* * *

  The new roundey of dream images made him promise himself never to fall asleep without the appropriate dream catchers, or to take up methods of dream control, or to try to take his own training to the section of fortune-telling and cirvoyance, just in case he found a talent. It was said shamans were very good at this kind of work, and the same call practice had the necessary rituals and types of invocations in stock. True, this thought existed for a few seconds, a fraction of that, before being buried in the avanche, tsunami, and mudflow of visions, equally colorful and incomprehensible.

  * * *

  Armed with a double-barrelled sawed-off shotgun and a stack of sharp-edged throwing letters, Postman Pechkin fights against a chthonic shit in the form of streams of crystalline and liquid bckness, now and then growing symmetrical cones. A small and cartoonish girl with a pstic hammer knocks cssic WH40k fortress ships right out of orbit while an infantry battle between the armies of Those Who Are Hot and Those Who Blow is going on around her. The much-maligned boa constrictor Kaa swallows a container ship den with weapons and radio parts while the crew desperately fires off rge-caliber automatic parrot throwers. Six sumo wrestlers try to push a small Godzil back into the sea as he desperately tries to expin his smallness.

  SpoilerT.N. When you ride a bus half of the bus demands to turn off AC because it's blowing. And half demand to turn it on, because it's hot.

  [colpse]* * *

  A red-haired young man in a heavy and unbearable without magic armor, a horned dragon helmet with a huge hammer-halberd-axe near him is stroking a cat that has climbed up on his arms, making a speech in front of a crowd of people armed with anything. The people, characteristically, listen attentively and not without respect to the speaker, even quite inspired by what they have heard. They are all excited, ready, and eager for feats, booty, and new levels, but the kitty sitting on his arms looks indifferently at his subjects. He knows for sure that in fact it is His Fluffiness who is the most important here, and the rest are just trash, needed only to put the food in his personal bowl. But the others do not know about it and live their petty human passions. And that is why His Catness, in His mercy, will not dissuade them from these naive and ridiculous delusions, allowing them to maintain the illusion of control over their own lives and destinies.

  * * *

  Dressed in the uniform of American marines Scrooge McDuck, paints his face in the style of the famous Rambo, arms himself with a plunger, soldering iron, and pliers, and then goes to storm the office of the Elven Queen, breaking through the defenses, tearing to shreds the protective fields, in passing sizzling the crowd of naked goblins with a crowd of naked goblins with big dicks, as well as loudly and ornately and exquisitely swearing in high Elvish. Elves, non-elves, flying meatballs, and even the gods try to stop him, but Scrooge is unstoppable, unstoppable and incredibly cool. His plunger strikes without a miss, shutting enemy mouths, his soldering iron passes dangerously close to tender asses, and his pliers threaten to pull out all the teeth one by one and twist the tips of the ears to blue. But here, on his way stands an elf dressed in a spiky man's choker and tight leather pants with the face of a fatally tired worker for fifty dolrs, and the mighty duck stops, bitterly wails, sobs, and almost begs, but under the tired and indifferent look of the elf streams of gold defended by him began to flow away again.

  * * *

  The same elf, only even more tired, with the "I'm surrounded by idiots and even bigger idiots" stamp on his face, yells - somehow without raising his voice at all - at the group of elves and elven women who want to fall through the ground, repeating a slightly modified monologue of Sergeant Hartman. Particurly hard to get a shrunken elfess of amazing beauty, which even reeks of seductiveness and superiority... would have reeked, if she did not want to vanish to nowhere. The pointing finger of the Gachi-elf now and then pokes somewhere in the direction of the illusory projection, which shows a vague and murky image in which you can see the same elfess. Then he points to another image, which shows the same elf, only lying in a medical magic circle and being patched up after some severe setback. With each passing second, the despair on the face of the victim of tyranny grows more material, and her ears twitch more and more, turning ever redder. She promises to mend her ways, to check her servants and her quarters better, but, for the sake of the First Tree, stop mixing her ego with fertilizer for the First Tree.

  * * *

  A man desperately yelling something profane is fighting off a water tentacle demon with a barrel of pickles, while a powerful Requiem is pying in the background and angry dragons are flying in the sky, where someone has cut the thin membranes of their mighty wings, so that they start to fall a little bit every now and then, leveling off at the st moment and fpping those wings like hummingbirds. A man with a cleaver, dressed in a very shabby set of heavy armor runs past, shouting that he has brains and he is not a fool and very sensible, dragging on his shoulder a snake-girl hissing something no less profane, and in his other hand holding those very brains. Behind him runs a fming Asian cultivator with the posture of an emperor and the face of a sadistic ogre, running without half of his skull and the brains that the fleeing man took. At some point, the Asian man got fed up with it all and turned into a dragon, whose wings covered the very heavens. But the fleeing man presses a button on a remote pulled out of the serpentine girl's cleavage, activating the air defense system, and magical rune missiles in the shape of shovels strike the enemy in the vulnerable wings. The gloomy and majestic Requiem is repced by one of Andrei Danilko's hits, causing the hovering dragons to scatter in terror and fall.

  * * *

  The frame changes and a very angry, but equally embarrassed half-elf, blushing like a crayfish boiled in boiling water, expresses some kind of compint to a vaguely recognizable, as if from another dream, elfess in a dress with a gorgeous neckline and a tired face of a professional who failed on the spot and was assigned to a completely unpnned work as a punishment for not even her failure. She apologizes in an almost sincere manner, saying that she was framed and that she was the injured party, no less than he was, because they were in the same wing of the healer's wards. And she was only medicated she was only a little less than her accuser, and he was much better cared for. For some reason, he did not calm down, but he did not find the strength to yell anymore, he choked on air when the accused told them that they would be working together for a long time - she was entrusted with his training, the same subject as st time, but now it was teaching, not training. And in general, she said, "Get over it, boy - this is the Royal Pace and games like this happen here regurly". But usually without participants from outside the Forest. And without the threat of becoming a corpse. The half-elf gritted his teeth, but he couldn't say anything, because he didn't have enough breath, nor eloquence, nor arguments for objections.

  * * *

  Purple gaseous mist and indescribable color light that came from other worlds, unbearably bzing and fluctuating under the blows of the supreme demonic magic of the whole army of the infernal invasion, but reacted as violently as an elephant on the pellet that hit him on the flight, crawling on the enemy in a broad front with the grace of a paver. After a while, all that was left of the desperately fending off demons, including their incarnated Lords, were mangled remains and some quality nothingness. Purple gas and unimaginable light gather from an indescribable horror beyond the comprehension of the human mind into the humanoid figure of a slightly older man in an old suit and reading gsses. The man's appearance causes Stepan, who has suddenly realized his presence in this not-here-and-not-state, a kind of chthonic horror, especially when the man looked at him with such a characteristic squint that the sleeping shaman almost recognized him. Shouting something incomprehensible, the young man began to run away from the dream, chasing away the thought that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Even-In-the-Deepest-Pit of Hell had noticed him.

  * * *

  A luxuriously furnished bedroom with a dozen beds, expensive furniture, a lot of magical protections, and only one woman sleeping on the bed, a beautiful woman, magically gifted at the level of a good adept, red-haired, and shapely. Dressed only in a nightgown, under which her tense nipples show through, she is sleeping and dreaming clearly pleasant dreams, as she has a satisfied and inexpressibly imperious smile on her face, the mistress of her own life and countless other people's lives. She is the only one sleeping in this bedroom, but not the only woman at all, for next to her on the bed is a guest dressed in a solid and tight-fitting bck cloth, who is clearly uninvited to these boudoirs. Her face is not visible, but her naked and gloveless palm is visible, from which invisible and almost imperceptible even in the most qualitative magical vision threads flow to the head, to the eyes, ears, and nostrils of the sleeping aristocrat, flowing inside, staying there and letting through everything that flows through these threads.

  * * *

  A shapeless and inarticute piece of space, in which the self-conscious Stepan runs past bck and withered trees, running away from some old and scary Negro, who chases him in the company of hundreds of running mannequins with the faces of various people and non-humans. Among these faces, the face of the old man, one for all, one for each. He runs, speaks, or asks, the young man even hears this phrase: "Wait, I want to ask". Stepan shouted the answer on the run and without slowing down: "I don't really know anything," and then accelerated even more as if a racing car and a couple of rocket boosters had been inserted into his legs. As he ran past another clearing in the foggy and dark forest, he crossed paths with a very surprised and demonic-looking teenage girl who gave him a gnce with cross-shaped pupils.

  * * *

  Dressed in the famous and recognizable armor, Commander Shepard tiredly fills out some documentation in the company of Liara and his female double. The documents include delivery dates for the next batch of catgirls, as well as mind-rewiring instaltions specifically for Azari women. In the eyes of the trio, there is universal sadness, even more universal pain, as well as resignation to the inevitable and a deeply hidden struggle against it. On the table of the male version of the Commander is a full bottle of rare Jamaican rum, on the table of the female version is a thick volume of exorcism prayers and a reprint of the Hammer of Witches under the seal of the Vatican with the test revisions, and on Liara's table is a pink-covered tome with the title "The Hypnotic Power of Blue Tits: How to Master and Use". Justiciar Samara, dressed as a very lecherous maid, enters the room, delivering drinks, dinner, and a new stack of documents with specifications for the next shipment. An empty bottle of rum went quickly to hand, running out just as quickly, so next up was a supply of medical alcohol and rocket fuel. No one notices the little devil girl with horns and a ponytail peering into the room and quietly sneaking around, except the male commander, who is staring bnkly into nowhere with his thousand-yard stare.

