Chapter 19 (Patreon)

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The only logical thing to do was to silently baptize the entire capital and wish it to rest in peace. Even if you were a non-believer or had never heard of Christianity - it would still be about as much use as any other action. Even the most optimistic attitude, multiplied by an iron will to win, could easily give way before the sight of the revealed asshole.

A huge, almost a dozen kilometers in diameter rift in the middle of the already abnormal sky was another portal. If individual beams manifested single devils or entire groups of them, there was no need for manifestation here. A pure rupture connecting two points of space, representing a textbook spatial gate, only of colossal size and incredible strength. Breaking such a structure, even if it is not protected, is a matter of a few minutes, at least. If there are appropriate specialists with high levels and powerful artifacts. Here there were not only minutes but even seconds. The opened breach was not just hanging but was fulfilling its main function - to let through.

Until then, it had been mostly cultists and their summoned masters or compact groups of invaders. The breach brought out a real crowd. I could distinguish tens of thousands of lights, each of which was the heart of a gradually manifesting creature, sometimes quite weak and sometimes not so weak. I'd say Eternal had been attacked by saboteurs and assault squads. And now regular units were on the move. I was tempted to think of this wave as the last reserves thrown in, when the slanted, the lame, and the sick are thrown into battle, but common sense and intuition said it was not the last resort of the devils but just another step of their plan. Something may have gone wrong, but they had little chance of taking the capital by sabotage alone... too much of a chance. Probably, there was a calculation for that, but it was one of those dreams that, if they happened to come true, would surprise most of all the dreamers who knew exactly how unrealistic they were.

Hell's "line infantry" attack could still be considered a negotiable force, even if it would take a lot of optimism to do so. The combined pressure of a collective fleur, massed techniques backed by tormented souls. All of which can be stopped with their own trump cards. And the average fiend is not so unimaginably strong, as it was said before. There are not enough souls for everyone. The collective fleur can be reflected or leveled by mass auras, enemy magic can be met with their own, and their own champions can be used against the elite. In addition, the horde of creatures falling directly on the Palace was bound to lose in numbers, not jokingly killing their foreheads on the stones of the indestructible, even now stronghold. Under the protection of walls imbued with so much magic that they already consisted of magic, people had every chance to become the rock that would break the seemingly unstoppable wave.

There were, pardon the bad pun, a hell of a lot of monsters falling from above, but only one object caught my attention. Its presence, it was causing my arsehole to shrink, the production of bricks by all the unfortunate people who were contemplating it, and probably some buttache in the palace defenders. The latter had every chance to turn from figurative to real, given the type of creatures opposing the endowed ones.

Even just looking at it made my eyes water and hurt. Not because of disgust or any combat effect but because this thing was emitting a power so powerful and intense that it was piercing even here, and my eyes couldn't stand the parade of energies that were flowing through the deceptively slow creature descending to the sinful earth.

A mythical creature.

I wouldn't have risked my board-stained brain to look more closely at this entity, but it was sticking out its very essence, using its image like another attack aura. Not the lord of the entire domain, not Lust incarnate, but rather a unique and incredibly complex robot powered by magical propulsion. Hundreds of thousands of souls, tens of thousands of individual devils, either captured or consigned to such a fate for some provinces - that's what it was. Without gender, without purpose, without form, without even the happiness familiar to every fiend. Only the will that bound it, only the armor molded of unknown material that became the basis of a cage for the deeply unhappy symbiosis of souls.

News Bringer.

One hundred and sixteenth level, and I could be wrong, as the heroic ability malfunctioned at that distance, blurring the system inscriptions every now and then. A willless tool used and awakened only for the worst slaughter, when even the fiends need not pleasure but victory and the death of those who get in the way. It was indeed the bringer of news, always the same news, the same message, and the same truth. And the truth was that a foreign will had come, and it had become the new law. There was no way to fight, no other outcome than to submit.

It was awakened for the war between domains when one abomination proved its truth to another when one Vice rebelled against another. From here, it seemed like a small black ball. As if it were made up of many hexagonal segments, but just compare the scales... It was already transforming. The segments were already moving, allowing not a toy ball to transform into a huge, forgive me physics, mecha the height of a five-story minimum and width not much inferior to the height. No special techniques, but only the impossible strength of black stone and iron that formed the basis of the monstrous armor and an intolerable fleur, even for the Summoned, reaching such a concentration that its Lust became almost material. The elements of this construct sitting and howling inside the armor were both a source of energy and a conductor in case armor and strength alone were not enough if they had to strike with magic as well. And that magic, I could say with absolute certainty, would be as large and thorough as the Bringer's construction itself.

Perhaps such a shell, falling from above on the palace ahead of the rest of the wave, covering it from the return fire of the defenders, really has all the chances of bluntly pushing any defense, not just breaking inside the palace, but also breaking through the gap for the rest of the unholy army. After the fall of the Palace, the defense of the city will fall. It is there the keys to the magical defenses are concentrated, and it is there the defenders themselves are concentrated. Once the Palace falls, the people will not be able to gather into a united fist, even if there are still capable troops left.

The only thing left to do was to admit that the News had indeed been delivered, and those who saw the message had only to accept the doom broadcast by the creatures and prepare their asses for a horrifying gangbang as eternal as the blood of the rulers of the Empire of Ages. You can't fend it off, you can't overpower it, you can't break it - only accept the vice and enjoy it to the fullest whether you want to or not.

The Emperor and he had clearly survived the first stages of the battle, saw the spectacle, perceived it, realized it, and then expressed his truly imperial disagreement, backing it up with more than just imperial conceit. If his renewal buff was cool, then the new trick was not just cool, but as ass-breaking as the Devils imagined the Bringer to be. I was also glad I hadn't decided to kidnap the Emperor to get Yoke's secrets out of him.

From the palace, invisible from our location, an indistinguishable and colorless wave went upward, spreading out in a cone that covered both the invasion armada and the breach itself. This phenomenon could not be recognized by sensors or even clairvoyance, but it was easy to see the results of its application. The entire cone of the skill's activation zone simply froze, like a crappy-quality image frozen when a TV show was freezing. The Eternal Ruler asked Eternity for help, and his blood responded, boiled, took its toll, and then fulfilled the request. Time shuddered, creaked, and changed its course, changing the conditions of the immutable Law in one part of space for a certain period.

The army froze.

The portal, which had just transported the first batch and was about to work again, was blocked by the same army, which would smear new reinforcements against the surface of the timeless section if they tried to be transported. Even though the creatures inside the altered time stream could not attack, they could not be caught. However, this exchange is beneficial to humans in the first place because such a huge elephant can be eaten in pieces before the pieces are reassembled back into an elephant.

There was only one problem - the said News Bringer, who was slowed down by the Emperor's will and forced to move like a fly in a flowing syrup, but certainly not frozen together with the rest of the army. Those remained completely motionless, but the mythical spawn of the devils' sick fantasy not only continued to fall but also gradually accelerated again, threatening to break out of the freezing zone in a few seconds. Moreover, it did exactly that... only to be overtaken a moment later by a second attack of the tired Emperor, or maybe by one of his relatives, who took up the task instead of the representative of their family who had already done his share of work. I didn't even hope to be able to recognize the Bringer with clairvoyance under such interference from the Bringer's fleur, and I didn't even try, honestly.

The creature broke free and immediately froze again, securely. This time, they only had to work on one target, even if it was a very strong one. And the volume of space affected by the Eternal Dynasty's will was much smaller. Not a cone, locking the huge volumes of the real world in a box, but only a relatively modest octahedron (or another figure, which I took for an octahedron) with an edge of five hundred meters, in the center of which was a creature that had not yet had time to come to its senses after the breakthrough of the previous barrier. It even twisted, almost completing the transformation into a huge golem, not resembling the original spherical design, and from the area where the flattened helmet of the cursed armor had been, a long tentacle flew out, glowing with the sheer amount of power and souls that the Bringer had put into it.

He froze, his tongue almost reaching the inside of the octahedron with its tip as if trying to lick it. It would have been funny if my perception didn't allow me to notice an increasing glow just near the edge of the barrier. Something told me this trap would last far less than the Imperials had planned.

For me, despite the barely functioning third eye - no other way, it had shrunk to a point along with the ass that sensed something wrong - what happened reminded me of a short exchange of moves in a chess game. The portal seemed to open up, forcing the defenders to spend their trump cards, but then the Devils, clearly waiting for the Eternals to make such an obvious move, made their move. The Bringer was protected from manipulation of the Law on a very serious level, and it's not even elimination, but only a delay, an attempt to gain more time, required a very terrible strain of forces. And people seem to be winning, successfully dividing the enemy army, but the parts of the whole haven't gone anywhere, and it's hardly possible to keep them in these barriers for a week or two to gather forces for each enemy and quietly nail them immediately after leaving the timelessness.

The exchange of strategic charms between the warring parties, both of which are hostile to me personally, left behind a slight sensory overload, a twitching eye, and a wounded sense of grandeur, which, after watching the master class, crawled away to die in the darkest corner of my internet- and porn-site-corrupted mind. Because it hurts to realize that you are all so cool, killing legends and tearing elite creatures with bare paws, suddenly, not the coolest bastard in the foreseeable space. Far from it.

"Let's go the other way." I squeezed out of my parched throat about ten seconds after the riotous flurry of fleur now bound in the chains of Time had subsided. "I don't like it over there."

No one commented though I could sense that Taria wanted to. She always gets a kick out of being funny when she's nervous. Just like me, but not me.

We really did not go to the center, as we had planned a little earlier. We did not turn back, however, and began to make a wide circle, avoiding the central districts. First, we wanted to be far away from the mythic and the accompanying army, which had every chance to escape in the next couple of hours. Second, it was in these districts, equidistant from the outer walls and the center. There were most of the ritual's strongholds. The Imperials would not reach them soon because they were defending the palace, and even if they understood (and they would understand, they were not stupid!) the necessity of attacking the ritual's strongholds, it would not be possible to gather forces quickly anyway.

But we're here now. The fact I am planning an attack on the third ritual focus point, having survived the first two while successfully accomplishing the mission, speaks for our effectiveness. If we survive, the Emperor will give orders and titles not to us but to the rest of the gang, who are barely able to save their skins now. I can feel by my guts things have not gone smoothly for the devils, much more difficult than they originally wished, but all these burdens are still within their capabilities. At the same time, the defenders of the capital, though they are fighting back, are still unable to seize the initiative, lacking the organization that was damaged by the treachery of high-ranking cultists and the swift attacks of the first assault groups.

Those corrupted by the cult often attacked with no hope of survival, with only a frantic desire to serve their masters, and that was what they did. Even if they were killed, their blows if not fatally damaging, could at least cause confusion and time, and there was nothing more valuable than time for endowed.

Another group of cultists, not attacking for the sake of variety but retreating back to regroup, was badly battered and thinned out. Even without intuitive flashes of understanding, it was easy to discern that the previously well-functioning groups of fighters were now rather dumbed down due to the absence of some of the companions that had previously taken on some roles in their ranks. These cultists mostly looked like simple dogs of war, and only a few of them had clear traces of Vice influence. Most likely, they were mercenaries who had been drawn too deep into the blackness to turn back.

We destroyed them on the fly, killing the strongest of the mages with a shot of Valerium, mixing up their orders with Trails, covering them with a throw of explosive potion, and crushing them with a dozen shadow blades that mangled the bodies of the survivors. We didn't even slow down, but the brief skirmish allowed me to come to my senses and come away from seeing the first mythical creature of my life. And not only in my life, to be honest. Everyone was affected and crushed morally, even Tia, though she could see other creatures of comparable class in her long life. Also, of course, from afar.

We stopped at the same cabin where the cultists had broken in, and I even continued the sleeping spell on the family living there, but it was based on Dream instead of Vice. The mood was far from combative, but I wouldn't call it defeatist. We were all visibly tired morally and did not want to fight in this madhouse, but not more than that.

"We need to knock out at least one more point." My own voice seems somehow strangled as if I were speaking from under a pillow. So thick the Hell-soaked air had become. "Then we can try breaking through the barrier, especially if we run right at the moment the point is broken."

"Risk." That's all Tia asserts, not even trying to change my mind or at least convey an image or two through the visions.

I even understand her and sympathize with her a little. My idea can't even be called risky, even against the backdrop of my usual antics. Trying to break through a crack provoked by the breaking of such a massive structure should be called only terminal retardation but not the miserable word "risk." It's even sadder when I realize Tia's silence and almost complete humility only means she has no comparable alternatives other than "lie down and die." If she had those alternatives, she wouldn't have limited herself to symbolic resistance by trying to drive some of my self-preservation instinct right into my skull. Probably deliver it through my ass.

"Why don't we try to make our way to some temple?" Losius doesn't have any work plans either, but that doesn't stop him from spouting ideas. "I hear the Heavens singing, and even if I've never heard such a thing before, I'm willing to bet that the Servants of God are being summoned there. They're probably capable of organizing a refugee corridor, after all."

"I don't believe the creatures didn't take care of that." Hans, as if he had to, lay down against the wall and seemed to doze off, waking only for a comment and to close his eyes again.

It's hard to say in detail, but in basic terms, the tracker's damn right. The devils have blocked all approaches, and they've been working on blocking the temples first and foremost. If there were some cool priest among us, we could try to help, join the clerics looking for a loophole out of the stalemate, and try to break through the wall with our heads. But there are no clerics among us, and using planar power alone won't help the cause, as we all know very well.

"Moving on, then." Hestia summarizes, turning her palm to mist for a second, pulling out another vial of explosive potion, the supply of which is not endless either.

On that note, our brief smoke-free smoke break was over.

* * *

It took me a while to realize why I was so attracted to this point. I suspected it was some kind of tricky decoy trap designed for sneaky visionaries, but the reality was simple. It wasn't until I got close enough to the once chic mansion for the shadow sphere to probe the inside of the building. Then I realized what kind of company was gathered there. The unobtrusive but insistent pressure pulling me here was the effect of the Soul of Mocker at work.

The manor had recently undergone a furious assault. Judging by the several decomposing carcasses of mold and lime honey, the attackers had washed with blood. In addition to the possessed, there were at least three dozen corpses under the windows, in the gateway, and in the places where the stone walls had been breached, with energy characteristic even after death, easily picked up through the sphere. The cult had won confidently and swiftly, but not bloodlessly, even if the defenders were not much more numerous than the attackers.

The bodies of the defenders belonged, for the most part, to beastfolk of the wolf subspecies, wearing armor made to the same patterns and by the same craftsman. The light leathers and chainmail of the archers and agility men, the clean leather of the lurker who had been torn in half, the heavy blackened metal of a pair of heavy fighters - the equipment spoke at least of the wealth of the defenders. However, in addition to the beastfolk, who were probably mercenaries, there were several humans among the dead (they had asked to go under the roof of a well-protected building, I guess) and halflings. There were few short people among the guard bodies, but they didn't like to choose combat classes, traditionally preferring to go into trade, farming, or administration. Completing the picture were the remains of a single man dressed in the easily recognizable uniform of the Eyes. Well, among the bodies visible outside, only one, and it was harder to tell how many.

