needed, even vital, to find and understand how he had the demonic Name in the back of his forgotten dreams, possibly, though unlikely, incomplete, making things even slightly worse. But dreams did not store answers, and if there was an answer, it was lost in one of the many dreams that he constantly dreamed, which were forgotten when he woke up. No surprise there. They could not be remembered, because that is the nature of echoes of future, past, and, what is more often, never existed events, which come to shamans in dreams.

  “As if the problems of the past weren't enough for me,” Stepan said simultaneously in the dream and reality, opening his eyes and easily overcoming the oblivion that had already disintegrated, keeping in his memory the image that he had unknown and unnatural recognized and that he had almost been forced to forget. “In this world, it seems you can't even sleep without another shit trying to fuck you in the brains. No, it's not even surprising, knowing my skillset, I can do that myself, but I didn't expect it, I didn't expect it, though I should have.”

  When Stepan woke up, he immediately developed a flurry of activity, trying to assess the damage that had been done to him and that he hadn't noticed. He noted in passing that the system had not given him a new rank in dream-inducing, because he had discovered the problem through brute force, simply breaking the effect designed for a weaker shaman who was weak and had not received his trump subcss. In another moment it would have been a reason to regret the missed opportunity, but now, for much more important reasons, he had neither the time nor the nerves to regret not getting the free talent.

  The first thing the earthling immediately set about was constructing a specific protective amulet designed to summon rather specific entities. Several diverse strong spirits, quite difficult to summon and requiring specific offerings and calls, were able to search for traces of demonic foulness and their influence. An inquisitor would sell his left kidney, hand, and ball for a contract with such trackers if he couldn't take them away. Stepan had organized all the summons in the fastest and safest possible mode. If the speed, quality, and safety of the summons were maximized, then the price of such a summons would skyrocket. A significant part of the avaible stock of currency was spent on the purchase of offerings.

  Yes, the shaman did not hesitate to press, and use the mark of spheres, the amplification of the mark from the Patchwork Echo, and advanced forms of spiritual dialog. He did not show his interest. He did not let the spirits feel their superiority and charged a price for their services. But as it was, dreams of another purchase of a special lot had to be put off for an unknown time. Stepan spent about a third of his stock on new contracts, reusable and durable, with the prospect of renewal ter. All in all, four basic spirit finders sharpened specifically against the demonic threat had been added to his arsenal and it was still a great deal. A rare, very rare, and unusual specialization. A set of extremely exotic properties that are difficult to meet and almost impossible to properly develop. Still, demons with the worlds of spheres practically do not intersect, they have nothing to share by and rge, and therefore among the spirits rarely arise predators, which eat demons. Not just capable of destroying the demon entities, any creature with sufficient strength and developed intelligence or instincts can do that, but those who see demons as their main prey. And already among these spirits even less those who know how to not just kill and eat, not just search and find, but to see traces of demonic influence in someone else. Without ready-made contacts and lists of offerings, without the right configuration of the call and developed dialog, such individuals can be searched for years, finding at best only something of comparable effectiveness.

  These four were skillful, strong, reliable, and yet very successful at interacting with shamans in the material world. Given his suddenly discovered problem, he would need such contracts permanently, to the point of converting them to a full and eternal contract. The first of the spirits scanned his body, searching for signs of demonic touch. The entity literally saw with its gaze the pces where the demon had touched, his material and not-so-material body. The spirit primarily saw these touches on the living but on things as well, making it the perfect tool for finding cultists of all sorts. Of course, a strong demon is more than capable of working its victim in a way that doesn't touch them directly, but, often, they aren't too keen on that. If Stepan or his belongings had those marks on them, he probably would have formed a gravitational singurity in pce of his own ass. But fortunately, no such obvious trace was found. The spirit that had the look and feel of a gssy and mobile scolopendra just looked up its ass but found not a single trace of anything demonic that had even been near the slowly panicking shaman.

  It was quite possible to deceive the search abilities of even such an exotic and elite spirit. Especially if the demon was strong. Therefore, Stepan did not stop on the first of the four, nor did he reduce the degree of paranoia. Frankly speaking, he would have loved to know that the search was positive, just to understand - where and how exactly he contacted Inferno, just to know where and with whom to fight, but it did not work out. The uncertainty was not so much frightening as exhausting, making him suspect all sorts of things, peddling paranoia and looping his thoughts in snake-like rings. Although, there was some motivating and sobering fear in him. Not allowing him to look for bck cats in empty dark rooms where there might not be a cat, the shaman began to work with the next spirit. This individual was no longer picking up the touch of a demonic entity, but the very presence of the Inferno energy, which all those who like to organize Autodafes call foul.

  Property and trick in fact ordinary in its nature, almost all the most common spirits even without a purely search bias able to feel such scent-smell smell and signal. Actually, it is due to the visibility of the curse demons and not eaten yet all the worlds together, it is because of this visibility they are so clever and cunning, so skillful. They have to compensate with experience, skill, and clever combinations of the strongest debuffs to stealth. Yes, the demon itself, especially if strong, is almost guaranteed to possess methods of concealing infernality and mopping up traces of corruption. But this is if the demon is strong, called into reality, and fixed by some anchor. At the initial stage, when at the disposal of the demon is only a couple of dumb as Beavis and Buthead, and others call demons will not, cultists, they have to wiggle their asses, minimize the impact and presence and very clearly pn each action.

  Returning to the question of searching for profanity. Stepan's contracted spirit looked like a greyhound from the translucent blue mist and was a real ace at it. Yes, any spirit could smell this kind of shit if there was a lot of it or it wasn't hidden. But this one was able to distinguish thousands of shades of this filth, to catch it in such a diluted and rarefied state, that the old demon fighter had tears of envy in his eyes. It eats the reserve, however, absolutely mercilessly, and what a dog slouching requests for offerings, and so on. And it does not discount its prices. It's not accepting cheaper substitutes for its favorite gifts. Crumbs and dust from the altars of the light gods are necessarily active and full of power. This is not something that can be easily obtained without a System store, nor is it something that is cheap in that store. And certainly, in ordinary life, you can't come to the main temple of some Light God and ask to chisel off a little bit from his main altar with a chisel. However, as you know, if you put the right question and describe the advantages of the spirit, you can and agree, on the condition that you make the same contract in the name of the Inquisitors.

  The dog didn't find any evil, though it ate up the shaman's full reserve, leaving not even a drop of grace in the crumbs from three different altars, just an empty and quite ordinary stone, nothing more. This again both reassured and armed Stepan. Because the name, at least part of the demon's name, had appeared in his memory from somewhere. And if a demon has a name as such, then it is not a simple demon, but if this name consists of several parts.... let's just say the singurity at the waist was about to form the event horizon of a bck hole. The third spirit, probably the most expensive of all, was summoned directly inside the body and aura, as it worked precisely with the search and purification of filth in its deepest and most disguised manifestations. This spirit was able, with the help of a shaman and proper training, to restore the brains and harmlessly remove the curse even from an old cultist, especially if he was recruited involuntarily, which is the case with ordinary and high-ranking pawns in equal measure. Demons are even better at brainwashing than mentalists. Their very nature, the presence of a pile of devoured souls, allows you to influence the passions and minds of more stable creatures of the material world.

  This spirit did not have a clear form or image. It was a small swarm of wisps of dense fog united by a common aspect and sphere. They swarmed in his body and aura simply unbearable, a kind of analog of spiritual tickling, and he still had to help: letting as many spiritual limbs and spiritual body in general outside the flesh shell. Reliable, although expensive, and even with the conditions of image erasure, so as not to leave hired entities even the memory of what your spirit looks like from the inside. That's even more expensive. These guys were also capable of death-reincarnation in case of need, it was their very swarm nature allowed, but they knew how to do it, not practiced it regurly and voluntarily. One had to provide extra payment or simply ignore it, which was even smarter. It's agent work and the perfectionism of the System. speak in Stepan. Ordinary shamans at most contracts-nondisclosure concluded, and for a couple of years only, until all the imprints of the spirits from memory will not leak out under the currents of the ether.

  Stepan's soul and spiritual body were not foul, or he wouldn't have been surprised if the first two hadn't found anything. This fact left one more option, the worst and, at the same time, the most successful and positive for the shaman: pure mental-spiritual influence with a connection through a dream. The most obvious of the options. It is not for nothing that the Name was hidden in dreams. It was not for nothing that it came in them originally. It was comforting to influence, seriously influence, the master of shamanism, and even the most skillful in inducing dreams, and being under the protection of several dreamers, even if not outstanding.... let's just say that such creatures are always outnumbered on several worlds around if system erudition is to be believed. And, most likely, if he had met something like that, the young man would either not have woken up at all, or would have woken up as a loyal servant of his mistress with red tits.

  Or the master with the red titties. Demons are so creative.

  Suppressing a wave of reflexive disgust, Stepan banished unnecessary thoughts and fears from his head. No, there was clearly someone more simple here, someone who had managed to snag the shaman's dreams and try to get deeper into them. It wouldn't have been a problem at all, the contact was so weak it wasn't even serious if it hadn't been for the Name lodged in his memory. The demon or demoness had given him a piece of their self for some reason, the key to controlling themselves. It wasn't the kind of information that any reasonable creature shared willingly. Yes, for an ordinary mortal without a gift, training, experience, and protection, the very knowledge of even part of the name of a strong demon can be fatal, because the Name gives the Connection. But in the case of an experienced gifted, and even a shaman, which is skilled in the control of the spiritual body and works with aggressive shit ... the bridge has two paths. That's why demons do not throw away their images-bels, so take care of them more than anything at all.

  And this Name was given to him after the meeting in the dream, for some reason having erased the meeting and forcing him to forget the dream as best as possible. Dreams are already forgotten, but here the demonic creature made a lot of extra effort. The question is why? The answer is actually quite simple, at least the first part of it. The Name was given to him to establish a connection. Because in a normal situation, his natural defenses would reflect almost any trick, even if Stepan did not wake up at all, and the maximum that would have achieved unknown demoness, is to send wet dreams. Actually, if he understood the timeline correctly, it was something simir that had happened to him then, after the assignment of cleaning up the abandoned shrine. He woke up with a morning boner. But then question number two. If the Name or part of it had been fed to him, fed to strengthen the contact, then what purpose was the creature trying to achieve, and most likely had achieved?

  The spirit, which looked like the smallest shining dot that entered the shaman's eyeball, instantly penetrating the spiritual body and turning off consciousness, allowed itself to be bound by a bunch of contracts forbidding any suspicious and harmful actions. Otherwise, the shaman would not have let him into his consciousness. What could the spirit decide to leave in that consciousness for a good memory? Forcibly immersed in the realm of the dream realm, the shaman was fully aware of himself this time, revisiting the images of his dreams. The images were forgotten, erased, as befits the primitive and uncontrolled shamanic dream visions, but somewhere among these shards was the one in which he had met the demoness. The one in which she met him, established a connection, introduced herself by Name, and then tried to erase the memory of the Name, but not the Name itself. And they, the shaman, who took the unformed image of the sleeping self, as well as the point-light, in the world of dreams became a huge motley bird with feathers of pure light of the moon, were looking for answers to these questions.

  They found very little, but they did find traces-images of the infernal something that had come into his dreams. An image of oddly shaped eyes with crosses, which he had noted upon awakening, but had not done anything about, as if he had been tempted to discard that detail, and another, much more complete, but carefully erased. An image of scarlet breasts with dark purple nipples, so tantalizing that even in his fully conscious state he was overcome with the desire to focus on that image alone and nothing else, forgetting why he had begun the search in the first pce. He didn't need Big Moonbird's help; he managed it himself, peering through the haunting image, seeing the half-forgotten features of an earthy-looking room in the style of American movies, like an expensive psychotherapist's office.

  As, nothing more could be obtained. The rest of the dreams were erased, but that was enough. The image of the study was very clear, pulling with it other, much better-hidden details, forming a certain picture-understanding. A dialog, a dialog between the sleeper and the one who came to him in his dreams, who came to speak and to talk. The joining spirits of the dreamers also said their word. They too remembered this moment, this conflict, when the guest of Stepan's dreams tried to prevent them from doing their work. And again an amusing fact. The shaman had checked on his servants upon awakening, had learned that something had tried to visit his dreams, and had done nothing. Was the creature's influence in this? Most likely, though one could not rule out a manifestation of his own self-righteous stupidity either. He was simply too well aware of what dreams were and how dreams were influenced through them, and so he saw no reason to panic. It was a mistake, of course, but in his defense, he did a full-blown reserve run through the subtle bodies every morning, especially after too turbulent and chaotic dreams. If there had been any influence there he would have at least noticed it, if not removed it, probably. He knew a few dozen tactics that would allow him to cheat such a check, but, again, it was hard to expect such sneakiness when wandering through wild forests and away from civilization.

  "Well, well, well, now I'm fucking intrigued." Squinting unkindly and involuntarily parodying Rodisv Gastoldovich Yanin's manner of speech, Stepan said, filled with some wild resentment and anger at the whole world and one as yet unknown creature. "There are two ways to the bridge, aren't there, bitch? And since you came to visit me first, I won't hold myself back."

  He wanted to call the demoness by name out of pure schadenfreude and pathos, but he bit his tongue at the st moment. Strong and experienced demons, skilled and ancient enough, may well hear their true name or part of it. Even if called to them on the other side of the world or from a neighboring world. Actually, this is the reason why such names are erased from the memory of people not only demons, but also demon fighters. And that you say so once, another, and on the third between you and Inferno will appear thin, the thinnest even, the connection. A mere mortal to roll away after the marbles and personal cuckoo does not need much.

  Except that he was no longer a mere mortal, but a Senior Shaman officially confirmed by the mighty System. And that's why he won't forget and won't forgive the attempt to get into his head, especially considering how this attempt could have ended. Sylvia's games and pns will seem like paradise against the embrace of Inferno. The shaman will get to the city, create a new ir, legalize his presence, and then call the cursed name, either by sending a dozen strong and a couple of older spirits, just on a diet of demoness, or call the female demon with her scarlet tits inside the protection circle. And he will not talk, gloat, or ask about the reasons for her interest in his person. He will not talk at all. He would only summon his entire combat retinue and tear the creature to shreds so small that the rgest one would hardly pass for the energy signature of a sick and maimed cockroach.

  Because, fuck it.

  *

  Stepan looked thoughtfully at the shore of the rather waterlogged ke. At that site, where there is a small sand bank as if it were a wild and unvisited beach. Almost unvisited, because on the sand there was a campfire built long ago and washed by rains so long ago. A good campfire, with a stone barrier, a small deep hole, and even a piece of log dragged from somewhere. The log, however, was a failure, having managed to get damp, rotten, and covered with mushroom caps, so the shaman would not sit on it. The ke, at which the only man in the area was looking so attentively, was also looking, one could say. It looks in the answer, as Nietzsche abyss from Statham's quotation. The scout spirits caught a thing hiding there, at the bottom, which was kind of undead, but not quite undead, but at the same time not a vampire of some kind, and not a spirit, which settled in a body that was already dead but had not had time to rot. In short, it looked at Stepan from the depths of the ke, without using its eyes, but it still saw him.

  Stepan didn't want to leave, because evening was approaching, and it was going to rain. And it promised to pour not just rain, but a real storm, with howling wind, lightning strikes, and randomly appearing driftwood. It was not the kind of rain that even a master of shamanism would be able to ward off so easily. Yet in the heavens right now he could feel the spirits of winds and storms pying and anticipating the coming storm, and among them, Stepan was sure, there were a couple of spirits of elders almost manifested in the material world. It was a rare occurrence, even in the fierce winter storm he had sheltered the Lyady from, there had never been such a rush of immaterial beings. In theory, he could try, if not to pacify the spirits, then to bribe them to move the most powerful front away, but that would take a lot of time and effort. If he had been given such a task, he would have taken it, but instead of a task to work with the weather on a rge scale, he was sent another quest from the Autogoddess.

  Stepan had nothing against it, it was easier for him, though the reward for a small task was good, but now he had to take shelter somewhere and make that shelter strong enough to wait out the storm. This piece of beach was actually quite nice. It was a bit low-lying, but it had a natural drainage for the water, it covered the steep ke shore on three sides, and even the wind was weakened by the topography. That's at least half the cost of supporting the defense that can be saved if you meet bad weather in a clear field. Taking into account the fact that the heavens would be raining for at least a day, and about half of that time it would be stormy, the question of saving reserves was not such a silly hobby. Shelter from the wind, deflect the rain jets, put out a duty protective circle, provide warmth, and support normal humidity. This will allow him to survive the storm with full, as far as it is only possible in nature, comfort.

  If the ke dweller didn't mind. The creature was quite strong and, what worried Stepan, well enough camoufged that he could not understand where exactly this thing was hiding and what it was in general. Well, without an active and unceremonious scan, he couldn't figure it out. But if he started it, then surely the terribly territorial and location-bound creature would definitely take offense, and then conflict was inevitable. He would have preferred to put the local beast to sleep and restrain it for the duration of the storm, but the ke was not only a home and food base for the creature, as there had been no fish here for a long time, and not many frogs left, but also a personal domain-territory. This little thing was far, very far away from that monster, which Stepan did not dare to venture into, but was still an unpleasant enemy, unambiguously unpleasant, like all adepts of witchcraft in general. The grasp of a battle shaman was certain of that. Witches and spellcasters are not the most dangerous of opponents, but they are almost always capable of unpleasant surprises and trouble. So, it was either leave, preferably far away, and prepare to face the bad weather there or solve the problem here. I didn't want to fight, and I didn't want to hit him first, because Stepan was a very non-conflictive person, but I didn't want to be neighbors with some evil shit.

  In the end, the tactics were pretty clear. Right in line with my grandfather's precepts. If a fight becomes inevitable, pretend not to wait for a blow and fuck the asshole when he opens up at the moment of his attack. The approach is very dangerous tactically. There is an inevitable risk of missing the very first blow, but it is strategically advantageous because the injuries you inflicted will be cssified as self-defense. No, the young man would not hesitate to strike first, but hitting a witchcraft-wielding monster while it was hiding at the bottom of a marshy ke covered by all its defenses was, to put it mildly, costly. It was better to wait for it to come closer, though he didn't want to risk it. Only to find oneself with a half-empty reserve and still under the attack of the ke-sitter was even less desirable. There were no fish in the ke, but there were enough traces of the inhabitant getting out of its ir and moving far away. The unknown shit preferred to come out of the water from the opposite end of the ke, but nothing would prevent it from following the shaman. It was possible to camoufge its traces, to hide itself from pursuit, but this was a new expense and there was always a risk of running into a predator with unique properties, which disguise would not deceive.

  Stepan made himself comfortable, but he did not forget about the protection of his ass. He put it even ahead of this comfort: a standard defense circuit, a second one hidden in the first one, territorial training, albeit cautious, so as not to conflict with the enemy's, a second yer of territorial influence, in order to weaken the enemy's control, a couple of traps. And appeals. There were summons, too, both front-row alert trackers, whose purpose was only to identify and signal threats, and stronger entities. A couple of separate teams, with strong spirits at the head, one of which was trained in power-eating, if you could call it that, literally confronting witches. The second of the strong ones was adept at weakening and restraining, creating ghostly barriers and defensive traits, confusing and restraining even a stronger enemy. Especially if that enemy had a material body. As a physical argument, Stepan had his faithful Lizard. He had summoned him not directly into reality, but into a small man-made pocket-cavern so he would not phoned by its presence. Stepan was thinking of blessing him with a system endowment, and if his warrior spirit didn't fail him this time, he would do just that, even before Squidward Plus.

  He didn't call the st one, as it was too powerful a caliber, but he made a billet for the call so the octopus manifestation would go as gently as possible, while he would be covered by several more simple spirits. He did not rush to endow the octopus with the gift of the system, even if this endowment would guarantee that he would be promoted to the senior spirits. That was because he wasn't sure of his reaction and obedience, intending to test the technique on Lizard: both were fighting spirits with a clear image of animal or beast-humanoid nature, several very powerful exotic skills, and a strong contract that was reflected in their system status. They even have retively simir personalities, so if the weaker one won't jump up at a sudden increase in strength, the other won't either.

  Probably.

  Probably.

  I suppose.

  Hell knows.