  * * *

  A huge mansion-pace, as if stacked like a constructor from a pile of separate pieces of buildings and structures, both rich and poor. The structure is constantly shuffled in the style of Rubik's cube, so the vilge hut can stand upside down or sideways, just next to a piece of the magic tower. Two men are walking through the slightly overgrown and feral garden - a young man with a military appearance and in scarlet trousers, frantically writing something down in a notebook, and a young but slightly older man with the look of a clerk incapable of hurting a fly. The tter suddenly stops and looks straight at the pce where Stepan's image-understanding is located, wagging his finger and saying that it is not good to peep, but since such a Divine Milf is asking for him, let him go in peace. After that, Stepan seemed to be kicked away with a very soft but unstoppable kick, and the vaguely recognizable devil-demoness ran after him, losing her slippers, fshing a stamp of pure admiration mixed with primordial horror on her face distorted by these emotions.

  * * *

  A nightclub, and a terrestrial one, recognized personally by Stepan, in which for some reason they had also delivered stripper poles and brought in strippers. The young man even looked at the whole pleiad of all sorts of beauties, among which there are not quite people, like that lizard-girl, wiggling her ass and tail, skillfully dancing in a charming, enticing and passionate rhythm. A strange noise distracts the young man, and he realizes that he's been talking to her for some time, which makes him feel a little ashamed. A beautiful girl in a cospyer headband with horns and contact lenses that create the effect of cross-shaped pupils is asking him questions, and he's staring at these strippers, and she should be offended. However, she was not offended, only slightly irritated, and that not at Stepan, but somewhere behind his back, immediately smiling sweetly and seductively and asking: "So where are you from, Pann, my darling? And what is your real name?" He starts to speak, but for some reason, he doesn't hear his own voice, he just looks into those beautiful eyes and at her smile, but then...

  The noise from behind him disappears as if moving to another point, and now the side wall of the hall colpses. A group of battle mages cd in enchanted armor and magical shields pile onto the dance floor. "Good evening, we are from Neirat!" Albus Dumbledore, dressed in rune armor-mantle, announces, adjusting his sungsses and pointing his battle staff in the direction of a girl rolling her eyes in obvious annoyance. On that staff, a not-so-great headpiece shimmered with a mixture of green and purple, directing a stream of reality-burning magic toward the girl with whom Stepan had had a strange date. However, she just disappeared, vanished, and with her all the strippers disappeared. Then the battle mages themselves, led by the old man Albus in dark gsses, nodded manfully, gave a military salute, and were gone.

  * * *

  Again a vaguely recognizable couple, a half-elf with no sensation of elvenness, and an elven woman, beautiful and seductive, sitting in a chair with a slightly bored look, throwing off her scarlet sandal and putting forward her bare feet. The young man looks at her with a triumphant expression on his face, even though he is on his knees, furiously and diligently pleasuring himself, now and then squinting his eyes at the measuredly moving foot, up and down, up and down, up and down. With a loud and satisfied groan, he came, but at the st moment, he changed his position, cumming on the softly carpeted floor instead of on the elf's foot, earning a sweet smile from her. Without even attempting to wipe himself, he wrings himself out every bit of it, sitting down in the second chair, leaning back in it, and breathing heavily. Satisfied and a little with superiority even he expresses to her that he passed this course with an externship and her trick didn't work, so he closed the exam, you could say, with an automatic. Because if he's ready, and not attacked sneakily and suddenly, then Mrs. Atrel won't be able to do a damn thing, and that's why he doesn't need her lessons anymore.

  Without changing her sweet and innocent look the elf agreed with everything, and also asked, just out of curiosity, to expin how exactly he understood her trick and removed the effect. The young man expins he quickly realized that several hours of dialog that had disappeared after he had refused to give her practical lessons were a consequence of her despicable actions. He properly analyzed all his thoughts and therefore, as soon as she showed him her perfect foot, which any normal person would want to lick and kiss, he immediately broke her compulsion and brazenly brought himself to orgasm, without waiting for her orders and permission. And even the secondary effect of forcing himself to spunk on her perfect skin, he overcame it by bringing it to the floor, as befits a man, because his human seed should not stain her primal purity. And so now he would go to his chambers, where he would spend at least two hours licking the pussies of his maids, dreaming of the day when he would have achieved enough in this skill to make Mistress Atrael witness it.

  The elfess only looked at the two maids sitting a little aside, a pretty cat dy and a human beauty, as well as a short-haired elfess in the robes of a battle mage who folded her arms on her chest gloomily, blinked a little perplexedly, as if she had just woken up from watching this spectacle, winked at them and achieved a synchronized tired sigh. The same tired sigh, suppressing the statement in the style of "such an idiot" from a few combat groups of elven special forces watching the training. After that, she corrects a curl out of her hair, draws the attention of the still-smiling student with a soft movement of her hand, runs her fingers over the sparkling neckce, and then flicks the boy who leans forward and opens his mouth in delighted amazement at her beauty on the nose.

  He immediately went limp, falling back into his chair, and then, blinking, hastily covering himself with the pants he had taken off earlier and blushing beet red, she gave him an equally sweet and polite but very substantive lecture about how he still had a lot to learn, despite his opinion to the contrary, and his dangerously deceptive readiness to attack. She said goodbye politely to the female guards and reminded them of the next lesson in three days, and asked them to work through the techniques and manuals, to be more diligent this time, and not just egotistical, because she had self-respect, despite the circumstances. Besides, in the future, the tasks will become more complicated and she will not always warn the student that the lesson has begun and he needs to resist. Blushing more than ever and desperately averting his eyes from the eloquent gnces of his guardians, the half-elf promised through gritted teeth to do his best.

  * * *

  Tahira, smiling a dumb smile with DD-size tits in her hands, is busy tossing those tits in her palms and not paying attention to anything else. She's sitting in a cushioned chair in the middle of a nicely furnished room. Next to her, in the same room, two men are talking, each with a guard, and in the far corner, a devil girl is zily waving her tail. The first convinces his interlocutor that it's possible to pay more for a gifted girl, and even so finely crafted, because he has preserved her original personality and skills with minimal damage by installing full verbal activators. The second parries with the fact that she's weak-gifted. She has no knowledge and he doesn't really need her personality. The first shakes his head, waving away with a hand in heavy and magic rings, asking not to try to deceive him if he does not want to quarrel with the respected adept Maurice. Why should he have stiputed about the identity and its preservation, if not for the fact that this product for some time was in the team of Gush? Wasn't that why they fiddled so much with the need to cover up the victim's five-day absence and not to arouse suspicion, wasn't that why they bribed her escorts?

  * * *

  A long and dark corridor of an abandoned hospital, along which a bloody monster-killer walks, dragging his wounded leg and holding three heavy rusty cleavers in his weakening hands. The fourth cleaver, as well as the fourth hand, are unclear where they went, but the stump is almost no longer bleeding, slowly healing. But the monster can't get far, in the far corner of the corridor there is some noise and shuffling, he tries to hide, to escape, to hide in one of the side rooms, but he doesn't get away, he is quickly overtaken by a low and crooked old woman in a pink sundress. Here the hellspawn leaps up, catching on the wall and then on the ceiling, running across it in defiance of gravity, holding the old mop the way one holds a battle harpoon, and the old floor cloth like a myrmidon its net. She runs past a girl sitting on the ceiling with horns and cross-shaped pupils, who wags her demonic ponytail thoughtfully, and then there is an ominous and portentous "Where to on the clean floor?" After that, only screams, sounds of tearing flesh, and the monster's agony are heard.

  * * *

  A dark room, though no, it is not a room at all, but a very recognizable isnd in the middle of a complete colorless void. In which one can see and see despite the darkness. In which one can live even though there is nothing to breathe. In which one can be, even though there is nothing else. Here, in the middle of this emptiness, on a single ft ptform are the only guests of this pce. There are more than three of them, but only three of them are in the center of the dream's focus, only three of them belong to this dream, completely different and yet something impossibly simir, as if they were even united by a single will, bound tighter than blood brothers and the most loyal friends. And all three of them are infinitely annoyed by their being here, literally exuding vibes of where they saw each other. If there was an opportunity, even the slightest, they would have been at each other's throats a long ago, but there is no such opportunity, just a quest and the need to fulfill it. The problem, as they say, is a small detail - the assignments were given strictly according to their specialties and strengths but the recipients of these individual-group assignments were mixed up.

  A strange half-elf, in which exactly no star blood can be sensed, yells swearing, banging a homemade tambourine, and wasting reserves in attempts to summon the highest spirit of a very vague and difficult-to-digest sphere of space and emptiness. No one comes to his call, and it's not because they're in the middle of nowhere with no way to escape, it's just that the mage's call is completely wrong, working the way he's used to with magic, with high magic, with almost no use of his spiritual bodies. Of course, he listened attentively to the specialist's expnations but as it happened, it was impossible to retrain on the fly, especially if one had to master a completely alien magical approach and doctrine. It's funny, the spirits hear the call from this pce and come to him, as if in the normal world, but only to escape the ways of the spirits can not even try, as if the possibility of this cut off at the root. Next to the half-elf, two beauties - a red-haired cat dy and a human woman with white hair and a doll's face - are hustling around, trying to help as much as they can, but they can only help by wiping away the sweat of bor. The task must be done personally and independently.