The mansion clearly belonged to Halflings and not just ordinary ones but very high-ranking ones. And in this mansion, before the invasion, had gathered an interesting company of halflings hired guards, visiting Eyes, and representatives of the administrative apparatus of the... Eternal Library? The Eternal Library? Without even trying to peer into the stolen memory of an old Pypysh, locked away in isolated pieces of mirror, I had already guessed who the house belonged to, why the Eyes had come here, why the librarians were here, and, of course, what the fuck the cultists were doing here

I even knew, even before the sphere had finally broken through the interference produced by the remnants of the superior defenses, scanning the interior of the house and its guests, who I would meet among the attackers. It was enough to look at a dozen bodies of the defenders, literally torn by streams of aggressive essence and blows of the seven-tailed whip.

Well, even if the situation is far from cheerful, I can still give my old acquaintance ten minutes because I'm going to have a lot of fun now. I need to change my appearance a little bit. Otherwise, I will not be able to squeeze the maximum possible out of this clowning. It is not for nothing that all my childhood, youth, adolescence, and maturity, I was called a clown. I'd better live up to it.

"Tin, I don't like your smile." Taria was the first to notice something wrong, but nothing could stop me, for there is no cutoff for inadequacy. "Ah, whatever, though."

The rest of the company probably had something to say, too, especially Tia and Hestia, as the loudest voices of reason in the realm of idiocy, but I tyrannically and despotically prevented them from expressing their opinions, starting to give orders right away.

"I'm going in." At the same time as words, I'm trying to transmit bits of images, but I'm not getting it right. "I can't figure out why, but I feel it's the right thing to do. Call it intuition."

It would have sounded more convincing if it hadn't been for the wicked smile on my face, but I really felt that now I could not only get some lulz but also realize something, something hidden from me so far. So I closed my eyes and, guided by the data the sphere was transmitting, stepped through the Shadow and straight into the captured building.

* * *

The central dining hall for halflings is the main room of any house, where the whole family gathers for dinner, discussing news, sharing impressions, handing out praise, and writing out condemnation. In their usual habitat furry-footed ring bearers (among them there are a lot of real jewelers, by the way) live in large branched houses occupying a whole hill. A typical hill, inhabited by a whole clan of halflings, is a real fortress in miniature, where strangers cannot get through without bending down, and if they do, they will quickly die from the blades of the defenders.

The settlements of this race are very hard to rob because they quickly put their valuables in the farthest and hard-to-reach corners, and safes and treasuries are always built in such corners. A lot of tunnels, manholes, and secret passages connecting hobbit houses turn their cities into a labyrinth of death for stormers. Yes, they usually have a lot to loot, right down to furniture (even if underground, but their houses are far from being a peasant's dugout, quite corresponding in terms of comfort to a good hotel) and kitchen utensils. But if it is still possible to just throw battle magic on the hills, collapse all the passages, and flood them with fire from all ends, then it has always been a wild headache to rob halflings.

It is precisely because of this problem in terms of squeezing out valuable property that hobbits are famous as guys who very easily go for an alliance with a subordinate position within other nations. They make just too useful allies, who, more often than not, have no desire to rule the invaded territories themselves. But they are excellent Agronomists, excellent Traders, excellent Businessmen, and Artisans, from which a lot of use and a minimum of problems if in time to shorten them. But if you don't, you risk to find out one fine morning that they have bought up your people, tied up your vassals with debts, recruited an army of mercenaries for the gold earned, put their debtors or relatives in all posts, and there is nothing you can do about it. In fact, almost all the largest clans of Halflings, which have more autonomy than any other (including also a part of the vassals of the Empire of Ages, belonging to their tribe), appeared in such a simple way.

That's why they are obviously disliked by the rulers, who regularly trim their hair and shorten the heads of overzealous Inhumans. Not to say that all sides are always happy, but hobbits were and are the only race that has alliances with any other.

In the god-blessed Empire of Ages, there are entire provinces that produce huge amounts of unique food resources, like rare varieties of grain or carrots, which are too costly and unprofitable for humans to grow, while at the same time supplying Agronomists and Farmers with a fabulous average level for such a profession. Have you met many farmers who have their class and know how to develop it?

In desert Alishan, several of their clans have also taken root, albeit with great problems, helping to raise fields where it would seem impossible to raise them. They also provide the basis for smuggling routes between the two warring superpowers. In fact, it is from those guys come out almost become a proverbial parable of Thieves, Knaves, and Assasins of their tribe, who can give competition to many and many. And there is probably a smuggler or two in any of their families, given the size of their families, and it is good if only a couple of them.

The Dwarves hold tightly to their alliance with the Halflings, for it is their provisions that feed the mountain towns, even if the clever hill dwellers like to raise prices, organize an embargo, or even stop all trade with the proud dwarves if they are well paid for it by the enemies of the dwarves. They find their approach, even to the elves, snobbish in the most terminal of possible stages, even if the latter do not need hobbits as farmers but as trade representatives, networks of informants, and intermediaries.

In the case of the inhabitants of this mansion, they had long since gotten used to the living conditions typical of halflings, and even the ceilings in their house in the capital were quite normal in height. The mansion was not so much a dwelling as a permanent representation of the House of Prychodonotchev in the capital, and the interests of the entire clan of Trydygorodskys were also represented by them. Thanks to the influence of the now deceased grandfather, this family was allowed a lot, a lot, and they used it quite consciously, helping, for a small fee, to solve certain issues for distant relatives, which without blat were solved too slowly or not solved at all.

After "Pupysh" had made a beautiful jig before his death, at the same time making a fog about his nature and who exactly he was working for, the whole house was in not to say dark times, but quite a twilight. Many people were interrogated, including the very unpleasant procedure of mental suppression and subsequent questioning, but they all turned out to be as clean as it was possible for lovers of smuggling and mutually beneficial cashback. They would have been reminded of everything, not out of a thirst for justice but out of a petty desire to squeeze out existing businesses and shops, to divide property and real estate, to block bank vaults, and to seize debt receipts.

However, the owners of too many assets themselves were not willing to part with their wealth. Even if they were pressed very hard, with no hope of fighting back - with such a reason and no wonder - but they fought. And just at the moment when the fidgeting stopped, and high guests came to them to discuss what they would voluntarily give for someone else's good, the Invasion started. Isn't that fucked up?

Add to this the fact that the cult also wanted to ask a lot of questions to the relatives of the deceased because of the mentioned "Pypysh." They were almost a hundred percent likely to have moles in the Eyes, so they had access to the records of interrogations. Yeah, and it wasn't as if the cultists weren't right there in the interrogation, but they didn't come here for the kind of answers you could get just by asking. Sacrificial magic, among other things, allows you to boost clairvoyance, and if the sacrifice of the blood and souls of those who are related to the source of interest, then the chances of a clear and direct answer or obtaining the coordinates of the target's location increase multiplied.

Since, at this moment, your humble servant in my person is almost pawing with his sweaty hands the web of threads of other people's plans, intrigues, and investigations, there is much to learn. The plan for the current invasion was not thought up in a year or a century, and its scale exceeded all common sense. Needless to say, many of the devils tasked with a particular milestone in the plan were careful to try to out-serve and, if possible, to make sure that a competitor did not out-serve. Without the threat of disclosure or outright setups, the intrigue was still quite layered. And the cultists, though led by a single coterie, many cells cooperated with individual creatures a little more closely, trying to seek benefits for their masters and mistresses, again, without jeopardizing the common cause.

And those guys who were in charge of infiltrating the cheerful ranks of the Eternal Library staff were very upset when their almost accomplished plan, after all the dizzying successes and the accomplished deception of the entity sleeping in the stones of the altar hall, failed. And so it came to pass that a separate and very well-coordinated battle team of cultists, backed by pre-called and secured fiends, had a strong desire to ask questions, if not of Pypysh, then of his masters. Which meant the fate of his kin was sealed. The blood connection would allow a glimpse into the past of the deceased, even if he was a changeling. At least some of the answers they reasonably hoped to get, and they had every chance of getting them.

If we're talking about questions and sacrifices, at least some of Pypysh's closest blood relatives could have had their asses grabbed by guys not even affiliated with the cult and for the same purpose. It was just that the Eyes did not have time to deal with this issue in the austerity. Another thing is that they could do without outright blackness, limiting themselves to more gentle and not always lethal methods. There were some artifacts in the possession of the Imperials, which Tia told me about, tied to unraveling blood ties. And not all of them dried up the sample given to them, not all of them.

In general, this way of searching had all the chance to catch even me, who interacted too closely with Pypysh Popyatchev, having managed to squeeze out some answers from the universe. Too few to be seriously alarmed, but much more than I would like to leave behind. And I couldn't even tell which option was worse - the Eyes on the trail or the devils who wanted to meet face to face?

Fun, right?

The ritual took place in silence, with barely audible hissing and cursing as the wounded fists of the cult bandaged their wounds. The paralyzed and partially disabled victims lay in neat rows as they were dragged three at a time into a hastily created ritual circle, where one of the creatures that had taken over the real body methodically mauled them to death. Given the presence of six tentacle-like tentacles instead of arms and a double set of genitals, they did not have to separate. There were no moans of agonizing pleasure, for the polite devil had set up a barrier to cut off the sounds.

Ideally, there should have been some kind of villainous speech, with which the whimpering and begging for mercy victims will be ridiculed. Or, on the contrary, not whimpering, but even under the threat of death remaining unruly, but it depends on personal sympathy for the victims. Apparently, the villains got tired of such scenes because none of the captives could speak - some tricky mental crap that made them forget any speech while serving as a damn strong sedative. Only two Eyes operatives, a beaten mercenary beastfolk, and three hobbits, as the highest level holders, managed to keep their brains intact.

It's a working atmosphere.

It was shattered by an incomprehensible rustling inside an ancient carved cupboard turned upside down on its back, which in the course of the assault had been knocked into the common dining room, where there should be no furniture except a table and chairs, according to the canons of Hobbit design. The rustling did not stop but grew louder, and then it was joined by barely audible swearing with a distinct "hill" accent.

The fighters and the possessed sitting under the walls, quite naturally thought they had managed to miss some hidden child whose parents had had the bright idea to make a small spatial pocket in the closet to hide their children in case of trouble. Despite the surprise, they were on their feet very quickly, preparing to get the next piece of meat out. The couple had hoped to have some fun with this kid - the service of Lust awakens very unhealthy desires, even in the minds of those who have never had such fantasies. Alas, but the dreams of the bloody faggots turned out to be dreams because the closet door opened by itself, and a fully grown hobbit crawled out, even, rather, an old hobbit.

"Ho, what a misfortune." The visibly rejuvenated-looking Pypysh looked and spoke so authentically that any test would acknowledge him now. "And they said Narnia!"

The librarian looked dazed, his clothes disheveled, and his hair full of owl feathers that had fallen out of a stuffed animal in the closet. His clairvoyance immediately told him why it was there. Because of Eyes's unhealthy but entirely understandable interest in bird-related topics related to the Prychodonotchevs' House, all compromising stuffed animals or images had been carefully removed from sight. During the search, they were found, and everything connected with them was examined under the microscope of detective and clairvoyant classes, but they were not returned to their place so as not to bother the eyes.

In another situation, the adult and probably dangerous halfling would have been immediately attacked by ordinary soldiers who did not know him by sight, but the essence of what was happening was too absurd, so the experienced and seasoned thugs inexcusably delayed. And the barely audible clinking of glass, which even a hundred and fifty perception would not allow to distinguish, had nothing to do with it, yes. The fighters were confused, if only for a fraction of a second, but some of the others, higher up, were not.

"You're dead!" There was far less fierce anger than some otherworldly terror in the shriek of a cat-like beastgirl armed with a seven-tailed whip, now almost emptied of its supply of rare battle essences. "Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead! Dead!"

Her ears pressed to her head, her hands shaking, her heartbeat racing, her breath hitching-despite all her stamina, backed by the level and gifts of her masters, the sight of the seemingly harmless hobbit instilled in her such fear that even the Vice inside her couldn't quell the wave of horror coming from deep within her. Horror at something that had been with her long before her encounter with the cult, long before she had learned to dissolve all sorrows in Vice, replacing them with the pleasure and joy of a new challenge to her abilities. There was something about that fear of hers that gave away the chill of the night, the darkness of the starless sky, and the flapping wings of the night birds.

"I'm back. the same way as I'm die" Taking advantage of the blatant unprofessionalism of the enemy, who never attacked me, I get out of the closet, shaking off and fixing my clothes. "The owls are immortal."

T.N. As I've already mentioned, Owl is a slang name for a user who sits late at night on the board. There is no registry system on imageboards and you can't delete a user. That is, they are in a certain sense immortal.

After the last phrase, Shmielae finally broke the bar, and the Dream-based closed field that had been induced beforehand could not overcome the boiling raging hatred born of the soul-devouring horror and pain of loss. With a bestial howl so primal that it simply could not belong to a reasonable and civilized half-breed, the tails of the legendary lash rained down on me and the closet. Well, after that, the conversation automatically came to an end, and in the depths of my soul, there was a pleasant languor in the realization that I had brought her not even to a frenzy but to the brink of personality disintegration, which, no doubt, flattered the fat troll inside me.

I was wearing Shadow Theft, modified by Creation, copying Pypysh at the highest level possible under the circumstances and time frame. The mask was augmented by clairvoyance, allowing me to mimic even better, having had time to be inside (down with the vulgarities, Anons!) the halfling's soul. Disguise is undoubtedly very important in the delicate business of taking out the brain, but to fight under such concealment is very difficult, as I have repeatedly argued. A little twitch, a little too much effort, and some of the disguise can drain away, miss a bit of the real you. Of course, the audience here is not the most fastidious, but I don't want to work sleevelessly in front of them either.

I bounce off the whip, letting it shatter the poor cabinet, and then the pieces of mirror pulled from my sleeves are in my hands like a set of throwing knives. As Shmiela swings for a second blow, the rank and file and all three possessed creatures, including the one in the ritual circle, begin to shake the lilac cobwebs off their brains, and I begin to beat the people around me painfully.

Funnily enough, Shadow Theft, if you make it as autonomous as possible and don't overly saturate it with pure planar power, is still one of the few techniques that can be used in conjunction with another plane. Difficult, and yes, there is a risk of washing away the disguise if you get too heavily invested in the technique, but still possible. Pretty logical, if you think about it, because I knew about it before, even from Stone, where I successfully pretended to be the head of security of the fortress, using some of his skills. That possibility is one of the main trumps of the Theft and Creation combo if you think about it.

While the head is swarming with such important - and, most importantly, timely! - thoughts, the hands are doing faster than the head. All three creatures receive two pieces of mirror intravenously, and quite literally, for the mirrors that had been embedded in the flesh tainted by vice were instantly dissolved inside their wounds with mirrored mercury, destroying the connection between the host and the devil itself, blurring its essence and depriving it of control over magic and the souls captured in the dream. Elite creatures would have been able to burn out such an attack, but these, though they were above the thirtieth level, were not the most powerful. All three died, even if the ritual-occupied abomination had to add another portion of planar power to their bodies, redirecting it directly at the beacon of mercury splashing through their bodies.

A clap of the hands and every reflective surface in the mansion, including the bloodstained and dusty polished wood floor, began to reflect something else, and many surfaces that were not reflective became reflective. Simple fighters were not killed, but they were covered with so many effects that they were no longer fighters. Dizziness, ringing in the ears, weakness in the body, hallucinations, aggravated mental disorders, confused memory, confused reflexes - under such pressure you can't fight. And, of course, the noise. The noise of flapping wings, drawn partly out of pure insight provoked by clairvoyance, partly out of the horror-soaked image of the fear that had so frightened the insolent feline.