  By the time the shaman finished his defense, deliberately disguising it as weaker and under the stronger one, creating a third yer of really serious defense, a light rain began to drizzle. The wind blew gustily and viciously, tormenting the body of the naked shaman, who had not hesitated to cover his skin with several primitive but strong protective patterns. The fact that the creature was not as powerful as the slightly shabby nest of a powerful bloodsucker led by its parent did not mean that the young man took this enemy lightly. The moment the zy drip was repced by a wicked and sharp downpour, literally a wall of such, he activated both insution, wind diversion, and even rain deflection at once. Still, the same method, when there is no clear shield-barrier, just each drop is slightly deflected to the side and does not fall on a small beach clearing. The water in the ke, by the way, despite the wind, was barely bubbling at all, as if the storm had not dared to touch it. A clear sign of someone's control over this pce and the area.

  He made a fire, the spirits had brought some wood, made himself a comfortable stool out of sand compressed by the spirit of the solid and sand warmed by the spirit of the heat, got rid of the rotten logs, and even put a cauldron on the fire. The porridge was going to be especially good. He had spared no expense to make it with the remnants of a special enchanted oil made from several magical kinds of grains that he used to summon infernal spirits. It tasted amazingly good, but it still brought tears to his eyes. Even though this oil could not be stored for a long time, not tolerating any magical preservative effects, but for that third of a bowl you could buy a house in the city, and in a good neighborhood. The boy ate with appetite, but at the price it was a dinner that would have made any other local oligarch sick to his stomach. This is again to the question of how rare and valuable spirits with such an exotic specialization are in reality. Or, more precisely, how much these spirits know how to value themselves and their working time.

  The storm was raging all around. One time a rge broken branch of an acacia tree nearly fell on the young man's head, and in a beautiful artillery parabo, it flew almost on the poor man's head. The earthling, who was in tense expectation, and therefore all on edge, did not squeal only because his teeth were clenched almost to the point of crunching. And the spirits had not warned him, because the branch had flown past him, was not dangerous, had no magic or poison on the branches, and had not even touched the fire. Speaking quietly and unprintably, offended by such a sudden and sneaky attack, Stepan performed a vandal act of counter-battery warfare and cut off the pest acacia with a couple of sent spirits, which struck two air bdes right under the root of the already wobbly tree that grew on a hill three kilometers to the south. And yes, the wind was that strong.

  Reprofiling the shields and putting them in a more attentive selective mode, giving the spirits the appropriate commands, the shaman y down on the warm sand, covered himself with his favorite cloak, smiled a baby's smile, and closed his eyes. Not falling asleep, but sinking into meditation, while one of the spirits pnted in the body carefully controlled the aura, making its fluctuations identical to those of a soundly sleeping man. The shaman in a trance felt like a bullet in the chamber, if not a taut string, ready for a deadly burst, waiting for its coveted hour. He waited for the attack for an hour, a second, a fifth, and still, he waited for it, about dawn, at the very dog time. The storm had already subsided and pieces of trees were not flying everywhere, but it was still raining, the water level in the ke had risen and approached Stepan's rookery by a couple of meters, and there was a dense fog.

  The unnaturalness of the fog was not striking, but that was only when it came to ordinary people or weak gifted people. Even an adept, especially one unfamiliar with witchcraft, could miss the subtle fir of magic in the shroud of water droplets because there was no direct magical influence there. Still, the shaman, or rather his spirits skilled in indirect influences, immediately sounded the arm. And it became even greater when their arm was supported by poison detectors, which had been circling the awake pretender ever since his visit to Little Ronna. There was no poison as such in the ащп, but there was pollen of some kind, in small concentrations, but with such a killing tranquilizing effect that it didn't need much. It was not even a sleeping pill, but a hallucinogen, the dream of any mushroom elf who was earthly, not local. Visions and dreams under such a drug of natural origin would be very vivid and colorful.

  Stepan did not react. The spirits let the poison through to him at his command, but at the first signal of danger, the young man began to breathe clean air, which was brought directly into his trachea, already filtered and sanitized. A thin web of barrier on his whole body, almost invisible even at close range, prevented the crap from settling on his clothes and body. He realized with annoyance that he'd have to clean the pollen off his belongings ter if he didn't want to get high every night for the next couple of weeks.

  If I were an immoral asshole, this pollen could even be traded. He thought, zily listening to the images sent back by the poison spirits, realizing more and more deeply the very essence of this stuff. Minimal harm to health, no physical but deepest psychological dependence, easy to dose, easy to store, and low magical activity so it won't be tracked down by auras. It's the perfect drug, man, you could just create your own Hydra. And roll, roll, roll.

  Having decided that for such business his honorable grandfather would really come out of his grave and kick the shit out of his grandson, despite the difference in magical potentials, Stepan put aside the idea of getting into the drug business instead of I.T.(*), returning his thoughts to his future confrontation. The inhabitant of the ke, exactly the inhabitant, Stepan did not doubt it, and that's why he was only gd, because he had had enough of female devils, he didn't hurry with the attack at all, he first let his victim breathe the fog with special impurities. Stepan did not disappoint such a cunning opponent, ordering the spirit responsible for masking the aura to create the image of not just sleeping but also a hallucinating individual. The spirit had done brilliantly, a remarkably experienced creature who had successfully seen the auras of a human on high, as well as many other species of intelligent life, over several eras of his life. It's only a particurly fattening little spirit, but it's useful, eh!

  SpoilerT.N. There's a saying. Russia has three ways. Webcam, drug-dealing, and IT

  [colpse]Nothing happened for the next half hour, as if the attack had never happened. Even the fog was gone, dispersed by the new breeze. But then... Then something at the bottom of the ke, sitting in the deepest muddy pit, in the center of its power and the most primitive witch's field of concealment, moved. Stepan could scan it much more fully now. The disguise blurred, revealing a little more than it had. He wouldn't be able to put spirits in a bird, not in this weather. But, even if he did manage to protect some night owl, and he would, it would stand out a lot on its own for being in the storm and ignoring it. He'd have to put additional yers of camoufge on top of the main one, which would make the idea of bird-settlement meaningless.

  Instead of birds, several water balloons with small ghostly fry inside them were circling in the sky on a complex trajectory. It was like an eyeball made of rainwater and a lens made of the same ghostly fish. Each of these eyes, there were five of them in total, was not a bad analog of magic binocurs. Each of them looked with the same magic vision as spiritual vision, but in different spectra, overpping the gaps in each other's perception. So it was possible to determine the enemy's type rather quickly. Not undead after all, but some living and humanoid crap of witch-type, which so merged with the ke and the source located at its bottom with aspects of Sludge, Stagnation, and Decay, as well as the elemental belonging to water, that it began to be perceived only partially alive. The thing was also small, noticeably smaller than a man.

  It was a very old and very old goblin hermit witch doctor, who had all but abandoned any life outside the ke and only came out of it for the occasional hunt. The hunched, gnarled figure of the cruel and hungry creature crawled onto the beach silently, not disturbing a single stalk of reed, not spshing a single drop of water or putrid silt. It, the silt, covered the enemy with a solid lump, and it was because of the silt that the goblin, who was under a meter and a half taller, seemed much taller. It was the silt that hid his aura from the attentive gaze of the spirits of the first line of defense. But the spirits of feelings and meanings, by the way, quite caught his emotions, hunger, and anticipation of long games with a defenseless victim, howling in pain while it is sliced into pieces and eaten alive. In one hand the creature held a lump of some abomination, like a handful of rotting silt and algae. On the other, it clutched a dagger, crooked and seemingly barely held together by a single piece. Not a bone dagger, but an iron dagger that had been worn away by time, rust, and being at the bottom of the ke. However, in magical and spiritual reflection this knife made quite a different impression, causing a desire to take this toy for himself, if it were not for the obvious fact that such a peculiar artifact was tied to the life and existence of its owner and creator.

  Not a master, not even close, but still not just an adept. In the pce of his power, he seemed, in the volume of his aura, even stronger than Eel, though not by much. Also, despite its power and affinity for the terrain, this little shit has hardly ever seriously fought an equal opponent. There's no pce for him to meet those equal opponents here, in the middle of nowhere, where even other goblin tribes are found in trace amounts. And so it turns out that a wildly old and experienced spellcaster, who used to be the king of this pce, literally the alpha predator of the neighborhood, fights much worse than even an ordinary adept. He rushed forward swiftly and easily, as if he weighed about nothing, he rushed forward by a cunning route, bypassing the spirits who had not noticed him, with a stroke of his knife he opened the shield, overloaded it with a lump of rot and broke a hole in the second and with sincere surprise he ran into the third.

  Stepan did not py games. The freak, who might as well have been Sylvia's human life, had gotten too close to him. He was met by a powerful bolt of lightning merged into one from several spirits at once. And the barrier, active and powerful, struck, though not with a shock, but with a curse of weakness. At the same time, the shaman put his control over the territory on afterburner, not breaking, but weakening the enemy's control, trying to send him a couple of cunning curses. Spirit Debuffer weakens the goblin even more, though it isn't necessary. The enemy isn't some huge thing like a witchcraft-wielding legendary troll or an ogre, but an already puny little thing that reinforces its puniness with spells. The barrier spirit puts up barriers and tries to shackle the enemy, deprive him of maneuver, and prevent him from escaping the panicked runt, whose lightning bolts, air bdes, water whips, fshes of light, and vampire curses have begun to crumble his silt defenses. To keep him from hiding again in the water and on the bottom, where he could st much longer, with a theoretical chance of tiring Stepan and getting him to leave without his attacker's head.

  The Lizard did no such bullshit, simply striking as hard as he could, suddenly and sharply, like diarrhea, coming out of the ambush crease just to the side of the hoarsely howling super-goblin. He struck not with his bdes, which the runt managed to inexplicably intercept with his knife, almost pulling off the lizard's spiritual fingers, but with his tail covered with a dense yer of bck smoke, like a baseball pyer. The evil runt flew as if it had indeed begun to identify itself as a ball, hovering for a moment at the point of highest lift about fifty meters above the center of the ke. There, he was struck by another super lightning bolt from several smaller lightning bolts. Still, in such stormy weather, the summoning of air spirits was much easier, and the spirits themselves even put extra strength into the strike, simply out of the joy of seeing such weather and its reflection in the World of Spheres.

  It still didn't kill the witchcraft adept, who was almost completely and utterly fused to his pce of power and authority, though it did kill his sludge armor, exposing a puny and completely naked figure, not even green, but some kind of disgusting white. The figure was completely bald, but it had an aggregate that truly matched the hentai manga about goblins and elven queens, with a length and thickness that would put any earthly porn actor to shame. The slightly burnt goblin jerked sharply downward, not so much accelerating his fall as pulling himself to the bottom of the ke and the pce of his power, trying to restore his defenses, replenish his strength, and get out of the battle, which he did not like at all. At the same time, the shore of the ke bubbled up, spewing a dozen mud blobs toward the shaman, who was still lying there and hadn't even changed his position.

  The clumps of slimy stuff were intercepted by the spirits. Only one managed to hit the line of the shield, breaking through the first of the three, vaporizing in the second, which swallows it and redirects it to the spirit world, losing the enemy spells somewhere there. The goblin seems to have set the attack clearly against this particur shield, which, by the way, is not such a simple trick, albeit primitive in its essence, but, it seems, worked on thoroughly. Stepan himself, a little tensed up, once again took control of the other's witchcraft. Apparently, the goblin stupidly did not know this was possible and did not know even the basic methods of counteracting the interception, as if not believing that it was even possible. Well, the skill is not ordinary and quite complex, requiring several developed areas of mastering the gift. And now, the attraction, which pulled the short man to his favorite muddy pit at the bottom suddenly changed pority, as if a magnet turned the other side starting to push the caster screaming in horror back up. At the same height, where before he was caught up by another attack, this time not only by lightning but also by a ghostly wolf's maw, which swallowed and chewed the body of the goblin, which until the st moment desperately called for his native ke, which betrayed him at the st moment of his long, exorbitantly long, as for a goblin, life.

  "I killed the old dwarf," Stepan said into the void, finishing his commands to the spirits, feeling the remnants of the spells on the ke, which would now slowly become an ordinary body of water again, not a pce of power. "And also a local aksakal, almost a relic of bygone eras. I will not tell anyone about this feat."

  And what's more frustrating is that he didn't even get a level. They only gave him a certain amount of experience, but not much. Stepan understood perfectly well that his enemy, though he was strong magically, but in terms of danger was inferior to Ugryu by almost an order of magnitude, representing anything worthwhile only in the center of his power. But it was still a shame. He wanted a freebie but got only a little adventure, which he didn't give a shit about, and some moral satisfaction from the fact that he killed Stepan, who wanted to kill him first. If the creature had just sat in his ke all night, Stepan would not have gone in either, for there was no need. But no. The goblin struck uninvited and indiscriminately, simply because he could, and if the young man had been unprepared for the fight, he would have had some chance of success. Well, if the shaman had not defended himself, giving the fight to the spirits already summoned.

  He zily handed the orders to the air spirit with a penchant for Cleanliness and Neatness, waited for the pollen to blow back into the ke, then finally turned off the air pumping into his lungs and the barrier around his body, rolled over onto his other side, and after only a minute he was sweetly asleep. No dreams came this time, as they did every time after he'd strengthened the dream defenses and tripled his retinue, even summoning one strong spirit, on a three-year contract with the prospect of a permanent contract.

  He dreamed of Commander Shepard staring tiredly at a half-empty bottle of collector's liquor, dejectedly listening to the Blue Mediator's, i.e., Liara's, pn to sway their Archnemesis with the power of her hypnotic blue tits. She said they had the support of the entire Citadel behind them, and the Reapers in addition, all working together in close alliance, so they should have a chance. Somewhere off to the side, the Catalyst was crying, grieving that he wanted to solve the problem of coexistence between organics and synthetics in a completely different way, and if united against a common enemy, then not against such a terrible one.

  In short, typical sleepy bullshit, Stepan even stopped being surprised a long time ago.

  *

  The forests, hills, and swamps bored him worse than a bitter radish, and he had not been happy with the beauty of the scenery for a long time, but the way through them was easy, and the rare encounters with dangers ended in nothing. Having no reason to take risks, Stepan carefully avoided troubles, preferring to go around rather than go straight ahead. Spirits were constantly scouting, and trace wiping, and cloaking were applied in time. Plus rare impnting of spirits in his own thinn bodies. He kept a pretty good pace. For example, why go around a wide and rather deep ravine, when you can simply jump over it, having strengthened your body with a universal spirit, and having previously protected your belongings from damage due to the jumping impulse? Why raft down a wide stream or search for a ford when you can cospy one cheerful carpenter and walk across the water? You can also walk through a swamp, but you have to look more carefully at the pce you're walking through so you don't end up right in front of the ir of another predatory creature. Or not predatory, but just does not like to be trampled on.

  He encountered another small necropolis but the undead in it had long since become almost powerless. Not an entire town or a small caravan, but an old and nearly colpsed watchtower. From the looks of it, this tower was designed to watch over the road, once upon a time, a very long time ago. If one looked closely, mostly with spiritual eyesight, one could even see where the now completely overgrown road had been. A quick reconnaissance showed that there were quite a few corpses piled up in that tower, which had not been buried or ritualized, and which had degenerated into the spontaneously risen dead and a few ghosts. Over the centuries the tower had stood abandoned the creatures had almost ceased to show signs of activity, huddled in the remains of the room with no way to escape. The ghosts, as spontaneous entities, could not leave the pce of their death, and the corpses were obviously too chopped up to be able to get out of the ruins. Some of them must have successfully scattered around those very hundreds of years ago, and the rest were still at the site of their deaths.

  In principle, one single brave enough individual with a good amulet, a bag of blessed salt from ghosts, and a silver-pted axe against material undead would be enough to put this anomaly to rest. The presence of a gift is not necessary, as well as outstanding military talents, the main thing is not to panic at the sight of the undead. Not a warrior, even an old, but still strong, grandmother could do it. Scratching the back of his head and accepting the small system task, the young man honorably fulfilled this task, calling specific spirits and then still conducting the ritual of resting on top turning the almost non-dangerous burial ground into a grave that is already exactly non-dangerous. He finished his effect by ordering a couple of spirits of stones and walls to destroy the st supports of the tower, letting it finally colpse and covering the corpses with a burial shroud. The spirits didn't find anything of value in the tower, which wasn't surprising. Those who had sughtered the local guards must have appropriated everything of value. The shaman picked up the reward for the completed assignment, a vial with ghostly matter, perfect for necromancy rituals or specific calls of the sphere of non-life, and silently went on his way.

  Two small assignments, both not from Great Milf, were much more enjoyable, and he did them with full dedication. The first assignment required a powerful and multifaceted territorial influence on another ruin. This time without undead and completely abandoned. The remains of some estate with a small farm in the set were in such a deplorable state that there was nothing left but a grassy foundation and a single half-colpsed wall. The shaman needed to put a rather complex blessing on this pce: recovery, pleasant dreams, accelerated healing of wounds, acceleration of reserve replenishment, and some kind of protection from uninvited guests and undead. It seemed that such a list would have recently been considered an average assignment, but now, it had become a small one. Legitimately, because there was nothing particurly difficult for Stepan in this assignment, it was literally a day's work.

  The reward promised a very small amount of experience, increased affinity with spheres, easier work with guardian spirits, increased efficiency of territorial magic, and one random property. Needless to say, the earthling was directly energized with enthusiasm. Even more than that - he was burning with enthusiasm! He worked hard, even spent a couple of contracts from those he had saved for ter, when he could get a cozy house for himself, without any pity. Some of the work was done by spirits. Some of it he did with his own spiritual body and witchcraft skills. Toward the end, he even considered summoning the Jolly Milkman, but as, the young man had no affinity for the house. Instead, he summoned the echoing presence of an old house-spirit that had practically disintegrated with the death and desotion of his home, feeding it a quarter of his reserve and some avaible offerings. Exactly avaible. He hadn't bought anything from the System, enough of what he'd gathered along the way. With proper scanning, it wasn't hard to change his route to find a rare herb or a stone with an unusual spiritual reflection.

  The entity sucked up the offering with absolute readiness, and now, according to Stepan's estimates, it would be able to maintain and coordinate the blessing for at least five or six years, if it was not intentionally disrupted. After that, the spirit would go into hibernation again and continue to shrivel up, but there was nothing to be done. Spirit can not change the pce of residence. It can't be recruited as a retinue. As an option, you can try to take away with you the cornerstone of the estate, and after calling and binding the spirit again, deceiving his nature as if he is still in his native home. But Stepan just didn't want to bother. He made a note in his notebook that if someone needed a house spirit, and one with a history and an old one, not one that had been born with the help of rituals, he would know where to get what he was looking for. The spirit, by the way, resembled a very furry Cheburashka, or Kuzya from an old cartoon, but it was not very intelligent; other guardians of groves or separate parts of the stream were much stronger and smarter.

  SpoilerT.N. Cartoon about Kuzya https://youtu.be/RNXMOdBvfGc

  [colpse]The closed task gave the promised property called “regeneration of subtle bodies”, which was, in essence, the opposite and yet allied branch of the already existing “high resistance of subtle bodies”. Where the second property allowed one to train and call more actively without hurting oneself and crippling aura nodes in the process, the first one helped one to recover after one had practiced. The smallest micro-traumas of auric veins inevitable even with proper training, healed and disappeared almost instantly, light overstrain passed in a day, and even full-fledged injuries, especially those not too serious, could dissolve with time. Also, the owner of this property more quickly heal serious injuries and mutitions, if it will be taken care of appropriately. The full combination of this pair of properties came out in full synergy, almost multiplying each other.

  Stepan almost never allowed himself to work or call to the point where he started to feel like shit. Unless you counted the rarest exceptions, like the healing of Small Lady. But just reducing the accumutive effect of fatigue from workouts, increasing their effectiveness, and overall high-energy body tone is just fine. Add to that the ways to work more flexibly with the Patchwork Echo, which now could be bent around him even more, without risking tearing its own ass to the British fg along with the aura, it was a reason to drink something strong. If Stepan was into drinking hard liquor. Some other properties were also slightly strengthened, for example, the same “toughness of spirit”, which now, even more, accelerated the recovery of brains after a blow or coming to his senses after some wave of horror. Oh yes, the “blessing of health and long life” also began to affect the regeneration of wounds, making it more advanced and better. The aura is still intrinsically linked to the physical body if we are talking about humans and other flesh-covered individuals. However, with the increasing strength of the gift, the gift allows you to depend less and less on the physical state.