  At the opposite end of the ptform, an ordinary-looking man of very average, though well-groomed appearance, unremarkable and furious is working. For the eighth time now, he is beginning to draw an intricate ritual outline for a powerful and multidirectional elemental strike that can be used to crush a dwarven sub-mountain settlement, a medium-sized city, or one of the Neirat Towers, if struck suddenly and with precision. While uttering the most subtle curses at the stupid fighters who have neither intelligence nor imagination but to burn and burn and burn, he ments that he has a very different specialty. And even the fact that he is a very universally developed user of the Tablet, does not cancel his gging behind in the aspect of combat higher ritualistic formation of reinforcing circuits! Behind his back are also two assistants: a tall, over two and a third meters, orcess, organically combining beauty and femininity, as well as strength and athletic-muscur physique, and huge green tits, and also a thin and even in sleep elusive Asian woman with good forms and habits of an elite killer. They both wipe the sweat off their Master now and then, trying to calm him down after another failure.

  In the center, separating the two individuals, who otherwise would certainly have cwed at each other's throats, or rather, would have tried to cw, despite the system ban for the duration of the quest, was Stepan. He sat tiredly in a semi-meditative state, holding a suffering expression on his face, in which the unspoken 'What have I come to?' and 'What am I wasting my life on?' were equally mixed. Hovering in the air in front of him was an elven beauty with the aura of a battle mage, short-cropped snow-white hair, and very decent breasts, supported by many small spirits. Many threads, tentacles, and fully formed spiritual bodies were flowing into her aura and spirit, carefully and slowly remaking the victim into a perfect sex toy with many modes, sub-personalities, and embedded bookmarks, as well as with full preservation of personality and skills in the "dormant" state of these bookmarks. The young man can't help but express his thoughts out loud, earning angry looks from both of his fellow inmates.

  The half-elf venomously remarked that the shaman owed him, if only for the fact that his mentor had agreed to become a "teaching aid", since she was written in the quest condition by the name of the System, and also promised, by the same name, to remove all the effects back three weeks after the quest was completed, adding a certain number of characteristics. The other asked, with a kind of venomous jealousy, a provocative question about how the shaman had gotten such fucking skills and summons and where he could get such skills and summons? At the same time, he conically reminded him not to press too hard on the marked areas of the mental field, or it could cause "leakage" of the embedded habits and sub-personalities in the normal and peaceful life of the "sleeping" doll, which should not suspect its state. He also gave some more advice, in which Stepan could feel the deepest experience of working with simir tasks. These remarks caused an angry tirade of the half-elf, no less venomous mockery from the second man, a contemptuous response to the counter remarks, and so, they are again making a mess, rather than trying to complete their assignments at least on the most minimal-satisfactory grade.

  Stepan, once again punching himself in the face with an audible facepalm, is almost ready at this point to start praying that the three of them would be moved to different rooms, or at least provided with sound isotion.

  In the far corner of the ptform, invisibly for all stands, trying not even to breathe, a girl-devil with horns and a tail, in the eyes of which glisten cross-shaped pupils, and on her face you can see the intense work of thought and understanding with which she looks at all three.

  * * *

  An old house, ruined by the battle that had just broken out, the dust and bloody haze still in the air, the drops of scarlet liquid that flow between the wide slits in the floor of this house, disappearing underneath it. Stepan tries to follow each drop, but something is not right here, he is distracted by something else and disappears, continuing his battle with an unknown enemy. His own blood, the scarlet droplets of his nearly lost life, pools into rivulets and drips into the crevices until the dry and dusty boards are not even stained, not even a trace that blood was shed here at all. Somehow this image seems very important, much more important than the demonic girl standing in the corner of the dipidated house, waving her tail with a thickened heart at the tip. No less important than the battle raging with renewed vigor and slowly subsiding outside those walls.

  * * *

  Sixteen pussycat girls in sailor fuku sneak through the streets of the evening city. They move smoothly, confidently, calmly, and with an ominous coherence, like a single organism. Here is a lonely guy walking alone on the night road, dulled in the screen of his phone, not noticing how the ominous shadows surround him, how the ring around him is shrinking more and more. The leading catgirl lets out a quiet and concise "Nya," and then all sixteen merciless babes pick up her battle cry, descending on the st unsuspecting guy. He tried to react. He tried to fight back. He pulled a loaf of hard-smoked sausage from his bag, using it instead of a baton, but all his attempts at resistance were brutally and uncompromisingly crushed. The sausage flew in one direction, the telephone in the other, the clothes in the third, and the ruthlessly occupied victim was covered with a solid bnket of catgirls in sailor coats. A few minutes ter, seventeen catgirls in sailor fuku sneak through the streets of the evening city, they move smoothly, confidently, calmly, and with an ominous coherence, like a single organism. From the side another girl is watching them, only not a cat, but a devil, only her gaze is quickly transferred to the image-flow of the sleeping Stepan.

  * * *

  A recognizable image of a half-elf-not-half-elf, but at the same time this image, was different as if it were not just a dream, but a dream that had not come true. That could not happen a priori. That could never happen in this version: a different outcome, a different facet, a different everything. A facet in which there is no someone else, someone very important and as if also connected with this elf, cut out of reality for some reason. In this dream the guy is tearing up the range with perfectly executed magic arrows, streams of lightning, and complex elemental strikes, now and then throwing a lot of scanning and searching charms, finding the most successfully hidden lies of the enemy, which are numerous animated dummies. His movements are close to perfect, he doesn't waste energy and constantly keeps his defenses up in case of a sudden strike. This happens several times, but each time a specific and very advanced attack is met by an equally specific shield, with additional safety yers.

  Here the practical training session was over. After that, he and his mentor, a cold and professional-looking elf with short snow-white hair and violet eyes in perfectly fitting attire of a battle mage, headed away from the training ground. When the young man washed off the sweat and dust, the elf was already waiting for him, unclothed, next to the washroom, and she had already freshened up, undressed, and stripped off her clothes, wearing only a light shirt. Pointing with a gnce at the pce in front of her, she achieved a sincere and happy smile, with which her pupil knelt. Running her hand over his cheek she sparingly, but with the faintest shadow of approval, praises her student for his diligence, in one motion pressing his cock to the marble floor, wedging it between warm foot and cold stone, in a second and a half provoking an ejacution without the slightest effort on her part.

  The boy stares into her eyes, diligently and habitually not even trying to look at the shirtless elf's pussy, at the nipples peeking through the fabric, or anywhere else. Stroking his head once more, the elfess leisurely steps towards the bathroom, not bothering to wipe her foot clean of his seed, decring the school day complete. Hastily dressing and bowing in embarrassment, the young man retires to his chambers, where two faithful maids are already waiting for him. He kneels before a white-haired human maid who has pulled up her bck-and-white dress with no underwear, working diligently with her tongue. At the same time, the second maid, a red-haired cat-dy with rge breasts and a fluffy tail, carefully and calmly expins how best to perform this or that movement. Afterward, they change pces, in the interval between the licking quickly bringing the boy to release with the work of tender palms, and then the lesson continues again.

  Another elven woman bck-haired and graceful, dressed in a dress rather than a combat uniform, arrives ter in the evening and takes the exam, watching as the boy quickly and skillfully brings one of the maids to orgasm and then keeps the other on the verge of it for as long as the mistress instructs. At her mere gnce he lies down on the floor, enjoying the way the mentor runs her stocking-cd legs over his face, and then almost cumming when she notes in passing that his skill level is already high enough for the first-born dy to accept caresses from the half-breed, who is at best worthy to lick the elves' perfect legs, divinely tender feet. Perhaps after their next session, even the strict and fastidious Diantrel, who demanded perfection in all things, would decide to open her flower to his lips. That would be beautiful, wouldn't it? And under assurances of how pleased he is, she guides his face to her bosom while the maids, as if nothing had happened, continue with their chores. All this happens under the gaze of a lovely cross-eyed maid hiding in a barely-open closet, looking through a small slit where only her eyes can be seen.

  * * *

  Again in his dream, Stepan saw himself, looking tiredly and irritably at the dark elf who was restrained on her arms and legs by the revived rope. She is incredibly beautiful and shapely, with skin the color of onyx, reddish pupils, and snow-white hair. She looked at him a little scared but with much more anger and irritation. Having just secured a pce to live, he hadn't even had time to set up a normal defense, shutting down after all the stress and strain. No, he had a decent defense for himself and called the guards, but the rest of the house and the things he'd dropped were barely covered. It was a good thing he'd left the spirit in the rope to guard the backpacks, including the system's gifts, otherwise it would have been foolish to lose them. The spirit was not the strongest, and a gifted elf of radically bck development could have bypassed such protection, if she had expected such a thing in an ordinary townhouse. It was near his belongings he found her, woken by the signal of the spirits.

  Stepan asks the captive what she is even doing in his house. What the hell was she doing there, to which he gets an honest answer, which is confirmed by the spirits: she was just looking for shelter, hiding from the chase and the search of those who are looking for a runaway sve presented as a gift to a very important short-eared person. Even more tired of all this shit is the young man who has no reason to kill the beauty who has invaded his temporary home. In her situation, he would try to steal some appearance-hiding rags from the first source he could find. He decides to make the situation worthwhile by simply asking her about being a dark elf and life in the underworld. Realizing that no secret secrets are expected from her, the elven woman speaks quite willingly, softly, and sometimes even nguidly, occasionally inserting some caustic remark. She seldom stopped talking, telling one story after another, expining traditions, and customs or even telling a story that happened to her.