The cat howled desperately, only due to the level and the suicidal amount of Hell's energy coursing through her body right now, managing not to die of fright right there. Reinforcing the nightmare being born right now while preventing the power of Hell from reaching the brains of defenseless victims, causing the fighters to rapidly turn into pumpkins, at least mentally. Brain and partially even soul burnout, from which even those who had not become vegetables were losing marbles fast, turning into whimpering ruins, wrecks of their former selves.

Shmielae, hearing what she thought was the rustle of wings, lost her lust for battle, and even the pressuring will of her masters, soaking her body, mind, and essence, did not bring back that resolve. She tried to escape, dashing to the nearest breach in the wall, dropping (really dropping a legendary weapon!) her artifact, but I, even in disguise, was faster than the half-breed, who was frightened out of her wits. Not by much, but enough for a swift kick.

Another piece of mirror, but no longer intravenously, but externally. The mirror turned to liquid, covering her clothes and skin with a thin layer, paralyzing, stiffening, breaking her will and giving her the same rustle of wings that I broadcast, behind which the ringing of the mirrors is indistinguishable. Her terror reaches the point beyond which she cannot even stand, cannot think, or stay conscious, falling to the bloody floor and falling into her nightmares. I need her alive, and it will be easy to interrogate her in that state, even without bringing her to consciousness. If she were sane and not desperate, she could have resisted for at least ten minutes before being turned inside out and stripped of any secrets I might be interested in, but my "subtle" teasing had crushed her ability to fight.

I spent a second contemplating whether to kick her in the kidneys or not to waste energy on a blow that would go unnoticed against the background of her personal hell. Then I turn my gaze to the shocked-looking captives, some of whom, some of the highest level ones, have had time to come to their senses a little and freak out.

"You're a big guy, but who are you?" When I brought my disguise back to normal, but still without taking off my short, gray-haired form, I jumped with the illusion of my bare feet onto the miraculously surviving chair and, already standing on it, hovered over the still untied prisoners in the Eyes uniform.

It should be noted that they began to answer at once and seemed to be ready to tell almost everything, if not everything, judiciously assessing the chances of keeping their secret information within easy reach of the creepy halfling who had just burned the brains and souls of not so creepy devil-worshippers. I started the conversation only because I was digesting the knowledge I'd plucked from Shmielae's mind right now, filtering out the vice and fleur of Hell from the information I needed and putting it in its proper place. It is better not to hurry here, or a missed drop of poison, a shade of sense, can come out in the future with all sorts of troubles despite any resistance. And it's good if it's just a boner for catgirls, but there will be something worse. It's always like that with Hell, and I'm not a Shadow to ignore the risks of defamation, even if I sometimes get too close to it.

"Nah, I'm not asking you that." I interrupted their chief, who started singing first, before his subordinates started singing, devaluing the life of their chief. "I don't give a fuck about your ranks, authorizations, and all this. It's a good thing I've had time to see some of the secret stuff. What do you do for a living? Who you are?"

On the faces of all present, including the gradually regaining consciousness of Pypysh's relatives, who were looking at their resurrected patriarch with disbelief and quite contradictory emotions, there was bewilderment, combined with a concrete fear, even more noticeable than they had felt a second earlier. Because if the old man is mad, it is not the old man's problem but the problem of all those who were foolish enough to be near him.

"The Emperor's Eyes?" Somehow, the same chief suggested unhesitatingly, suppressing the underlying horror and even winning a drop of my respect, which does not play a role against the ocean of dislike.

I squint slyly, looking into the brown eyes of an unassuming man in his forties with light-blond hair and an absolutely average-looking face (obviously traces of some plastic surgery or application of a specific spy skill), nodding affirmatively. Yes, you're right, uncle. You are the Emperor's Eye, just like your subordinates who came today to squeeze the hapless halflings dry.

"Then tell me, dear..." I begin affectionately but involuntarily take a pause, revealing a particularly interesting stretch of stolen dreams. "Why on earth should I do your job?"

The ringing of mirrors in the shimmer of words is exactly strong enough to lead to hysterics but just as surely weak enough to pick up the edge for each listener, not allowing them to fall into hysterics. It's almost jewelry work thanks to The Fear Giver title, it passes without any special problems, literally in the background. The background is also the rest of the tirade, which I give out only in order not to distract from unpacking images, among which there were more and more funny, interesting, and, of course, nightmarish and disgusting.

"I've been working my work for almost a hundred years!" The dream was no longer in my voice, both out of a desire not to traumatize the listeners even more and out of fear of losing concentration. "It was a good position. Interesting things were being done, and geshefts were being made, especially on supplies! I was in a good position, so I was happy with everything! But why, your mighty man, was it me who had to give riches to the evil spawn who came to visit, whom all your Eyes didn't notice, as if everyone's eyes were blind? Who is to do your work by spearing you in your eye sockets? For the sake of which you were created, you pentads! What are you doing there, fucking into these very eye sockets for the last years instead of cleaning and checking?"

And that was about as much as I could say, interspersing my words with Hobbit swear words, kicks to the kidneys of Eye's trying to justify himself, and a terrible pressure on their souls that made my heart go not even into the heels, but straight into the boots, without ever untying any of the captive losers. In truth, some of them were quite capable of breaking the restraining charms or tearing the bonds, especially after killing or turning into vegetables all the cultists on whom those charms and seals held. Eyes were certainly capable of breaking the shackles at any moment, as they'd been taught the necessary skills in training. They didn't want to provoke the shouting motherfucker, because now he was just shouting, and it was hard to imagine what he would do when he was interrupted, but he could also interrupt.

The time went on like that, not less than five minutes, during which I was having fun and piecing together the already almost deciphered images until new personalities came to visit. I spotted them in advance. They were not hiding, and their approach was indicated by the approaching rumble of battle, chimes of planar energies, as well as the sound of shots, explosions of shells, and such a recognizable, though not heard for a long time, the roar of the engine. It would have been possible to finish it all as quickly as possible because I was already tired of the show named after the swearing Pypyshch, and half of the audience was already passed out, but I decided to stay and watch it just out of nostalgia.

It was at that moment that nostalgia broke through the wall of the house, nearly bringing the roof down on me, crushing a couple of vegetables from the cultists and one unlucky mercenary from "ours," that is, from those hired by the kin of my stage persona. Such destruction to the structure of a very sturdy building, capable of withstanding sieges and assaults thanks to the alchemy- and enchantment-strengthened foundation stone, was done with a light tangential blow!

The heroic eye easily assessed the artifact complex before me, calling it the Battle Machine of the Undermountain, but without the level, which was obvious. An artifact mechanism, as I remembered in the Stone, is only even more dangerous and rare. Whereas the large mecha that Hestia had once given me a lecture on, or rather a full-fledged training course, allowing the almost defenseless in direct combat riders and pilots to fight on an equal footing with a couple or three powerful epic creatures, this wunderwaffle was a head taller.

Leaving the cage of walls in one leap, taking advantage of the very breach left by the dwarven engineering strike, I eyed the creation of the short folks of the bearded subtype with an attentive eye, at the same time, trying to understand the thing as fully as possible. The size of a house, If not a house, then a very large barn, with just an illegal amount of steel and not badly enchanted armor, armed with a couple of massive battle wands, this thing could single-handedly pulverize a medium-sized town without taking serious damage. It was kept at the embassy of the Undermountain Kingdom for a reason, as one of the arguments for a quick escape if something happened to interfere with that escape. And it was just a status thing, and only a properly trained dwarf could operate it properly, so no one was afraid of stealing scientific concepts.

Alas, but despite its status, this iron-wheeled coffin was now in a state of utter deplorability, with several holes in its armor, a melted side, a missing wheel, the torn-out sockets for two twin magic wands, and an almost dead crew. It's a good thing this model, at least, didn't use flamethrowers or lead guns. Otherwise, an explosion would have been very likely. The last surviving crew member (I could feel how the second before the commander of this hearse, who never showed his face, had ceased to be affected by the fleur) left his vehicle not through a special hatch but through the molten hole. Meanwhile, I was looking at him shamelessly.

He was not tall, well-built, but by no means square, as he was not wearing the famous rune armor, which, being an analog of magical exoskeletons, created in the minds of most people the image of those square dwarves with axes. Rather, it was just a very stubby and short man, even without a beard, obviously burned in another magical blow. I was about to say hello to the twenty-fourth-level Gunner when he exploded from a clot of lilac glow, emitting a dreary fleur.

While I was staring at a fantasy tank, the enemy group that was following them calmly took the estate of the Prykhodonotchevs' House in a pincer, clearly determined to crush these guys as well. Apparently, they sensed the death of the possessed or even the almost complete destruction of Shmielae's essence, realizing the stormtroopers had screwed up.

"The Dwarven Embassy is three blocks away." As if by the way," said the chief of the Eyes, stepping cautiously beside me, wary of the creatures of Hell more than of a single uncovered renegade spy serving a Nightbird Cult neutral to the Empire. "The brat of iron has come a long way."

"That's because we managed to stop the other two units." A cultist commented, blinking (despite the spatial distortion, I note) at the gnome's remains, coming into our field of vision and diverting our attention from the rest of the pack of bastards coming in the back. "Very interesting stuff they were trying to take out."

Through the theft-based cloaking constructs that were now hiding my team from other people's eyes and senses, I began to send out a kind of Morse code, directing them in the right direction and indicating targets to attack if I needed help in the coming carnage. I really don't like this cultist, even more than I don't like normal creatures or their servants. For one thing, I couldn't see his level due to some sort of clever disguise not too inferior to my own, and uncovering that deception through clairvoyance without too much ado... he attacks early, forcing me to fight without preparation. Second, aside from Lust's fleur, even through his cloaking canopy I could sense a power too strange to dismiss its presence. Not more dangerous than Hell, no, but there was something in that tinge, a barely perceptible rustle on the edge of my consciousness, something incomprehensible but familiar at the same time. It was as if I'd seen it before, only from a different angle and under different conditions.

It was this very impropriety that made me keep up a foolish masquerade, in no hurry at all to start a battle to the death, fearing some tricky trump card. Not surprisingly, the attack was made by the enemy and, characteristically, not at all by the one on whom my attention was focused. A particularly strong source of danger suddenly stood out among the still out-of-sight bastards, forcing me to do a dizzying somersault to avoid the bleeping spawn of the mixer and industrial crusher that had attacked me, while kicking aside both of the Eyes, who had no doubt considered me a temporary ally rather than an enemy.

Shapeshifter.

A very strong and old shapeshifter. One who had literally bonded with the spirit of his Beast long before he became a tainted brat. Its leap was perfectly calibrated, and the direct attack of its animal-shaped jaws and claws would have torn to shreds even a swamp ogre like Ygra at the time of our first encounter, with almost no resistance from the monster. A monstrously powerful racial class with almost no external techniques but with such boosts to survivability, regeneration, and physical characteristics that such masters don't even need it.

And he hated me, or rather, not me, but he hated Pypysh.

Where the image of the incomprehensible Owl, which I had created for fun, frightened Shmielae to death, I made this animal even more furious than he was in life by the mere fact of my existence. Clairvoyance, despite all the plugs literally sang, and the threads of intertwined destinies resembled the strings of an outlandish musical instrument. The shifter was an old enemy of the Nightbirds, who had brought them much evil and had himself been forced to hide from vengeance under the cult's skirt. I had no way to find out the details of these stories quickly and without risk, to understand what it was that connected him and Shmielae, why he had come here, and why he had gone out of his way to storm the place for my "person," going into debt to drag the rest of the group along with him. But I didn't want to know another bloody or tearful, or even tearful-bloody story of someone's life.

I'm just bored with it.

I had to start doing what I really enjoy - playing on the nerves and pissing off the people around me.

"I've never had a good thing to do with bears," I told the truth, only in hobbit fashion, looking straight into the eyes of the human-turned-Beorg, whose naked skin shone with unholy patterns of cult tattoos. "It's always your tribe that pisses me off! Don't you have anything else to do? I'll get you a job in no time!"

And then, without waiting for an answer, I threw up my hand, catching a small and unbearably hot needle in midair, fired in pursuit of the shapeshifter's attack. It scratched the operative in the line of fire with its edge, making him crumble to ash in an instant, and was quite dangerous, even for my shadow form, if the aegis defense was not applied. Alas, the nature of this disposable artifact was not so much planar as it was based on pumping massive amounts of Flame essence into subspace, anchored by the artifact. Even a simple scratch would cause a portion of the mobile pocket stored in the container to flow into the target's energy body, burning away everything that could be burned away. And on top of this needle was added a system of flight, acceleration, targeting, and allied recognition. The barrier penetration and elusiveness to premonitions were ensured by the exotic material of the needle itself.

Anyway, they tried to fuck me with a special tool sharpened for destroying Heroes, Summoned, or targets of comparable caliber, made in the same methodology, in the same style as the seven-tailed whip used by Shmiela. I'm proud, I'm telling you. I'm even a little offended that, thanks to my essentialism, a toy like this will be one of the few nearly useless methods against me... if I can react in time... of course. Behind the disguise and the hobbit's palm clenched tightly around the trophy, the barely discernible pollen of my essences, which I use to stabilize the hostile trinket, is not visible, so for others, I caught this legendary in every sense killing toy with my bare hands.

The talker, the shapeshifter, and even the cultist who'd launched a projectile at me out of direct line of sight were clearly freaking out. I, for my part, was getting tired of the prolonged and unnecessary clowning and decided to call it a day. The shapeshifter was level forty-six, his colleague was an unknown quantity, and the rest of the opponents were just background.

It was very difficult to use Dream, high-end essentialism, and shadow theft-based disguise at the same time, but after the recent insane artillery experiment, it seemed acceptable. I'd rather have it that way than have my brain come up with a new way to kill myself in a particularly sophisticated way.

The neighborhood of the manor, as well as the nearest part of the street, is covered by another mental influence, weakening, driving mad, burning out the will and thirst to live, ignoring, no, adapting to the powerful but very uniformly vicious defense of the fleur. The rustle of shards and the clinking of mirrors masquerading as the flapping of birds' wings, continuing the deception I had already created beforehand, generating more deception, itself becomes the worst of nightmares, for there is nothing more deceptive than the mirrors, nothing more adapted to pretense than the kaleidoscope of the unfulfilled.

The attack ignores the Pryhodonotchevs' mercenaries, the Eyes' fighters, and a few of the brave halflings, even though it scares the crap out of them. It doesn't hurt my companions, who follow the order to stay out of the way. But the rest of them got the full measure, and from the first seconds, there were casualties among the ambush regiment that "surrounded" us.

My expectations were indecently violated when the two high-level opponents, instead of instantly attacking the evil hobbit, which should have knocked me out of the created technique, on the contrary, retreated, covered with protection, and the shifter also hid under it. The second one, which I didn't understand, tossed aside an extremely unpleasant protective artifact that maintained an invisible barrier that cut off the flapping of wings and the pressure of Dream. The pyramid, shining with white light, just hovered over his left shoulder, and he got down on one knee and began to prepare something bad, which made my gut start to tingle with needles right in my brain, even though it was, as always, in my ass.