  The second assignment came at the moment of being near some very deep, too-deep cave, from where magical power was flowing, only more rigid and uncontrolble than it was on the surface. The entrance to the Underworld according to that very magical erudition was literally a separate world, very loosely connected to the real world. You could dig a dozen kilometers deep, but you couldn't dig into the Underworld, and you could go down a couple of hundred meters and find yourself in an endless and ever-changing byrinth of tunnels, halls, rifts, and failures. It's the Darkest Dungeon, where all sorts of things want to eat you, kill you, use you as an incubator, or at least take you as a sve if we're talking about sentient beings. As if such creatures live there, but their character has been corrupted from such living thousands and thousands of years ago. Stepan wasn't even going to go there, no assignment or reward would make him do such shit, but luckily he didn't need to go there.

  The rather narrow breach was, in fact, not even a breach, but just a gap through which nothing of any size could get out. But something as small but dangerous as two or three rge predators could enter an ecosystem foreign to them, not to mention the rva of something rge that would grow under the sky. A reason to beef up the defenses and guardian spirits with sensory features. A reason to get away quickly and stay away for a couple more days, doubly paranoid about what's going on around you. Certainly, not a reason to get into this DEEP DARK DUNGEON on his own, especially since no one would pay him for the expedition. The assignment of the System caught him just at the moment of decision and the first step away from the wild and unbridled power of the crack in the earth.

  The System demanded the strange, as it always did. To take advantage of the flow of alien surface energy to summon and conclude at least a one-time contract with a strong spirit of the distant bowels, anyone, any specialty, any direction. In principle, Stepan had the appropriate spiritual bestiary in his luggage of knowledge, albeit not as advanced as the usual call practices. In order to perfectly adapt to work in the dungeon, it was necessary to properly invest in a couple of specific knowledge avaible to pump, such as “the practice of call to the spirits of the Underworld” or “methods of shamanic work in exotic conditions”, but the root skill is the root skill that can repce any other. On the other hand, a Senior Shaman, especially one stuffed with systemic knowledge, even if he finds himself in an extremely unfriendly environment, such as an Underworld or, say, in the domain of some higher entity will retain the lion's share of combat effectiveness. But yes, like ordinary gifted people, he would have to get used to a different energy pattern, even if he could do it faster.

  The summoning itself had been successful, though tense. The images used and seen by these spirits were too different and alien. Stepan felt as if his knowledge of spirit dialog had been robbed of about two points of talent. Not literally, of course. It was just that the task of summoning a not particurly strong spirit had suddenly become more complicated, even though nothing seemed to have changed. And the spirits of the deep earth, on average, are noticeably more, though not strong, so resistant, stable, and angry than their more ordinary colleagues. The reason for this is the very energy background. Existing and developing in such a harsh etheric environment, the inhabitants of the depth involuntarily adapt and develop natural resistance. But even with such a handicap, the call did not fail, although the spirit did tear itself out of its bonds a couple of times. The Earthman did not call out to just anyone but called out a rather advanced entity. Not the strongest and not dangerous in direct combat, it specialized in scouting, searching for danger, and other methods of advancement in the Underworld.

  After all, he hadn't pnned on going down that hellish asshole, but life took some strange turns. He wasn't going to fight elite river pirates, just as he wasn't going to fight a trio of bloodsuckers or lick the pussy of another vampire, a very conniving and equally beautiful vampire, while under tight mental and bloody control. The fact that he wasn't pnning to do something didn't mean he wouldn't have to do it, due to the ck of alternatives as such. The contract for the five summons had been finalized, even managing to negotiate a tighter cooperation. The spirit realized that the shaman was not a weakling, and the shaman himself adjusted to the spirit's images and came to a peaceful and satisfactory agreement without mutual threats and attempts to break the enclosing circuit.

  The hardest part of the job wasn't containing the underground spirit and its aggression, there were only a few blows, more for show than for the actual purpose of killing. No, the hardest part was to create an analog of a closed barrier, which would maintain inside approximately the same energy-etheric picture as in the native for the spirit Underworld, and then call the entity into this energy bubble. I used up a lot of energy, spent one charge of reserve renewal, worked hard to prepare the area, and even hastily carved a small totem, inhabiting it with specific spirits of pure magic that worked with the magical background. The deal was fixed in the spiritual perception, the contract bound the spirit with strong ties. The young man carefully opened the circuit and sent his newly hired employee away.

  The assignment was completed, increasing Stepan's resistance to Underworld energy, and increasing his affinity with the spheres of the respective directions, again giving him almost no experience and one random meta-skill. This meta-skill was once noted but then crossed off “Intensive Development I”, which increased the experience scale gain factor from active and strenuous Rocky-style training. It was a useful thing, but it lost out to “Peaceful Development” in every way. First of all, it requires full dedication in training, and preferably, the recipient should be trained. An earthling, constantly traveling and constantly alone, simply can't pour absolutely all of his safe reserve into training, because there would be no one to take care of him, his defenses, to help him recover after exhaustion and a thousand other little things.

  However, in conjunction with peaceful development and the presence of all kinds of assistance from local authorities, then yes. It would be a real imba. Especially if you dedicate training not to something, but the same tantric practices: there would be a triple addition of intensive, peaceful, and lecherous development. Even without multiplying the gains from each other, if they were simply added to each other, there was still an impressive result. As, Stepan did not have a kind princess on a unicorn over his shoulder to give him a big harem and allow him to grind on its inhabitants. Stepan even looked around, almost believing this princess on a unicorn would crawl out from behind the nearest bush. But the bushes remained just bushes, even without pianos in them, not to mention princesses, and the shamanized man shrugged his shoulders, finishing cleaning up the traces of the ritual and leisurely going on his way.

  Along the way, he managed a couple more minor assignments, getting to four-fifths of a level twenty-six scale. Reject a couple of quests from the Autogoddess, as well as drooling over yet another special offer in the system store. This time he couldn't resist moving it to the waiting list. It was a great cape, though. Colorful and covered with feathers of various birds, it served as a home for the supreme wind spirit, as well as several dozen strong spirits and three older spirits of the same sphere. Even an untrained gifted person with such a cloak could easily demolish houses with air rams, bst them with vacuum explosions, pump out oxygen in areas, and so on, even until the cloak ran out of energy. The energy in the artifact, in fact incredibly strong and capable of withstanding a ballista shell without getting a scratch and without injuring the bearer, was replenished by itself, but slowly, slowly, slowly. But there was a reserve, as in any other stationary storage device in the ritual circle, so it would take a long time to fill it up again and even longer to wait for the energy to replenish itself.

  Yes, the artifact's protection is also good, including even curses or indirect damage, which simply blows out of the cloak's owner's aura. It will also help a lot during a call, especially with the spirits of the air, because it serves as a banner, a passport, a red ticket of the deputy-silovik-diplomat, to whom it is very harmful to health to insult and to refuse is deadly dangerous for the career. But the main power of the cloak is not in this and not even in the fact that it allowed even an adept to fly, and very fast, at the level of a helicopter of some kind, overtaking dragons and kicking them, but at the same time draining the battery at a wild rate. The main trump card is that it can cross wind paths almost effortlessly and with maximum protection for the crosser and three to five passengers he takes with him. In principle, with this cloak, even as an adept, you can jump to the other end of the continent in a couple of minutes of flying through the spirit world, but to the other end of the state in the same couple minutes of flight and transition. You only need to give the image-mark-coordinates, and the higher wind spirit will transport you without unnecessary risks.

  On the downside. The transition, as well as the attack and defense barriers, are absolutely all air element-based. If you want, you can find countermeasures, overpower shields, stop attacks, and block teleportation. Or even prohibit the use of air calls in a certain territory. All this is quite possible, but it is a weak consotion for the enemies of the artifact's owner. If you are attacked by a tank, even a perfectly known model, which you know every vulnerability, so you can destroy it by hitting a vulnerable pce, you still need a good old AT missile, which you will use to destroy the enemy. Otherwise, what good is it if you know the vulnerabilities of a tank or a very powerful artifact if you can't use them? Especially if the owner also knows about these vulnerabilities and tries to cover them as much as possible.

  He didn't add another vulgar and brainwashing super-lot to his favorites. Though, he did think about it, even if only for a brief moment. A gss ball with a murky gray haze inside was, among other things, an excellent observing artifact, especially if you could power it from a source under some magical tower. If one could focus the orb on a person within a certain city, one could first study their defenses, and then find the keys to them. All this can be done directly through the ball, there is a surprisingly wide range of scanning, and very little noticeable and lost in the natural background, especially if the background is initially high. And having picked up the keys you can start to act on the mental body and sensual perception of the victim, as if standing next to her and at the same time in the mode of maximum secrecy, but without leaving the cozy and protected tower. Of course, it is also possible to strike to death or curse, but with noticeable difficulties. The basis of the artifact is sharpened for mental and charm-like influence, so it is much easier to drive her to suicide, make her a vegetable, or steal a cuckoo than to torture her aura or rot her flesh.

  The tool is very useful, even though the farther away from the target, the weaker the impact. Ideally - work on targets within a couple of tens of kilometers, but if careful and on the already known defense, then a hundred and fifty or two hundred kilometers is also not the limit. The problem is not in the weakening of transmission because it will not be possible to use a strong enough suggestion through the mediator. Still, mentalists are quite skillful in minimal energy saturation of superfine suggestion. No, the control will start to fail, and stealth, so the owner of the artifact, or trace of the signal will be detected if they try and are ready. In general, if Stepan had his own top-css magic tower, he would have put Big Brother's Billiard Ball in the queue for purchase. Not even for perversion and bewitching the beauties he liked, but for surveilnce and information gathering.

  Only Stepan didn't have a magic tower with a personal source in the highest configuration. He had no magic tower at all. None at all. He could appeal to Autogoddess and demand that she immediately provide him with a magic tower, but he wouldn't do that. And because Her Milfy Milfiness could fulfill the demand, the tower would be accompanied by a mentalist magistress with a love for pying with the minds of her subordinates, a convenient colr, a wild list of fetishes, and a desire for a big and pure sincere love, which for a mentalist, probably, is close to the limit of avaible perversions. No, no, thank you, he would rather build this tower himself, slowly and sadly, but surely and irresistibly. Even if it was with his bare hands, without magic, and with only a sapper's spade as a tool.

  *

  Stepan stopped again for a day and a half. This time not for rest. He had to renegotiate some of his contracts with the guard spirits and scout packs. He had already learned the lesson that if the nd was uninhabited and abandoned, it was not because the local popution did not want to inhabit it, but only because the local fauna and flora were strongly opposed to the settlement of their native territories. So he didn't save either on guarding his sleeping pce, or on ying the way, or on fending off predatory animals, among which there were magical mutants of various degrees of danger, or on the constant support of the arm group if it was necessary to start fighting on the move. The next hill was dry, stable, and cozy enough to make a parking lot right on it. There was also someone's abandoned but still stinking of animal droppings den. Stepan didn't settle down in that hole but he liked the hill and spent a day and a half on its top, constantly stoning and calling to the familiar spirits, who knew the shaman and readily renegotiated contracts without any fuss and suspicion. So he, tired and drinking his concoction of local herbs, was caught by another assignment, already an average one.

  System assignment (average): using any avaible methods of calls or other application of the gift to transfer to a distance no farther than one day's crossing to the Free City of Dantmark, while not going further than three kilometers from the point at which the assignment was received.

  For satisfactory performance, the preparation and the transfer itself must be accomplished no ter than two decades from the acceptance of the assignment.

  Full execution requires teleportation without the use of intermediate anchors between Dantmark and the current location.

  Perfect execution requires reaching Dantmark, maintaining maximum stealth, and not causing marks on the city's tracking systems by your actions.

  Reward: closing the experience bar to twenty-sixth level; a significant increase in affinity with the spheres of Space and Paths, aspects of roads, Distance, and Movement; a significant increase in the likelihood of spatial manipution branch talents and increased mobility.

  At full execution: two random uncommon reward tokens; two random “mark” category properties tied to random and as yet unrepresented in status high spheres.

  At perfect execution: one random rare or elite meta-skill; one random improved property reted to spatial manipution; plus one characteristic unit to the least developed attribute at the time of the assignment.

  The first thing Stepan did after reading the images of this assignment and realizing their meaning, was to put it on the waiting list and start setting up another camp for a longer time. There were no sources nearby, not within a three-kilometer radius, so there was no point in changing the location. While preparing the pce of the future parking lot, Stepan was pushing the help to get some answers, the first of which was the possibility of closing the already quite close twenty-sixth level, and the assignment to transfer this level to the twenty-seventh. As, but no, the assignment clearly indicated the level to which the experience bar would jump, and if he took a new level before completing the assignment, the twenty-seventh level would not be avaible to him, just give him a certain amount of experience, depending on the complexity of the completed assignment.

  The assignment, by the way, was nowhere easy, even if the reward suited him with its quality. Especially a unit in the underdeveloped Resistance, but the complexity of the assignment was at the appropriate level. The main problem in Stepan's understanding was that if he was going to perform the assignment, he had to focus on the highest bar and only on it. To make the transfer not only successful but also unnoticeable. Actually, it was precisely because of the need to be inconspicuous that he had not done something like this until now. Still, to hide the spatial transition, no matter how to perform it, is quite a problem, even for a shaman. Yes, a shift in reality through the spirit world is much easier to pull off unnoticed than a cssic portal. But the backsh would still be serious. The only saving grace was that we were not talking about the inner walls of the city, especially its upper part, nobility quarters, or protected temples, but about the distance of a day's crossing in any direction. The crossing through a good road and in a cheerful condition, even if there were only forests and hills between the city and the point of arrival.

  In fact, there are not many such pces. Land near Dantmark is valuable, vilges or estates are plentiful, and there shouldn't be too many ownerless and impenetrable forests. However, it's easier to find a deserted pce, than within the city limits. Yes, even there the transition can be sporadically detected and, given the reigning Big Search, it will be detected. However, there is a difference between the density of networks and fields of scanning covers, their intensity, and the frequency of checks. Either way, he would need to mask his transition with a very high quality, blurring it into the general magical background and hiding it in the shadows of more significant magical influences. If it weren't for the reward involving a unit of attributes, he wouldn't want to risk it, but the assignment had given him a suitable excuse, which meant he could start preparing his path. After all, he was sick of these wild nds and solitary passages, they were in his liver, he wanted to go to people and normal food, and cheap food, and not purchased from the system and therefore worth as much as an airpne wing.

  Having put the quest into the waiting queue, Stepan did not prepare exactly the transition, so the queue would not deactivate. He had learned his lesson after the st average quest. No, the first thing Stepan started to do was to prepare his camp, to create a strengthened call circle without any strict connection to the quest itself, just general strengthening and defense of the calls. In addition, he was engaged in another, no less important and even somewhat interesting task, for the sake of which he had to transcend his own dislike: studying the situation in Dantmark and finding ways to deceive the city's signaling charms. After all, he had direct access to the person who in hiding from this search is forced to understand almost better than those who watch the signal charms. Besides the obvious search for a solution, it was necessary to know where exactly he was going to get to, what centers of power and authority there were in the city, and to whom it was best to get a pce under the wing of “just an ordinary apprentice”?

  He pnned to deal with it ter, once he was near settled territories. For now, hiding his tracks after the massacre, he took the wildest routes, deliberately avoiding encounters or settlements. Several times he crossed roads or trails, even a single path, but it was crossing, not moving along them, trying not to be seen by anyone. A vampire so strong, so well-fed, so empowered by his endowment, carrying a minimum of cargo (which was minimal for her strength) should have reached Dantmark by now and entered her ir. With her ability to run for days on end, her great stamina and speed, it was no surprise, but one could only hope she didn't eat any passersby. Judging by her temperament and preferred methods, she would only bite them in such a way they wouldn't understand why they had been haunted by this annoying weakness since morning.

  Closing his eyes, sitting in a meditative posture, and sinking into a trance, Stepan manifested over his palm a fully naked doll of his doll, not dressed in a hunting suit, but fully naked, concentrating on it, using it as a mediator and antenna. And then, after a minute, without any summons from the spirits of the suggestive type, simply by his own will, influencing the doll with the spiritual body that had undergone another modification, he plunged into the memory and thoughts of Sylvia Malter, browsing them like an open book. An interesting book, it had to be said, because the life of a full-fledged nestmistress was already intense. And after the mass search for the unknown vilin had begun, the intensity had become almost unbearable.

  Sylvia at the moment of communication through the doll was lounging in a hot bath. She returned to Dantmark where the chicks were already waiting for her not even starting to worry. The bloodsucker had been captured quickly, she had not been able to signal distress, and her absence was still within normal circumstances. Yes, the ck of communication through amulets was worrying, but, as they say, things happen, and her silence was not beyond the usual lying on the mattress in a particurly dense mode. Now, having appeared before the scarlet eyes of the initiates with a scarlet drop, she began to give orders, collect reports, and estimate losses. She had losses, she couldn't avoid them, because even if she was warned about the raid and the search, even if she was allowed to leave, almost defiantly closing their eyes, she couldn't and wouldn't have been able to get all her assets out of harm's way. And this does not count the assets that had to be sacrificed in gratitude for the timely warning, and the gratitude was quite sincere, and the requests, it must be admitted, were quite modest.

  Some merchants tried to renegotiate deals. A few of the vendors pressed for delivery dates and demanded additional guarantees. One smuggler supplying alchemical reagents pushed the goods already paid for by Sylvia to third parties, pretending that it was the right thing to do. A couple of shopkeepers, who were on credit and went under the unspoken roof of the scarlet eyes, were pressured and demanded to change the roof. One of the medium-small officials of the magistrate's office, feeding from the vampire's hand, was gently moved from a useful position to a simpler one. Another official, much higher, more expensive, but also more useful, was summarily executed, even though he had officially slit his own wrists during his house arrest. Apparently, his even higher patrons, for whom he also performed all sorts of unofficial tasks, cut off the ends and decided to get rid of a too-dirty individual, who, as it turned out, was in contact with the bckness.

  The special stomach pearls of predatory carnivorous snails, one of the Underworld's creatures that survived well on the surface, though they required special care and did not live in the wild, were highly valued, sold for a lot of money, and were always eagerly bought. Mages, merchants, even priests - a truly universal reagent, suitable for many practices, even Stepan could use it. But the fastest way to ripen these pearls is not just by fattening snails with meat, but with fresh meat, and preferably alive. Or better still, human meat. This did not make the pearls, which in reality were just stomach stones, but very simir to authentic sea pearls, better in quality, but they grew and formed amazingly fast, as if on yeast. Everyone in town suspected that the official and his retive, who kept his snail farm and crushed his competitors not without the help of the official, were practicing this approach, because of the excessive yields he was harvesting. But a much smaller number of them were aware of the fact the man also traded in much rarer snail pearls, the elite subtype, not snow-white, but bright blue.

  Snails regurgitated such a harvest if you fed them with special alchemy, and fed them for a long time, the costs were not profitable, and snails after regurgitation of elite reagent sickened, and even died, so the profit was not worth it. Or you can feed snails still alive babies, preferably girls who have not yet their periods. Then yes. Then it would be cost-effective, even if we take into account the additional payment to svers for silence and to the head of the guards, both regur and secret, for turning away. Such a charm, Stepan felt nauseous, though he had gotten used to the local mentality! Except during the Big Search, the poor guy didn't have time to cover his tracks and the temple of Gaia stood in defense of the children, demanding a fair public trial and an equally fair punishment. As a result, the temple was thrown a bone, the taxes were reduced, the rest of the outraged were also somehow silenced, and not always with gifts, and the culprit could not bear the burden of guilt and opened his veins. Sylvia, who had received very extensive information about such a sensational story, assumed that he even opened his veins voluntarily, just so he would not be helped to die with less dignity and more suffering, plus the rest of his retives would not be sughtered as an example.