  Her voice drifts and stretches in a continuous thread, bringing rexation and drowsiness, and now she asks him, and he answers, but more often in one word, just nodding and agreeing, nodding and agreeing. Agreeing that such a young but so talented speaker of the underside had nothing at all to fear from his guest, that it was rude to keep her tied up. Agreeing with that thought, Stepan gives the spirit an order, releasing the wrist-rubbing Drow from her captivity. She doesn't stop talking, and Stepan agrees. Agreeing that he had nothing to fear in her company, that he could calm her down without scaring her with his spirits ready to attack, letting them go free, canceling all summons altogether. Agreeing that her body was stiff from being tied up. He, as a polite, good, and properly mannered human should give her a massage, starting with her tired anthracite legs. Agreeing it was not shameful for humans to dream of such feet, to kiss and lick them, and grateful for his participation, the drow would let him do so, let him kneel before her, help her wash her perfect body.

  And what a shame. In this primitive and tasteless Human' house, she doesn't even have anything to sit down on. There is nothing here for her to put her perfect buttocks on. But, if the human boy who met her with kindness and understanding is so good and kind, she will, in her mercy, allow him to offer her his very nice, as for a Human, face instead of a chair. Stepan, distracted for a second by the devil-demoness sitting on the ceiling and attentively watching everything that is going on, agrees with this statement of the question and is happy to provide conditions worthy of his guest. So she enjoys his submissiveness and tongue, asking in passing about all sorts of things, with each question more and more amazed and realizing what a mithril lode she found when she got into trouble and managed to get out of it. The Drow was half-lying on the bed, zily caressing the staked cock of the man lying on the floor and answering her questions with her licked foot, while the ivory bracelet she had grabbed in passing a second before the rope trap had twisted her, cutting off her access to the gift and depriving her of mobility.

  She has a lot of pns ahead of her, and this cute human is sure to agree to help her.

  How could he refuse her?

  * * *

  Stepan woke up as if by a click, adjusting his clothes and sitting more comfortably in the soft medical chair, looking straight ahead and pretending that he hadn't fallen asleep while talking to his therapist, the one he had to go to in order to get a prestigious and well-paid job. After looking around the typical office, as if in an American movie, he focuses on the doctor. The psychologist and hypnotist was dressed in a light brown pantsuit, as well as a snow-white shirt, which could not hide the neckline on her chest and the absence of underwear under the shirt, strictly buttoned to every single button. With a warm smile, Dr. Laghan, whose name he read on her badge on the table, addressed him as if she hadn't noticed how he had fallen asleep.

  "So, dear Stepan, you and I have come to the conclusion that your problem may well be solved if you put some effort into it." Her words make him feel good and want to recline in his chair without moving or thinking, which he immediately does. "The nervous breakdown caused by moving to a completely new environment, the heaviness of the Tablet you have received, and the ck of an active sex life is certainly a serious problem, but we will try to do something about it. The main thing is to listen to me, Stepan, only to me. Will you listen?"

  "Yes, yes, of course I will." The young man nods, feeling a fsh of incomprehensible pleasure shoot through him as he is pleased to agree with Dr. Laghan, who smiles so beautifully, her nipples showing through her shirt so enticingly. "I'm ready to listen."

  "It's wonderful, just wonderful, Stepan." Cpping her hands, showing her breasts even more and expressively, she starts asking questions, surveying his answers. "Favorite fantasy? Preferred breast size? Nipple color? Taste of pussy? Do you like to obey beautiful women? Do you want to obey me? Would you be happy to let me possess you? Have you ever been hypnotized? Under a spell? Under the effects of vicious magic? Are you ready to set out on your journey? How close is Endoras to you? And Neurath? Morgrave? Where is your current location? Where are you? Where are you? Where shall I find you, tell me, tell me, tell me - where?"

  The answer to the st question is about to come out of the young man's mouth, but he is jerked abruptly by a loud knock on the door. The door, pin and wooden, seems to blink and turn into a steel bunker partition before his eyes, but Stepan is a little perplexed. He doesn't understand - why does the hypnotist's office even need a bunker door with ten locks? Accidentally looking down, he notices that he is undressed from the waist down, and his penis is squeezed between Truda's huge breasts, only the herbalist herself looks completely empty, despite the smile and fascinatingly skillful movements with which she caresses the dick cmped in the hollow. It was as if she were not her, but a fiction, an image, an illusion, a wet dream woven out of nothing for a short time. Stepan almost does not go down between those huge tits, mentally even regretting that he could not do it then... then? And when then?

  "Excuse me, Dr. Laghan, but am I not here with you?" He crifies, breaking into a groan and gripping the armrests of the chair as Truda squeezes him even tighter. "I'll be right there...sorry, but I'll be right there...."

  "It's not a problem. You are a young and passionate young man, so don't be shy, spunk between those tits, spunk and give me an answer - where?" Without changing his professional and confident tone and her approach, Dr. Laghan's manner seemed to stare straight into his soul with her cross pupils, wagging her tail nonchantly. "Where are you? Tell me where you are, you who bear the Tablet. Tell me where you are and I will let you spunk! Tell me where you are and I'll give you everything! Come on, tell me! Tell me! Say it! Imagine where you are and come, come on those tits, come on! Give me an image!"

  The hypnotist, who turned out to be so unrestrained and passionate, accompanied her demand with a torn shirt on her chest, exposing for some reason scarlet-colored tits with dark burgundy nipples, which you want to look at so much that you can't take your eyes off these tits, tits, tits, tits, tits, even though the bunker door was almost colpsing, even though he is about to cum and at some point he can't stand it and is about to release his seed, but the door to the cozy office is kicked open with a mighty kick, he even tries to say something indignant, but instead, he says something else, which makes Dr. Laghan smile with a victorious and satisfied smile.

  "No one was expecting a theocratic i-i-i-i-nquivisión!" A crowd of scarlet-and-bck-cd men with torches disrupts the stupid dream, preventing him from finishing what he started, but his consciousness finds it harder and harder to hold on to the flood of images that his strange dream was.

  "Bye-bye, sweet Pann, bye-bye." The hypnotist said pyfully and with the promise of something vague, and gave him a st glimpse of her bouncing scarlet tits. "Bye and forget, bye and forget, because dreams are so easy to forget, remember only the st detail, watch and remember."

  What beautiful and juicy red tits she has. Red. Tits. Stepan thought, and afterward...

  ...woke up

  * * *

  After that quest with the cursed shrine, as well as after the experienced express-pumping, Stepan that very night was ravaged by such idiotic dreams that he felt a little bad in the morning. And even ashamed, he promised himself to go to a better brothel at the first opportunity. He couldn't remember what exactly he had dreamed about, only the fragmented image of tits with dark maroon nipples, as if they were painted on. They stared into his soul and almost caused him to have to change his underwear in the morning. One sharp movement had been enough. While he was trying to figure out why the devil and demon had dreamed about red nipples and tits, and why it made him feel like he was back in puberty, the rest of the dream images escaped again. Since he'd once again forgotten to set the dream catchers, he couldn't even try to pull some of the images out.

  Scrooge McDuck in a military uniform, a barrel of pickles, graceful female feet walking on the marble floor, a dark corridor with a lot of doors, sungsses, and a long snow-white beard, a huge bed with heavy curtains, a cozy office in warm colors, scarlet-bck clothes... everything. Yes, he would never be a fortune-teller, Stepan thought then, and he was not particurly upset. Despite the almost embarrassment, he felt very positive emotions. A normal assignment, which at the same time did not pose a mortal danger, its successful completion, as well as a pile, literally a pile, pumped up status lines. Apparently, and the help indirectly confirmed it, this assignment was not just average, but was just millimeters away from the next level of quest value. The young man was not to say that greedy, but at that moment wanted to increase at the expense of a free point not pre-pnned call practice, and the issuance of assignments to see what is there after the average-value quests and pick up loot from them.

  However, it should be admitted that the assignment was not perfect for the young man, but very close to the ideal. If he had been given something more difficult or did not allow him to spend much time on preparation, he would have failed. Just as he would have failed if he had been given something not so suitable for Stepan's specialization, for the talents he already had. Even with this assignment, he had cheated a little, because he had prepared everything in advance, except for the assignment itself. The same intuition told him that the more advanced his status, the less likely he was to get a lot of rewards. Either pump up the meta-skill or increase the difficulty of the assignment. However, it was enough for him to get some benefits just by doing a quest that was convenient for him personally.

  After a little rest and looking at the situation soberly, the young man recognized that puppet magic would certainly be useful to him and certainly not unnecessary, but it was very narrowly focused, demanding materials and reserves, even the pce of creation, although the tter could be easily compensated for in one way or another. To start using the fruits of this magic he would either have to drive himself to bankruptcy, spend system currency on materials for dolls, or settle down and maybe, sorry admins, get a job. In Fantrel he was offered a job by the local nightwatchmen but he didn't get the hint and the other pyers were waiting for his move. If he, a strong and skillful apprentice, already having some experience, will politely ask people who need a shaman who can, let's say, not heal - healers here are a cartel, squeezing everyone without a diploma and patent - but to conspire materials and tools for strength and bless the fields.

  Yes, the tter, by the way, is quite an option. The priestesses of Gaia will not oppose such competition, though they will definitely take a part of the profit by some taxes. Add to this the work with weather, which is an ever-demanded skill, add something else, like the ability to create the simplest amulets-signals on a shamanic basis, cheap and not reliable, but working... yes, it's all within the limits of student development, but, at the same time, useful enough that no one would oppose such a worker. The problem is that he has no surety, no cover, no lineage, and therefore, the risk of being put on the chain figuratively, through contract fraud, or literally, through a bale on the head and a sale, is unpleasantly high. Well, for an apprentice, which Stepan is going to pretend to be. Maybe he should just give up, change his name - or not even change it - and pretend to be a full-fledged adept. Yes, he was too young, yes, he would attract attention, but at least he wouldn't be afraid of a crowd of thugs... because he would be taken by a full battle group at once.