The shapeshifter jumped on the overturned mechanical fortress, still in human form, and with his whole appearance said that he was waiting for something, clearly provoking an attack. The barrier of the pyramid was not planar but, on the contrary - anti-planar, suppressing any deviation from the usual world order and leveling any active magic. It was a strong thing to be crushed by something like Shadow but not by Dream's scattered influence, disguised as either an astral attack or a trick from the arsenal of high shamanism. The picture was completed by the rare and not-too-accurate blows of the cultists, who were alive and protected enough not to die from the simultaneous pressure on their brains and essence. Their minds were a priori turned blind, while their souls were held tightly and thus protected from everything else by the influence of Vice.

Suddenly, I didn't have to dodge, nor did I need to use protection based on a pair of mirrors stashed in the pockets of my illusory clothes, because one of the Eyes, who possessed some powerful amulet and a perk or a title, and two mages from the beastfolk-mercenaries, supported by a halfling armed with another artifact, silently and without further ado, took over my cover. If I remembered those pieces of my memories correctly, this man was Pypysh's third grandnephew.

I smirked a wicked smile, increasing the pressure, making the flapping of the wings quite deafening, at the same time changing the polarity of the pressure. Instead of fear and terror, there is complete apathy, depression, the disintegration of any thoughts and desires into nothingness, and complete emptiness. And where Lust overcame Fear, it was too difficult for their defenses to counteract satiety. I could say that I exploited the natural vulnerability of such defenses. Though I confess if they had been better if they had been more saturated, and if they had known Lust more deeply, I would not have succeeded.

The number of attacks is decreasing, and even those who used to be beating in my direction with arrows, crossbow bolts, and simple (complex under the pressure can not be made) magic are now trying just not to die when the stopped mind forgets about the need to breathe and even live. Only the couple hidden under the barrier calmed down even more, and in the expression on the face of the remaining nameless kneeler, there was a kind of relieved sneer that could not be hidden behind the ecstasy. After all, having increased the power of my attack, I was no closer to breaking through the barrier, and, as they believed, I would not.

In some ways, they are right, of course.

But not in everything.

Even though shadow theft at my level allows me to use techniques of other planes, but only up to a certain limit. There's no way to use Dream and restore shadow techniques at the same time. Now, I am wearing something stolen and processed by Creation, but if I overdo it, the disguise will be washed away, so a moment later, the people around me will see a man of a human tribe instead of Pypysh Popyatchev, which is undesirable. In such a state, I will definitely not gather enough strength of Dream to break this barrier. But without disguise, and even with the use of mirrors, I can cope, although it will be more difficult than with Shadow.

The barrier was not even a weakness but a slight vulnerability that allowed me to deceive it without making too much effort to reveal myself and my nature. The still-maintained cage of essence, preventing the needle clutched in my hands from activating, was held by me for a good reason. In a different situation, the owner of the needle, the same bastard who had thrown it at me, could have activated it remotely, causing his artifact to open the vault and shower me with the essence of Flame. It wouldn't have been as effective as a direct injection, but it would have made me sad enough.

It's a good thing that right at the moment of my attack on the square, the third highest-ranking officer in command, albeit the weakest of the trio, took a Valerium shot to the head, which spattered the artifactual protection covering him, and a light scratch with Crooked Root, which turned him to rot a few seconds later. This far-from-militant man was clearly being dragged to open some kind of stationary defense or perhaps a safe because a Barrier Mage and Ritualist had no business being on the front lines, cultist or not.

The needle, without orders from the deceased, continued to carry out the command - to move towards my heart, or rather, towards the image of Pypysh's heart created by the disguise, so it was not too problematic to hold it. Either the spell or the prayer of the comrade hidden behind the barrier turned into frankly obscene howls and groans when I finally found the idea I needed, looking directly into the eyes of the shifter still sitting on the armored vehicle.

The flapping of wings fell silent.

Gone is the maddening apathy.

A few surviving opponents who had not yet been killed by my "allies'" apt strikes began to come to their senses.

And I, looking directly at the slightly tense Beorg, pointed at him with my finger, rolling my eyes as if parodying some fortune-teller from a cheap show about true love, began, relying on the Soul of the Mocker and unformed visions about the fate of this maniac, to recite undying classics, because anyway it was necessary to occupy the freaks somehow, while I managed to realize another schizoplan.

"You walk through the woods, but you fly over the world." The dream is added to the voice not at all personally but at the expense of one of the pocket mirrors, a couple seconds earlier reworked into a simple amulet, but from the outside it might well seem as if I were using some analog of a very specific battle prophecy, as strange as the phrase sounds. "You see the Vehicle. You are a bear. You will burn!"

And the last words were so strong (the amulet cracked) that the shifter, who stood up sharply after the first line that had touched something in him, sat down on the cold iron of the Battle Vehicle.

He sat on it, and he burned to death.

I'd say I could be proud of myself, but I haven't been able to make myself proud with another crazy move in quite some time. In any case, I managed to not only keep the pair in place but also to neither retreat nor redesign the defense in a more acceptable way. Combining Essentialism, Creation, and the banal control of the little critter of my "favorite" plane, I siphoned off all the essence in the needle, thus destroying it, and enclosed this essence in a strong cage of neutral essence (while maintaining the highest "pressure" in the new vessel), attached the resulting bomb to the unfortunate beast, thus fatally crippling the beast, and kicked it out into the real world. He kicked it out inside the barrier, smearing the creature's essence on the barrier, thus releasing the imprisoned bomb.

The shadow lunged into reality and burst just inside the dead vehicle, scorching the shifter's ass all the way to his brain. With his regeneration and tattooed resistance, he had a good chance of surviving being burned to the bone more than once. But being hit with essences, and even with planar support, is considered one of the most disliked tricks by regenerators. This is where, for example, the vulnerability of swamp ogres to alchemical acids or even the undead's aversion to silver comes from. The poor cannibal bear - I'm sure he's eaten more people in his life than I have burgers - screamed for a second and a half, and then his lungs, throat, and the rest of his body were sizzling. By the time the screaming died down, the flames had engulfed the entire barrier, turning the safe haven into a crematorium, but I wasn't happy yet.

He stood still, right where his companion had been burned (probably in time to try to cover him up), with a bad glow in his eyes, his clothes intact and unburned, and the force radiating from him was still as unpleasant but now recognizable. In addition to Hell fleur in his eyes, in the colorless and conditionless lights that replaced his pupils, the same power that had been sealed in Taria's favorite weapon was bubbling with a poisonous brew.

He was a Hell-twisted chaoticist, and he'd asked for the most help he could from his patrons. Now, when my clairvoyance was no longer inhibited by his defenses, I could easily see his fifty-second level, his two classes of Chaos Conductor and Chaos Flame, and the state of distortion that had prevented him from gaining third class and Hero status at fifty. And I also knew that his sibling's soul was now swirling in torrents of morbid pleasure, taking all the negative damage of the Fire of Change, allowing the bastard to strike without fear of fatigue or intoxication.

A strong Chaotik, a natural born distorter, even if he does not possess pure Chaos at all, but only one of its isolated Manifestations. From this perspective, there is a much purer particle of Chaos hidden within Valerium, one that has no attachment to Manifestation, let alone contamination by Hell. Each shot from the Valerium changes its Manifestation to the one that fits best against a given target, and Chaos itself, in its purest form, cannot be realized or used at all except in exceptional cases.

And yet.

A flame that combines Chaos and Vice and is entrusted to the hands of a corrupted man who was created for this very task, sacrificing his endowment. A strong argument, even against a normal me who didn't need to disguise himself or play to the public. I should have nailed him in the beginning, but there's no one to blame now because I couldn't blame myself, right? I'm a fucking infallible isekai, I can't be dumb, right?

Although.

Stop.

A short man with a beard and mustache, summoning the flames of change and standing on top of an armored vehicle?

T.N. Well, it's a reference understandable to any native of the former Soviet Union. Vladimir Lenin. Made his famous speech standing on an armored vehicle.

Universe, are you fucking serious?

It was going to be a tough fight, and I couldn't make up my mind whether to fight with my disguise or not to take the risk, shifting into my Form and overwhelming the enemy with pure power. With all the danger of fire twice changed by two different plans, a fully pumped Aegis put on the Form would protect me from such a thing more than reliably, and up close this guy, whose whole power is based on turning himself into a volley fire system, would not be too scary for me.

I didn't have time to make a decision, as the surviving cultists, who had woken up a bit, began attacking me and the aides still protecting "Pypysh" from all sides, forcing my cover group to stop waiting for my commands and respond to the blows. The Chaotik approached in one sharp leap, apparently unable to use his blink at such a high level of energy, immediately launching several blood-red balls of chaotic flame.

I meet the balls with a mirror thrown to meet them, which sucks up these balls like a vacuum cleaner of spiders, although it was not easy for me and the rapidly fading artifact. This thing is very unpleasant, much more powerful than the usual planar attacks, requiring more energy to suppress the energy of the enemy. Where were you all going to go after drinking the dwarves? Why did you gather in one group a non-combat magic hacker, an antimagic shifter, and this prick, who is now using someone's billet against me, prepared not for this situation at all?

The powerful lightning from the left beastman is met by another flash of scarlet flame, which sprays the lightning, meets a frost arrow and a throwing dagger, but is shattered by the same wave, only reflected from a second mirror clutched in the hobbit's wrinkled and sweaty hands. And then he backs away as a huge, palm-sized gold coin flies past him, covered in ancient symbols and literally absorbing the surrounding energy. It took a chunk out of my defense, even though it was thrown so that it didn't hit me.

"Torbash, since you've opened the family vault, I have a question for you," I say indignantly, remembering where I could have seen this coin. "I hope you didn't damage my collection of Zainberg goblets."

"I ordered this filth to be sold for a third of the price in the same week that we began to be turned inside out for your adventures, Uncle!" Said the rapidly pale hobbit, not from fear but from the brief contact with the coin taken out of the container. "With all due respect!"

"What!!!?" Almost without acting, I put my hand to the place where my heart should be, even while turning away from the cultist who somehow didn't risk attacking. "I've been collecting it for half my life, you bastard! Do you know what it cost me, huh?"

Instead of attacking, the cultist simply jumped back, sending a few flaming spits in the direction of a couple of mercenaries who had carelessly peeked out of the ruins of the manor, turning them into less than ashes. Then he immediately jumped again, approaching us from the other side, where there was no coin. And now he was already preparing not a tentative but a real attack, literally glowing with the halo of his abominable fire.

The mirror turned black, bursting and crumbling into dust, but still, I managed to create a dome that distorted reality so badly that even that flame was sidetracked by the looking glass and its cunning. The great part of my success lies in a couple of barriers raised by the mages, which, although they did not slow down the blow that was clearly in another league, hid me from the gaze of the creator of this flame, allowing me to create deception with much greater authenticity.

"Go to the trolls' asses, you bastards!" I shouted indignantly, pretending that, all this time, I hadn't even paid attention to the enemy talking to my "nephew." "I'm not going to help you again! You take care of this shit, and I'll fly away!"

And with those words, I... no, not flying away, but finishing pouring a few streams from the melted mirror - the first one I threw toward the fiery bolls - into the mindless and almost soulless body of the cat cultist. My opponent recognized Shmielae, even though she had changed her appearance in the style of a wax figure that had been in a sauna, but he didn't immediately realize I wasn't directing this puppet into direct combat. It was just that its body and the remnants of its shells allowed this piece of meat to be used not only as a support unit (a very strong one, I should note) but also to survive a few seconds of contact with the very coin that had managed to scare our opponent.

The doll clutches at the ancient artifact, rapidly beginning to decompose into melted wax, but there is still too much real flesh in it to disintegrate on the spot. Simultaneously with the exit of the already definitely dead cat without nine lives on the stage, I raised the flapping of wings again, imitating the apparent effects of some clearly recognizable technique to everyone around me. It was the kind of thing where you had no idea what you were pretending to be, but the others had such a good idea that you could fool those very experts by relying on their understanding alone.

I'm sure that everyone, except perhaps the cultist who had realized the false nature of this attack, would consider Pypysh not only an adept of the Mirror but also a very cool mix of Cleric and Shaman, able to draw power directly from his "inner Owl." The Chaotik, especially after pumping himself with so much power, could see that I was attacking with Dream alone, even if he felt bad for a moment. The shield, carefully calibrated and prepared against subtle planes, covered him with a scarlet film, burning any attempts to influence his mind.

He was ready to pulverize Schmielae and then all of us. In fact, he sincerely believed that the mirror-man, tired after the square attacks and the deadly prophecy, was no match for him. He hit us so lazily only because he was afraid of overstressing the soul of his sacrificed brother. The souls of his mother and sister, who also had a tendency to Chaos, had already been destroyed by earlier adventures. And he had a task he still held out hope of accomplishing, and he needed all the strength he could muster to accomplish it. That powerful attack of his barely dodged by me was not the pinnacle of his power, but even that he used only to melt... no, not all of us, but that coin.

The cat's body literally turned inside out, sprouting a dozen mirrored peaks that burst from its insides, and all of its flesh began to wrap itself into a fleshy, waxy roll. The nasty, no-kidding nasty sight, which made a couple of defenders vomit despite my attempts not to drive them mad with the rustle of nightmares, ended when the peaks burst with a clinking rattle, sending the roll covered once more in liquefied mirror toward the enemy.

An outer shell to overcome the attempt to burn this attack in a fire of bloody chaos.

Meat casing, so the coin doesn't destroy the entire structure with its impact.

Needless to say, from such a straightforward attack, the enemy simply stepped aside, only to be calmed down even more by the fact that the coin, which frankly frightened him, was carried away without his direct participation by the victims themselves, which is fucking amazing? My understanding was enough to unravel the nature of this coin. Even if Pypysh and his kin had not managed to understand this thing, even if I also understood it far from the end. But I had the basis.

What was hidden in an unassuming piece of gold was the basis to which any energy, influence, or even concept simply clung, attracted like iron shavings to a magnet, and brought to a common state - to zero. And if the Dream could destroy the very structure of the artifact, if not overload it, in the case of Chaos, which initially had not even an energy manifestation, it was enough just to "poke and watch the result."

If he had wanted to strike without regard for his condition, I would have been the only one left alive, but he had relaxed too much. He thought my game, our game, was lost after we had lost the only weapon that could overpower him. And he genuinely, through all the agony of a body overflowing with pain and pleasure, through the soul-devouring Vice, managed to be childishly surprised. He was surprised when his leap, which should have broken the distance, was outrageously short. He was doubly surprised when a mirror-glazed cat roll flying by changed its vector of motion, attacking the point where the Chaotik had been forced to land. Tenfold was surprised when a quick, overpowered dash that might have allowed him to avoid the blow by a couple of steps made him step on the spot without moving an inch. But when the roll opened like a flower and released a golden round right into the cultist's stunned face, he didn't have time to be surprised.

Perched atop some huge and slightly magical tree sprouting in the garden of someone's estate half a block away from my battle, Hans, at this moment, must have gotten a level and some tricky title.

And the chaotik burst out, no other way than from envy.