  Thus, the return of the fugitive vampires, whose nest, one of the half-abandoned buildings in the lower town used as a warehouse and transshipment base, had been publicly and pompously put to the fire, having executed a couple of bandits, went without pomp and unnoticed against the general background. They returned, of course, to the main ir, which nobody dared to touch. This is the private property of the noble family, what vampires, are you out of your mind, apologize immediately and pay a fine. That hunter of bloodsuckers, by the way, did pay the fine and even muttered something apologetic, leaving the house with his stormtroop. Sylvia had given a gift of three of the fines paid by the hunter's squad to her man in the guards. By the way, she had kept his bloody pulse on him for almost fifteen years, occasionally and very discreetly nudging not just a new and promising young man, but half a centurion.

  The problems in the city were only a small part of the returning bloodsucker's problems, though, because it had fewer chicks, and those were not losses that could be compensated for so easily. A new fledgling would need at least two or three decades of training and coaching before it would be strong enough to work at night and not fall into catatonia during the day. And that was if the material to turn was gifted, accelerating progress and enhancing the general characteristics of the inanimate body and aura. Sylvia had a total of six subordinates, three of whom were her converts, whom she had selected and raised while they were still human, who knew about their future and tried their best to earn it. One more was converted by her fledgling, also retaining direct inheritance, and the remaining two were of different parents, but who had brought her bloody patronage and recognized her authority.

  It was six. Five left, and it could be four. It could have been in the “almost guaranteed” category. Two of them were ambushed in a stupid ambush, set up not for them. They'd accidentally gotten hit by hunters chasing one of Edward's fledglings or a vampire without a nest. If there had been two experienced bloodsuckers, even if they hadn't been of the most fighting nest, following the teachings of Liranmil, they would have taken the group down even in the daytime. But this pair consisted of one experienced bloodsucker who had been sucking Scarlet Drops for a hundred and fifty years, while the other was a newcomer, barely able to move during the day even with conscious effort. The veteran overpowered the enemy and broke the circle, but the chick, a young and very skillful swordsman, a favorite of women, and just a sweetheart, was seriously injured.

  Mentor and nanny, and also parent, literally Sylvia's right hand dragged him to Dantmark, led him through the guards, and paid smugglers she knew, but the boy had little chance even when he was put in the healing earth and watered with blood. He survived only because of the constant feeding, regeneration was not going on. No, it was only getting worse and worse, very unpleasant. an enchanted arrow mixed with a bag of silver dust in the face and a pot of consecrated combustible mixture on the back of the head. Apparently, she'd just have to let him go into eternity, he wouldn't be able to regain consciousness, or he'd have to be kept alive for a good forty years in that state, with someone around him 24 hours a day to feed him blood and power. If it had been that “right hand”, Sylvia would have tried to help, perhaps, getting into debt to someone, but here even the parent herself recognized that the guy should be scrapped - the harsh truth of non-life under the scarlet drop.

  The second loss was not technically a loss, because no one died. It was just that the same newcomer and non-native who had come under the scarlet patronage of Malter, also voluntarily and with conditions, decided that he had taken everything he could from her nest and the mistress. However, he did not want to repay for another hundred years at least. So he used the knowledge he had gotten from her, the reagents he had stolen from her, and the skills he had mastered in secret from his mistress to cut off the control-tracking leash, by which the parent could not so much influence the chick as monitor it and know how it was feeling. For this endeavor, he had spared no expense in letting an entire family of the second generation, including a minor third, serve Malter faithfully for ritual and blood. A very motivated non-human. Sylvia, staying quietly furious and blurring the story of the murdered family, suppressing rumors and panic, was feverishly patching up the gaps in her net of influence.

  The escaped ghoul was responsible for communicating with criminals and smugglers. And since he had broken off all his contacts, he would not hesitate to sell information about the network to anyone who wanted it, if not to intercept it. That left Sylvia with only four bloodsuckers at her disposal. And these bloodsuckers were all female. Of the two men, one was almost dead, and the second was not a man, but a faggot. Stepan would have suspected some strange twist of fate, literally asking him to apply the full arsenal of the Autogoddess's skills to this cozy nest, but for the followers of Liranmil - and Kryzmar, but he is often overlooked by virtue of a rather long ago death even by the standards of the eternally undead - this is quite the norm. They traditionally turn more women than men, especially if the parent and hostess are female. In the case the nestmaster is male, the ratio is one-to-one, which is the norm for adherents of most other teachings as well.

  So, Sylvia, though not fully normal, stands on her feet strong enough and, if she manages to find Riksar, the traitor still hiding in some wood, she will be almost in the bck. The losses are minimal, as for such a serious force majeure, the profit is, even if most of it she does not-thought-not-remembered, managed to shit herself with a slight fright. And nothing would stop her from suddenly remembering that she needed to help a master of shamanism get into town under the guise of a mere apprentice, at the same time providing the boy with a legend, a pce to live, and general confidence in the future. Stepan is unhurried and cautious going over his rosary in his hands, at the same time shuffling Sylvia's thoughts and memories. Primarily those that concerned Dantmark's defense and scanning systems, both inside and outside the city limits. The bloodsucker knew a great deal, but just by virtue of her age and natural powers of observation. She had noticed many small details that could be put together into a coherent picture. Stepan liked what he saw on the one hand, but not so much on the other. Everything was much better than he had feared, but at the same time much worse than he had hoped. Especially against the background of the Big Search, which increased the general attention and made everyone very meticulous, ready to sniff out any detail.

  The main scanning contours were located in the city limits. They were simultaneously connected to the city magic tower and its owner - Master Miller, a very good fire Elementalist, also skilled in water magic, and a bit of Artifactor - and to the pace of the ruling family de Dantrelle, who had power over almost all the charms-scanners in the city while the tower acted as a repeater-amplifier. The walls of the city and the towers on those walls, the city temples, the portal hall, special amulets and artifacts buried under the paving stones of rich neighborhoods, as well as some individual estates, mostly those where the closest allies and vassals of the Duke lived, also pyed their role. All of this made the goal of getting into the city by direct teleport and yet unnoticed very difficult, to say the least, for Stepan's current level. About on the very border with impossible in principle, especially in the allotted time and without extremely costly preparation.

  When it comes to the suburbs, things are much nicer, even if the tracking of the fabric of space and its state is set at a level definitely above complete zero. Powerful perturbations will be caught and beeped with a guarantee, but a small puncture for a loner has a chance to disguise and hide, especially a shamanic one. Of course, here, closer to the wild nds and the territory of the Horde, there is more attention to shamanism than, say, on the coast, and therefore in the sensor complexes of ritual inscriptions to search for shamanic passages and disturbed astral paths were given a lot of resources. But a one-time transition made by a Senior Shaman personally for himself carefully hidden at the level of the second rank of agent works to notice much more difficult.

  After searching for answers, working through different options, and even making Sylvia think about the answer, which in her head was purely theoretical-hypothetical, and which she immediately forgot about, he finally adopted a rough pn and drew out its still indistinct contour lines. First of all, he would rely on the work of the city portal, through which all sorts of cargoes of high value are regurly transported and which phonates into space when activated. Under this background you can try and disguise yourself, to hide a small, tiny puncture through the world of high spheres at the time of opening the portal of the usual. It would muffle the sensors in the pace and the tower a little, just a drop, but it would resonate with the rituals embedded in the walls, giving him a second and a half or two seconds. Of course, he will start preparing for the transition much earlier, but he will make the final step at the moment of transition and it is not difficult to find that moment. The schedule of portal activations, both day and night is scheduled by minutes and almost never changes without very serious incidents.

  Ideally, of course, it would be good to make everything even more inconspicuous, literally dragging himself with the help of some specific spirit, which will personally carry and pull the shaman in the right spot. As, but it's too risky, especially if you still need to take care of stealth. Again, it is necessary to prepare an exit point, and such spirit carriers often have problems with the coordinate system of the real world. Those that are devoid of such problems, either require a special time of year, or a decade of calls, or are very expensive, or require sacrifices that the shaman did not want to make, or may try to lose or eat their luggage, either on purpose or by accident, or all of the above together. If an Earthling had more time, had access to a magical source, had more purchasing currency or extra talent points, he would think differently, but here we should remember Rodisv Gastoldovich Yanin's attitude to the subjunctive mood.

  The most important thing in his situation is that he doesn't need to point at the city himself, send the appropriate spirits, control them from such a long distance, or even build a chain of totems that rey his image commands. He has an anchor and a beacon to which he can point and through which he can send images, literally calling spirits directly to the said beacon - Sylvia Malter. She was the perfect tool for him, due to the doll at his disposal, and no worse than a fully prepared call circle, reinforced with totems. Only mobile, able to fight on the level of another master fighter, and also very pleasant in appearance, just a dream of an isekai. If other Stepan had seen her, he would have been filled with envy. Actually, it was on her, on their connection shaman made a bet. Otherwise it, in the specified time frame, to the highest level will not be able to fulfill, the maximum on the second of the three, and that with risks.

  Having sketched out the outlines of the coming pn, he continued to prepare his pce of work, again creating a primitive stone circle, making the area more saturated with his own will, strengthening it, and masking it from possible sensors. In fact, he was engaged, in addition to the standard bundle of protection-concealment, in a favorite trick of witches and spellcasters - creating an artificial zone of aether compaction and stabilization. This is not a source of magic sprouted from scratch. As, Stepan had the wrong rank and skill set. But all the same, his strength is replenished faster in this pce, his calls and spells are easier to perform, and the spiritual world responds more readily to his attempts to control it. In the meantime, Sylvia had been going about her business quietly, not even paying much attention to the fact that she'd sent a couple of letters and notes, and had changed her schedule a bit, setting aside time to check out an old ir outside of town that she'd personally gone to check out. No surprise, despite her dominant position and loyal servants, both dedicated to Scarlet Drop and still alive, the vampiress wasn't shy about running errands herself if it wasn't possible or cost-effective to send someone else.

  Of course, the time she spent was also worth a lot, but there was a pause in the piling up of things when everything that needed to be done had been done, but the next step had not come. The vamp-style femme fatale was going to spend this time in idle rexation, maybe not even alone, but with one of her toys, but then, suddenly, she changed her mind and decided to do those things that she usually either put off or dumped on her assistants. On the night of the inspection, she went through a few stashes, renewed the discharged amulets, put in pce a rusted trap with a poisonous needle under the floorboards, checked the chain of traces, which was too close to another cozy dugout, and then turned away from the route. Stepan would have been happy to use one of the vampire's dugouts, but they were common dugouts, known to everyone in the nest, and therefore could be very inconvenient. Sylvia also had her own private hiding pces, but Stepan couldn't say for sure whether it was only Sylvia who knew about them, or whether some smart guy was keeping an eye on the pce.

  It would be easier to create a transition point from the ground, knowing for sure that no one was, had been, or would be in this patch of slightly marshy woods, especially if Stepan succeeded. Sylvia, who had entered the swamp about half a day's journey from the outer wall of Dantmark, did not think about her actions at all, passively selecting expnations and rational reasons for them. Such is the nature of puppet control. It is almost impossible to detect it, unless the puppeteer shows it intentionally, or simply screws up. Stepan didn't show it, and he couldn't screw up, because he was too diligent in watching his actions and the result of them.

  Sylvia, frozen in the middle of a patch of dry ground, closed her eyes and began to sway slowly on the toes of her hunting boots. At that moment, she did not think or exist at all. In this moment she was almost Stepan, who had transferred himself and his will into her body, leaving the very minimum of his spirituality in the almost jettisoned physical body. Her-not-her aura was strangely unstable, trembling and twitching in a way that, from the outside, if you looked closely, you might have mistaken her for a shaman rather than an adept of bloody practices. Or think she was having some sort of nasty epileptic seizure, for that matter. With every second, the earth in the pce where Sylvia was staying became more and more saturated with power; the power over her was consolidated and strengthened. The woman moaned softly, sang an inaudible but perfectly discernible melody, opened her mouth wide, unnaturally wide, and out of it flew a transparent cloud, almost invisible even in magical vision. A strong spirit with a rare specialization not so much as a concealer, but someone who creates stationary concealing webs and fields.

  The first call was followed by several more. Leaving Sylvia's body, in which Stepan had almost completely settled, he pced the spirit and consciousness of his sve in a doll, plunging them into a dreamless sleep forgotten by the undead. He called leisurely and carefully. Some parts of the aura, too tightly bound to the body, were very unusual, and the spirits sometimes reacted nervously to the call from within such a vessel. They, the wiser ones, could see that it was not a vampire calling them, but only someone who had taken the vampire's body, but they still felt uneasy and uncomfortable. Those who were stupider were easily deceived by the images-traps of the shaman, who eroded their will and confidence in case of excessive panic, aggressive, or simply insolent behavior. In a separate case and just for the sake of testing, he used Sylvia's scarlet eyes for subjugation, successfully adjusting their subjugating effect on the spiritual victim. Yes, Lady Malter is not only strong in bloody control. She has other tricks for brainwashing, too.

  The session of combined call sted almost six hours, and during this time most of the spirits of the concealing type were transported to the desired point. The piece of nd had been taken under Stepan's power, becoming an extension of him and allowing him to transmit images to the spirits even without the presence of Sylvia's body. He could even feed them the reserve, albeit weakly, in a limited way. Toward the end, the bloodsucker, who had regained some of her consciousness, spilled some of her blood, cutting open her wrist, and creating an additional yer of protective and masking barrier. With Stepan's help, putting herself on the list of owners of the territorial structure, the array being built from scratch, even if not exactly defensive. Now she could get in here at a moment's notice, there was no need to further disable the defenses specifically for her. At this point, having healed a small wound and refreshed herself with blood from the fsk, Sylvia calmly and confidently went about her business as if nothing had happened, already knowing exactly the reasons for her dey, as well as the reasons why she shouldn't worry about lost time.

  For the next week, the bloodsucker went about its business, while Stepan, still holding and even strengthening his territorial power over that piece of swamp, was preparing for a new stage. In general, the synergy of puppet magic, shamanism, and witchcraft was amazing, allowing to overcome one of the main disadvantages of witchcraft: attachment to the nd and pce, which weakens and weakens the adept of witchcraft as the distance from the point of application of forces. Even if you don't bind yourself to a certain area, you will still weaken, just with the difference that you will be able to create a controlled territory again and become strong again, instead of being permanently weakened. The puppet resonator, supported by the spiritual connection and the ability to send its influence, the seal of the spirit, along with the calls of the subordinate contracts, this shortcoming, if not canceled, then gives a workaround. The creation of many shreds of territory, which will be spelled by you as if you were already there, always there, although, in fact, you only occasionally support these spells by the forces of one of the dolls.

  The only thing that cooled his enthusiasm was the fact that Sylvia was not the easiest victim of puppet magic, so without gifts from the System and the Autogoddess, who had supplied the components for the puppet, he would have to make very narrowly sharpened puppet-type artifacts designed to work exclusively as a transmitter. And even so, after all the expense and preparation, at his current level of skill, he would not reach what he could do through Sylvia. However, even so, if he wrote a high-quality textbook in which he would describe in detail all the advantages and disadvantages of this method, ways to master it, and adjust it, then any adept of witchcraft would tear off such a manual with the hands who wrote it. Even if they can do something simir. In his performance, it was maximally adjusted base, ideal even by System standards of erudition.

  Some witch with skills of shamanism and summoning spirits, but without a bias in involuntary practices, could see it as a wonderful way to strengthen and overcome their shortcomings. You could start looking for someone to sell such a marvelous method, especially if the witch was also pretty. For some reason, Stepan, even though he thought so jokingly, felt a shiver of foreboding run through his body, as if on this spring night, quite cool after the recent rain, someone had blown a hot and prickly wind carrying crumbs of sand by the scruff of his neck. Having banished the unwelcome fsh of intuition - as if he didn't know that such thoughts could be thought in jest at most, and not too loudly - Stepan continued his work, the features of which were becoming clearer and clearer with every hour of bor spent on it.

  The second time Sylvia went to the marshy islet incognito, without warning anyone, because all her charges were busy with one errand or another, and Malter sometimes allowed such sudden outings on her own (as well as the rest of the fledglings, who also had their own projects). This time she didn't need to look for a suitable pce, just to confuse the tracks a little, check for tracking, and then rush straight to the right spot. After a sharp spurt of strength and taking a drop of ancient blood, hypothetical trackers, accustomed to a completely different vampire, could be in for a very unpleasant surprise. There she spent another six hours, ferrying through several spirits of the strong and a crowd of change. And at the end, when she sat down in a pose absolutely and to the millimeter identical to Stepan's, only that their complexions were slightly different, three already activated totems appeared in her hands, one after another, having previously disappeared from the shaman's hands.

  Sylvia, with the help of instructions from Stepan, who was a little overstressed and had to replenish his reserve with meta-skill, installed these totems almost by herself. The instructed spirits obeyed almost-Sylvia with noticeable reluctance and creaking, but obeyed, perceiving her as another instrument of the shaman's will, only more willful and unpleasant, because undead. The pced totems worked and began to strengthen the connection between the two points of coordinates with a link to the reflections of these points in the world of spirits. At this point, the mutually tired ritualists finished another day's work, and Stepan sent Malter back to her normal state and then went to bed.

  Despite the way he'd shielded himself from dreams and whatever might come in them - he'd put out a pair of mutually covering dream spirits with a fir for demonic presence - he was still dreaming about some bullshit. A huge ghost without a face, but with a mouth the full width of his head, dressed in a heavy and shabby robe and chains, literally bulging with ghostly muscles, like a steroid-pumped jock, yelling something about “Necros flowing in his veins, repcing hearts! !!!”, controlling a huge walking three-kilometer golem, the center and torso of which was a real ancient necropolis, or rather its ruins. And the necros really flowed through its auric veins, pulsing in time with the dead ghostly hearts, all three of them, as if to make them beat again. It would have been funny, but the creature's aura was so creepy that it was creepy even in sleep, even to the guardian spirits, who resolutely dragged the sleeper's consciousness away from this stream of images.

  SpoilerT.N. It's a reference to Specter from They Never Called Yet He Is Here.

  [colpse]A wicked-looking kid, even younger than Stepan, and even shorter in height, all frail and skinny, with an expression of absolute rage on his face, walked forward through the sea of creatures, so strange that it was impossible to describe in words or read in Lovecraft. As they approached or attempted to attack the boy from a distance, the creatures fell to the ground as dead and motionless bags of meat, which literally disintegrated their spiritual and auric bodies, even more profoundly, as if the very nuclei of their souls were detonated. The companions following him, or rather, companions, all more beautiful than one another and one more seductive than the other, were also gifted, and so gifted that they could not be given the title of master without adding the prefix “archi” to that title, they preferred to keep silent, occasionally covering the guy not thinking about defense with a shield or knocking out a creature. And so they reached the target. A small window in a blind wall, dark and slightly ajar. Then the young man took out a tattered wallet from his pocket and began counting out no less tattered dolr bills, throwing them into the window and taking a small key. Above the window was written in glowing scarlet blood, which belonged at least to an entity of near-divine level, the conic and somewhat inappropriate in such an environment: “PAYMENT OF FINES”. A little lower, in the same blood, but in a smaller font, was added the admonitory “park correctly”.

  Even more angry and furious looking half-elf, almost burning with fire from his butt, literally bursts into the room of the beautiful elf who was not expecting his visit, telling her that he was not going to waste any more time on thinking and that he had made his decision now. So he didn't care about her methods, he'd get over it, he wasn't proud, but let her teach him fucking mental defense so that the result would be as powerful and fast as possible, and don't care, don't care and don't give a shit about anything else. The blonde maid who appeared behind him, out of breath from running after him, and the nonchant-looking elf in perfectly fitted, luxurious robes politely, but persistently tried to find out from the young man the reason why his ass was so hot that the temperature in the whole Forest, figuratively speaking, had risen by several degrees. The elfess smiled sweetly, saying that it was not in her power to refuse such a request, and therefore, she would probably go to finalize their curriculum, and at the same time take her favorite sandals and stockings, what's the big deal? The half-elf, strange as if he had less elven blood than he should, instead of exploding in nuclear ass-fmes, suddenly calmed down, and their dialog went on in retively even tones.

