Chapter 20 (Patreon)

Chapter 20

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The afterburner mode of the Aegis is the subject of a very long and inconclusive reflection that brought me many questions, few answers, and a whole mountain of headaches. The nature of this technique, while dangerous, allows you to ignore a lot of life's adversities, but it also requires quite a lot. As practice has shown, if you are trying to shut out these very adversities not only yourself but also several allies, the demands also increase. Not exponentially, fortunately. Otherwise, I would not be able to think coherently and ask myself questions but would start eating with an audible slurp the souls of everyone I could reach.

It was not my willpower or even my heroic awesomeness that saved me, but the banal nature of the attack, which was not even an attack. Much can be said about the devil's signature technique, even if it's hard to find any good in it, but for all its dubious nature, the fleur remains an extremely effective tool for influencing any animated consciousness. This is not mentalism or hypnomancy in its purest form, no! A perfect combination of the subtlety of influence, its ability to overcome resistance, the monstrous power of this influence, as well as the speed of influence on the victim and the massiveness of this influence. How many of you will be able to remember the classes of seducers that can compress their signature techniques and methods in time from months to a couple of minutes and then begin to hit them on the area? If there are such, they are very few, and Hell always has plenty of such specialists.

It's axiomatic that there's no defense against the fleur.

That is, you can ignore it, you can block it, you can stop it with an amulet, a prayer, willpower, a ritual circle, a class skill, or anything. There has not yet been found a way to create a reliable defense available to every soldier or citizen that will remain economically viable. Either, figuratively speaking, throw gold bars at the enemy, keep a huge number of benefics and clerics who will provide protection, or rely on some cunning plans, but a reliable and affordable way to protect at least an army from the fleur has not been found.

The more devils there are, the more powerful their collective flair, the stronger they are, the more subtle its pressure. The most pernicious thing here is that even single strong devils can add subtlety of influence to the general aura of Vice, even if there is almost only one small thing gathered in the crowd. Subtlety and strength which do not mutually exclude each other, as in the case of the usual mentality and related offshoots, but, on the contrary, complement each other. People can only choke on their tears, spending stocks of the rarest consumables to temporarily cover themselves from Hell raiders or watch the sad picture of army units being converted entirely without a single hit.

It doesn't matter the Aspect of the particular raiders, for Agony, Despondency, Fear, or Pride always operate on the same principles, which is what made the Fleur so notorious. Force the endowed or even monsters and monstrosities to fight such invaders, getting used to acting and striking back. When Hell invades reality, no one will chase unprepared army units at them, only get all settlements out of the way of the invaders and evacuate civilians, taking them out of harm's way. Only after the preparation, when they gather a striking fist of Сlerics and other support classes, reinforcing them with shock troops, they will give a fight for devils.

Divine Miracles, which the gods do not skimp on in such cases, powerful auras, attacks with strategic magic. If the creatures managed not just to organize a cult but to break into the human world with a whole raid, then all forces are thrown at their destruction. The problem of the devils is not even that their elite fighters are, on average, superior to the elite of the endowed ones. They have their Heroes, their pets Summoned, and artifacts, of which the creatures always have less than the creatures themselves. The elite has something to meet the enemy and something to repel the aforementioned fleur. The problem is that the fleur, which in its pure form is not very useful against the Guard, leaves the Guard alone against the enemy and yesterday's allies.

So, there were a handful of warriors of level forty-five and a slightly larger handful of level forty. They were facing a roughly equal number of comparable-level creatures, a huge crowd of low-level creatures, and an equal crowd of seduced guards and soldiers who didn't have high levels, amulet, and artifact defenses, or personal blessings. Not a good situation, especially when you consider that, even if they reflected and leveled the effects of the fleur, this handful would spend their strength on countering, which would make them weaker, slower, and simply unable to give their best.

The fleur is strong, powerful, and deadly to endowed or at least sentient beings.

But when Fleur encounters Aegis, all of his sophistication, weightless subtlety, and almost cheater-like ability to ignore standard mental defenses turns into a pumpkin. It's still possible to push through Aegis with a fleur if you can create something extremely powerful and cunning with it. But only a few of the devil's brethren will be able to create such a thing. And even if they know how they won't always be able to do it in time. In the case when you are hit not by the influence directed by someone's will but by an unformed stream? At such times, a shadow adept sheltered by Aegis from the highest point of the world does not give a shit about the power and density of the impact. It would be like trying to bury a steel bunker under a mountain of feathers and fluff - whatever the total mass, it would not be able to concentrate the necessary force.