There was no explosion, nor was there a powerful planar impact. It was just the cultist who had received the coin in his insolent face was like butter with a hot knife stuck in it. The coin plunged somewhere in the region of the upper jaw. The victim twitched several times, swelling rapidly, and reddened from the power of the scarlet fire flowing through his veins, which fought with the artifact and burst, annihilating the victim's entire body, along with a small - a couple of meters - area of the surrounding space and the artifact itself.

At the same moment that the deadly amulet touched its target, I struck the square again, this time without discounting the need to hold the essence needle, covering the heavens and earth with flapping wings and owl hooting. For a moment, the concentration of the dream-created nightmare became so dense that it managed to break through into reality, and every surviving defender of the manor, including the remaining Dreams, was able to make out the silhouettes of circling birds, invisible and unreal but deadly.

And everything fell silent as every single attacker fell silent.

"That's it," I said in a somewhat tired tone, looking accusingly in the direction of Pypysh's nephew, who had already realized that his daring of a hangman, who was going to die anyway, to his terrible uncle might lead to a foolish death even after a miraculous rescue, for Pypysh valued his goblets very much. "So I'm going to go and get my goblets back."

I was certainly eager to be stopped and by all present. For the guys from Eyes, the sinister Pypysh was considered a spy who had picked up secrets that spies just couldn't live with, as a matter of course. For his relatives, on the contrary, he was one of the few chances to get out of the mess with the squeezing of their assets because it's one thing to squeeze money and even lives from the relatives of a dead spy and quite another if this spy, who can transfigure a crowd of enemies into zucchini at one time, can at any moment, if not come to the rescue, then negotiate the protection of his family through those in power in exchange for some of his secrets, silence or just personal favors. And everyone around him, everyone in general, was deathly afraid to stay in a city plunged into a figurative hell without a fighter of his level behind him.

Alas, the shadow's steps took me away before the people around me dared to voice their requests.

With the same steps, I moved to the very house where my companions were sitting. All of them have decided to climb the tree mentioned earlier. To watch, so to speak, my outstanding actions and to get away from the active defense of the house, where there were no owners but some servants and guards were hiding. Some not the weakest curser turned the garden of this mansion into a minefield, which, during the attack on the capital, was put on full alert by those very guards. The owners were out of town anyway, and we were here to protect the house and ourselves.

"I give you my praise, Tin." Even before I had spoken a word, Tia spoke up. "Your theater of masks, which made those around you seriously believe in the existence of a previously worn disguise, will allow your strings to play many melodies for many and many ears in the far and near future. It was an excellent plan. I, and anyone who has the gift of reading into the intrigues of others, am ready to admit."

I was even a little confused by such blatant praise, especially since I had originally gone there just for the knowledge in Shmielae's head, not for clowning around. Something just came up, and I decided to tone it down a bit without getting too out of hand. It was only towards the end that I had to take a risk and spend a bit more time than necessary. On the other hand, it was because I had covered the prisoners and helped them survive that I was able to deal outrageously easily with a corrupt of this level and with such piercing power in the vessel of his body. Without the Сoin, I would have had to take much greater risks, and I would have expended much more energy than I wanted.

"I'm glad to hear that, Tia." I start cautiously, sensing behind my back that Losius is putting his palm over Taria's mouth, wanting to say something. "But alas, in this situation, I acted simply out of..."

With a sharp jerk at the limit of her potion-enhanced speed, the elfess drew closer to me, standing so close to my face that you'd think she was about to kiss me or was already kissing me.

"It was a well thought out and brilliantly executed diversion plan." Calmly and confidently, her lips uttered. "In the finest traditions of Weaving of Strings and Webs. By all canons, it should be recognized by the masters as a development of the highest class. And that's exactly what you had planned to do from the beginning. You planned it. Wisely. Not make a buffoonery of it for your amusement."

"Um..." Not even knowing what to say to that, I was just confused.

"I'm right, aren't I, Tin?" Something tells me that if I try to object, she'll do something anti-moral and wrongful, perhaps even painful, to me. "Absolutely right?"

* * *

"Okay!" Trying to keep the shameful squeal out of my voice, I turned on my inner Hero, who was now atypically silent and seemed to be huddled in the farthest corner of my leaky attic. "I've learned something, and now I know the point of our next attack. But the armada is even bigger than the last one, so we'll have to be smarter than that. Or dumber. Yes, definitely dumber, but much riskier!"

After about a minute, Taria and Hestia managed to move Tia away from me, which calmed my paranoia that claimed the druid could start growing FLŰGGÅƏNK∂€ČHIŒβØL∫ÊN for me, and then we started discussing the plan. I realized there was no threat in Tia's words and actions, and she was just out for another time with my love of messing with people's psyche. But at some point, I really started to get nervous! In one respect, my premonitions were completely true - the current plan was indeed even crazier than usual.

It took us at least an hour, if not an hour and a half, to find a suitable group. During this time, the mythical giant licking the timeless octahedron had managed to thin its prison, and the reinforcements frozen in the stopped space above the Palace also began to move slowly. Even without intuition, it was clear that it was the breakthrough of the mythic that had damaged the original structure of such powerful charms, reducing their time of effect to completely unplanned values.

In full deployment, such work on the Law could keep its prisoners for days, if not weeks, and this prison could be deactivated piecemeal, slowly and methodically grinding the armada of the devils. In fact, in this attack, their commander-in-chief threw, if not all the reserves, then a considerable part of them, at once, reducing the available forces to operate to values not at all soothing paranoia. But this commander-in-chief, whoever he was, was well aware of the presence of such a trump card and realized that no one would spend it on smaller prey.

The armada itself, though amazing, consisted mainly of weak and average devils, among which all really strong individuals were at most chasers, but not fighters, administrators of sorts. Ideally, the Mythic should have completely broken the order of the Emperor and his family, bringing the whole thing down on the palace. Even huge losses among the attackers would not be particularly dangerous because all this trifle had almost no personal souls with them - weak and deprived of prospects, the middles could rarely boast of a normal somn. The fall of the central stronghold, falling into the hands of the Eternal Blood devils, or even the Emperor himself, would more than pay for this massacre.

But even if they managed to capture both the armada and the mythical giant simultaneously, humans still lost. Exceeding any imaginable limits, the resistance of the mythic damped all possible influences, weakening them dozens and hundreds of times. Perhaps people could have used the pause, but the pause was put only by those who came from above, while the main assault groups, consisting of the devil elite, did not weaken the onslaught for a second. Every second, the ruler of the Empire of Ages received dozens of panic reports about the attack, losses, betrayal, lack of communication, the impossibility of dismantling strategic artifacts, and so on.

Time, ironic as it may sound, was now playing against the bearers of power over the Law, forcing them to make mistakes and waste time. And even if any of the Eternals could speed up Time for himself, having the opportunity to think carefully and make a plan, the rest of the capital was under attack, and there was no one there who could think. No matter how true and correct the orders of the Emperor, who had spent several hours compressed into a second to create them, he could not be heard by the warriors and mages fighting for their souls, and if they heard him, it was in one case out of five. The plans depended on information in the first place, and it also came incomplete, false or not at all.

In short, the situation was complicated.

It wasn't any easier for us, admittedly. It was hard to find the most suitable target, at least because the devils were not in a hurry to walk around us in an ideal composition for us, preferring to act in a way that was effective for them. Amazing, isn't it? The few groups we encountered, which were getting smaller and smaller, and the groups themselves were gathering into larger and larger crowds, we quietly cleared out, moving towards my intended goal. The reason for the increase in the quantity and quality of the cultists encountered was that all the small groups had either fulfilled their original small goal and went to join one of the larger groups or had been killed. The only ones left were the relatively dangerous factions that would not be easily broken.

We flooded three of these reinforced groups with Heaven, Shadow, and Druidic techniques, not caring so much about disguise anymore, though not forgetting it completely. Some of them had to be passed over because they were either moving too fast, or even by air, or they were too close to even larger formations, or they were already in battle with the defenders of the capital.... or they were strong enough that destroying them would require us to expend a lot of energy without doing much good.

A group of six creatures hugged and held hands, creating a sort of roundelay that floated above the ground and flew in a direction they knew with the speed of a good race car while covered by a fortress-class shield, maintaining all possible maneuverability. And all six of them had levels approaching the fiftieth, and at least one of them even exceeded the coveted fifty.

Nevertheless, the right group was found, and not without the help of clairvoyance, for the sake of which I had to stop controlling the shadow disguise, take a mirror in my hands, and fall out of life for a couple of minutes, allowing the others to cover myself. The right jackpot was a rather small, shabby team of half a dozen fighters, including only two devils. The cultists, however, were not a gift themselves, being their elite - excellent equipment, levels under forty, and no sense that they had recently gained those levels due to the huge number of victims, calm behavior of freaks accustomed to their vices, enjoying the flair, but not losing concentration and sanity, as well as a clear willingness to act coherently and the ability to achieve this coherence.

Despite the casualties that had thinned this team by more than threefold, they were still dangerous and important enemies, capable of causing a lot of trouble, especially if you let them join up with a larger unit. If we were to fight in the style we were accustomed to, we'd have to pour shadows over them at almost full strength, and it wasn't certain that a single blow would be enough, for they had high-quality amulets of protection on everyone, and they could put up their barriers with amazing skill.

But there's a reason I was looking for idiots like this, right?

My attention was focused on the devil couple. The incredibly skinny Thirsty for Laughter, wounded by some priest, judging by the remnants of divine magic on the stump of the missing limb, didn't interest me much. Giver of Caress of the forty-seven level was a different matter. The deviless was only a little taller than the human standard, about two meters and a half, while maintaining normal proportions. She had dark scarlet skin with a blue tint, large breasts covered by a bony breastplate and the equivalent of Taria's abilify (a popular trick among Lust's spawn, judging by the examples we'd seen so far), long legs, a gorgeous ass, and three tentacles on each side of her back, growing from somewhere near her shoulder blades, looking like an ugly parody of wings.

All of her power, which I could read through her defenses, was sharpened into the kind of subtle mental influence typical of devils and doubly typical of this aspect. A kind of slave driver capable of enslaving someone or reconfiguring an already-treated cultist on the fly. At least a third of the remaining people (though they could be considered people if they were a quarter of a step away from warped status) were firmly attached to her. The lady had obviously insured herself against a surprise attack by almost drinking their souls and caressing their bodies, so the bond between them was so strong that any blow to her would be passed on to the people who trusted her. I'll bet they almost fought for the right to be near the devil and thus protect her in case of danger. And she's not going to take them into her fold and eat them, except maybe a couple of the most damaged ones, because they're no longer common meat but useful assets. Such people are taken to the end only on big holidays as a reward for a feat or as a punishment for failure, no matter how much such mutually exclusive paragraphs piss me off.

The second devil was a melee fighter with the ability to absorb attacks directed at him while simultaneously burning the minds of his attackers with a wave of fun, happiness, and idleness. It was an orgasmic joke, and the harder you hit him, the stronger your connection to his magic would become, making it faster and easier to take the attacker down. If you kill him, then only with a powerful single blow, without giving him a chance to use his ace trick, and preferably also to be able to get rid of this trick. Even with a banal planar pump, unless there is something more elegant and cunning, like Shadow Theft, Aegis, or Manifestation.

Not ideal for my plan, but far better than anything we have a chance of finding in any reasonable amount of time. The timeless cage has only a short time left to live, and when it bursts, all our chances of escape are just as likely to burst like a giant soap ball with shit inside. It'll make any straw seem like steel rope.

With these thoughts, I reconfigured the stolen shadows on the team, refined them a bit more with Creation, added a little concentrated essence from the vessel, then covered myself with Aegis, stepped in front of the group going about their business, and, without waiting for a logical reaction to such insolence, poked a shining ring in the direction of the deviless, who was about to weave her attack.

Take two, yeah.

Last time, the consequences of the ring's blow to the devil were so powerful that the flux from the heroically dead (and thank the tits!) creature was so strong that I could feel it in full Form. This time, I decided to prepare a defense against such an uncommon wave of vice, laying a straw, so to speak. If I, being ready to meet something similar, can stand even without the Form, based on endurance alone, but for my friends, I can't vouch for it. Tia and Losius at most, but not Hans and Taria. Of course, we could have just led them away, but we were running out of time, and the group we'd met could either disperse at any moment or reach their goal by joining forces with other comrades.

It was a pity to discharge an ability that, in theory, could temporarily stun even a small army of devils on such a minor nuisance, but for the crazy idiocy that I hypocritically called a plan, I would need an allied creature, preferably a strong enough one. Giver was a good fit, and she was also the closest, so I rolled up my frugality into a tube and stuffed it deep inside. And I still had hope for one more ability of the Ring, which, in the same theory, can give an effect similar to the basic subjugation. In fact, my plan was based on that hope!

So, I activated it.

Until the last moment, I wondered if something bad would happen and if Giver would reflect my artifact on me. I mean, seriously! Trying to enslave a devil imprisoned in depravity, and clearly, an experienced devil with an artifact like the Ring - even asking the standard "what-could-go-wrong" question would be inappropriate because anything could go wrong. Whether I had underestimated my ring, which I had grown accustomed to seeing as a useless piece of junk on my finger that I would be sorry to throw away, or whether I had overestimated this particular person of the sorcerer's tribe, everything went perfectly.

The orgasmic shriek, inaudible to the ears but clearly distinguishable through the boiling fleur, struck first the cultists bound to Giver, then the other cultists, then the wounded Thirsty, and only then all of us. And this wave, capable of scorching the soul and mind, if not instantly, then of scorching the brains with so many perversions that it would be better to scorch them, washed over the hastily installed protection, shattered it, tore some of its elements, disembodied the creatures processed by Creation and embedded in it... And already when the stream of fleur was ready to overwhelm its victims, I completely closed myself with Aegis and pulled the stolen damage on myself.

Just like last time, the blow made my favorite defensive technique darken, though it didn't put it into the afterburner, and after it began to subside rapidly. The first and decisive blow of pleasure, which was to rewrite Giver's consciousness, had already passed, and the deviless, like any experienced devil, was rapidly taking her new desires under control, acting on bare reflexes.

In the meantime, I took my time stepping out of the Shadow in front of Thirsty, using the inexcusably long gap for my acceleration, testing my newly mastered technique, the final Aegis enhancement. Cold, hunger, emptiness, and such painful loneliness blindsided and pressed, pressed on his brain even harder than my form. And that's even though I'm using the ability in as controlled an environment as is even possible in a situation like this. Aegis blackens all the way to the bottom and a little further, making me a two-dimensional figure that eats light, warmth, and even joy, making me a creature more terrifying than my victim for a second.

And then.

I.

Share.

I share a drop of my pain, sitting not even in my soul, but somewhere deeper, in the very nature of what is the Overlord of the Shadow, giving my enemy the only thing I have the right to own, and which no one and nothing can take away from me. That which lies in the nature of every Shadow, which in its essence is more terrible than eternal hunger. That which gives food for icy hatred, the thirst to inflict suffering and to take, take, take everything that can be taken from another. It does not matter if this someone is a mortal, a victim, an enemy or even a Shadow, because there can be no difference in principle.

The origin of being Shadow, rejected equally by Light and Darkness.

The endless and nightmarish Loneliness.