  A powerful scarlet-skinned demoness, embodying all shades of unbridled Rage, naked and pumped up like a weightlifter, listing with fury and anticipation all the things she would do to her victim. The victim, which you can recognize as the namesake of Stepan Normal, almost drooling, looking at her tits, which were the size of one and a half heads of the beholder, but at almost three meters tall high-ranking demoness looked even natural and attractive. And, characteristically, there was no mental impact on the watcher, or rather, it all drowned in hundreds of yers of protective anti-demonic litany. Realizing that its victim had been distracted, and without her influence at all, the creature asked, even a little perplexed: “Mortal, are you even listening to me? Look into my eyes, now!”. One look into those eyes, specially modified and improved over millennia, could plunge the victim into unbridled rage and self-destruction, during which the one who looked would kill everyone but the demoness. If there was no one around, he would cut himself to pieces. Even though the protection of this damned boy, oozing holy power so that it becomes bad even the highest, even against him her look should have worked. She calcuted it all right, had gone into debt, had used up her stockpile of souls just to modify her best weapon, to customize it for her only opponent. If only her enemy had looked into her eyes instead of saying, in a slightly absent-minded tone, not taking his eyes off her tits, “Too te, dearie, I've already made my choice.” The creature roared in Rage as it realized that it had been outsmarted and was now being bullied, and then unched one st furious attack, eager to sell its life.

  Stepan woke up rested and full of enthusiasm, even spent some time analyzing the dreams, but still could not get much out of them, only separate images, pieces of them, not put together in a puzzle, no matter how you twist them. Two bdes, short and long, shining with holy power and strength, a heavy and as if transparent robe with chains, a signboard with the inscription GIBDD, - that's certainly not the appropriate image, - an elven woman, very beautiful with a very penetrating gaze of bright blue, almost azure eyes and gorgeous forms, and that's all. Here, in fact, the image of the elfess was probably the most successful of all, and not because she was, well, pretty and all. He was ready to bet his mask on the fact that it was not a vision, that this face was quite a real elf living in this world. If only to know whether he was somehow connected with her or would be connected with her in the future, he just pulled the first picture he came across out of the noosphere, the yer of the spiritual world responsible for knowledge and meanings.

  SpoilerT.N. GIBDD - This is the Russian Traffic Police

  [colpse]There was no answer, so Stepan enlightened himself with the familiar ways of searching for a demoness, once again promising himself to take on a certain Laghan as soon as he got normal conditions and the opportunity to work without distractions and continue his quest. Despite his good pace, he probably wouldn't have time for a second attempt. It wasn't explicitly forbidden by the quest, but with his current knowledge and talents, there would only be one safe attempt. And if he failed it, he would not make a second, dangerous, and risky one, he would write off the task as failed and make normal preparations, being transferred outside the framework of the task, just at his own will. The shaman scratched his nose and sighed at his heavy - very, very heavy, yes, yes, no need to give him new problems, oh, Powers That Stay - share, and began a new round of calls.

  *

  In addition to the first three, he had ferried five more totems, not counting the individual amulets, which could not be called totems because they cked most of their functionality, but rather anchor witch mediators. He didn't need Sylvia's presence for these transfers, as well as for most of the other tasks, so he didn't summon her, allowing her to pursue her projects, such as the search for her fugitive and treacherous chick. The third time she would come to the ground sprinkled with her blood would be the night or day Stepan would make the transition, not before. The spirits were summoned, their reserve repcements were summoned, and those who would watch over the honesty of those summoned, somehow in passing, he had managed to renew and strengthen contracts with several strong entities that had seen his growth and were now more willing to follow his orders.

  The Earthman had contracted a few summons with a fellow jellyfish bodyguard: this spirit, a strong one, only slightly weaker than Squidward Plus in terms of the pure reserve, would cover and protect the traveling shaman from the spirit world. The probability that some evil and hungry, or good but also hungry, thing would decide to attack the shaman right at that moment, attracted by the outbursts of power being released into the spirit world, was not great, not even negligible. The jellyfish, for all their strength and skill, were not good enough for this type of guarding, to be at the point of entry and the point of exit. Their element, their specialty, was following the target, unobtrusive but relentless cover, not reacting to attacks from beneath the fabric of space, with an emphasis on a different metric of the spirit world.

  The summoned entity belonged to the realm of Death and carried aspects of Decay and Ashes, but it was so friendly and ready for dialog that Stepan tensed involuntarily, looking for a catch. Either his skill had grown enough that even such creatures spoke to him politely, which was at least partially true, or the spirit was just being funny, or the spirit was mocking shamans in such a way, which was also common. Or, more likely, all of this together, and seasoned with the fact that the shaman had overpaid for his participation in his scheme. A single small assignment, tied to the summoning of several spirits of the Spatial sphere, perfectly suited to the general framework of the task, so the young man did it in passing and as part of the main quest. The reward reagent, a mush of foul-smelling roots and muscle fibers, was quite valuable but perishable, so he had to sacrifice it without pity and with a minimum of bargaining. The hired spirit had obviously affected to the depths of his spiritual essence.

  The image of the spirit was memorable and caused a nostalgic grin: a huge skull hanging in a cloud of dark green smoke, only a snake was missing to directly organize a night of memories of Harry Potter. However, appearance was the appearance, but the spirit was paying for its offerings and the reserve it had drained, so the young man was in no hurry to regret the excessive spending. Moreover, the summoning was not paid for a single, but reusable, and it would be possible to attract to his side such a specific spirit, quite capable of pying the role of ordinary security for the departed body of the shaman. The rest of the spirits, of those attracted or even deliberately summoned for this quest, were also of those who could work with space or the spiritual world in one sense or another.

  A group that will conceal spatial disturbances and tears in the fabric of reality. A group that will dampen the energy trail. A group of catchers would keep the wild aether from spilling out in case a geyser of energy started spewing out of the rift. And that's just the top of the list because there was also an individual protecting from the seers, resembling a tangle of hundreds of long fingers with a lot of nails, which with these nails literally scraped off all the information marks. A very good suppressor of optical images was summoned, which hid fsh, heat, electromagnetic waves, and ultraviolet - there is little chance that drones are flying in the air, that is, ugh, magically modified birds. The glorious city of Dantmark had its own circle of druids. These guys had a lot of influence, did all sorts of useful activities, increased crop yields, and produced and sold defense and combat trees with explosive apples and modified guardian beasts bent on obedience. They also run the drug market, and, as Sylvia sincerely thought, they kept it smart, giving out only high-quality goods that didn't cause disease or progressive dementia, which was why they kept a very jealous eye on the suburbs a couple of days away from the city.

  There were enough of their special gdes in the area, where all sorts of herbs and mushrooms grew, including those used for alchemy, even very rare and expensive ones. Malter used to buy from them, so she had long ago found out the location of several interesting points, often represented by weak, but cultivated and specially modified sources, which made the already unusual reagents even more unusual. She did not know the exact recipe, of course, for it was guarded like the treasures of their little circle-guild, for such things were treasures, in fact, communicated only under oath and only to their own. That was why Sylvia had spent so much time searching for the pce of the call because she didn't want to accidentally start preparing the transfer near one of those gdes. In spite of her distorted thinking, she made very sensible decisions within the framework of the task at hand.

  Stepan decided to make the transition on the nineteenth night. The penultimate twenty-four hours of the allotted time. Just in time for the midnight opening of the city portal for the exchange of correspondence. He could have started earlier, but he decided to give himself a day and a half of rest, complete rexation, and recovery of regurly used meta-skills, so only on the nineteenth. Despite all the preparations, he was still nervous, unwilling to lose the effort he had put into the ritual, and even more, unwilling to lose the reward for completing the assignment, trying to remember if he had forgotten anything at the st moment. He and Sylvia stood in the same pose at the same time, facing each other, even though the distance between their faces was considerable. Inhaling and exhaling. Then the circle of stones activated, and the spirits began their dance, jumping from one stone to another, the earth shining with power and will, the very ones the earthman had put into them. The totems and amulets located at the final point of arrival began to resonate, giving a clear response, allowing themselves to be felt through the mediator-Silvia, a doll of that now hovered over Stepan's left shoulder as if it were the same miniature angel. Well, or like a shoulder-miniature devil, but the young man did not like the association at all in the light of recent discoveries.

  The first beat went like a beat. The connection was strengthened and made to flow into each other, and the protective and cloaking spirits, whole squads of them, did everything as it should, without releasing even a shadow of an energy trace. The young man felt himself one in two bodies, controlling himself and Sylvia. His spiritual body and hers as well. The second beat already required more effort, especially from Sylvia, who began to infuse her own reserve, releasing blood to the ground, and feeding it while the ground was giving strength to the bond-ritual. And then the third beat, the most important one, happened. Stepan closed his eyes, just as the bloodsucker had closed them. But still, they saw, even through the lowered eyeshes, an impossible-colored door, which appeared right on the ground, outlined with amulets, totems, and ritual grooves, inside which Stepan and Silvia had to pour mushroom powder and some crystal dust saturated with power. By the way, the bloodsucker had gutted her personal stash of reagents for the occasion. The young man took a step forward, commanding the group of defenders, preparing to fight for his life or to flee into the distance without a backward gnce.

  It was as if he had frozen for a moment in the fall, as if he were everywhere and nowhere, as he had been every time he had been engaged in spirit transitions through space in his native body. Only now there was no spirit to carry him, only his companions, and this invisible-visible door connected the two points of coordinates, even if only for a few seconds. The moment passed, and nowhere was repced by the real world, dark night, and the smell of dampness, but now Stepan, who had previously gathered all his belongings and was ready for any outcome, stood not where he was before. When he opened his eyes and met Sylvia's slightly mocking gaze - it seemed because of his out-of-breath appearance and reddened face - he nodded back at her and began the st ritual of the ritual - clearing the tracks.

  Again, close his eyes and almost not fallen, let the bloodsucker pick him up and y him down on the cloak that had been id out, he gives orders to the spirits at the site of the abandoned camp. The totems quickly decay and rot as the spirits take what remains of their power and resources in payment for their bor. Other spirits, waiting for the moment, begin to clean up the picture, energetically, spiritually, and physically. The trampled footprints disappear, and the trampled grass comes alive again. The campfire and stone circle, as well as other traces of vital activity, gradually sink into the ground, which has become liquid and quicksand. Even the odors are carried away by an unnaturally light breeze, blowing away the very memory that someone or something was here. After about five minutes, everything is finished, and only a few spirits in the world of spheres continue to clean up the final lines, working out their fee.

  Everything is also fine at the pce of arrival, although there is less work to be done here. Stepan isn't in a hurry to call in rge forces, having not yet left his mark here, and he himself intends to wait here for a while, regain his strength, and only then move out. Judging by the fact the confirmation message about the perfectly completed quest flickered at the edge of his consciousness, he really didn't raise any arms. That's why he can take some time to rest. He looked at the equally thoughtful Sylvia, who was also looking at him, with a wistful gaze, but he couldn't help himself and gave the command through the doll.

  "Well, I see you've arrived, pet. I didn't expect it to go so smoothly." The bloodsucker said in a satisfied tone, already figuring out how she was going to use him for her own purposes, as he slowly and sedately undressed before his eyes. "Such diligence should be rewarded, don't you think, hmm? Do you want your mistress to reward you with her body, sweetheart? You want to fuck your night mistress, you want to fuck her, huh? Come on, admit it to yourself, admit my power, and give yourself to me, become my sve again and again!"

  She orders the st phrase without objection as he squeezes her hefty breasts in his hands, pying with the cool skin with pleasure, feeling the hardness of her nipples and the tenderness of her pale skin. She presses his hands into those buns, literally demanding to grope and grope, seeing it as a manifestation of her, only her power over him and his mind. It is difficult to refuse her in such a state. Not because she knew how to mesmerize with her voice and sharpen her will, but now she did not use anything like that. It was just that he, having the opportunity to rex, wanting to rex after so many days of tense and risky traveling through uninhabited forests, could not find the strength to refuse the temptation. His conscience, which always prevented him from losing his shores and using the gifts of Her Milfness as he saw fit, did not keep silent in the case of Sylvia but also agreed with her, saying that she deserved more than that.

  He did not realize when he had undressed, at the same time restoring his reserve and vitality, including, incidentally, Sylvia's blood supply, though not completely, how they found themselves on the cloaks stacked on top of each other, how she had ridden him, sealed her lips with a kiss, biting his lips again. Cold, yet passionate to the point of heat. She takes him into her in one motion, immediately swept away on waves of ecstasy, not from pleasure, not from her lover's skill, or even from a direct order through the doll, but only from the realization that she is the one controlling him, bringing him down and fucking her sve, forcing him to grope her bouncing tits, tug on her pale pink nipples, pull him against her and kiss, kiss, kiss her perfect skin. She doesn't tolerate objections, doesn't seek to stretch her pleasure, seeing her goal as bringing Stepan to the peak, making this another dispy of her power over him.

  And he finished, violently and with pleasure, unable to hold back a growling moan, knowing that the spirits would hide the sounds, the movements, the smells, would hide everything, just as they would hide the shriek and moan of Sylvia's cumming after him. It would hide the way she y on her back, throwing her legs behind her head, demanding to be fucked immediately, as if she were that sve in the exotic brothel again, not his mistress and dy, as if they had switched roles, and she had fallen under his spell, even if it sounded ridiculous. She demanded to act harder, more powerfully, not stopping the tantric connection, cum not into her, but onto her ft tummy, onto her tits rubbed by her fingers and licked by his tongue, onto her face that had taken on a triumphant expression. And he, as befitted her pything, obeyed those orders, bending her over, taking her from behind, doggy-style, bursting in the back door, making her cum instantly from the pleasure, from the humiliation she had brought to the mighty and submissive boy by forcing him to pour his seed into her tight vampire ass.

  Here she gives a new order. He doesn't suggest anything to her and her doll at all, all these ideas come from her subconscious. She believes it, wants to believe, and lets herself believe it, if only not to ruin the picture of the world in which she is the mistress and he is the sve, not the other way around. And she is on her knees, with his back against the tree, sucking him with a skill and experience she has never forgotten, looking up at him with her scarlet eyes full of superiority, taking his cock out of her mouth only to start spping herself in the face with it, achieving eruption and almost rolling her eyes in pleasure at this victory, at the fact that she has made him cum from this little thing, at the fact that he is spewing his seed for her, at her will, at her wish and command. Her will and desire are matters. That's what matters, and the submissive sve, the foolish and naive boy-toy caught in her net doesn't dare, can't even think of objecting when she slowly and steadily cmps his rod between her breasts, slowly jacking off, bringing him to a new ecstasy, right into her cleft. She looks at his face, sees every moment, every feature, every movement, her own and his, savoring them as she never had before, because it was the only way she could show her power to herself. To squeeze, to milk, to squeeze his seed, to suck it out, to drink it and consume it, to take it for herself, without even letting him know that he was giving her his seed, that he considered it the highest honor, joy, and obedient service only because she had bewitched him, subdued him, bewitched him, and won him over.

  Again, they are on the cloaks. Again, he takes her from behind. Again, the tantric hearth boosts their auras, but now he does not hold back at all, bringing the victim to unconsciousness, pouring into her for the fifth time, which, even taking into account the tantric rituals, is a lot, but it is still enough for the sixth. That's the limit even for enhanced corporeality and overall magical power. Linking their auras together again, he brings her to ecstasy, reflecting his peak in her, forcing her to howl and finish with a sense of deepest satisfaction and power over the defenseless boy-toy. For a while, they y like that, coming to their senses. Even if the inanimate body doesn't need rest so much, her consciousness is still overloaded a bit. So she, too, lies there, stroking his heated body with cold palms, looking at the one who will be the jewel of her servant collection with amusement and anticipation.

  And then they talked, discussing the preparations she'd already made, allowing him to find a suitable workspace in a confident and unhurried manner, but without losing a lot of time in maintaining the legend. It wasn't that easy, but it wasn't difficult, even if he would need to take some more measures afterward, to influence other people's perceptions with suggestive spirits, without much interference or any evil games. Sylvia, even at this moment, clinging to him with her whole body and enjoying the remnants of the aura resonance that hadn't yet dissipated, is being so damn bossy, talking to him like a toy and a sve, but he doesn't interfere with her in that. To be honest, he was a little turned on by it, not by being the “bottom,” no, by the fact that she actually believed in her power, by her awareness of her control and her ck of awareness of it.

  Well, power really does corrupt, and it also brings out things you don't expect from yourself. He thought, zily pying with the breasts of the vampiress pressed tightly against his side, occasionally touching her scarlet and juicy lips with his fingers, letting her suck those fingers to her great pleasure. The main thing is to measure your boundaries clearly to yourself. Only, given the tendency of local beauties to be the first to get into my brain, I won't have to limit myself much, because I'll have plenty of targets for my own lust.

  “Well, I suppose this night, as lovely as it was, must come to an end too, Pann.” With undisguised pleasure, openly funting herself, Sylvia gives him a reverse striptease, leisurely and seductively dressing, eliciting a reaction that seemed impossible for such a tired body. “Oh, and my pet, it turns out, is so lustful that Mistress will have to punish him. Scary, scary punishment, but you will apologize to Mistress, won't you? Perhaps by cleaning her boots with your submissive tongue? Or with your mouth on her flower, for you, Pann, love to lick it so much, you like the taste so much, don't you? Mmmm, what else could I think of to do with you, honey?”

  Leaning over him, she, already dressed and having removed all unnecessary odors and secretions from her body, simply dissolving them into a bloody haze, takes the tip of his cock into her mouth with her lips alone, quickly and lightly caressing the head with her swift tongue. Pleasant and slightly ticklish even the movements turn into very pleasant and still end with another portion of seed for her thirsty mouth, which she swallows with visible pleasure and the same superiority of the winner and mistress. And only after finishing her meal, she releases it, licking her lips with a greedy gleam in her eyes, clearly wanting to lift it again and enjoy it again, but prudence prevails in both of them because he can't take it one more time. He was breathing like a hunted horse, exhausted, despite the tantric connection, which, in the case of sex with a vampire, also required extra concentration and skill.

  “Hmm, looks like I've figured out how to punish you for your intemperate stare, Pann.” She nods, winking, wiping the corner of her mouth from a spilled drop. “You're a good pet, but so ill-mannered, ah, it'll be a long time before I have to teach you how to lick and beg, but that'll come in time. Now...”

  While she stares thoughtfully at the shaman, who has begun to dress, the shaman is doing his best to disperse his aura around his body, giving himself stamina and even indwelling himself with a small spirit that gives him extra strength and vigor. Only after the buff does he find the will to get up and get ready to clean up the most obvious traces of the transfer. Well, the most obvious ones after the most obvious ones, because his spirits have already gotten rid of the st ones. This does not prevent him from politely inquiring of his “mistress”, who is obviously waiting for his interest and questions. He sees no reason not to py along.

  "And what did you come up with, my adored mistress?" With a share of poisonous sarcasm and the real resentment that still remained, asks the shaman, meeting the smug look of the bloodsucker. "How will you punish this stupid boy, who was not honored with the right to lick your sweet pussy?"

  "Mmmm, I'm going to turn around, walk out of this lovely clearing, tug on the nipples of my pale tits, and cum. Mmmm, so sweetly I'm going to cum." She gives it off with the look of a world championship winner in blood magic if there were such a thing. "And then, my dear, I will just forget about you and this meeting, you know. I will not even remember, as if all memory of you I will cum out. And you will remember and know that your mistress has no memory of that night until she wants to remember. No, no, no, no tears and pleading, no matter how much I would like to py with your tongue or sit on your face, my pet. As, I have too little time, I can't afford to waste it anymore, so bye-bye, remember every moment, dreaming of their repetition."

  She waved her hand at the “crying with humiliation” young man, who could hardly contain his outburst of ughter, and then disappeared into the darkness of the night. Without the help of the spirits, he would not have seen the moment when she, two hundred meters away from the transfer circle, slipped her hands under her jacket and shirt, pinching her cherries, cuming, and really forgetting, as the algorithms embedded through the doll advised her. Forgetfulness, however, did not prevent her from overlooking some individual details and diligently masking her traces to the pce of transfer, because at her core, doll-like, she still remembered everything and fulfilled everything. Stepan, looking through the spirits, passed her gradually blurring and wrapped in a masking morocco figure, then rexed and contentedly leaned back, throwing his hands behind his head. The night sky was cloudy, and there was no chance of stargazing, but the tiredness and pleasant exhaustion didn't cancel out the fact that he was just gushing with vigor and eagerness for action.