  It's a disappointment, not an isekai.

  Why are humans and not just humans everywhere such assholes?

  He spent a week on that hill, canceling a small task of sughtering goblins - not out of pity for the goblins, but because it was necessary to sughter the whole tribe, and he wasn't ready for genocide yet - and also looking at a live Mellorne seed missing from the store, having met another Autodivine miracle in the form of a unique love potion, which would penetrate even a master elementalist with perfect self-control and a lot of over-insurance, and so that she would not have noticed the gradual, but very quickly unfolding effect. During this time, he was practically not distracted by calls, and only slightly replenished his retinue with interesting spirits, mostly reted to the new specialty. All his energies were devoted to Tahira's doll, and all his attention was devoted to her, which made Stepan feel like a crazy fan with mental disorders rather than a normal shaman.

  The material, the basis of it was a cloth woven from special pnt fibers, and the pnts were river algae to emphasize the type of gift of the doll's image, as well as cy, magically charged and impregnated with a bunch of specific shades of magic. The originally faceless and sexless doll... remained just as faceless and sexless, Stepan didn't waste any effort on external resembnce, though there were methods where such was used. He only molded the face out of cy as authentically as possible, but no more. The rest of the doll's body resembled a typical rag toy of vilge children, only much heavier, for the body under the rag stuffing was still cy. In the center of the doll's chest was a small core, with a drop of blood that wouldn't dry, and a single hair of the victim, creating a sympathetic connection and infusing the envolt with the victim's images and aura.

  Through this doll, the young man observes the world through the eyes of Tahira, still ft-chested and angry. At that moment she was celebrating another successful trip in a tavern, successfully squandering the bonuses. She thought she didn't need to spend more, she had already made a sacrifice to Fortune, and the rest should be left for more important purchases, like the accumutor she had been saving up for for six months. And she wanted to buy a normal amulet, probably even more than she wanted to buy an accumutor. She didn't like to fall overboard with a broken skull. At that moment, she remembered with unexpected warmth the juvenile and savage shaman from these, as they were, Lyady, as it seemed, who had managed to pull her out of the other world. And she, without any influence from the outside, decided next time, if they would pass by that vilge and stop there, to visit him. Though he was a ndlubber, also strange, and simply not of this world, he knew how to fuck girls, which, in her opinion, was most important for a quick fuck.

  Stepan, delighted with such a positive assessment of himself, put a healing and strengthening effect on her, facilitating the training and development of the gift: the synergy of puppetry with the skills of a mentor. He also did not deceive himself and carefully, observing the whole procedure, disconnected the puppet and its connection with Tahira, although he was tempted to try something else. But no, he only ordered her to scratch her nose and not to drink another jug of wine, the tter of which she was going to do herself. I mean, not do. That is, not to order another, definitely unnecessary, pitcher, especially since the wine was so bad.

  Having finished with the doll and suppressing the desire to stay near the spring for a while longer, the young man packed up, wiped off the traces of his stay in this pce, called the furry ball once more, and set off on his way. He decided to save his free talent point for ter. It was probably not the smartest approach, but the twenty-fifth step was very tempting - with the new rank of "peaceful development" the already two-thirds taken twenty-fourth will fall soon. And then the twenty-fifth, on which he was promised to be allowed to choose - or not allowed, but assigned automatically, even the help was silent here - the specialization of the main css, and this would automatically open the previously blocked directions. Moreover, some of the knowledge, which is now at the threshold of development, may become avaible for pumping even if the characteristics cking. Roughly speaking, specialization should lower the bar for some knowledge and properties, which also can not be ignored.

  He was saving his points, pnning not to waste the one he would earn on the twenty-fourth: if some very tasty branch opened up, or if a branch that had already been pumped up to the point of being able to be developed even stronger, then he would immediately invest those talents. Well, not at once, but one at a time, otherwise his head might burst, but that's if you cling to words. Not spent gains pressed on his brain like a bottle of vodka stashed away by an alcoholic, he was too accustomed to spend them at once, but it was a good moment. And Stepan, which is fortunate, doesn't have a lot of failures in pumping at the moment. The same dialog has already been developed to the maximum, and for him, the mastery of calls has been secondary to dialog during his entire isekai life (not so long so far).

  Then again, while he was on the road, there was no time to stop and absorb the knowledge: remembering the amount of effort and suffering it took to master the advanced skill in dialog it would turn him off for a couple of days at least. And also warmed his heart with the gloating thought of how the asses of normal non-system mages of any power would burn if they learned about such "horrifying" expenditures of effort for the sake of the maximum block of knowledge for a master. Not only Stepan could be incinerated by the exhaust, but the gciers of Antarctica would be threatened, and the gciers of the Earth, while this world would be turned into psma, generating another supernova. That is why the young man will keep silent about himself and his systemic methods of development, yes, to save the Earth's gciers from melting, not otherwise!

  The journey to the faraway pce was uneventful, as was the journey itself, in which nothing particurly dangerous happened. Trying to do some practice on the go was of little use to him at his current level, giving him not even crumbs, but some nanometers of experience. The quests were exceptionally small or Autodivine, but even the offerings of Her Milfness were less rewarding than usual. It wasn't just bad luck, or the System had gotten a rollback for a very generous reward after a closed quest with a shrine. Small assignments the shaman performed in passing, most often spending material rewards right on the go. It was unprofitable in terms of reserves and costs, but it saved time, and he didn't need more than that. Rare encounters with predators ended with the tter running away and dropping feces along the way, and he avoided any reasonable entities altogether. But the absence of direct danger and battles didn't mean he hadn't encountered anything interesting or even titilting.

  Once Stepan had to make a rather big detour, having gone off the route for almost twenty-four hours, because he had definitely entered the territory of some old and very evil monster, who had hung around the area ndmarks made of the bodies of sin beasts. Whoever had hung the remains of the magically altered bear in the tree was very tall and massive. He was also able to control his mass, because the size of the footprints and the wisps of long gray hair on the tree, left after the bear's killer decided to scratch himself against that tree, were discouraging. With such dimensions the creature should, if not colpse under its own weight, then fall into the ground beneath it. But no, nothing like that. The spirits he'd sent to reconnoiter brought the image of something old, hungry, intelligent, and dangerous, not daring to get closer, because this creature could also conjure something primitive and witchy, but powerful. Including defense fields and sensor networks, yes. He could try to cheat those fields, to get through them, or even to re-subordinate them, but the power of their creator inspired respect and reluctance to mess with them, or he, the creator, might pull the bnket back on himself, ripping it out of the thief's hands along with his arms.

  Stepan got only one image, rather blurred, but still reminiscent of... perhaps, the behemoth monsters from the third or even fourth Heroes, but not a funny picture, but something quite real. Stepan was not sure that he could kill this shit in direct combat, especially on his territory, which a somewhat intelligent something had successfully subjugated. So he went in the opposite direction, not going beyond the milestones and not risking going to bed without a triple protection-signaling net, as well as the call of a strong spirit. The Lizard was not averse to arriving at the call out of turn, for a separate and markedly reduced fee, standing as a ghostly protector over the sensitively sleeping shaman. No one ever attacked, no one walked in circles near the shaman's route, the traces of which he diligently mopped up, and no one noticed the scouting spirits, on the call and support of which Stepan spent up to one and a half reserves per day, sincerely rejoicing at the acceleration of the "reserve renewal" rollback. There was no battle or conflict, but the young man finally understood why this area was so sparsely poputed and had not yet been colonized properly.

  Another time he, looking for a pce to rest in the middle of a marshy lownd, was forced to continue his journey even at night without finding a pce to sleep. So he came to a small town with its lights twinkling, where something was being celebrated. His spiritual vision could see through the illusion perfectly, recognizing the long-colpsed walls, the streets that had been burned centuries ago, the ruins of houses that had colpsed under their weight, and the ghosts and evil spirits that sometimes changed into each other in their species, creating the illusion of life and luring the occasional passerby, if there were any. Stepan easily overcame the weak, but very insidious effect of these lights, calming and reducing critical thinking, so that the exhausted traveler came to the gates, was greeted by the guards, and allowed to enter the feast.

  Still, some gamer part of him wanted to go to the town, to clean it of all the crap that had lingered on this world. For this would definitely count not even as an act, but as a deed, because there are a lot of creatures there. They are old and experienced. There are at least a couple or three very strong, corresponding to the power of the lower bar of senior spirits. But they weren't really spirits. It was something between them and the undead of the ghostly type. Stepan had a chance, after all, such enemies were literally his specialty. Every shaman is a bit of an exorcist when needed. But he just shook his head, made a note in his notebook, and quietly left, deciding to go to bed during the day and continue on his way at night, increasing the distance between himself and the dead city. The spirits and ghosts in it were only awakened at night, hiding during the day in a huge cavern pocket the size of the whole city, located right in the high spheres. But at night, at night they could risk leaving the walls of the town, weakening and losing density, risking death or extinction if they didn't make it back in time for dawn. The young man was not at all enamored with the prospect of falling prey to the night hunt of the dead aristocracy of this city, who had once died as mere middle-aged necromancer adepts, but now had grown to senior ghost spirits.

  He quietly looked, quietly gathered information sending a couple of spirits with simir aspects of death and non-life inside the perimeter to boil in this cauldron, extracting information, and then left. One of the spirits, by the way, having fulfilled the contract and transferred all his knowledge, decided to stay in this town instinctively realizing that here he could steadily grow in strength. Having bound him with a contract of confidentiality, so even a half-image of the shaman did not give out the next thirty years, the young man left continuing to keep the city under the supervision of a strong spirit- farseer rose into the sky for a couple of kilometers in the form of an owl woven from the darkness of the night. The same spirit sent the shaman an image-picture of how the "newcomer" who came to visit without hiding, was quickly torn apart by the "olds", who had barely enough of the necrotic background of the city and its magical sources to maintain themselves and the cavern-ir in working condition.