The lightest touch on the pseudo-body of the Thirsty, who had just begun to react, the multi-ton pressure of the accelerated boost, the feeling of my presence, one heartbeat away from spreading over the alien and vile soul, washed over my opponent, at the same time revealing me to him as fully as he could not understand even the souls of his sonm. In another situation, to open myself to the devil would have been something even more obvious than suicide, but now that his very nature was reaching out, eager to receive what he had almost willingly given.

He sees it.

He understood it.

He shared it with me.

I don't feel any better. The burden of my shadowy nature hasn't lessened because even if you share infinity with someone, it won't stop being infinite, and two lonelinesses will still be lonely. I did not throw off this burden, merely giving the victim the exact same one. And, unlike me, who was used to such things, who started to get used to it from the very first level, from the first days of being in a new world, with the first feeling of gut-sucking emptiness that appeared when using shadow techniques...

Thirsty for Laughter saw.

Became as black and two-dimensional as the silhouette that touched him.

He found himself overwhelmed by the realization.

He shared.

And ceased to be.

Somehow, I did not even doubt that even such a depraved creature, accustomed to seeking pleasure in any pain, in any death, in the most terrible destruction, would receive only bitterness and emptiness from its outcome.

The cultists had been thinned out considerably. They did not have the ability to restore their brains to normal-abnormal form that every single devil had. If they had a normal state of abnormality at all. In general, half of the existing cast was rather dead than alive, and exactly zero of the cultists who remained in the category of the living showed any hope of self-recovery in the next few hours.

I thought about turning off the saturation of body and clothing with shadows, switching to mirror effects, and turning off the longtime nonhumans in voluptuous agony before they spilled out their souls and brains, but then they began to quiet down, to calm down, to freeze. It seemed as if the vice that had gripped them was changing in tone, becoming more viscous, more rigid, not allowing bodies and minds to be free, like some kind of intangible bondage, honestly. The effect felt habitually nasty, like anything else tied to Hell, but now there was a direction to it, an alien will, light and gentle but unbreakable and pervasive.

Slowly, as if to show off (not "as if," but definitely showing off), Giver of Caresses rose to her feet, crushing her companions with the ruthless efficiency of centuries of experience. From her point of view, however, they were all originally just her toys leased to her with the prospect of permanent ownership. And if you let her work properly and at the same time set her clear objectives, then these toys will continue to serve her even if she diametrically changes her goals. Well, they would. If they hadn't been damaged beyond reason by the consequences of Giver's conversion.

"What next?" The words flowed into my head with sweet molasses, seeming to bypass my hearing entirely, reaching at once to the base of my mind. "Orders, wishes, demands?"

There wasn't a hint of threat in her voice, just a slight mockery and a touch of not even love magic, more just natural charm. I wonder what level of seduction skills she has. She's trying desperately to probe me now, despite her ostensible calm and bravado, staying within the rules, unwilling to harm me with even a shadow of influence, and afraid that she'll become dangerous to me if she learns too much.

The deviless was literally rebuilding her personality on the fly so she could enjoy her new state even more without wasting a second. Her ring-bound loyalty was the cornerstone of her essence, more solid than she could have imagined, but her skills allowed her to build on that foundation any shell she or I needed. Whereas with Taria or Hestia, I was wary of influencing them too much, lest I break the original personality, the new victim of the ring was a different story.

Among devils, brainwashing each other and themselves was generally the order of the day, and it was not even considered something special for such creatures. Bosses would plant triggers and bookmarks in the brains of their subordinates, subordinates would seek to do the same to their bosses, allies would deceive an ally through a planted and pre-processed soul, and enemies would do the same to their enemies. At the same time, the same willingness to enjoy any pain and any outcome of events was the best defense against any influence of the inhabitants of Hell. It was impossible to subdue devils, for their personalities flowed with honey, ignoring any nets or barriers, reassuming their original form. Or not original, but any other form the devil desires.

The foundation, whether it is there or not, remains unchanged, and even a Domain Overlord has far from complete power over the foundations of his servants if they are strong servants, dependent not only on the domain but on their somns and skills. Now, Giver has a new foundation, much stronger than she could have imagined a moment ago. There is a new strength to it, giving a backbone to her techniques and methods, strengthening them by a quarter minimum, but there is a weakness as well. Now she is doomed, for the moment, someone suspects her of her altered nature... she knows her kin all too well, and she doesn't want to lose her new feeling. It is with me that her pleasure is so complete, so all-encompassing.

As with the bloodsucker from Arenam, the subordinate creature did not feel the typical human feelings or urges for me because its essence is not exactly not adapted for such things... it doesn't see the point. As with the aforementioned bloodsucker, the resulting transformation, while providing absolute (even against the typical effects of the ring) fidelity, did not make the creature's essence any more tolerant. And it was still a devil of Lust, which didn't make it any better.

To her, many things seemingly obvious even to a bloodsucker, despite all her experience and knowledge, are something distant and incomprehensible. Just as a professional animal trainer, scientist, or taxidermist understands much about beasts but hardly realizes how they think, she simply could not fathom some things. No, no, she perfectly mimicked feelings, emotions, and social roles. She could deceive and feign at an admirable level, as a creature of her rank and type should, but something was missing, completely missing. She wasn't a bloodsucker who at least remembered what it was like to be human, to be endowed. She had never lived as a normal mortal, and so it was difficult to read her, even given her complete openness and utter unwillingness to cause harm on her part.

A painful realization.

It's almost physically painful.

No way!

I was on the verge of killing the creature I'd just discovered, ignoring all self-control. If it had been me, even if it had been a medium-sized visionary with the same ring as mine, it would have had a good chance of being so mentally damaged by the images of its new "slave," despite its care and desire to keep the new "master" safe.

A mutual exchange of understanding of situations. That's what becoming a visionary is all about. It would be great if we could create visionary-only battle groups, but we're not in a fairy tale, are we? In a few seconds of eye-to-eye contact, we exchanged images, and I gave Giver some of the tasks that would need to be done by her. The deviless possessed a vast sonm, among which there were also seers, forming a small compact circle and a few more working separately. Most of these souls were personal souls, not loaned from the soul bank, and only for the duration of the attack. The credit souls were the first to be spent, and the battle her squad had been given had forced her not to conserve her strength, laying down trump card after trump card.

Yes, Giver was well aware that every soul in the Domain belonged to the Sovereign, even if it was a private one, sharing that awareness with me. But right now, the Sovereign has too many things to do to keep track of every servant of his. Neither my personal abilities nor the hundreds and hundreds of souls of seers constantly monitoring the situation would help - the plan required maximum investment from everyone, even the Sovereign himself. Even though Giver of Caresses had only a modicum of understanding of Sovereign of the Domain's full plan, even that was enough to make her wish even more strongly to be away not even from the city but from the Empire of the Ages altogether.

Surprisingly, until a minute ago, I thought this desire was incapable of getting any stronger.

The essence from Hestia's vial poured down the tall, forty-first-level cultist's throat, causing him to turn from a wilted zucchini to a fresh zucchini. It's almost impossible to restore brains after such a shakeup, even if I had a few days and a decent lab, but we don't need to give the patients their minds back. Just the ability to function and a modicum of adequacy so the dolls don't give us all away before they do.

I was working with essences, elixirs, and even Dream at the same time, which earned me the annoyance of Hans, who had to drag a mirror from the nearest available house again. And we were in the Middle Ages, albeit a magical one, so mirrors weren't the most common item, even in wealthy neighborhoods, so I couldn't open the first house I found and find everything I needed.

Slightly off to the side, Hestia worked, not caring about the anthropomorphic nature of her form, concentrating the mist on individual cultists, trying to maximize its impact without the need to accumulate it over a long time. She was doing very poorly, but she had a mythical talent, so she was getting something. This something was supplemented by the effects of Giver, who was leaning over her material while humming some lingering melody, whispering something inaudible to our ears but easily recognizable to those to whom the whisper was directed, and braiding the heads and hearts of the cultists with some strange black threads that were thinner than a spider's web and seemed to ignore material obstacles, going straight into the energy spectrum, merging with the victim's shells. Tia was scribbling some ritual that was supposed to cover us all since I was paying only minimal attention to disguise at the moment, and Taria was simply and uncomplicatedly shining her breasts into the faces of those Giver pointed out, helping to weaken even more the already almost non-existent natural resistance of the cultists' minds.

At a certain point, when it became clear that my potions (originally prepared to pump me and my companions out if we happened to catch a planar overdose) would no longer have a significant effect in a short time, I switched from the work of a medic to that of a ripper and taxidermist. A trick that had not been used for a long time, since the battle with Roche, and which was first tried by the late (I often mention the deceased who became deceased after meeting me) Maître Gordion, the head of the Stone Security Service.

I start decomposing still breathing, or just dying cultists into essence, literally ripping out chunks of their already chewed-up souls, feeding those chunks to the summoned Shadows, and then creating those Shadows in the right way. It was only slightly inferior to the recent Dream sacrifice, and that was only because the material had been worse than dead.

...Image Stealers, they're called...

Old and almost forgotten quote from the system description. It had seemed quite ominous even then, but it was only by doing it again, by taking up the task of creating the perfect mask again, the perfect garment, by likening ourselves to the Face Takers, that one could realize that ominousness, if not fully, then fully enough to shiver once more because of the unpleasant shiver that ran down one's spine. Or maybe the draughts are just too fierce in this half-destroyed building where we're staying for final preparations.

Six creatures, bursting with streams of gold and blood, literally devouring first the souls I had filtered out and then the lifeless bodies of the cultists. Once, they were small Shadows. Now, they are something completely incomprehensible, signed by the System with incomprehensible and constantly changing terms. This is the first time I've ever seen the System, or more likely my Hero eyes, unable to give a precise definition of the thing in question. I've seen completely hidden information or even planted deception, but I've never seen such a thing until today. Eventually, the process of incomprehensible transformation was complete, and the six creatures became six Garments of Shadow Flesh. No level corresponds to artifacts and amulets, not living or quasi-living entities.

Losing their intangibility, resembling a golden-black mixture of marshmallow, jelly, and smoke, they were, indeed, like garments. Not just camouflage in most of the spectra I knew but even allow me to use some of the donor's abilities. The latter, however, was of no use to anyone, but it opened the door to other advantages. Together with a part of the classes and gifts, part blocked and almost completely extinguished, deliberately reduced to a barely smoldering embryo (so as not to risk poisoning the wearer of this abomination with Hell fleur, among other dangers), the garment would give skills, pieces of memory in the form of sudden insights when it was necessary to answer a question, even the donor's manner of speech or movements. Combined with the disguise should be enough to keep us from being discovered right away.

"Now I'm going to say 'my deeds have contained even worse madness' about this one." The sarcasm in Tia's words was about as poisonous as the battle-flowers she grew. "You're a seer, Tin! How can you even tolerate what you willingly took on?"

"And you have to try what I've experienced to fully understand, Stargirl." The creature replied softly, now gently pulling me against her, pressing her face into my tits, while keeping as much traction on me as possible, creating a small circle of just three onlookers. "Then you'll feel better, and I'll feel more desirable."

Tia ignored the attempt to get under her skin with her typical indifference, seemingly not recognizing Giver of Caresses as a person, just an inconvenient tool, like a cursed blade or an unstable explosive potion. The devil immediately disliked the elf for two fatal (from the subjugated creature's point of view) flaws. First, the druid was the only woman in our ranks who remained untreated by the Ring. Second, unlike Hans and Losius, who were relatively well-read by the devil due to their experience, skills, talents, and some souls from the sonm, Tia was able to hide and deceive those watching. And then the typical logic of her kind worked: she was hiding, so there was a reason to hide, so she was planning something, so this something was dangerous for me, so Tia had to be quietly bewitched, put bookmarks in her head and preferably completely defamed and bound, and then polished with a ring on top to guarantee it.

She even managed to subtly, really subtly, and, importantly, very logically hint that the ring would be a reasonable option for Tia. She managed to do it in a way that didn't completely piss me off by making me turn Form and eat her heart out. Moreover, without any magic, hypnosis, or any other influence, just the ability to deliver her thoughts. I, for a second, consider her proposal. I mean, I rejected it immediately, but the fact itself shows the level! This is someone who had a lot of experience in seducing the righteous from the righteous path.

Even my contempt, my unconcealed disgust, frozen on the border with hatred, was perceived by her with sincere joy, as well as any other of my actions. She got more pleasure from the very fact of her humiliation in front of me than in her whole life, and therefore, she could not get upset or offended almost conceptually. This, of course, is entirely like a devil, only with all thoughts fixed not on the desire of Vice to follow but on me, but fuck! Fuck me three times!

"Objection!" Taria, observing the situation, behaves, as always, completely unconcerned, hiding behind that unconcern a desire to troll all sides of the altercation. "I've experienced it all on my own, but even to me, this idea seems crazy. And I'm a very broad-minded person, my tongue."

Still, Taria is surprisingly thick-skinned and reckless, and not just in a good way. From our stories and the many training sessions she'd had in Dream, she knew the threat of creatures, as well as the difference between them and the endowed. Moreover, she had already developed her senses well enough to be able to sense all sorts of things even without a connection to the plane. And she was still drawn to frivolous pranks and fun in obscure directions. Luckily, even she wasn't desperate enough to seriously try to get someone like Giver into bed.

I hope.

The deviless, instead of answering, only stuck out her tongue, which Taria had mentioned, and started to move it in the air, putting her fingers to her face in the shape of the English letter "v". Again, no Vice, only body tongue (pun totally intentional) and a kind of hypnosis, but after watching this "dance" for five seconds, the dancer almost cum on the spot.

"I don't like this thing." Losius didn't listen to the argument at all because he was fully focused on his garment, which disliked Heaven even more than Losius disliked garment. "And she obviously didn't like me either."

"I'd look at someone who would even like that thing." Hestia showed no enthusiasm either, though it was to her, as one bound to the Mist, that such things were not so much a source of danger as a hearty supply of strength that could be given to the Mist at any moment. "But we're not likely to see such crazy ones here."

"Gah! Ha! Huh! See what I can do!" Hans shouted from the opposite end of the ruins we were occupying, twirling his daggers, which flashed fire and cold in his hands, filling them with a faint shadow of planar power from the residual essence of their former owners. "I wish someone had told me I wasn't fucking awesome!"

"Yes-yes?" Losius's face expresses a strange mixture of world sorrow and doomed politeness.

"Well, yeah." Hestia agreed, finishing dressing, pretending that she hadn't said her previous phrase and that the people around her had heard it.

"Look, Losius!" The pathfinder persisted. "I can light a pipe from my finger!"

"Holy Heavens, Hans!" The aristocrat's soul still couldn't stand it. "You're a tracker. You mustn't smoke, for the odor of tobacco will give you away."

"Yes, but all my youth, I wanted to light a cigarette from my finger, to be like a real wizard!" Losius' argument was wasted. "Well, not all my life, but only until I shaved my mustache. But I dreamed of it! And anyway, being able to light a cigarette from a finger is better than not being able to light a cigarette from a finger."

Somehow, it happened that Taria, who was simultaneously trying to probe the devil's vulnerability to bad humor, and the three of us, who were bound together, looked at each other and shrugged perplexedly, and even Giver was almost genuinely perplexed. That is, she sensed my attitude to the situation, and then she changed her attitude a little, trying to evoke a response from me, no matter what coloring, but just a little, rather than deliberately stirring up a false feeling in herself.

Yeah.

"It's time to go."