Thus, it is easy to see that the consequences of the Repeated Depravity were not something I feared too much. Instead of a temporarily harmless fleur, my essence was compromised by something else. As was always the case when it came to the use of Aegis. It wasn't hard to endure the blow, but it was harder to bear the burden of my defense, its crushing loneliness. And if I could still hold my share, even if only for a couple of seconds, it would be harder to bear the joint payment for the whole company.

Just a little.

Slightly.

It's a speck.

I thought I heard the crunch of my bones, though I knew with my mind that there was no such tissue in my body now. But there it was, quiet and thunderous, accompanied by a kind of wrong pain as if it was something you didn't have and never had. Along with the crunch came a lingering sensation remotely reminiscent of that which occurs when blood is drawn at a donor center or when you have a severe arterial bleed. It was as if something was pulling out of you, like a thread from a cloth, gradually leaving you, and along with the leaving, everything else began to fall to pieces.

And, of course, the damned hunger and emptiness in me, without which I had long ago been unable to think of using potent shadow techniques. The soul that was slipping away into the insatiable maw of my soul bothered me much less than usual, while I seemed to embrace the fires of other people's souls, invisible in any spectrum, but felt with painful clarity. Something that always came out of the depths of consciousness at such moments growled and screamed, shrieking and cursing, trying to convince me to let go of those lights and give them up instead of me, instead of us.

I hear.

I listen.

But I kept pressing those lights, pressing them into my existence to a metaphysical crunch, refusing to give the Shadow its prey because, for this scum, there is no concept of sufficient quantity because it wants to take everything. There was no heroism in my stubbornness, nor any sung loyalty to my comrades, nor was there any nobility or self-sacrifice. Only a huge mountain of donkey stubbornness and almost childish unwillingness to part with what I had clutched in my hands. The only difference was that instead of a cute plush dinosaur, I was not going to give away the souls of those who entrusted these souls to me.

...the pure and peace-giving immensity, together with the song of the deadly blade in the most robust frame, that this immensity shall direct...

...the thick, enveloping noise and distant beat of something unfathomable, vast and unformed, sneaking and lurking.....

...the rustling of branches and the creaking of gravel underfoot, behind which you can guess the chime of the finest and weightless threads that permeate all things....

...enchanting grace, behind which lies the sharpness of honed steel, simultaneously deadly strong and weightlessly false, as if it did not exist at all....

...the touch of falling leaves under the distant glow, the feeling of being ancient and yet young, as if unable to grow old...

That's probably why I was able to hold them back. Any nobility is nothing before the face of all-devouring Hunger. Friendship, or loyalty is extinguished in the clutch of Loneliness, anger, and hatred of the world and myself, quickly replacing principles and life guidelines. In such situations, these things save where everything else will not work - stubbornness, stupid whims, stupidity, and unwillingness to admit mistakes. And also one's anger, one's hatred, one's hunger, which can (in a hundred cases out of a hundred) both become the basis of your fall and turn, against all statistical probabilities, into a thin barrier, a barrier that will clearly distinguish you from someone else, someone who will have to appear in your place afterward.

So while I was figuratively holding the souls of my team in my hands and trying not to fuck up my own, I didn't have the resources to control the situation. And that's sad because if I had, I would have noticed, and I should have noticed earlier, that not only devils, victims, and cultists were present in the ritual hall. In my defense, the thing was very fortunate to be in the distance, hidden behind the streams of fluorescence and the fleur of the main freak's assistants scurrying back and forth. It was a lame excuse, but I couldn't notice it, having given myself to maintaining the disguise and deceiving the enemy's premonitions.

Golem.

The most trivial golem, the size of a grown man, was not even manned, unlike the huge machines from Stone. It was the only one that could easily cover the price of a couple of dozen mechas with their staff and pilots. Otherwise, it wouldn't have been here. The machine was not even combat (which does not mean defenselessness!) but an auxiliary support unit for the ritualist, able to close some of the contours of the ritual. Those of them, the retention of which, for living or quasi-living entities, is fraught with many troubles, among which scattering into atomic dust is far from the most dangerous threat.

A helper, a backstop, and, of course, a bodyguard.