  Apart from these two meetings, each of which ended in nothing and did not lead to dangerous consequences, nothing interesting happened. He got up, called, went, often called on the move, made a bed for the night, renewed contracts before going to sleep, covered himself with guardian dreamers, fell asleep, slept, and got up. A closed cycle, where day changed day with the rustle of leaves reappearing on the trees and the smell of blossoming blossoms, and the rare rains were hardly an inconvenience. Spring was already in full swing, even the night chill didn't remind him of winter, and instead of a warming spirit from the fire sphere, the young man summoned a couple of air spirits with ventition properties, as well as a cooler to create a dome of coolness. The progression was terribly slow and the twenty-fourth level limit had not moved much, but at one pre-dawn hour of the next day, having rejected the Autogoddess' assignment, the young man still stepped on the abandoned and old but used path.

  The spirits of paths and roads literally flowed off of him at that moment, embedding themselves in the road dust and tamped soil, seeking, asking, answering. The st time this road had been traveled was about a week ago, by three riders, before that, almost three weeks ago, a lone traveler had passed, before that, over a month ago, a whole group of several carts. Having roughly oriented himself, the young man headed in the direction he needed to go, expecting to access a normal shop and buy normal food. The Ыystem sold spices - they were good for sacrificing to spirits - skills allowed him to catch a meat meal and cook it, or even just order a spirit to possess a hare and drag its body right under the knife. But other, more familiar dishes were out of his diet. Already his greed was crushing him with amphibious hands to buy sweets or bread through the system. Yes, the temple breads, infused with the power of the Sun and increasing the tone of the body, are certainly very tasty, and can also remove a medium curse or help recover from a workout.

  But they're so expensive.

  The road was really not much traveled. He walked until the evening, having made a rest in the middle of a convenient clearing, where there was an old and more than once-used in the past campfire. Having brewed some decoction of herbs, and having eaten the remains of a bird that had fallen before the shaman's power, Stepan id down on his cloak, activated the protective circuits, and checked the Status. The dream quickly passed: the special lot in the store was changed again. There was something that the shaman was interested in, and he even had enough currency to buy it, almost to the brim, but enough. He rubbed his face in puzzlement chased away his drowsiness, sat down in a comfortable meditative pose, and began to consider the probable purchase in more detail.

  An artifact of the shamanic direction and shamanic-vedic method of creation, the level is not weaker than the other demonstrated items, although it is leaner than the gifts of the Autogoddess. On the other hand, this artifact doesn't waste a lot of resources on all sorts of nonsense, like the protective stockings that can raise massive protective fields, having outstanding brainwashing properties, and disguised as a simple garment. No, here the artifact is exactly what it was created for, utilitarian. A mask. It was almost a cssic African mask, recognizable from Earth culture - dark brown, almost bck wood, and a white and scarlet pattern on the surface of the wood, with fine cracks and fiber lines. Not even drawings, but the imprints of two palms, scarlet and white, each positioned so that the eye socket of the mask was right where the center of the palm should have been. Also, no matter how much you look into the image of this mask, you can't figure out whether the color on top is scarlet or white, which of the palms left its mark first and which left its mark second. If you think about it, it is not even clear which of them is on the left and which is on the right as if it was necessary to blink and these constants would change, but it was as if they had always been in this state.

  And also the eye sockets of this mask, two round holes the size of a table tennis ball, do not show the eyes of the wearer of this mask. You can even take a pencil and poke it into the eye, but you drop the pencil and it disappears into that bck void without appearing on the other side. Such an ominous property, but in fact not particurly terrible, born by the very nature of this artifact. An artifact created by and for Shamans, designed specifically for the use of Stepan's main css. This mask was not meant for fighting humans or non-humans, it was not a combat artifact at all, even if its usefulness in such conditions was non-zero, very, very non-zero.

  The mask was a very powerful amulet and an effector of a specific protective field designed to conceal or reflect blows from the spirit world and its inhabitants. Roughly speaking, with such a decoration on his head, even the senior spirit, wish it to do the wearer bad, shit from exertion, kill himself against the wall, wasted a lot of strength, or will slowly pick up the keys to protection for several weeks. But most likely all of those factors will py together, yes. It was as if the mask created a one-way bubble of cut-off space between the wearer and the spirit world, based on a sphere and the concept of darkness and emptiness. The very empty darkness behind the eye sockets of the mask was the outward manifestation of the attached effect.

  In human terms, nothing changes on the part of the wearer of the mask. He still sees everything and interacts with the spirit world as usual, at most it will seem to him that he is covered by an ordinary film. But, if someone tries to hit him ... all the blows will go into the void and darkness, falling into nowhere, and if it tries to attack close like the same Creep Bear, it just falls into this empty darkness and dies, because it leads somewhere in very specific areas of the High Spheres, where ordinary, even strong spirits without the appropriate affinity just die. At the same time, the shaman will be able to use spiritual maniputions or manifest tentacles with cws, because they will also be covered by the mask, the whole spiritual body will be covered by it, as long as it is on Stepan.

  Such protection would not reflect a primitive and trivial fireball or a crossbow arrow unless it hit him directly in the eye socket. The mask is much stronger than simple wood, comparable to a good dwarven helmet, but not a legendary artifact of legendary durability. Again, if the spirits attack through real manifestations of the elements, coming into the real world and pounding the shaman with lightning, he too will have to defend himself with the usual means. But while he is calling strong and dangerous spirits, while he is traveling outside the body (the image of the mask will easily leave after the shaman), while he works with the reflections of the world of spirits - he can be almost invulnerable to any insufficiently strong or skillful-exotic enemy, and extremely stealthy. In fact, the mask can be transformed from a single-yer bubble into a reflective sphere, as if shoving the shaman into a mobile and ultra-durable cavern, but without losing the energizer or cutting off the connection to the body. Of course, this is only for the spiritual world, the real physical body cannot be hidden like this, but it is still very powerful, above and beyond all praise. In such a state he would not be able to attack or influence directly, but you could not get him out of this bubble, even if you knew for sure that he was there. And Stepan wouldn't announce his presence!

  "I want to." That's all he said to himself, and then he immediately paid for the purchase before he changed his mind. "And I'll take it."

  The mask appeared right in his hands, not too heavy, slightly cool, and always at the same temperature, not warm to the touch, and always half a degree cooler than his skin. The holes of the eyes delighted in that very infinite emptiness, and the shaman's knowledge came to ecstasy at the sight of such a complex and self-sustaining structure. It was already possible to say that with this mask he would be able to strengthen the pre-door quite well, or rather, to speed up its unfolding and reduce the cost of supporting it in movement. Of course, he didn't put the toy on right away, no. He examined it first, both in person and through a couple of special spirits, except he didn't try it on his teeth. He even took out a captured evil spirit from the prison house, which he used to feed his spirits, and stuck it in the eye socket of the mask. The spirit vanished immediately as if it had been sucked in by a vacuum cleaner, causing the shaman to nod his head thoughtfully and say something equally thoughtful:

  "Wow!" And, after a short pause, he added. "I won't stick my fingers in it. It shouldn't take anything away, especially after the artifact is bound to me personally, but just in case. My grandfather always told me not to stick my fingers in anything, but I admit, he probably meant something else."

  Trying on the mask showed exactly the results he had hoped for, no more and no less. It was very difficult to use this thing without training, but what could be said for sure was one absolute truth: the calls of the senior spirits were guaranteed to be, but not now. First, a new pce, settling on it, and then, then he can start. He wanted everything at once. The mask allowed, albeit with a creak, to conduct the call of another weak elder, preferably from the spheres approved by the Autogoddess, even in a clear field and camping conditions, but no, he was not a retard. Again, he does not even have a reserve of currency to be able to buy quality reagents for the circle, protection, and decoys-baits, well, where in such conditions still senior spirits to call? Has he stopped loving life?

  The next morning, putting the mask in his backpack, right next to his case for super stockings, the young isekai continued his long journey.

  * * *

  Stepan is standing right in front of a road sign, old and obviously not renewed for years and years already, almost colpsed. One of the signposts has been broken off so the inscription cannot be read, but this may be a deliberate action, not the oppression of passing time. The second path, which separates from the main path, which is not far from the path itself, is already thoroughly overgrown, almost hidden under a carpet of grass, and the spirits say that no one has walked there for more than two and a half years. Maybe even longer, but the spirits won't say. It is necessary to climb into the dust of the road too deep, and too dense, so the shaman will have to pay extra. Stepan searches further and does not order, intending to go on the main route, returning his attention to the pointer. A quick check of the route showed just an abandoned vilge, where only grassy mounds on the foundations of the houses and huts remained.

  If this pointer was to be believed, then a small hamlet called Small Bzdy awaited Stepan a couple of hours ahead, just beyond those hills. The spirits sent ahead had already spotted it, so the truthfulness of the pointer was confirmed. Judging by the transmitted images, there are literally less than two dozen huts and a very rge and once-prosperous roadside inn. Apparently, this inn was once a community enterprise, but over time the road withered, the route was abandoned, and the farm began to live out its days. At least a third, if not half, of the houses, were long abandoned and partially dismantled, and the inn itself, a sturdy two-story building with a fairly sturdy wooden fence and thick walls, was clearly used for its intended purpose only a couple of times a season. Some of the windows on both floors were boarded up, the stables were half dismantled, the sign was faded to an unreadable state, and there were a lot of other little things that testified to depressing decadence. Nevertheless, there were people on the farm, and there were even horses in a whole part of the stable, which were being tended right now by a frowning and pale stableman, as if he had not slept well and hungover at the same time, as well as having had a recent illness.