* * *

This fortification was probably the second most important, if not the most important, of all the anchor points of the Eternal Ritual. The complex of buildings that belonged to the Golden Feather Magic Guild had been surrendered to the cult almost without a fight. Unless you counted the token resistance on the ground. Just in an instant, almost all the defenses, all the defense lines, multilayer traps, and artifact perimeters were turned off, and almost all the guards, rapid response teams, and the strongest guild mages silently let people, non-humans, and creatures inside. After that, the defenses were raised again, adding new ones and putting the guild under siege while continuing the abundant flow of sacrifices that went on in the guild cellars.

This organization was never known for its strong fighters, preferring to keep a huge staff of mercenaries, and specialists, or simply tie up retired fighters from the army who wished to retire, but without losing the streams of gold and silver that they were paid for their service. The Golden Feathers traded in all sorts of enchanted amulets, alchemical potions, and ritual supplies. They were often shamed for having such close ties to the Gold Belt merchants that it wasn't even clear where the peddlers ended and the proud mages began.

To be fair, it was not an unsubstantiated accusation. The Golden Ones had much more of the above-mentioned merchants in their actions and manner of doing business, and they were accustomed to solving their affairs with money rather than magic. Nevertheless, they had their own researchers, prominent scientists, and even outstanding young talents in their ranks. Even though this guild did not have a clear specialization, it had enough wide-ranging specialists and the departments they led. Their masters rarely created true masterpieces, and the elite layer of amulets, elixirs, or rituals was not under them, but this guild held the lion's share of the turnover of grassroots charms and amulets in the territory of the Eternal, as well as in the central or distant provinces.

The chicken pecking at the grain, the presence of patrons among the imperial court, allies among mercenary units, many of which could be considered mercenary armies, even if not as "free" as they said, as well as partners among the most prominent trading houses made them one of the richest guilds of the Empire of the Ages. Not the strongest, because only mercenaries and talents lured by various means could not get to the top, not the most influential, because for the protection of "free" mercenaries and favorable state contracts they had to pay a considerable share of autonomy, but really rich.

They had a stronghold to match their ambitions and wallets, and when put into battle mode, filled with cultists ready for battle and reinforced by the spells raised by the devils and their terrible magic, it was capable of stopping almost any attack. It did. Defense calmly repulsed a few sluggish and a couple of not-so-sluggish assaults from the gradually recovering guards, guards, and mortals ready to fight the creatures.

The trick was that with all the turmoil raised by the betrayals, the broken bonds, and the general panic, all these guilds, even those that remained unaffected by the betrayals and managed to recover quickly from the surprise attacks, began to defend themselves and their own first and even the direct orders of the Emperor did not always reach the ears of the senior officers and honorable guild masters. The creatures didn't need to storm every point of defense, only to hold them back, to give themselves time without giving it to the others.

So it turned out that not the most powerful forces went to storm the Golden Feather, getting epic kicks back. Reinforcements were arriving, communication was restored, the depth of FUBAR gradually reached everyone and everything, and the endowed realized that there was no way to sit back and that it was necessary to go to war. But slowly, this truth was germinating in their heads, and the devils and the remnants of their network of agents were doing everything in their power and a little more on top to make "slowly" even more "slowly."

I could try to make a situational alliance with the army and militia, slowly gathering outside the reach of artillery charms or battle artifacts. But there were two things in the way. The presence of Tia and I in our squad, who are a bit sought after for such a small thing as a successful assassination attempt on the ruling bloodline, slightly reduces the likelihood of a successful alliance.

Instead, we headed straight inside.

Of course, the territory of Golden Feather was surrounded and blocked off by its barriers, enchantments, and artifacts. The personalities defending the capital included their Heroes, legendary artifacts, and elite units. There were too few of them to storm the fortification, and they would hardly be able to gather enough forces before the Emperor's locking technique fell. Unless they were sent to their deaths by direct decree for any chance, even realizing that they would all just bang their heads against the wall, but that would be of little use. The defenders were already strong enough to make life difficult for the devils in hiding.

It would have been enough if the creatures hadn't foreseen such an obvious move if they hadn't prepared their countermeasures long before the final stage of the plan. One of the unremarkable buildings was a small mansion of some provincial aristocrat who had bought the property only out of a desire for a place to live in the Eternal. The unobtrusively treated servants quietly allowed the masters who arrived a month ago to create a powerful and almost no background ritual circuit of a one-time portal, which works only in the presence of a certain key. It was not easy to hack such a thing and to survive the hack and be able to get inside the perimeter of the Golden Feather, you had to be a very dangerous and lucky scumbag.

This portal was a backup loophole for some laggard group that would have to get inside the ritual support unit but would not make it in time for various reasons. Giver of Caresses had that reason even before she met me. She was carrying a vial with the soul of a very famous master jeweler she had fucked, commissioned by one of the generals. She had also broken into the estate of a proud aristocrat who had an extremely curious artifact that he didn't want to give away to his rivals and a vicious group of elite guards who also didn't want the artifact to be taken away bloodlessly. It was on the second assignment (the most difficult of the half dozen errands) that she lost a significant portion of her toys and one of her devil allies.

She could have pulled it out, but she didn't. There was no point in risking herself, having already seized an artifact in which the Sovereign had shown interest. It had been a mild, indirect interest, but one of the higher subordinates had remembered it and had thought it logical he should be the one to present the gift and not someone else who had witnessed it.

From the Giver's point of view, she had completed her task in full, even if not at an ideal level. No one would praise her for her losses, but they wouldn't punish her too much either. It was just that her profit from her deeds was less than she would have liked, but any devil wants everything, right? Losses among the elite toys were unpleasant but understandable. She hadn't been sent to kill a squad of bums but rather serious warriors, ready to defend their lives and successfully fend off a surprise attack by a recruited servant or a brainwashed family member.

But that was before. Before she met us.

She was the only one of the devils left, even if she still had her prey, but she was not to be praised. I had to take care of the opposite. We all needed to get close to the source of the ritual, but to be allowed to go there, even with a guide in the form of a high-level subordinate creature, we had to be cunning or breakthrough. Breakthrough, when surrounded by an army even larger than the one at the last point, it's a breakthrough to our demise.

I had a vial of Tia's blood, a little free time, a sick imagination, a growth mirror, and vegetable-like cultists, which, even after disassembling some of them into Garments, were still enough to do the trick. Enough to collect all the available essence of star elements, add to it the essence of life, and, with the help of frankly black alchemy, mirror reflections, and strong words, disguise the victims as pureblooded elves.

If you dug a little deeper, these meat puppets (puppets even more than devils usually put into that word) would reveal it with half a glance. But they wore the same garments as we did, with the difference that they were sewn on, not put on, and I could still control the disguise, even if I was getting close to my limit. Disguise on us, on still alive and relatively capable cultists, on deceptions in the form of elves, maintaining communication with the deviless, and the need to maintain all these deceptions, dynamically change, adjust to individual scanning abilities or closed fields .... Let's just say that the problem here was not even in concentration, but in the diversity of actions. It was one thing to pretend to be something or someone else in front of any audience - it was not that difficult for a shadowman. It's much harder to pretend to be several separate identities at once, as in the case of a shadow stealing team's cover. But when the disguise is taken to the next level, and the number of people being covered up has increased significantly, you just have to grit your teeth and bear it.

For a second, I wished I'd thought of pretending to be one of the captive big-eared ones myself, riding the handles all the way to the final target. It would have been much less stressful, but now, under the inaudible ticking of the incorruptible timer, marking the approaching moment of total fuck-up, I had only to play the chosen tactics to the logical finale. It was a pity that the logical finale of this idea was only a stupid suicide.

It was with these thoughts in mind I stepped into the bloody light of the portal ritual, where a minute earlier, five of the subordinate servants had been laid down by Giver's command. It was disgusting, but there was no time to search for another batch of victims, and the victims themselves more than deserved their fate, as I hypocritically tried to convince myself, carefully omitting the fact that most of the fatal distortions in their brains and essence were not voluntary.

I wondered if I should promise myself a glass of vine for the repose of their souls in the distant future (if there was a future for all of us), but then the portal went off, and all thoughts of food and drink went out of my head, and I almost threw up in my mask. Not because of the disgusting sight of the transfer but because of the very peculiar sensations of the transfer that seeped through the construction of the Garment.

Welcome to Hell office, Kostik.

Don't fuck here everything.

Oh, wait a minute!

Quite the opposite!

The first sight we saw at the new place was a classic tentacle monster of extremely unpleasant level, occupying half of the vast hall, which had at least a dozen transfer pentagrams in addition to the one we used. And this mega-tentacle, oozing slime and other suspicious liquids and semi-liquids of all colors of the rainbow, was performing precisely the tasks that one expects from such a creature - to fuck magick girls. And magick boys. And even magick grandfathers and magick grandmothers. And in general, fuck humans and non-humans of all professions, levels and genders.

There were prisoners who had been given to a near-legendary creature or were threatening to take that legendary status at any moment, and future servants who were now being mind-washed in a very subtle way for such a crude approach, as well as proven cultists or devils who were not only enjoying the caresses, but were also being restored, healed, and given positive effects. If Giver were of a lower rank, she would have felt free to relax in the tentacles of Sliding Embrace after a difficult task, but now she had not yet completed the task, and her level was too high to allow her to relax this way without losing her authority. Plus, the effect of the Ring didn't and couldn't dull her lust, but it did redirect it in my direction.

So, while I kept my cloak on, recovered from the transfer, etched out the energy that had seeped through the defenses from myself and my companions, trying to suppress the urge to fill the place with shadows and sprinkle salt on top. Giver was pushing diplomacy, accomplishing the task at hand. A forty-third-level Passionate Freak, resembling a huge hunchback of three meters in height with a cock longer than he is, clearly wanted something from my "ally," and not good.

It was reckless to use clairvoyance, but Giver shared the images with me, who'd cut off all my attempts to probe my surroundings, sending them directly through the soul of one of her beholders wrapped in the flesh of the Garment. The soul suffered as the new garment literally ate away at its fragile essence, ignoring the fleur of Vice, but it did its job.

Devils do not speak like the entities of the real world - they are creatures, even if they are very clever. Devils, especially if they are powerful or even contracted in the real world, are perfectly capable of talking, pretending, and lying, but they have a different way of communicating than other planar creatures, like Shadows, Astral spirits, and the like. Something more akin to the exchange of images than words, but even here, the fiends stand out.

They, due to their affinity with the hosts of souls and familiarity with the society of endowed or simply material creatures, have adopted a lot from them. So, the exchange of images in their ranks is easily combined with words, flattery, threats, promises, and other pleasures. Somewhat similar to the manner of elven High Speech, only more chaotic, devoid of static, and constantly in change. The same word can have hundreds of meanings for both elf and devil, but for the elf, these meanings are often clearly defined from the beginning. Hell Speech depends on the speaker's position, status, level, species and subspecies, date and place of conversation, environment, mood, and generally any whim. Yes, high speech can do that kind of thing too... but not to such an extent that even absolutely the same truths, expressed in similar situations, can change their meaning to the exact opposite.

Absolutely.

Nonhuman.

Psychology.

They had to not listen to the surrounding sounds, especially considering the mega-tentacle and its victim-friends, and decipher only the final result and the "radiograms" sent through the captive soul. The cultists, due to the nature of their gifts, understood much more than ordinary people, but this understanding defiled and corrupted even more. Lust seemed to be in every word of these creatures, every gesture, every stance, every movement - no wonder these bastards were so easy to brainwash and recruit. The very nature of Vice is that it is a vice that everyone desires, and there is no way to remove the vulnerability to it because it is inherent in the nature of every living thing.

The power of the fleur was not pure energy, not at all. Just the planar power of Hell was surprisingly neutral, not too dangerous, inferior even to Astral-based techniques... theoretically. Because for a devil, there is no such thing as neutral energy - any particle of power that passes through the filter of the devil's essence becomes a fleur. It is a funny situation when the main thing of the plane is firmly tied not to the plane itself but to its inhabitants, actually not existing outside the essences of these inhabitants.

The pure energy of Hell is like an imaginary number in mathematics, a theoretical unit that is simply unrealistic to touch or measure. It is necessary to look for research on this topic, preferably conducted by some class tied to such an ambitious plan.... but such studies are sometimes dangerous even to read, and not only because interest in this direction one can be burned to death. Ha-ha. Literally.

Giver of Caresses was cool by the standards of her domain. She was in the small percentage of the elite that could look down on almost all the other devils, but that wasn't the top. She had her own bosses, both much more powerful in level and in a favorable social role, which made them look at her like shit. The Humpy Dickbearer (for whom the Oglaf huge dick was quite a working weapon of high grade) belonged to those who were not allies, as far as it was applicable to devils, for her, as she was not a part of the retinue of those whom the Humpy served.

Exchanges of pleasantries, words, and sub-thoughts boiled down to hundreds of different promises, suggestions, indications, or concerns. The freak wanted to know where the Giver had gotten the elves from, at the same time hinting at the possibility of pointing out to her superiors that her troop was losing too much, putting his opinion and the opinion of a few of those he could persuade to speak in the right light. Had you not lost the forces entrusted to you by chasing after the sweet souls of the firstborn to gain favor with the Sovereign? And if you have, then share it if you don't want trouble.

Push.

Respond.

Reference to the order.

Ignore.

New cycle.

Intrigue in any domain of Hell never subsides but always comes down to the fulfillment of the Sovereign's will. Simply because any creature living in a domain, in an artificial world objectified by hundreds of thousands of souls that belonged to the Sovereign and were assembled by his will, belongs a priori to that Sovereign. Not even brainwashing for absolute loyalty, but controlling the laws of reality, rewriting the universe, against which every creature always fights, striving to throw off control but remaining within the established rules. Only the strong are worthy of partial freedom from the domain's influence, but they always use all sorts of tricks against themselves, methods of maintaining obedience, so that the chain dogs remain chain dogs because the Sovereign may turn out to be a new one.

It was not to say that the loyalty instilled by the Ring would fall apart if Giver spent a couple of months in her native domain or simply fell under the gaze of the creature that ruled that domain. She was strong, and her personality could resist a lot of influences, but still, the processed deviless was going to die, but not to get into the domain. All for the thrill of being mine, that mere existence alone pleased her beyond even her imagination. There was no point in risking the Sovereign's gaze if it could be avoided.... or die, but without losing the source of her submission, staying by his side until the end.

In such conditions, it is quite difficult to intrigue. One must simultaneously keep one's own goal in mind and not put the common cause in a vulnerable position. One of the favorite tactics of the devils was to provoke a competitor to an unwise action by putting his back or, on the contrary, by pushing the one who had been put in his back. Quite often, by the way, it was the one who allowed betraying profitably who was punished, not the one who betrayed because no need to be the smartest.

Or Sovereign was in such a mood.

Or something else.

It depends on the situation, and there are more shades of it than there are petals in a field of daisies. In another situation, Giver could have acted in many ways, but right now, she didn't care about the consequences, trying to fulfill her goal without revealing herself too soon. But that early time never went farther than a couple hours, so the rudeness she allowed, the refusals to share, the broken strands of commitment or broken contracts were very unkind, but, at the same time, silence.