  The success of such a difficult assignment, the most difficult he had ever encountered, was only a small part of the reason for his good mood. The mad lovemaking in the company of the ensved Sylvia was a small part of it, though he did not deny to himself that he enjoyed the release of all the tension he had accumuted. What mattered was something else. The proximity of a full-fledged city, almost ready alibi-legend for ingrowing into society, and the possibility to start living like a normal person, not a savage. Hell, he had talked more that evening than he had during his entire solitary journey after the Bzdach massacre! Even if you counted dialogue with himself, there was still no comparison! He was beginning to seriously forget how people, not spirits, talked, and after the discussion of the upcoming “settlement” his throat even began to sore from habit. In general, no, fuck this solitary wandering, especially since it was much easier to get into trouble than sitting in one pce. Though he could do it sitting still.

  There was still a lot to do, even if the deadline was not burning, since no one had noticed his arrival through the spatial door. But there was no reason to procrastinate either; he had rested and that was enough, so Stepan took a meditative position and began to perceive the System's gifts. The first thing he got was not rewards for completing the task or even a gift from the Autogoddess, but an honestly improved talent from the ones he had developed. And it would not have been possible to increase or even to open some serious branch of shamanism, for example, one of the knowledge of working with space on a shamanic or witchcraft basis. No, no gifts, and Stepan didn't deserve them, having taken his own by pure brute force and cheater guidance by a beacon-puppet, and not by long calls of appropriate spirits. Tantric practices increased to a new level and became “advanced basic techniques of tantric practices”, giving out another cascade of synergy.

  First of all, he noted that now it was easier for him to adjust to the energy of his mistress-partner, even if this partner was not quite human, partly undead, or, say, was an adept of a specific school of magic. To qualitatively and with benefit for both parties to fuck a master of fire magic and a master of the school of air with a bias in lightning need some different approaches and methods, simir in the base, but the more, ha-ha, deeper, the more there are differences and separate methods. And what to use those tantric practices for - for pleasure, for healing, for accelerated replenishment of reserve, for seduction and brainwashing by overturning a spy, these are separate questions. By the way, in fact, these skills do not have to be used for sex, you can work as a masseur, and you will be on good account, as a specialist with literally golden hands.

  The ability to take casts of the energetic body or even to pnt spirits in the partner's body in a controlled way, manually leveling the danger of neighboring in the same shell. Ways to work with the spiritual body, merging with a partner in a controlled obsession, up to the point of actually inhabiting her body and groping himself-not-self for tits. By the way, he can do the tter without tantric practices, through Sylvia's doll. He's recently been calling directly into her body, it's just that the situation there was tense, not to such experiments. Some in-depth methods of paired territorialization are also interesting. Sleep with a witch to get guest access to her witch fields in the area, or even to seize this control while she drools with pleasure and can not resist. Various methods of contractual agreements with spirits, many of which are sealed in rather obscene ways. An excellent method of transferring control of a contract with an elder spirit. It is easy to make the entity understand that this energy, which is intertwined with the subtle bodies of the shaman, also has the right to order him.

  In fact, the skill turned out to be unexpectedly useful. Probably because at some point even outright sg will give more and more benefit from the very cascade of synergies. Not those skills and tricks that will be used all the time, and just to rex for the sake of rexation, too, not every time you turn to these methods, but still. After all, this talent was given to him for free, not even by Megamilf, but by his actions, so there was no reason to get mad. Having finished accepting the knowledge and drinking a little bit of crystal-clear water called directly into his palm, the shaman moved on to the assignment, regretting once again that he had to work as fast as possible and with the support of Sylvia. If he had done his teleportation without the doll and the vampiress, he was guaranteed to unlock a couple more talents, and equally guaranteed to miss the deadline. And he wouldn't have been able to pull off natural disguise as easily as he could evade the sensors of the city limits, even if he knew their specifications.

  All right, there's no need to be greedy, it worked out well as it was! The Earthman calmed himself down, and really calmed down, because he was, as for an isekai, inexcusably out of control of the totemic animal-entities of Hamster and Toad, because of which he would have been obviously kicked out of the club of those who got to other worlds with the System. Especially since they should have gotten all sorts of interesting things for the assignment, too.

  SpoilerT.N. I've already mentioned it. But I'll say it again. Hamster and Toad are avatars of greed.

  [colpse]Both reward tokens for complete fulfillment belonged to normal versions, like Stepan, not Autodivine versions. Both of them were not useless, even if not the kind that could be applied right away. The first token was called “ significant materialization of the stock of quality reagents and consumables tied to the css”, doing exactly what the token said: you choose a pce and activate the call of all sorts of useful shit in a significant assortment. Boxes of amulet bnks, spirit houses, and totems, stockpiles of offerings to spirits of various types, ready-made contract anchors or bnks for them, material for dolls or already assembled unified envolts, herbs, mixtures, roots, wood and stone, ore and organic parts. The total weight there will obviously be hundreds of kilograms, even if you don't count containers and storage for those materials that will spoil outside the storage. This token will not give anything outstanding, at most one or two reagents of the level of the lower limit of the rating of the special offer of the System Store. All other gifts will be products of high quality. A senior shaman or even a young magister would not be shy of working with such gifts, but no more than that. Well, as far as it is possible to say “no more”.

  The problem is that these gifts will, first, fully correspond to the development. Each talent, property, or branch of such is perfectly suited to the usual methods of practice of the senior shaman-cognizer with skills in witchcraft and envolting. Secondly, the role is pyed by the quantity and quality of reagents, because it is a box or two of such consumables every respectable master can afford, once every six months, or even a year, if you have had to exhaust yourself. Fully used tokens will give stocks, which can be filled with pantries for the same six months to a year of super-intensive practice in the style of Stepan. That is, without economy, without breaks, without distractions, without research, as such, only for practicing the already avaible knowledge, with constant offerings of only the best, using the best quality, duplicating the protective circuit and threefold reinsurance against any danger, which is easier to fill with donate than to risk yourself.

  Yes, it will be possible to find and buy most of the gifts of the token. Maybe not so fresh and not in such good packaging, but it will be possible. It's not a problem. Except the full analog of such a purchase will cost in pure gold no cheaper than the same armored stockings. Even if it is exactly in terms of money, silver, and gold. Again, not counting the elite reagents randomly selected by the system. Still, the contents of the gift token could well be afforded with just money and connections to suppliers, with a bunch of suppliers. To get an analog of stockings, bracelets, a mask, or even a coin miner, only for money will not work. No one will sell, not for simple coins. Well, or not for any reasonable number of them.

  Taking into account the pns to organize a normal call pce a Lyady for once, the gift is certainly royal. It's obvious the Autogoddess didn't give it to him, although, admittedly, when activated, the token will also give out a bunch of specific items for the charmers and brainiac, simply by virtue of the fact he has developed the right talents. Such a fortunate moment of giving makes one wonder if the System is really tracking the pyer's needs on its face, which in fact is quite obvious. The same mechanics of Deeds state that the constant monitoring of the pyer is in no way a fabrication of a sick mind or paranoia of Stepan personally. And if the deeds are not enough for the conclusion, you can read the texts of the assignments, which are very and very often tied to the pce, time, and events that determine the very essence of the task. Not that Stepan cared, because the System and its owners were so superior to ordinary people and the gifted that it was useless to resent them. Much more he was, well, not outraged, but slightly stung by the understanding of the nature of the token, which turned out to be another test of the pyer's greed.

  The ter this token was activated, the more talents, knowledge, properties, and separate branches were accumuted; the higher the level was, the greater would be the result of materialization. And if Stepan waited to become not a Senior, but a full-fledged Higher, then the System gifts would correspond to a magister of some kind, not to a master of shamanism with a wide profile. He suppressed his greed, of course, but he hoped that the System would give him the opportunity to get the same or simir token once again, once he'd spent the supplies given by it.

  The second token was slightly inferior to the first one, called “instant recovery of magic reserve” being, in fact, just an analog of the corresponding meta-skill Stepan already had. The only difference was that this token had twenty-five charges and had no rollback. It could be used on the same individual, and not necessarily on Stepan. Well, for some rge-scale mess, it would certainly work. As a means of st resort, as well as in the presence of a bunch of allies, because one single Stepan twenty-five draining reserves in a row will put one at best in a hospital bed. No matter how natural and harmless this recovery turns out to be, the very process of wasting the reserve strains the subtle bodies and spirit, even if it is just carefully released from the subtle bodies, and not call at full power. However, he had no intention of giving up this or any other normal token, being quite happy with the reward for the assignment. Why would he be dissatisfied with another gift that did something impossible from the point of view of the ws of magic and logic, and did it for Stepan's benefit?

  Two properties from the mark category were activated simultaneously. That made it a little heavy as if his aura and spirit were being simultaneously fanned by an industrial fan and drenched in water under a Niagara waterfall. The appearance of such a rge-scale mark on the spirit to be counted by the system as a full-fledged property is not an ordinary thing, but when these marks began to sprout two at a time, the young man did not feel bad it did not feel good either. Having entered a meditative trance, he waited for the unpleasant moments, waiting for the assimition of both marks, which took at least a couple of hours, and then dawn broke. Both marks were dispyed in the status, pleasing Stepan with their presence, because he immediately began to estimate the degree of effect of these marks on the coming calls, especially taking into account the patchwork echo.

  “The mark of free winds and whispering blows” and "the mark of quiet pools and deep waters": are properties of roughly the same value, of roughly the same power, being in the same category as "the mark of fallen leaves and bck roots". Not just a universal plus to the water and air realm, but a more exotic direction, as in the case of the dark side of nature as embodied by the long-found leaves and roots, but an even narrower sharpening, a specialization, one might say. That is, his call did not make water and wind weaker, no, just certain types of spirits and certain aspects turn out to be even easier to call than just a strengthened air or water sphere. In fact, it was a very serious argument in the coming kamns, although he would have chosen other variants of properties, both gifts were present in the list of avaible to choose from, and Stepan had studied them long ago with the help of the reference, sometimes refreshing his memory and checking the reference for new information on old topics.

  The wind will now be more willing to answer the call. Any air elemental spirits. But best of all, this mark will work on those who specialize in scouting, searching for something, eavesdropping, or groping the territory, opening defenses, or getting under them. All spy tricks will now be given much better, you can also call a long-intended flock of ultra-long-range airborne seekers, which will find the target, despite the fact that they are only small spirits. They were free spirits, and if they were to be summoned, they would have to be restrained, otherwise, they would forget their task and promises as soon as they left the shaman's zone of control. And now such free entities would be much more willing, no, not to obey the shaman, but to agree to py his games and by his rules. Even if instead of searching for a certain person or someone who said a certain word, they want to py with the fg hanging on the top of the castle or do something else.

  Water spirits will also be much more willing to respond, but this effect is doubled for those who have mixed their aspects with the Stillness, Silence, and Sarkness of the deep bottom, or even pces where there is no bottom at all. A rather ominous Mark, comparable to Leaves and Roots, but still not so dark and evil. In addition to good lurkers, fighters, and ambush specialists, there are plenty of territorial defenders with a bias towards strong and seemingly deceptively unsightly defense among the owners of simir aspects. Lots of healers or curse eaters, including some pretty exotic ones. There is, again, a whole bunch of contacts of all sorts of jailers, to whom you can hand over a prisoner, immersing him in a bathtub or in a puddle, and there the prisoner will be pced in stasis, put to sleep, and then, a week or two ter, handed over to the captor in exactly the same condition. From the same group comes the ability to effectively call entities that are able to stabilize severe wounds, not to let the life force from the torn aura, while the shaman will look for a way to recover the victim.

  Good properties, the system didn't skimp. However, the Earthman himself would not have taken such properties, as they were a very specific investment. He would have had enough of other areas of development, which needed talent points much more. The same could be said about the improved property, which was a gift to him for the perfect fulfillment of the task set by the System: “recognizing of doorkeepers and path breakers.” It was not some elite type of property, but the most common, also avaible to choose from the avaible options, but at the same time improved by two points instead of one, simir to the mark of passions. Actually, the System message about getting this property was dual because, in the first step, it was the “mark” and not the “recognition” that gave it to him. It was twisted, again, much more powerful, the dawn had time to change to early morning, birds were singing, one of them almost shit on the head of the meditating and wet from tension shaman, but some of his spirits considered it an attack and the shit was taken aside, and only feathers flew from the bird when the ghostly entity temporarily acquired material flesh.

  He could have done the teleport without the anchor of Sylvia Maltter, and he could have done it in the same twenty days. He could, if he had been given some more time to master the new mark and the possibility of preliminary agreement with the spirits of the relevant directions. But in general, this mark not only helps with the long-distance portals. There are many spirits with simir aspects and spheres, which do help not with movements at all. Whether it's shielder spirits that catch enemy attacks with their doors and carry them to the hell of nowhere, or specialists in trailing fields, thanks to which even a rge group can get lost in three trees.

  Simple jumps through the world of the High Spheres, where a spirit literally sits on the shaman's back and drags him into the jump. By simplifying the dialog, it's even possible to jump back out quite clearly and in the right pce. Path shortening techniques allow one step to cover five meters of the path for hours until the person walking doesn't look back and walks down a forest path. Or through an underworld cave, a regur cave, not an Underworld Cave, so that one goes into one and comes out of a completely different one and on the other side of the state. In another Underworld, which was capitalized with a capital letter, it was also possible, but Stepan had no suitable contracts of the proper level there yet, and they would not appear soon, especially given the earthling's clear and ironcd pns not to go into this Underworld. Especially memorable was the method of transfer through the grave, and ideally suited for Sylvia, because she would not need to disguise herself as a corpse, and protection from the aggressive energy of death, and soaked with her power, graves around the world are already scattered enough. And the spirit, which allows her to burrow into one grave and come out of another, belonged to those varieties, which are quite tolerant of the undead of any kind, being partly a ghost himself, that moved to live in the high spheres.

  The unit of Resistance fits into the aura like glue. It was a low value of this characteristic, so the modification process didn't take long, and its intensity couldn't be compared to the increase in Spirit or the recent increase in Power. The sensations were like a kind of squeezing from all sides at once, and the squeezing was energetic as if the universe itself had pressed a little harder on the thin bodies, thickening them, making them more monolithic and strong. Shamans don't really need Resistance, he was sure that one could even become Higher with the same unit in this characteristic. The very process of the call does not provide for the growth of aura resistance, because the shaman during the call reveals all of himself to the world, both worlds. No, of course, an extra drop of Resistance will not hurt him. Moreover, each individual characteristic strengthens the gifted person in the complex concept, so even before increasing his unit of Resistance meant significantly more than the same unit of the ungifted. And against the backdrop of the humiliating ensvement by an insolent bloodsucker, the doubling of the current Resistance was great news.

  If there had been a two in that attribute the moment he opened the cache dungeon with the captive Sylvia, she wouldn't have been able to brainwash him as quickly. For at least another couple hours, she would have to shake for her unlife. Maybe Stepan would have taken an oath of non-harm and honesty from her, forcing her to interrupt the process of turning off the consciousness of the one with the pulsing blood. That would have forced her to become more cautious, gradually loosening the oath and, by the time she would have struck, he would have long since been her pet dog, not even realizing it wasn't his own decision. It was ironic, but it was a good thing she'd hit him full force before she'd realized who was in her cold hands, otherwise, the situation could have been a lot worse than it had been when she'd gotten the assignment from Divine Milf.

  He could rejoice that his “spiritual-energy protection” had become much more effective, even if it wasn't an ultimatum, but it was still useful and had a significant effect on Stepan's defense. As he had noticed before, this property required a high Spirit to develop, but it became stronger only if he developed Resistance in addition to the Spirit. Even though a two was not a three or even a five, the result would now be quite noticeable: simple natural elemental effects and a number of others, like accidental cuts with an iron, not steel, knife, became practically non-threatening, even if you sat your ass in a fire, or swam in a boiling geyser, or were struck by lightning, or even tried to walk on magma barefoot and unprotected. In the tter case Stepan would definitely feel unpleasant and even painful, but the burns, if any, would not exceed the first and the beginning of the second degree, but not complete charring to the very bones.

  The st part of the reward, a meta-skill of rare or elite level turned out to be, well, not bad, although it was situational: “a small temporary increase in attributes” allowed to immediately add either five units of a characteristic or, if the characteristic itself was high enough, half of the indicator in any attribute. For a while, not forever, and the time needed for an important ritual, battle, duel, or experiment, then everything will return to normal. And it's really powerful because such an increase will accelerate you, to make the impossible possible. The meta-skill will also supplement magical reflexes, so the increase will not cause an imbance of the usual bundles and actions, so that at the time of strengthening, the pyer used these characteristics as if native, as if they have already had time to practice and work with them. The time of action of the skill is four hours, but this time can be extended if it is vital not to interrupt some ritual or battle. But for every extra hour will have to pay debuff - a day for every sixty minutes, and if you are overdue reinforcement for sixty-one minutes, then it counts as two days of debuff. The system curse itself reduced all the characteristics by half, but not below one, quickly making the master at best an adept. The second rank, by the way, was still unavaible due to the low characteristics, and it was necessary to gain at least five more stats in any attribute.

  It was a situational thing, but he didn't cim it was unnecessary. But he almost stuttered when the system gave him a level twenty-six credit for completing the task, and as if that weren't enough, the Autogoddess decided to vish him with her attention as well. Modifying the very meta-skill he had just received. Well isn't she a cutie, eh? With a twitching eyebrow, Stepan read the images of the help, realizing that it wasn't that bad, but still managed to be frightened by the fact that they decided to ruin and deface his meta-skill. It was now called “minor temporary attribute enhancement in the name of Liarat si Merrinal, Lady of Gifts and Gift-giver, loyal servant of Innes Inney (GIFT)” and in fact, the change simply added an additional mode to the skill. The original ability to add from five units to the desired characteristic did not go anywhere; the conditions and consequences remained the same, but the second mode was something.

  The gift mode increased all stats by three, or a quarter of the value if the quarter would add up to more than three. It also adds seven units to Spirit, or two-thirds if the increase is greater, and five units to Sensitivity. All of this is for one hour or one battle. You should activate this meta-skill only when there is no other option to win or at least escape alive, and you can't see any easier options. At the end of the hour or dangerous situation, all characteristics are lowered to the minimum values, that is, to one, if not counting the Source and Power - those to zero. All contracts with spirits are put into sleep mode, all properties are temporarily suppressed, and only knowledge remains intact, but of little use. Stepan will become an absolutely typical ungifted, able to manage the appropriate amulets at most if they are configured to work with the ungifted. The time limit is a month, but that's the minimum, or maybe even longer, especially if you spend a lot of time fighting and fleeing.

  It would seem that everything is perfect - a thing of those that you use only in the full and deepest ass. But at the same time, it is able to save the isekai ass from the deepest asshole! To sit through a month as a simple ungifted is a much better option than to die quietly and without alternative from someone's charms, to eat the steel of someone's bde, or to digest and transform yourself into shit inside someone's stomach. Only then it wouldn't be an Autogoddess, not Her Milfness meta-skill, not in the style of a Milf of Milf present. That's why the eyebrow twitches because post-effects have another unpleasant property, a small, tiny even detail, the size of an oil tanker or an aircraft carrier with a fleet of escorts.

  Stepan, who is caught in the reverse effect of the acceleration, will be subjected to the Autogoddess-style fate correction effect. While he is without powers and magic, the probability that some beautiful person of the opposite sex will decide to bewitch, seduce, fuck and a bunch of other synonyms becomes close to one hundred forty-six percent. Worse, at the moment of activation of the enhancement, as with Autodivine Deals, the very fact of this additional debuff is removed from the bearer's memory until the characteristics return and the rollback stops. And yes, the first thing the shaman did was check out ways to cheat, such as telling Sylvia to watch him more closely and expining the problem to her. That wouldn't help at all, because the conditions of the rollback would be wiped from the memory of not only him, but the rest of the world, and any notes, writing on the walls, or other bullshit wouldn't work either - they wouldn't disappear, but they just wouldn't be noticed until the rollback was over. The same mechanics, by the way, work for Deals, so in this case, you shouldn't count on the help of your associates or subordinates either.