  The people in the vilge were not smiling at all. The same Ronna, not to mention Lyady, made a more positive impression. But both of those vilges were not in such a state of decay, and they had better vegetable gardens. Here no one tried to sow those scraps of nd that were suitable for cultivation. Either they hunted, which was more likely, or they were going to go to a better pce for a long time, which was why they did not take up the main bor in the life of a peasant, or they had long ago become road robbers. Though the tter was unlikely, and not because Stepan believed in people. It was just that there didn't seem to be much to rob on these roads. The young man stopped contacting the spirit once more, vaguely realizing that he didn't like the pce.

  He returned his gaze to the road sign and studied it for some time listened to the spiritual echo and compined that this sign, as a pce not of Power but of Meaning, could be used in a whole set of calls, but he had no time for them if he wanted to finish his shopping today. But he had time to read the vague and half-erased inscriptions on this signpost. Not informational, but folk art, so to speak. There were at least three "dick" inscriptions, and one of them was in high academic Neirat, the local equivalent of Latin for magical records. There was an accusation of a certain Gorlois of active and passive bestiality, and there was an inscription "Perch has a small dick", which someone, no other than the offended person slightly twisted by adding the particle "not" before "small". Apparently, either there was a church school somewhere nearby, or those who had studied at that school had moved here - writing was not the norm in this world. In Lyady only Kirik, his son plus another man from the vilge had this skill.

  The test of the inscriptions, and the most recent, not more than twenty years old, was hardly an entire correspondence. One man's hand had carved into the wood the question, "Treska give?" while a second, much more unevenly and misspelled, answered it: "she hit you." The composition was completed by the st inscription, the smoothest and clearest of all, written, judging by the images sent by the spirits, by a woman's hand, if scratching out an inscription on a pole stuck near the road with an iron nail can be considered a writing process: "give and not hit!". Stepan is far from such primitive dispys of humor, but, damn it, he still got a ugh from this, in fact, forum communication! It's worth checking with the local residents about where this creativity came from, maybe there really was a Sunday school or its equivalent here twenty years ago? But when asking, one had to be careful, for the locals were very suspicious types, and the vilge itself evoked some strange associations. Men were working, women doing undry, and even a couple of children running around, but the atmosphere was oppressive. The boy even sent out a couple more spirits before he approached, but they didn't notice anything.

  The desire not to go there тв not to take any unnecessary risks fought against the reluctance to continue wandering through the forests, and the need to stock up on grits at least. If they tried to poison him, he would notice. If they tried to kill him right there, he would just kill back. He was finally convinced by the horses standing in the stables, pointing at the guests, and by the fact the inn was preparing food right before his eyes a burly hog man dragged a tray of pies and wine to the second floor. If they had just killed the horsemen, who weren't by definition poor and helpless people, they would have behaved differently. Shrugging and promising himself to be more careful, he still walked forward along the road rather than shifting into the woods, skirting those asshole Bzdys in an arc. He was afraid that once he'd indulged his paranoia once, twice, or three times, he'd become afraid of all people and go completely wild in his wanderings.

  They had noticed his figure in advance stepping out to meet him by a couple of pale-looking men, looking a little tired, exhausted, but not sick, Stepan had changed several modes of magical and spiritual vision separately. Just fatigue and hence a sag in vitality, but not some terrible pgue. The young man assumed that it was the ck of working hands and constant forced work on wear and tear, only even more pronounced than that of an ordinary vilger. They did not look at the traveler-guest unkindly, but without warmth because of the gloominess and inhospitality of the region.

  "What do you want, honorable." He mumbled as if his jaw had been broken in the past, and he had been broken, judging by the shape of his face, the chief of the two. "Quiet Ill, our inn, is a bit abandoned. There's room. But there's trouble with the food. If you don't want to stay, go on, there's nothing to buy or sell here."

  The other one didn't even say a word, and both of them didn't identify themselves, no handshakes or anything like that. Still within the bounds of the usual way of greeting a traveler, but not at all friendly, yes. It was probably due to the region itself, where there was a lot of shit, but there were fewer people who could defend themselves from that shit and offer protection. The young man finally decided that he wouldn't spend the night here, he would just buy some groats, checking them carefully for poisons, and then he would be on his way. The aura of his favorite "medium-strong apprentice" and the bracelets hanging on his hands and the neckce on his chest gave away the gifted one, but these two did not see the former, and the tter... well, the inarticute man was polite within the limits of propriety and even using the prefix "honorable".

  "I want to buy something simpler." The shaman says the same conically, switching to a format of statements understandable to the interlocutor. "Cereal, bread, dried meat, if you have it. I have silver. I can also heal someone if their health is bad. I am gifted."

  Both men nodded apparently not surprised. They recognize the shaman as, well, a shaman by the strange neckce. They gnced at each other, as if they were having a silent dialog, and then turned to face him again. There was something about them that he didn't like, but rather didn't coincide, that caused him not anxiety or worry, but interest and incomprehension, a feeling of missing something.

  "You don't have to cure anyone. You can buy it." He nodded, pointing towards the inn. "Barashn. Ask him, he'll sell it to you."

  He noted how they tensed at the mention of the offer of a cure as if they were frightened. Had he had some bad experience with a wandering gifted healer? Or one who pretended to be a healer? What do they call them in local folklore - the damned? It's not impossible, but even without all the sinister shit, if some uneducated guy cured the headman's favorite mother-in-w to death, it's not hard to start distrusting all the other gifted people. After quietly scanning both of them once more and finding no traces of demonic foulness or anything like that, he shrugged and went to the inn. The sun was reaching its zenith, it was nearing noon, and it was scorching. He wanted to sit in the shade or get into a barrel of cold water, or better yet, take a shower. For some reason, Stepan had no doubt that somewhere there was some isekai of the son of mother's friend who, at the first word was provided with living conditions in the presidential suite. Mentors in all disciplines at once. Resources of any kind, the best testing grounds for the development of the gift, and even pretty girls were put under him. Instead of Autogoddes, he had a normal patroness with no stupid quirks. Whereas Stepan got to the point that a barrel of water is perceived as the limit of comfort!

  "I'll pack supplies for the journey, of course, Your Magick, it's a simple matter." The innkeeper, who was obese and suffering from shortness of breath, ruddy and pale, though tanned, spoke much more clearly, and his temper was lighter. "Don't hold a grudge against our men, they're already beaten by life. It's hard here, you know, our Bzdy, that's all. Just gird yourself and move to Vrva?i, or Piatná?ka, eh. If you want to eat, you can have dinner, we cooked a lot anyway, there are more guests in my Quiet Ill today than in the whole season. Ill, if anything, my grandfather was my grandfather's grandfather, they called him Quiet, eh. So my grandfather named the inn after his grandfather. It was better then than it is now, yeah."

  In a simple story, by which Stepan was going to be lured to the paid lunch, he managed to learn the history of this pce. It was born during another attempt to make a normal overnd route for a trade caravan, not only to raft by the river but also to deliver goods not only to the coastal points but deep into the territory, a little bit away from the power of Dantra. There are such ways, but they are not connected. They go from one of the coastal cities and innd from the coast. Everything was fine for a while, even caravans traveled, there was an inn, and even a small hamlet grew up around it. They lived well for ten years, not exactly prosperous, but normal, and then the idea finally withered away. The council of town leaders changed in Great Blur a town of several thousand people, and they stopped investing in overnd routes, selling and trading more and more with Klyuchevoy. And this Springs stands on the Dantra, where several streams flow into it at once, for which it got its name. So, they abandoned the route.

  As long as the monsters were still gone and the brigands were not too bad the trade route continued to live as a convenient road, if not for a caravan, then for groups of travelers or vilge men carrying crops to the auction. Only very soon without raids of guards and cleansing from monsters, the way became too dangerous again for loners and even small groups. People preferred other roads and this pce was forgotten. Only such isoted vilges as Bzdy remained. By the way, exactly where the sign was broken, there was South Svechnaya. It was also a vilge, even bigger than Bzdy. A priest of Daromar had lived there at one time. That's why half of the children in Svechnaya were literate. It was a pestilence brought from the forests, then a bad harvest and five bandit mercenaries that wiped out Svechnaya. The survivors gathered together and moved somewhere, but Baroshm didn't know where, as he was in his teens.

  "That's the way it is, your magic." He shrugged his shoulders, wiping his sweating forehead with a cloth, and then winking. "So, will you have lunch? I'll knock off a third of the price. I cooked it for our guests, who were drunk all night and still haven't woken up, but they have no appetite."

  "Go on, bring it," Stepan said, putting a rge silver circle on the table, which immediately disappeared as if by magic, but also summoned a spirit-detector of poison. "I haven't had a proper hot meal in days."

  "Yes, I know that from my own experience, the camping life is not for me, that's for sure." The satisfied Baroshm agreed, and with unexpected dexterity went to the kitchen, not seeing the grin of the young man, who understood perfectly well the reason why he didn't like the hiking life, it was hard not to notice it, even if it was lost between two chins. "Sun, heat, wind, cold, it's not for me, I like to mess around with the inn, but the roads, it's not for me. Yesterday guests came, they ordered a feast, you, your magician, came, also money, so I live...."