Yes, she said she'd give the long-eared ones, the blood of Stars and Life, straight to the head ritualist (who at this point was a devil, not a cultist) and his assistants, not to her patrons, so that they'd already made the gift by charging for it. It's war, and they're all in a hurry, so her arguments are not ignored because she's not crossing the common cause. Some, almost all, will assume the deviless has some kind of treaty with Soft Touch and his retinue, that she is betraying now according to a prearranged plan. After all, it is easier to believe in the cunning of a rival for the attention and approval of the Sovereign than in the fact that thein trick with an infiltrated agent was used against them.

It's easier, yes.

However, one should not lose caution, keeping minimal pauses, answering questions, and giving room for imagination. So as not to be suspected, for example, a cunning agent of another domain, who managed to lure Giver by promising new souls, a new sonm, and connection to another soul bank, at the same time confirming his guarantees so the creature would believe it. Domains are at war with each other, albeit, most often, without leaving Hell so no one would reject the option of sabotage, and they would check even their own, just out of paranoid caution provoked by innumerable years of experience.

No amount of experience will help against the predictability of human stupidity.

Elves are the ideal sacrificial material, as is generally accepted among all the witch doctors of the world and among creatures outside the real plane of existence. There are races, ritual killing of which can give more output under certain conditions or even in any conditions, but there are practically none as capacious as ordinary elves, as widespread and relatively easy to obtain. The matter is not in planar connection, in fact, there are races with it that are not weaker, the matter is in the very nature of the firstborn.

Their souls and energy are as pure as a baby's tears.

Not in terms of holiness or anything like that, no. Rather, these souls have the maximum distillation, the ultimate filtration, so it is always easier to assimilate what is received from such sacrifices, carries fewer risks, and is many times higher in terms of effectiveness. The doctrine of any elf's training hinges on self-control, separation of self, and the imposing influence of class. Here you can give dozens of theories, each of which is surprisingly plausible, make assumptions, or some other bullshit, but the main argument will be banal statistics.

If you slaughter a bandit of the twentieth level on the altar complex and then do the same with a young elf of at least the tenth level, the result and the amount assimilated will be surprisingly different. Where a greedy creature or a cunning witch doctor would get one free stat from a human, the one who took the gift of the long-eared will be given at least five times more, and the consequences in the form of question marks in the Status will be given ten times less, if the ritual is conducted according to all the rules, and not eat directly through abilities like Grasp.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg!

The basis of the essence of the starborn is such that it can be used in almost any situation to strengthen almost any altar, and even now, despite the availability of pre-selected materials, a few extra ears will not just be superfluous - they will be surprisingly useful! For a good master, it will not be difficult to add such support, to throw a new piece of wood into the flames of the hell furnace without damaging the basis of the extremely strong and stable ritual, which has become even stronger since its launch.

In short, elves are a super grease for the mechanism of the City's transfer. Their presence is not necessary, but it will not be superfluous, for which Giver of Caresses was ready to vouch with her own existence, as well as for the fact that the probability of rejection of such a "gift" from the side of Touch is minimal. No one would be willing to help her get over her own decisions that had made her come directly to the ritualists until they'd milked her dry, and then it wasn't certain that they'd support her.

At the moment, the cult had lost only seven points of ritual concentration, among which only two were anchor points, one of them on my absent conscience. The situation is not the most dangerous, but still, the creatures have gradually pulled all their forces into a fist, waiting for the time of the Eternal's "let the whole world wait" not to lose a couple more. And the endowed ones didn't have much chance to break even small points during this time, let alone larger ones.

Nevertheless, the very fact they have pulled these forces together means the possibility, the existence of a probability in which the destruction of another ritual support, even if we are right next to the support, will allow us, if not to destroy the mechanism of the ritual, then at least to slip through the crack that has opened.

In theory.

The journey through the territory occupied by the creatures and their servants was a strange sight, to say the least. It was a mixture of porn, bloody horror, war drama, Giger's paintings, and other little things that wouldn't make you go gray just because your heart would stop before you did. The desire to kill was growing exponentially, and for once, I had no logical reason to restrain it. Well, except for the obvious "if I snap, we're fucked," but I'd been living with that fact for too long, even without the Hell invasion.

Lust ruled here, ruled unconditionally and mercilessly, and resulted in hundreds of orgies, very few of which were useless, but many of which were bloody. Some spectacles, such as prisoners being broken down and reshaped right in front of his eyes into another distorted something, caused not anger or disgust and not even the occasional attraction that slipped through all self-control but banal amazement. How could one think of such things?

Lust ruled here, but near the central ritual complex, which the monsters had quietly taken over with the Golden Feather Guild, even Lust gave way to discipline - patrols, barriers, sensors, hundreds of little devils scurrying around, tasting our disguises, the exotic abilities of the guards and the artifacts they'd brought in. I couldn't say that the protection here was on par with that of the Library, but it wasn't just me and Losius I had to cover.

The door leading to the ritual halls reminded me of bank vaults because there was so much enchanted steel, gold, mithril, and other exotic materials in this construction that its sale would cover the annual budget of some province of an outlandish kingdom. It was at least a meter and a half thick, shining with runes and sigils, and felt completely inert to all influences, a door that could be sent for a deep swim in the Shadow or left in Dream for a couple of days, only to be retrieved, wiped clean, and put back in place.

There are things and materials even more durable, but the main feature of this construction remains the complete isolation of all external influences and energy flows. At the previous points, even at the very first, accidentally found, there was bound to be something similar, only lower level, but here, looking at this creation, I realize that even I would have to lay out almost the entire reserve to break this armor. Still, it's good that we didn't go for a direct assault. It's very good.

Giver is merrily and cheerfully dropping hints, letting herself down on all sorts of promises and making guarantees she has no chance of backing up because they are false from beginning to end. Her battle now is even harder than my fight against the sensors, and the importance of that battle is even greater. We should not be allowed in because it is not the scale of a forty-seventh-level Giver of Caresess to be allowed inside with a creature working on such an important task. In other circumstances, she would have gotten an audience without much trouble because she was elite! But it took time, contracts, deceit, intrigue, scheming, backstabbing, and corruption, without which a society of devils simply did not exist, and they would have let her in alone, unaccompanied.

Deviless has been playing her part, trying to make herself look like a skillfully tricked loser who somehow got tricked into trying to bite off more than she can chew. That's why she's eager to put the elves in the hands of the Soft Touch, hoping to gain his favor and change one entourage for another, only to do so with a bunch of mistakes and small defeats will only lead to collapse, loss of status, cutting off the conduit to the soul bank, lowering her admissions, and depriving her of most of the sonm she'll have to give up for survival.

She pretends, hides one mask behind another, playing the trump card of surprise, supplementing it with the greed of Touch, who does not need a foolish servant, who let herself be fooled, entangled in the web of her intrigue, who lost everything after she managed to return with a magnificent booty. And her interlocutors did not realize that what she needed was not profit but only a moment to attack, a chance to be inside the ritual room, in the dome of the closed space.

In a place where reinforcements can't come, even if, by some miracle, they sense our blow.

Once again, I gave myself a mental kick, thinking about my own mistake. We really should have just pretended to be victims instead of masquerading as cultists. The disguise is melting, the essence is disintegrating under the attempts to break it open, and one creature's words and deception are making it harder and harder to withstand questions and deflect suspicion without letting it even arise. Because she alone, in company with the victims, could still be let in, but there's no reason to let the whole crowd in, even if we set aside all suspicion and paranoia.

How hard it was for her to make the conversation, so we were considered mere porters, and we were sent after her. There's no need for the high mistress to carry the meat herself..... especially if the meat is so sweet to eat it or at least play with it a little. Yeah, I could have tried to turn the dummy ears into bombs to have an additional argument since I had to carry them anyway. I couldn't, though, because a bomb, even disguised by clothing and nothingness, could be sensed.

They let us through, and we went in.

His eyes slid along the walls, ignoring the insane and mind-numbing drawings on every surface of the hall, which was not much smaller than the room with the tentacled shit. Ignoring the suffocating, will-stifling fleur that flooded every available space, empowering the devils, ecstatic the cultists, and trouble for everyone else. Ignoring the multitude of prisoners piled in pre-prepared areas, protected by barriers that cut off the fleur so as not to spoil the purity of the future meat. This place was a piece of Hell, dragged into reality, clawing at it like a harpoon and dragging, dragging it straight into the arms of the domain that opened its cyclopean maw, ready to swallow and digest the delicacy. If the Eternal was gradually falling into the purple sky, this hall was a fishing hook, and the ritual created the line by which the city was dragged.

The safe door slammed shut, cutting us off from the rest of the world and, at the same time, increasing the pressure of Hell on the mind even more. The porters were already approaching us, ready to take the bait and kick us all out of the sanctum sanctorum, and I was only just realizing the obvious. Fighting here wasn't going to work. Not even me. In the concentration of such power, Soft Touch himself is like a domain lord, a little Sovereign, and if he wishes it, we'll all be gone.

Once he exposes us, we're all gone.

All it takes is a closer look, and the disguise is blown away like a lazy pig's house from a fairy tale. All it takes is a wish, and reality will seize our hearts, rob us of our strength and willpower, conquer our souls, and flood them with perfect Lust without the slightest chance of escape. Having come here for the battle, I only brought the seventy-third-level ancient creature a very hearty dinner and Tia, whom he would use for ritual material. He might not eat or play with the rest of us, but he might add them to his important work or enslave them.

The short, literally dwarf-like creature half a meter tall, resembling a very cute and unnaturally alluring child, was a sentence for us all. A sentence that had only a few such short seconds to fulfill. Now he would come up, realize he was being tricked, ignoring all my defenses, and then he would be happy. He had hoped to laugh at Giver alone, having allowed her to enter on purpose, to take what she had brought and send her away under the kicks and whips of her deceived past bosses. And he'll get us right on a platter with our asses already greased with Vaseline.

No chances.

Simple no chances.

I was ready to cry tears of joy for the fact that it didn't even occur to me for a second to come here to fight.

All I have to do is wait for the doors to be locked, which can't be opened from the outside without permission from the inside, and then, for the third time in twenty-four hours, raise my finger with a shining gold ring, point it at Giver and, to her inexpressible happiness, activate the Repeated Depravity by poking my finger into her shoulder. In the process, I can drop the disguise, covering myself with my favorite Aegis, and cover all my companions with it. At the same time, I pray to the universe that the backlash of what is about to fall on me will not eat my soul at once.

One moment.

If the devils in both cases were so intoxicated after using the ring's basic ability, how should they feel about the increased debauchery? Of course, there was a chance that there would be no pleasure hit and no fleur, and Giver would just have new talents in Status, but everything I knew about the Ring said otherwise, as did my favorite intuition.

I made a mistake.

I am a brainless moron, expecting just another, only stronger and more useful reaction, which could be described by the phrase "chain orgasm." I assumed this blow wouldn't even be much stronger, if at all weaker, due to habituation and the fact that the first submission had been imposed on Giver only recently.

Moron is, in my case, not even a diagnosis, but an epitaph on my tombstone.

It didn't blow any less.

It didn't blow any harder.

The wave of pleasure spewed out by the newly rewritten creature increased not even by a multiple, but in cubic fucking progression. And when on the raised by me, right in front of the nose of really surprised Touch, the defense collapsed blow, all I had to do was to say this very epitaph of his life's journey. And then Aegis accelerated on the afterburner, transferring to me the emptiness not only personal but also all my companions, and I was no longer to self-exploration and reflection.

Any.

* * *

Authors Note:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EcqSszaW0_GCnTeKb3PV_f-BqzhhU7bK/view?usp=sharing - The wings aren't the same, but it looks like it.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1H8Uh6lj2b5hwB5WsMue7N3EPY4o8Z6Kp/view?usp=sharing - Over a meal.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pUjct2j5dcNhrJ6wHpkWWV8AeeDeQeCM/view?usp=sharing - Surprise.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1s7lulc0OIPnCF6I6UXQXzt7kLPO8s2Wv/view?usp=sharing - Huma.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1YU8c6U_lfQepMHZmaV9mghBBflRaxBPZ/view?usp=sharing - He didn't listen to Mom.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zL373FsDfquVat5lGOr7nwQ9c-jr8Nec/view?usp=sharing - Concept of Chaotic, only without weapons and armor.

Dice in one of the first comments, but not all of them - there will be an inordinate amount of them in this and the next chapters.

* * *

Many of the dice in this chapter are quite spoilers and will be revealed only in the next chapter or Interludes, but there is a lot of material without "secrecy".

For starters, pure crit and anti-crit:

100 and 55 were rolled by Pypysh's nephew to help in the fight with the Chaotik. Since I still haven't figured out how to justify such a success logically, I had to make additional rolls to bring it to any realistic result.

The result was a coin found in the storeroom with a piece of the Primordial Core inside. In fact, the artifact was a counter-pick to any Chaotik, as it had been demonstrated. If the Chaotik hadn't been defamed, they would have kept the coin, but it would just need a little wiping.

It's valuable stuff.

1 and 67 - 60 automatic and 100 59 + 65 automatic for Giver and Ring, but no change here. If it's about Giver, the Ring gifts become 73 - not a top result, but there is quite strengthened the talents already available to her, among which there were enough of them that are just as if they were gifted by the Ring, only natural.

100 and 81 on the final result of the disguise from Garments, but here I added almost two dozen points from the omake. Too much depended on this roll. I spent about another ten or so (13 to be exact) on assist rolls on disguise checks. By the way, the stash is almost guaranteed to be empty by the next chapter because it's going to be a massacre.

98+15 - not pure, but very close to the intrigues of Giver. She was good in this game in general - she doesn't piss off Kostya, does her job, deceives all the bad guys and, in general, everyone should roll like that! There were almost no bad rolls and no failure.

Of just the interesting stuff:

Actually, one of the two Myths is available in the domain (the other is Sovereign). It is even stronger than its creator in direct combat. But, spoiler alert, there's someone there to answer Bringer even without Tin, who won't even go near him. So, no chance at all.

100 with a bunch of bonuses for Portal of Devils and Frozen of Eternals at the same time. The Palace of the Eternal is certainly not the Kremlin from 23rd-century Moscow, but the reference is intentional and long thought out. True, the devils have the upper hand.

News Bringer is simply not countered completely, even by such a trump card. He may have been forced to lick the octahedron, but by his mere presence he has turned two weeks of timelessness into a minimum of frustrating hours, and those hours are less and less.

Of the two most "powerful" points of the ritual, the one I wanted was not the one chosen.

Touch is a very strong bastard at the point of its greatest strength. I'm guaranteed to be adding to MC's luck in the next chapter at the expense of omakes because if he doesn't throw out a bunch of crits, it's going to hurt. The only joy is Giver's ecstasy from Repeated Depravity (automatic double crit due to the nature of the devil and Lust) will give a chance for a quick fix.

Chance.

No fucking guarantee.

It's funny that Kostik has gotten to the point of using hentai art as battle art after all. **sad and facepalm**

Also, Tin needs to somehow survive her own "trick move" without losing his entire team or being left alone, and with Giver of Caresess, after all, this is going to be very unfunny.

Here, too, he needs to crit and avoid failure.

It's gonna be tough, and the stash is not bottomless.

All in all, it's going worse than expected, but better than it could have been.

Good luck everyone, don't get sick, don't spare mobs in games, don't pour boiling water on honey, and don't shave cats, they scratch.