  It's actually not that categorically terrible. Any effects on the mind will automatically subside by the time the negative effect is over (but not the sworn oaths of eternal love and fidelity or bonded contracts, they will have to be broken separately), the same distortion of fate will not just stupidly die, be sacrificed or fall into such a deep hole from which there is no way out. Nothing truly vile or traumatizing will happen to the shaman who has fallen under the influence of others. But there will be so many emotions, as well as problems, that it will be enough for a lifetime. And the most frustrating thing in all this was that Stepan was well aware of the crystal simple truth: if it was really hard if he had to choose between getting into the games of Milfeisha or death, he would take this chance. Of course, he wanted to beat his chest and shout about his unshakeable purity, his unyielding principles cast from titanium alloy, but he knew himself, he knew himself better than even on earth - a consequence of the hardships he had endured, and of his high Spirit, which even in this way helps in the knowledge of one's own self.

  He is opposed to Her gifts. He refuses Her quests as a matter of principle in all cases, except those where it's possible to cheat on the terms of the quest or if they don't oppose his integrity, as was the case with Shera. He refuses to follow the easiest and most obvious ways to gain power and recruit a personal harem of brainwashed beauties. But if Stepan had to choose between death and a new gift, he wouldn't think long, he wouldn't think at all. There were principles that he would not have compromised even on the brink of death, but this case was not one of them. Stepan sincerely believed that anyone who would prefer to say the opposite in such a situation was probably being hypocritical - everyone wanted to live, everyone.

  "Oh, Stepan, I'd like to give you a smack, but I can't get you, you're too far away." The Earthman never bullied or beat his namesake; they had quite normal and friendly retions, but at such moments, Stepan began to lose his moral image; something dark and evil was awakening in him. "I would have deleted all the contents of your hard drive, but you bragged that you always backed up all the best masterpieces in several copies."

  Shaking his head tiredly, Stepan silently began to pack and clean up the tracks. It was lunchtime, the sun was hot enough, the weather was pleasant, and the only thing that upset Stepan at that moment was that he would not be able to enter the gates of Dantmark before evening. He would have to spend the night in the woods or in one of the inns surrounding the town... No, he'd had enough of the inns. He'd be better off staying in the woods. Calling the spirits of the purifiers, hiding the traces, summoning a woolly multiarmed spirit to finally eat all the imprints on the terrain, a quick snack, checking the account of the system currency (by the way, it was quite a lot, it was a pity that he spent a lot too), many other small things, and finally, finally, the road.

  The lights of the big city seemed to be calling to him.

  Well, big by local standards, not earthly ones.

  *

  The city was impressive, he must say. A high outer wall, the first of three, no less than fifteen meters high, and if with an embankment, even twenty, magically enchanted towers, heavy gates with vigint guards, but above all, of course, people and non-humans in a rge, rge assortment. Poor and unhappy Fantrel seemed tiny and unimpressive against the background of the Free City of Dantmark, nestled at the confluence of Dantra and Mtra, the two rgest rivers in the region. Even Stepan, who knew what living conditions were like in cities rge and by Earth standards, was still impressed. First of all, because he had gotten out of the habit of such scales and crowds, and secondly, because of the magic, which was quite tangible for him at his intensity. The city stood on a rge source. There were several smaller sources within the city limits, and there were gifted people and a rge number of amulets, and he could feel it all. The high sensitivity allowed such small details to be added to one picture, to grasp it piece by piece and understand the depth of it. His head was a little sore, to be honest, but the noise, the cmor, and the not particurly pleasant smells of unwashed bodies, rotten fish, and horse dung pyed a part in that.

  No one built anything near the city walls. It had been forbidden by some edict or decree after the city had nearly been stormed by a quick assault from the slums adjacent to the outer wall. The lesson was learned, the slums were torn down, the walls were reinforced, and the edict was still enforced, just as it was in Earth cities, by the way. And for the same reasons, only without magic. Walls are devalued as a shooting position if you can get to them so quickly and stealthily. Yes, there was no building near the wall, but the line at the gate was long and busy. He could have tried to go to the other gate, to see the Three Ridges, as the local lingo called the trio of rge bridges over the river water that connected the banks and the city itself, but he'd chosen to teleport to the only side that Dantmark didn't have bridges to, the northeast side.

  The city stood literally at the confluence of two rivers. It lived on those rivers, so there was no shortage of bridges, rge, heavy, stone, securely enchanted and drawn (both in case of siege and for especially rge and heavy ships or river caravans). According to Sylvia and Shera, they were built by dwarven craftsmen. The drawbridge was a fortified and huge mechano-golem, also the work of short bearded men. One bridge crossed the younger Dantra on the northwest side, another gave passage over the Mtra on the southwest side, and the st and rgest one passed over the Dantra that had already been merged. Thus, all three sections of the Y-divided ndmass were easily accessible to all comers. Of course, this list does not include the many ferries and passenger boat cabs that help those who have no time or desire to walk to the bridge to get from shore to shore.

  Dantmark, as the main city and central agglomeration, was located at the confluence, at its very tip. It was where the wealthiest neighborhoods were located, where the pace of the de Dantrel dynasty was, where the Magic Tower of the city and the main defenses were located. It was a good pce for defense. The pace stood on a very high stone pteau, a natural one, or had been raised with the help of geomancy. It was a challenge to storm this pce, especially considering the many surprises prepared over the years. There was a reason why mages, cssical and wild liked to entrench so much. A full-fledged magician could hardly be thrown off from a defensive position prepared to the highest standards by three equally good mages who came with an army to besiege the city. At best, they will hold him back and cover the attackers, and even then, not with full success. That's why full-fledged assaults and sieges of rge cities in this magical world are quite rare. Either everything is solved by a quick and bold, like diarrhea at a bus stop, storm, or a blow from the inside and in the back of unprepared defenders, or at all intrigue and gradual pulling of the city under intriguer power. Or the enemy has such superiority in everything that it is easy to roll the defenders into the ground. This has also happened in history, though not in modern history.

  Sylvia was recounting, and he was counting her memory through the doll, the story of how the mighty and beautiful Morgrave had just recently been plundered and humiliated in a daring sea raid. It was the rgest of the Confederacy's seaside cities, the Pearl of the Confederacy, comparable only to Neirat. But Neitat was not exactly near the Middle Sea. Neirat - the local Hogwarts, home to the rgest academy of magic and library in the world - was considered part of the Confederation only conditionally, being a full-fledged and powerful state. Just compact and dwarfed, but toothy, tenacious, and deadly as a honey badger on steroids. But Morgrave was unprepared for a naval visit led by a magical superdreadnought of the local Pirate King, who organized this act of robbery, brilliantly pulling it off and leaving with the most worthy booty.

  Back to Dantmark. The locals said proudly that such a trick would not work on them, and they were right. First of all, because the city, though noticeably poorer and not as magically fortified, was too far from the sea. Running a superdreadnought, even a magical one, upriver was maybe possible. But all the locals of the coast would be very happy about such a visit and would do their best to make sure that this ship never left the riverbed. However, putting jokes aside, Dantmark was really well fortified. Moreover, in addition to the central city, it formally included some satellite settlements on the opposite banks of the merging rivers. There were fortresses there, too, albeit smaller and not as fortified, but they covered both the river and the immediate area with scanning fields and shooting points for attacks with area-shock magic. The debate over whether or not the residents of the backstreets are considered true Dantmarkians is an honorable and respected discipline of local debate on local forums.

  On days when especially cold frosts ice the river, these disputes turn into mass fists and stick fights on the ice. No, the teeth of opponents with a different principled position are considered at the first opportunity, and strangers are better not to wander around the True City in one snout, as well as should not unnecessarily cross bridges for an idle stroll. But it is in winter that everything takes on a solemn and almost tournament-like scale; Master Miller and his students strengthen the ice on the river at Duke Herbert's direct request, merchants bring in goodies, healers send their trainees out for a nap, and the rag-draped people armed with sticks, clubs, and staffs wrapped tightly in rags, beat each other up. A year in which the bridge massacre is without at least five corpses is considered boring and the performance me. This despite the fact that for carrying knives or shivs these sharp objects are stuck into the left buttock of the owner, and for an attempt to cheat with the wrapping and put pebbles and sand under the cloth they are forced to eat it right in front of the honest people. For the iron hidden under that winding they simply and uncomplicatedly beat on the head with the taken away baton, banishing from the festivities to the bench with a fresh concussion.

  Against this background, the “tooth” gate, so named because it came from the side of the nd between the two rivers, resembling a fang on the map, was the most boring and quiet pce. This side was mostly inhabited by vilgers and representatives of very small towns. They were devoid of that trademark arrogance, they did not cause any problems, and the guards here were vigint and were really vigint, not looking for a way to make money. Still, the only side from which a full-fledged attack from the nd is possible. You will strengthen the wall, build additional towers, and keep a full complement of guards. Stepan, according to Sylvia, was aware of the fact the river sections near the city were littered with traps or markers for targeted attacks from the city's magic tower, so storming Dantmark by the river was a task for lovers of hardcore only.

  Stepan was expecting some kind of adventure, danger, the threat of disclosure, an attentive guard with Sherlock's abilities from BBC, who would catch the young man on a small detail or discrepancy, but everything went so smoothly that he had to suppress involuntary nervousness. But no, the guard, and the head of the patrol, only boringly warned the young gifted not to misbehave and not to be weird, the magician assigned to him with some interest, but without contempt, enlightened the shaman with a gnce, with a slight superiority-looking at the young gifted young man, even gave advice on how to go to the branch of the guild of adventurers or representation of the city circle of magicians. Then he passed through the gates, wrapped in a Shroud, and additionally transferred all the valuable and magically active things to the remaining far-flung hiding pce, taking advantage of the hand-made inventory. The scanning charms here were powerful, skillfully produced, and soldered into the structure of the arch of the gate, but simple enough that Stepan could deceive them, even covering the emanation of his belongings and amulets. He did not risk it, and rightly so. How could he know that he could hide his magically active belongings until he tried it in practice?

  In fact, the biggest problem that he faced when he got to the city was finding the right pce and the road to it. It was one thing to know the pn and map of the city through Sylvia's memory analysis, but to get into this noise, noise, stench and constant Brownian movement of separate elements was quite another matter. He even tried to be robbed by some unremarkable-looking man, but as soon as he started to move in the direction of looking for the way and looking around like a vilge in the city (actually, everything in accordance with the image), Stepan just looked at him attentively and he immediately pretended that he had to go the other way. Being able to pick up on the small details around you is also part of being an agent, as is being able to hide your awareness. If it weren't for his reluctance to get involved with thieves, he wouldn't have even let on that he'd noticed the thief, or even just walked away from him in the crowd.

  His target was located in one of the commercial districts, in the Copper Middle, to be more precise. It was a decent, respectable, and rather wealthy neighborhood, where even the poorer aristocracy had residences. There was a residence there, a whole farmstead, and the one to whom the shaman was going on a visit. And not just a visit, but also with a letter of recommendation, written by the one who wrote it, and not a fake one. Nothing outstanding, in fact, just a recommendation and a word in favor of a homeless and weak, but diligent and quiet gifted young man seeking patronage and a pce in the big city. He had learned his lesson from his time in Fantrel, and now he wasn't even going to try to survive and settle in this pce solely on his own. He wasn't going to go under Sylvia's wing, either, both because he was cautious and didn't want the reputation of a weakling who'd sold himself to vampires and seemed to be dreaming of eternal non-life.

  No, the obedient and cautious Sylvia had simply used one of her contacts to influence him through a blood connection. He wrote a letter to another friend of his, who had nothing to do with the bloodsuckers. Since the comrade had been looking for a gifted worker with the right skills for a long time, here you have such a worker, and almost for free, since the kid is savage, doesn't know how to do anything, and will be gd of any opportunity to find a pce in life. Take and do not particurly hard to pay. The boy will agree to the minimum almost for sure. But also do not press too much, because he will go to look for something better, and even find it. The cunning Malter didn't just get the letter, she had it alchemized, aged it a bit, tattered it a bit so that it seemed to have been written months ago, and also corrected her partner's memory so that he was sincerely sure that he had written that letter quite a long time ago and without Sylvia's prompting.

  Stepan was sure to send a good suggestor from himself to put a false memory of where the idea of the letter had come from. Now that man, if he remembers about the letter, will just brush it off, not going into the search for the origins and reasons why he wrote it, how he knows about Panna, and all that. Basically, the change is very minor and weak, quietly made at the expense of a long-established pathway into the victim's mind. Sylvia does not have full control over her partner and does not seek to establish it. She only maintains such a small crack in the defense, regurly updating it, and almost never forcing her victim to do something disadvantageous to the man himself. That's why her combination hadn't come to light in so many years. But she, as Stepan knew, gave this man a helping hand when he was only the third son of his tyrannical and very hot-tempered father. She had helped him to retire his father without blood and corpses, to get around both brothers who had now moved to Morgrave and Westmark, had given him his first loans, and put in a good word for him with several businessmen. No one suspects, including the man himself, that his alliance and good treatment of the creature are not so natural. Because there are reasons for the alliance and good treatment of each other.

  However, let us leave the not particurly modest merchant and caravanner to his fate and return to Stepan's business. His letter was addressed to another merchant. This one was not a caravanner. Trabius Borshakl traded in wine, beer, and a few other types of liquor, all of which he produced. He had six vineyards outside the city limits, a couple of breweries, a cheese factory, and a recipe and specialists that made his goods either tasty or cheap so half of the taverns in the city and a good portion of those around it bought their liquor from him. He was a rather prosperous man, with a grip and a bad temper, but he was honest, did not tear the st shirt off his workers, paid them moderately, but regurly and without dey, and was not overzealous in punishing them or cutting their pay. For idleness or, God forbid, unauthorized tasting of the goods produced, he threw out without pity and severance pay - that is.

  There was also a story about a couple of employees who were flogged to death, but there, as if for a cause. Somebody either encouraged or paid them, or simply bribed them to piss in a barrel of the best and slightly magical brandy, which he pnned to give as a gift to one of the de Dantrel surnames through third hands. The scandal would have been epic, and Sylvia had learned about the story by accident because Trabius had been looking for the one who had organized the diversion and had taught the two idiots to do it. The vampiress managed to find out it was the work of a competitor, who was on the verge of bankruptcy and had almost been pushed out of the market by that time, and who had not been cheap to hire an illegal mentalist for this case so that he could finally break the brakes of a couple of jokers. She had, but she'd rather charge the poor guy for his silence than Trabius for his information. That way she could twist his arms, and the rival brewer, already on the edge, had to pay.

  Now those two competitors' breweries belong to Borshakl, and the only remaining one produces such donkey's piss that only outright shanty towns and slums buy it. He has fallen out of the big leagues and is now barely in the middle league; he has dispersed the most competent and skillful people (some of them went to Trabius, by the way), sold off his property to pay off his debts, and is drinking himself to death, keeping afloat only to marry off his daughter and then drown in the bottle. Sylvia is thinking of offering him a helping hand in exchange for some favors or information shortly. Having connections to a bunch of those scrappy eateries, a man unintentionally accumutes rumors and conversations, albeit of a second freshness, but will come in handy as one of the sources of information.

  However, this is not Stepan's story. His story is connected with this nky, smooth-shaven, and absolutely sober man with a droopy and tired face, blue eyes, and brownish-unclear hair, already beginning to fall out from age. Trabius Borshakl looked at Pann and at the letter handed to him by his assistant, obviously thinking whether not to send this little thing to hell at once and in fact. Stepan, who had to wait for the letter to be delivered to the winemaker until he thought and found time to talk to him, was also thinking of sending everything to hell, but the experience of working on Earth helped him a lot. There, too, I had to put up with asshole bosses who liked such psychological games.

  “All right, I won't drag this out, Pann.” Still, he makes a decision, though not without doubts, and he really doubted, not pying a role, Stepan, whose spirits were in his eyes and ears, could bet a purse of gold against a mug of beer. “I could use a gifted one, but not just anyone. I need someone who can keep the pests away from the warehouses with malt, hops, and grain. And cheese. I've renewed my amulets twice, my workers recharged them regurly, and it helped, I swear to gods I'll be damned. Only still the little, nasty, nasty things come back time and time again. And they eat. They're eating my money! It's right here, in the main farmyard. There's nowhere else like it, not outside the town, not in the country, not anywhere. And no, it's not a curse, I've had it checked by three specialists. And even if it is, it's not yours to remove.”

  Stepan listened to this rather expressive monologue without too much emotion. He already knew in advance what the man's problem was and why he was looking not just for a gifted person who could recharge an amulet or update an already drawn ritual star, but for someone who knew about deratization. The kid he'd been given wasn't perfect for the job, but the letter said that Pann could cure hangovers and minor illnesses, find water and iron, conjure knives, drive away rats, and, if he was lucky, also drive away or summon rain. A wide pool of skills, especially for an apprentice, each of which would be useful, but Trabius knew well how such letters and self-praises of poor and untrained magicians worked. If it says he's good at something, it means he barely understands it. If it is said that he can do well, then it is literally minimal knowledge of the subject, and if he can do something with luck, then he did something simir literally once, accidentally, and could not repeat it again.

  "I can expel the pests, and the spirits will kill those who can't, but the question is about the volume of work," Stepan confesses honestly because yes, volumes are important. Even he would find it difficult to kill mice in the entire city and suburban agglomeration. "I can start the first ritual tonight. I don't need any special offerings, a handful of grain and a bowl of wine will probably be enough. The question is how many times it will be necessary to repeat it and how often."

  And at what price, but he didn't say, leaving it unspoken, which made Trabius' mood a little better. If he didn't demand payment or at least an advance, it meant he had no doubts about his abilities. And that he would be paid, not lumatized, though the tter was understandable. If he showed himself well, they would not kick him out after paying him with a sp on the wrist. Vinodel once again ran his eyes over the text of the letter, and looked at the calm and not nervous boy, who was obviously confident in his abilities and knew his worth. Stepan had already told the legend prepared by Sylvia, according to which he had helped one of the caravans of an honorable merchant. That caravan had really been helped a year ago, for a good reward, by a wandering magician-shaman, still quite young, but definitely not Stepan. And after all, Trabius made his proposal.

  “Four warehouses where the mice can't be eliminated, three more are not so bad, they don't go there much. These are the first pces where you need to do magic. In the rest of the duties only that I will tell you separately if any of the workers get hurt, they will also call you, if it's something light. I won't forbid you to work part-time, I honor the precepts, there's no problem here, but only as long as it's part-time and doesn't interfere with business.” The list of duties is actually much more extensive than it might seem, especially for the apprentice he is pying here, because the reserve is not infinite, it is always unpleasant and even harmful to drain it and go half-empty. “I will pay a little, especially for a magician, but with full board and lodging, and I will pay extra for overwork and something special. Your rate as a junior master, not a journeyman and not a master, so two small thalers in silver per decade. If copper, you can and more, but no one agrees. If some reagents are needed for work, I'll pay too, but I'll ask and check too, whether it's really for work and whether it's really that much, so you shouldn't be impudent. Well, deal or not, young man?”

  The young man thought about it and began to compare it with what he knew. The pay was literally at the lower end of the middle css, or even beyond it. Only six thalers a month was ridiculous for a gifted man. But full board and feeding, as well as payment for the necessary consumables for work - this is also cool, very, very cool. In the usual practice of hiring a gifted person, there is a tendency to use the practice of “I paid you, and you do it, and I do not care how, only quickly, and that's better. That is consumable reagents and rituals at your own expense. You decide to invest more reserves, not save for the evening training, and spend less material or invest additional materials, but at the same time, come out in the best case with zero earnings. The variant suggested by the winemaker is very good for beginner magicians who need constant practice and access to reagents. However, it automatically cuts the payment to the level that a normal worker, who already has a couple or three assistants, gets much more.

  “Agreed, honorable Trabius.” The young man nods only, bowing his head respectfully, for this option suits him perfectly, for it is exactly what he had hoped for. “Then I am ready to get to work.”

  He didn't show any subservience, but he didn't show any familiarity or disrespect either. A pure working retionship, doing exactly what he was paid to do and nothing more. In this respect, Stepan intended to be as honest and scrupulous as possible, and there was no reason to do otherwise. There was no evil in the thoughts and pns of Trabius, whose defense the earthling had opened, and therefore he would not see evil from him in return. And yes, the man decided to py a little on the brat's nerves and arrange a session of silent waiting.