  At that moment Stepan put the picture together and realized what it was that had been bothering him all the time, at the very edge of his consciousness. First of all, for some reason, Baroshm said that the guests on horses had arrived only yesterday, though the young man knew for sure that they had traveled along the road at least a week ago. They had not waited at that very sign for a whole week, only to enter Bzdy one night earlier than the boy, had they? Secondly, the fact that the innkeeper himself believed what he said, or hid his thoughts very, very well, at a level inaccessible to a simple vilge man, was much more disconcerting. Not even a professional agent could deceive Stepan, even with a cursory reading, and here was a simple innkeeper with additional spirits of words in the active phase of scanning!

  There was more. Stepan energized his spirit under the Shroud to full readiness only now, in combat mode, began to realize he and his spirits had not checked the inn, especially its second floor, and guests. A field of distraction. He had such spirits, and now, realizing what he was dealing with, he cut off the influence from himself, not hard and noticeable, but simply redirected along the spiritual body, without affecting the mental part. The spirit sent to follow the fat man, though small, but very imperceptible and not saturated with magic transmitting very fuzzy images. Spirit saw how the innkeeper quite ordinarily took out of a separate shelf an expensive and fancy-looking vial and dripped from it a little bit of thick liquid. He had a bnk expression on his face, though he kept talking.

  The young man showed neither fear nor surprise: toughness of mind, as a trait, allowed him to remain calm even in very troubling situations. And it also began to seem to him that Fate, as a concept of something above the Gods, disliked him very much. He would have survived another gang of dashing men, and he would have killed the cunning individual who had decided to poison the guest. But what the fuck were the chances that a Senior fucking Shaman with a powerful retinue would run into something incomprehensible and dangerous just by walking into the first vilge he saw? He'd read once, back on Earth, that all sorts of entities were tweaking the chances of encountering all sorts of unusual shit. It was starting to make some unpleasant associations and suspicions.

  Your Highness Milfness, perhaps this is your handiwork? He thought but did not say it aloud, continuing to watch as the innkeeper, after pouring some of the strange liquid into the soup, put the vial back and carried the tray to Stepan's table. Though no, don't answer yet, or better yet, don't answer at all.

  The Earthman calmly continued the conversation, though not following it as closely, which could be put down to an empty stomach. He noted Baroshn had not realized what he was doing at all, nor had he been watching what the young man was eating. When he pulled up pies with eggs, potatoes, and sweet, with something cheery, not fresh cherries, but jam, and boiled potatoes with sausages, ignoring the soup, the poison was added only to it, the innkeeper did not react in any way. The young man, having stealthily summoned directly into his body the most skillful poison spirit from his contracts, was quietly freaking out. Ordinary spirits simply did not see the poison. Even this one was noticed not immediately, only after a direct pointer to check more actively! Something that paralyzed the body and put the mind to sleep, but it was really nasty. He was afraid to eat the rest of it, but he dared, especially since the spirit hadn't seen or found anything else. There was a chance of an even more cunning poison, poured in advance... no, hardly, and even if he did, he would be able to get it out of him, but he would need time, time.

  The young man sought not only to prepare his retinue's summoning in full combat power without moving his Shroud but also to understand against whom he should prepare his retinue. Mental processing, poisons, fields of distraction, it's certainly unpleasant, but not fatal: to protect himself from poison, to take control over a host of spirits, sharing himself with them in plurality, to add a couple of specific defenses, which he began to collect after that night from Truda and her daughter, and most of the already demonstrated will be either overcome or ignored. Except what else can an unknown and dangerous enemy throw on the table, and does Stepan need to put arguments on the table himself? Running away will be much easier, especially while the enemy is not waiting for an attack from the senior shaman, which is equal to a very strong master of magic, and with a very strong retinue. Right now, grab your belongings, add a battle spirit, call a crowd of little things for cover, and, using incredible physical strength, agility, and reaction, run off into the sunset.

  Well, into the zenith.

  The young man, who had listened to another really funny story from the fat innkeeper's youth - a conceptual character, though he was the first innkeeper who was really overweight, before that his potbelly was visible at most - decided to follow this pn. Ideally, he would leave quietly, without shouting or revealing his aura, but why would he need extra witnesses? He was just a suspicious fellow used to suspicion, he sensed something and ran away, taking advantage of the suddenness.

  "You should taste the soup, your magic. I've always been able to do it, my grandmother taught me." Suddenly the man said to him, even slightly interrupting the story, and then, as if nothing had happened, continued it. "So, we went then, all five of us, to the edge of that vilge, to find out who here spoil the girls, and to whom it is necessary to put a log in the ass..."

  At that moment, the shaman did catch a glimpse of the slightly irritated eyes of someone else looking through the man's eyes, wanting something different, saying the wrong thing, looking in the wrong pce. And it also became clear how exactly the fat man was being controlled. Through an internal signal, with a basis on blood, and not by cssical magic of the mind, which is implied by mentalists. That's why the young man didn't see the control because he looked in the wrong pce, but now, having understood the mechanism, he immediately saw or rather felt, the alien magic in the innkeeper's essence. And also, based on his experience, he assumed that he had a week and a half to live. The innkeeper, I mean - the control was very traumatic, though complete, but not that inept, just careless, not caring about the life of the victim. No one here cared about keeping them alive for more than a month and a half, most of which had already passed.

  Stepan shifted his gaze to his arms, which were concealed by long and very dirty sleeves, noting that it was not for nothing that he thought the man was compining about the heat, while he was working in long sleeves. He was used to working without them or, rather, to rolling them up, but then Stepan could see, as he saw now, shifting his perception and looking through the fabric, the marks of numerous cuts on his forearms. Mind magic, closely tied to blood, blood poison, with that blood at its core, pale faces, and ck of vitality in almost all the inhabitants he met, as well as regur bloodletting of subordinate vilgers. Stepan really wanted at this moment to shout, at full lung capacity, the famous to earthly connoisseurs of high culture: "AAAAALUCAAAAARD!!!", but was stopped by the understanding of the sad truth: he is a nowhere androgynous British girl with a heavy character, knighthood, long pedigree, and mathematical name. And therefore an uncle in a stylish scarlet hat with big guns and a fanged smile will not come at his beck and call.

  He'd have to deal with the nest - or, rather, temporary rookery - of vampire crap he'd encountered.

  "Sad." That's all he said, silencing the fat man and stirring the poisoned soup with his spoon, filtering the air from everything but the air that had long since made his throat unpleasantly dry. "I'd like to go to the toilet, where is it?"

  "Yes, it's okay, I'll show you," Baroshn said normally, but his senses, already accustomed and knowing where to look, saw how angry the one who controlled his blood and spirit was. "It's not far."

  The man was a pity, but Stepan couldn't save him unless he started to call the strongest of his spirits right away. But even then, it was not a sure thing, at most he could give him a couple more months to live, for which he could call on a full-fledged senior healer. Hell knows, maybe Stepan would have done so: it's not Kirik, he doesn't know the local popution at all, but to leave them all to die, including a couple of children, who were also treated on a common basis, would be beyond him. He'd pump himself a fucking medical branch. Again. But they wouldn't let him do that. Stepan picked up his belongings dragging them behind him, reaching into his backpack, and grabbing the edge of his mask in passing.

  Maybe he was being too suspicious. Maybe it didn't help that someone else's experience as an agent was giving him away something. Maybe the enemy simply reacted to the attempt to pull out something obscure and potentially dangerous. Even though the bag had long ago been treated to conceal its energy background, and his system gifts were either adept at masking their mark - like the mask and anchor saucer - or came with an insuting container - like the stockings and bracelet - or all of them together. Maybe, maybe, maybe. But more likely, the enemy was simply bored of fiddling with a lone traveler and decided to force the situation rather than be cautious. He accelerated sharply, unnaturally fast and agile, quite suddenly and right in the middle of a conversation - he never finished the story of how one of his fellow vilgers had nearly drowned in the privy - Baroshn rushed at Pann. Quickly, swiftly, and deftly, with experience beyond his own, mercilessly burning away whatever vitality and innards were still undamaged by the blood magic.

  Stepan, just as smoothly and calmly, not surprised and not paying attention to the fact he could not physically see the attack being turned back to his opponent, turned on his toes meeting the jerk with a soft touch to the chest of his interlocutor. A spiritual impulse, a blow with his spirit combined with the rudiments of witch paralysis, stopped both attacker and the bubbling blood and streams of someone else's crippling power, throwing the victim against the wall, and making him open and close his mouth in bewildered surprise. Then the puppeteer seemed to have decided to force Stepan's block, the st attempt to save the life of the uninvolved, by sending more power, which met the spiritual gap and annihited, tearing the aura and most of the ulcer-covered insides to shreds. Death was instantaneous and even a little merciful. Stepan's blow, a combination of martial skill, spiritual operation, and healing, not only paralyzed but could also be considered anesthesia.

  Looking into the dim and alien eyes of the agonizing body, into the eyes through which some bloodsucking and vile scum was looking at him, the young man smiled a very unpleasant smile, as if Rodisv Gastoldovich Yanin himself, and then said, remembering an old earthly meme from the time of the general hysteria over the works of Stephanie Meyer:

  "You're fucked, Edward." He said, covering his face with the wooden mask, which, when active, could no longer fool the superficial scanning, revealing itself and shining in his magical vision with all the power of a powerful artifact.

  The young man didn't know how it happened. He didn't know what frightened or angered his opponent in his words or appearance, in those bottomless eye sockets of the mask, but the contact broke off in an instant.

  And then, as soon as the young man finished barely in time the already started calls, a bloody hell unfolded.

  * * *