  “Yeah, yeah, all right, get to it. Now, watch this. I'll pay you for the current decade at once, like a raise, even before the results are in.” Calmly and without threat, but with an ominous look, his employer stops Stepan. “But I hope to see the result by the end of this decade. With my own eyes. Well, or to be told about it by those who have seen it. Or, pardon me, I'll chase you with kicks without respect for your gift, Pann.”

  That was the end of their dialogue. Trabius summoned one of his assistants, a scowling man with a pox-ravaged face, and ordered him to put the new worker in his proper pce, to give him his pay, and to feed him dinner. His lodgings were found right in the middle of the farmstead, a kind of artel, a small block within a block, with its own wall and gate, and a stone wall, two and a half meters high, a little enchanted. Here was the main house, which was also the residence of Trabia and his family. There were also warehouses with the products, wine celrs, and beer barrels. The most smelly parts of the production cycle, of course, were located outside the city, where the finished products were brought to be infused and finished, and with the same cheeses, they did not skimp on odor suppression amulets, so the stench did not go. The neighborhood is good. For the stench fines will be imposed like dicks in the mouth, more expensive than amulets and recharging will cost. It's a direct quote from his guide.

  Servants and borers lived here, too, in assorted ranges, both those who helped with production, personal servants, and managers in charge of the local trade. Trabius had several wine shops, where wine or other exotic liquor was not bottled, but sold in gss or kegs. It was in one of the guest houses that he was put up. A separate room, quite spacious, though not a pace. The bed was big, the mattress was woolen, the linen was fresh and clean, and the furniture was heavy and strong, though obviously not new. The second room, as it was agreed, was also his, but for magical affairs. Stepan tried to expin that a shaman often doesn't have to be on the spot to deal with a problem, so it would be easier for him to conduct rituals and calls in one room. Of course, the room would not be suitable for everything; there was no open air or possibility to create a totem circle, but he was not going to work seriously in this pce, and he was able to kill mice without regaining consciousness and with a wild hangover.

  It was possible to eat in the dining house or right here; there was a table, and the servants brought food as needed, especially when it came to gifted people, whose work schedules were often variable. Yes, yes, Stepan was certainly not the only gifted at Trabius's disposal. There were two other self-taught apprentices. They were mostly recharging amulets, an herbalist-alchemist and an apprentice, who did something special with the most expensive drinks - either disinfecting and preserving them for long storage or improving taste. Stepan wasn't about to ask. Another of the guards had the rudiments of a gift, which allowed him to use amulets more effectively, as well as to activate magical vision, but Stepan knew this from Sylvia. As well as Ma?tre Jasper, a certified adept universalist with a specialization in household magic and amulet-making, who served as a universal wand for all Trabi's pns.

  By the way, he and Trabius were old childhood friends, having saved each other's lives several times in their youth. And not only friends, if rumors, most likely true, were to be believed, but Sylvia could not be sure, because Trabius did not go out with women. He did not cheat on his wife, having two daughters and a son, but he could not tolerate her. However, it was their sexual difficulties, which Stepan cared about at the level of the influence of warm currents of the Gulf Stream on the state of the snow cap of Kilimanjaro. Absolutely in no way. He was much more occupied with the final stages of his pns, for which he exhaled tiredly, fell on the bed, y immovably for five minutes, and then calmly got up and went to the next room, having previously informed his guide, who had run in to check on him, that he was starting the call.

  He started it, literally in the very first tacts, summoning and incarnating several spirits-mouse-catchers, or rat-catchers, even hamster-catchers, if there was a raid of dangerous hamsters somewhere. But then he did not do what he was expected to do, even if the spirits he had summoned beforehand concealed the energy outburst, and he was very careful to drain the reserve. He had not come here, to the Free City of Dantmark, to live the life of a simple shaman's apprentice, but only in search of civilization, and human society, while he wanted to develop at the same pace. This pce was the perfect disguise, but, it was here, taking the role of an important but not fshy specialist, whose work is always performed on time and behind the scenes, that he could well begin to lead a double life.

  Sylvia and her nest had many caches, hideouts, and even a couple of secret bases. There were some that only Sylvia knew existed. Some were considered common to them all. But, more importantly, these hideouts were as well protected from scanning as their main ir, the same impoverished aristocrats' mansion that they hadn't entered in ages, but regurly received financial support from somewhere that kept them from going under. It's not easy to create a teleporter inside the city limits, and even harder to do undetected, but what if there's no need to teleport? What if one small shaman would be so forgotten that he would only be remembered on the day of money distribution or in case of some serious situation? Especially if he does all the necessary tasks anyway, especially if one of the shelters is literally next door in ten minutes of running, right under another building, and a residential one.

  Eighty years ago, a rebellion against the de Dantrel family almost broke out in the city. Duke Herbert, then a somewhat younger-looking man, did not forgive the rebellion that did not take pce. Some were executed, some were dishonorably banished, some moved to distant or near retives, and others simply apologized and paid their dues, and then swore oaths not to do any more mischief and to be good boys and girls. But something from those times remained in the town. Something was accidentally found by one of Sylvia's fledglings and then put to use. A small underground shelter, actually a naturally occurring cave, from which water was pumped out, walls were reinforced, masking runes were applied, some consumables and combat explosive mixtures, some good alchemy and amulets were brought in, and the pce was prepared as a pce to house mercenaries who would help in that rebellion. The same kind of blow from within and to the backs of the defenders that most often changes the authorities in such cities, where the authorities are too well entrenched to be easily dispced by direct assault and siege.

  The pce was never used. Herbert de Dantrelle was the first to arrive, and it was said that he had made a scarecrow of the chief instigator, who had not been formally killed or executed but had escaped. Whether this was true or not, Sylvia did not know, but she suspected it was fiction. Herbert's distant and very influential retive had probably been gutted by the mentalists, then killed and burned. The ashes were buried in an isoted container, and the escape story was fed to the public. Sylvia carefully renewed the spells and cloaking runes on the walls of the shelter, and even more carefully sold some of the amulets and mixtures she had found, keeping some for herself just in case, and mothballed the cave shelter until needed. Over the next few decades, the pce was used a couple of times for one need or another, but never for long. There was simply no need, there were enough other, more accessible and not requiring such problems with inconspicuous entrance and exit.

  It was not easy to call underground, but there were advantages to it besides being inconspicuous. Deeper contact with the solid, and the sphere of water in that cave, washed out naturally, will surely be easier too. Dark and darkness, again, will be called with ease, especially considering how rarely there is light in that shelter. The only and the most important problem of the whole idea is that powerful and mass calls, even with the involvement of masking spirits, will still, let's say, fsh through, giving if not direct coordinates of the source of disturbances in the energetic and spiritual pn, then just a wave, raising the arm, after which the secret guards of Dantrels will search, digging the earth with their noses. Judging by the way this noone's cave was formed, the guys can work quite well, so they might find it.

  But Stepan had a twenty-sixth level and a free talent point, which he would have to invest in minor knowledge again. There was one spirit among the summons of the elder spirits that had appeared after the battle in Bzdy, which was quite close to being considered the higher one, though not as high as the one personally rewarded by the Autogoddess, may the World Association of Speech Therapist forgive her, Vishpli-Schwalstprachtmatt. This spirit had very specific methods of summoning and working, as well as specific requirements, one of which was to stay underground, under the thickness of stone or soil, because only in this way it could reveal its outstanding potential. The spirit was not a fighting spirit, hardly powerless in direct combat, but it did not need to fight.

  It was a specialist in disguise, but very conditionally, for it did not create primitive emission-absorbing fields or trapping nets, nor did it redirect or dampen the sensory pattern. This spirit belongs to the spheres of, what a marvelous thing, Depth, and Darkness, as well as, what is more unexpected, Space. This spirit covered a section of some underground complex, a cave, or even a basement, and then, as if to create a cut-off field from its own essence, shifted the coordinate position of the occupied territory between here and not-here. Roughly speaking, as long as this spirit is active, as long as it is bound to its pce, the bunker under that house disappears, it is no longer there. You can dig from dusk till dawn, sifting the soil with a fine sieve, scanning it with sensory charms and rituals, X-raying it, unching chimaeroid scout worms under the ground, searching through the response of pnt roots permeating the space, even calling the search spirits for help - you won't find anything.

  To crack such a disguise you need to either know what exactly you are looking for and how to resist it, use something really exotic, or work through the magic of space, specialized sensory rituals that can sense the instability of certain areas, or flood the entire surrounding area with a bunch of magical weaves of search type, to literally not leave a scrap of free space. The spirit creates a kind of superposition in retion to a certain territory. Shelter in his embrace is not here and everywhere, but only on a limited piece of space, so overloading this defense is possible but very difficult and expensive. It's easier to slip a beacon into the pocket of someone who will visit the shelter and use it to locate him, search by blood or auric trace, or even catch him at the exit of the fold.

  At one of these exits.

  Yes, yes, within the city limits, he would be able, albeit with training and very carefully, relying on the properties and aspects of this spirit, to create such doors to get out of the shelter, say, in Sylvia's mansion, or in his room at Trabius Borshakl's farmyard, or outside the city wall in some bushes, or in an inconspicuous alley in the slums. The same property of creating such wormhole-like tunnels will allow almost without problems to call even the call of the elder spirits in the shelter. It drains all the magical background somewhere outside the city or in the depth of the earth, at a depth of many kilometers under the stones of paving stones. Yes, the strongest calls will have to be shielded additionally, yes, some spirits will not come to such a point of call, yes, if too actively drain their energy and spiritual echo outside the city wall, they will start looking for a master of shamanism, but it is still an opportunity to practice quietly, without going far from civilization and without attracting the attention of doctors!

  For just one talent point, and at the cost of again postponing the promotion of call practice to advanced mastery. On the other hand, he would have a chance to develop the very practice, as well as a lot of other knowledge, just by getting a promotion in the usual way (but for such a highly ranked and variable knowledge it would be very difficult), but the chance to get a ready and most reliable contract with the right spirit or its convenient substitute.... no, not minuscule or even negligible, he could try. Only for that, he would have to, well, call powerfully and an extremely strong entity, which would not immediately come to the call. The Earthman was willing to bet his sary for a year in advance that the guards, both regur and secret, as well as the representatives of the mages, would come to the call much faster, asking all sorts of uncomfortable questions and demanding permission for advanced practice inside the city limits.

  Received: “Contract with an elder spirit: He Who Hides Himself in the Rocks and Opens the Doors”.

  The acquired talent is added to the overall Pyer status.

  For the System with its perfectionism, the conditions are quite standard: one summoning per year, tied to a pce that the spirit will make its own and part of itself, and the spirit will stay in this pce and protect it for three winters, just after a year it can be moved to a new pce. If there is no desire to change the dislocation, then just update the order to keep masking and out-presence on the already occupied area, there is not even need to call, just send the appropriate image. Passing the contract by inheritance is quite possible, as well as possible to bind the spirit to a certain area for a longer time, say, for ten or even fifty years, so as not to fear that he will leave at the end of the three-year term, and you will not be around. At the same time, this action will not allow you to transfer the spirit to a new pce before the expiration of the specified period, only to recall it and then wait for a new call for the same fifty years.

  The entity was not evil or even dark, but rather born and bred by the absence of light rather than darkness, yet completely neutral and indifferent. Listening to his new contract, Stepan realized that this something was such an indifferent person - well, within the limits in which the concept of personality, not entity, could be applied to spirits - that if the world around him knew how much it didn't care about the world, reality itself would cry. There were no problems with the summoning, and the shaman was finally convinced that he had chosen the right path. A couple-three days to go through the brains of the bosses and just random workers with his spirits, wiping himself out of the picture of the world. Take a couple or three days off after that since he's dealt with the mice, and make the call of the lover of hide-and-seek and doors right inside the isoted ir. Make the ir suitable for work and long stays, expand it if necessary, and add a couple of rooms and a ritual hall. There would be no need to think about disguises under the protection of the elder spirit. Sylvia and her nest should be properly taken care of, and perhaps the nest should be subjugated entirely by calling another elder spirit with an unpronounceable name into that cozy mansion.

  After that, he can start working in peace. Appear here, at the winery, quickly and accurately perform the tasks. The rest of the time either to pump in the call cave or just rest. A huge magical-medieval city with a lot of people, non-humans, mages, embassies of other countries - there is even an elven emissary service here - shops and fairs. One can rex a little after so many days of hardship and wandering, can't one? He can, but not for long, because in the list of tasks set for himself, still hangs the search and preventive elimination of an unknown demonic creature, which managed to get into his dreams and lost a piece of her own name there. Stepan did not say it aloud, even thought it very carefully, but, with the right selection of entourage and proper preparation. He will be able to send at the call of this image-name of specially selected spirits with the right aspects.

  Yes, they can be fought off, but only by a very uncommon demon, really strong and dangerous. But somehow I can hardly believe that fate has brought him together with a creature whose name is divided into more than two parts. With appropriate strength and equally appropriate experience, such creatures are rarely younger than two or three thousand years old. Certainly not weaker than a magister in pure power and without regard to accumuted souls. And even if the spirits failed, he would still know about it, understand the depth of the problem and be able to realize the scale of the threat, shit himself a little, and then start preparing an even more powerful strike force. The likelihood of that, he estimated, was very low, but not zero. The probability of meeting a bloodsucker with his retinue in a remote and almost abandoned vilge on the edge of the world was not very high either. As well as to fall into a powerful ambush and games of special services just by accident sitting on the wrong ship, which, in turn, also confused with another boat. And to get into a hell of a mess with a lot of evil and bad spirits at the first attempt to get out of the body in order to pump profile talents for the shaman... and no, this is exactly the kind of shit he was expecting, the action is indeed dangerous, but he was not expecting it on such a fucking scale.

  "So much to do, so much to do, and I haven't even had dinner yet." Stepan sighed sorrowfully about his fate, getting up from the slightly dusty floor, on which he had drawn a chalk circle with camel chalk and dabbed some wax. "So we must go and chew. I hope they don't skimp on food in this pce?"

  They didn't skimp too much on food for the workers, at least the gifted ones. The food was only slightly worse than in Lyady, but it was edible, the portions were rge, and you could take supplements if you wanted.

  Well, it's not that bad.

  Almost good.

  He hopes it doesn't jinx anything

  *

  STATUS OF STEPAN THE NORMAL AT THE END OF CHAPTER SEVENTEEN:

  Name: Stepan

  Level: 26

  Css: Senior Shaman

  Specialty: Spiritual Master

  Characteristics: (free: 0)

  Talents (free): 0

  Constitution: 2

  Sensitivity: 11

  Power: 7

  Control: 5

  Source: 5

  Spirit: 13

  Resistance: 2

  Knowledge acquired: speaking and writing: Free Cities, academic Neirat, Isnd Kingdom; call practice of master level; advanced master level of spiritual dialog; wilderness hermit; advanced basics of working with healing spirits; advanced developed techniques of casting shamanic charms (GIFT); advanced basic techniques of dream-inducing and dream correction (GIFT); the advanced basic practice of combat calls; advanced basic techniques of interaction with magical sources; advanced basic techniques of countering curses: advanced fundamentals of fast call; the advanced basic practice of spiritual operation; the mastery of an experienced martial caller; advanced basics of spiritual haggling and contract agreements with otherworldly entities; the advanced basic practice of remote control of spiritual entities; basic methods of teaching magical sciences; basic methods of tantric practices; advanced basic methods of territorial influences; basics of work with totems; advanced basic techniques of building defensive formations; advanced techniques of spiritual wandering; advanced basic skills of spiritual conflict outside the physical body; advanced developed techniques of suggestive influences based on shamanism (GIFT); proficient methods of undercover work; mastery of puppet-envolt magical practice; developed methods of controlled spiritual indwelling

  Minor knowledge: contract with an elder spirit: Sleepwalker (GIFT); contract with the elder spirits: The Shroud of Touch and the Creator of Decisions (GIFT); a contract with a strong spirit: The Eater of Diseases; defense by distortion of the anteroom of the spheres; contract with a strong spirit: Cheesh'sh'shuya; contract with a strong spirit: Jolly Milker; contract with a strong spirit: Sneaking Glow; contract with a senior spirit: Joy of the Waves; contract with a senior spirit: Vishpli-Schwalstprachtmatt; contract with a senior spirit: Memory Eater; curse of the locking of the paths; exile from reality; contract with an elder spirit: He Who Hides Himself in the Rocks and Opens the Doors.

  Obtained properties: blessings of health and long life; toughness of spirit; resilience of subtle bodies; small mark of spiritual spheres: spiritual shroud of higher auric concealment (GIFT); flexible transformation of the spiritual body; marking of fallen leaves and bck roots; a tantric spiritual hearth; recognition of creators of passions and weavers of feelings (GIFT); heritage in blood and spirit (GIFT); patchwork spiritual echo (GIFT); multiplicity of spiritual awareness; small spiritual and energetic protection; the regeneration of subtle bodies; the marking of free winds and whispering blows; the marking of quiet pools and deep waters; the recognition of the keepers of doors and those who pave the way

  System modifiers: peaceful development IV; issuance of system assignments III; lecherous development IV; access to system purchases IV; small system endowment of characteristics; temporal awareness IV; reserve renewal IV; replenishment of life IV; accepting a systemic deal with a patron (Liarat si Merrinal, Lady of Gifts and Giver of Gifts, loyal servant of Innes Inney); creation of group I; intensive development I; gift small temporary enhancement of attributes in the name of Liarat si Merrinal, Lady of Gifts and Giver of Gifts, faithful servant of Innes Inney (GIFT)

  Completed Deals: -

  Avaible Deals: Cute & Innocent; Sweet Attraction; Big & Soft; Tense and Frozen; The Tenderest Buns

  Reward Tokens: Awesome Watermelons (100); Indifferent Doll (3); Ignored Orgasm (100); One-time improvement of item quality and properties (1); small artifact repair (3); significant materialization of the stock of quality reagents and consumables tied to the css (1); instant recovery of magic reserve (25)

  Special: Blessing of Liarat si Merrinal, Lady of Gifts and Giver of Gifts, loyal servant of Innes Inney: likely to grant additional talents as you level up; grant specific System quests with increased rewards; Mark of Destinies: Singha, daughter of Maega, and Maega, daughter of Maedra; hidden effects

  STATUS OF SYLVIA MALTER AT THE MOMENT OF THE END OF THE SEVENTEENTH CHAPTER (if Stepan Normal had bothered to accept her into the group):

  Name: Sylvia Malter

  Level: 47

  Race: High Vampire (human)

  Css: Bloodchanter

  Specialty: Bloodwind.

  Characteristics: (free: 0; in brackets are bonuses from Stepan.)

  Talents (free): 3

  Constitution: 9 (2)

  Sensitivity: 7 (3)

  Power: 4 (2)

  Control: 5 (0)

  Source: 3 (1)

  Spirit: 6 (2)

  Resistance: 8 (3)

  Knowledge absorbed: spoken and written: [ reveal ]; advanced developed control of scarlet drop; the advanced practice of blood shaping; advanced blood patronage; mastery techniques of subjugating blood resonance; the advanced developed practice of superimposing delusions; advanced techniques of racial magic; advanced techniques of blood acceleration; advanced basic techniques of scarlet pulse; advanced basic practice of blood magic-based searching effects; advanced developed techniques of scarlet alchemy; advanced basic ritualistic practice; advanced basic barrier-breaking techniques; advanced basic acoustic mental influence practice; advanced seduction and deception techniques; scarlet martial arts (Blood Pact); the art of agency and infiltration (Blood Pact); advanced basic mentoring and nurturing techniques; advanced basic personality reshaping techniques

  Minor knowledge: skillful protective crimson cloak; double whip of bloody submission; skillful crimson cws; implosion of bloody resonance

  Acquired properties: enhanced saturation of bloody drops; corporeal essence of the supreme bloodsucker; enhanced blood reserve conservation; eye modification: subduing gaze; vocal cord modification: enchanting voice; skeletal base modification: strengthening and flexibility; essence modification: Ancient Ichor's Drop

  System modifiers: [none]

  Special: [Empty for now]