Devils or cultists, but the original structure of this ingenious creation, which was no longer an artifact but something more with its level and status, had been heavily modified with modifications typical of Hell. It was a very significant enhancement for a creature that could not be upgraded in any other way than through modifications to the vessel of its essence. The worst news - for me, of course, the worst news - was a clear but delayed realization: despite the pile of tainted artifacts and imposed effects, this thing was still a goddamn golem. That is, something immune to fleur to an extent far greater than any undead!

You can't say it's impossible to corrupt a golem with a fleur because a well-powered creature would defile even the very fabric of reality, not to mention soulless magical constructs. The key part in this statement is "well-powered creature" because now the people inside the ritual hall were hit by the simplest possible, even if insanely strong wave of Vice. Another golem would have been utterly destroyed by this micro cataclysm, a storm in a glass and a storm in a bottle, but not this specimen, considered powerful enough and of high quality to assist Soft Touch here, in the center of its power.

The Golem withstood the pressure of the confined abomination, even if not without difficulty, after which its algorithms had a clear goal - to eliminate the source of sabotage, while all other allies, including even Touch itself, were in a weak state. Nothing so terrible in another situation, but, surprise surprise, at that very moment, we were also in a bad state, and I was, so to speak, knocked out of the game.

All of my abilities, all of my premonitions, all of my immense awesomeness had no time to react to the change of situation when this android decided to radically solve the issue of leather meat sacks. Short, very thin, with surfaces gleaming from the glow of runes and ritual signs, he stared at us with his face, which had only two eye mechanisms and nothing else. In the depths of the eyes, small parts and gears moved with great frequency, like some strange clock, and two huge sapphires glittered above, serving as focusers.

He had to kill us, perfectly timing the moment when we would fall out from under the Aegis but not yet regain consciousness. There were simply no other options, but the mechanoid himself had been blasted by the flare, though not damaged, but inhibited. He still came to his senses faster than the overstressed Kostenka regained his clarity of thought, even if for a few decisive moments, but faster.

Anyway, it's time to get your ass kicked, isn't it?

Turns out that's not the case.

Aegis's blow to my brain was too strong for me, but there was something good about it. The rest of us were hit just as hard. Feeling your soul being held in the clawed clutches of the Shadow. Even though they were not hurt, they were also temporarily incapable of functioning at those decisive moments, and no matter what their will was, no matter what pumped statutes they had, still "the stun passed." No immolate impruved, honestly!

But, gentlemen of knowledge, attention to the question! What plane helps the best to endure shock, horror, and other vicious emotions, embodying direct and maximally aggressive moral damage? The blue of heaven is by no means a panacea, and it is quite possible to break through its armor as the same defaming Hell, as well as crazy Darkness, and in general, a lot of aggressive or, on the contrary, insidious-soft planes. But still, the calmness granted by it has such a peculiarity. It helps those who have been hit by a mental or psychic blow to come to their senses faster. Or not to be hit at all.

Losius still didn't manage to ignore the experience. Even so, he woke up a little before everyone else, even me, even Tia, even the fucking golem, not to mention the devils. If he had fallen under the fleur, then Losius wouldn't even exist anymore - there would be nothing to wake up to after such a thing, even if your soul is very strong. A really powerful Heaven user could survive such a thing, preventing the fleur from touching his soul, shielding it with a serene armor of blue, but Losius still hadn't reached such heights, even with alchemy. It was not about strength, not about the power of spells, but about the depth of affinity with Heaven.

But the guy, who was barely conscious after the experience, didn't need all his strength and skill, only a minimum of common sense and a working speech apparatus. I could not hear what he said, but I could see the consequences of it. It was at that moment that I became alert enough for my brain to fall into place, and my eyes, strengthened by my Inquisitive Gaze, reflexively recognized my failed murderer, at the same time provoking my clairvoyance to a certain amount of belated but necessary information.

If it were a pure combat construct, he would have had to master reincarnation techniques if his soul had somehow managed to go to rebirth and not to the devil's pockets. But against this super-secretary for a professional ritualist, used by Losius was enough. I only saw the golem for a moment because, after that moment, the golem was blown away at such a speed that I'm not sure if I would have been able to react to Losius's pitch. No, I would have been able to, but without premonition, without prior preparation, with a pure reaction, I would have probably missed it.

The Golden Needle, a legendary battle-type artifact, discharged its ace ability. A beam of all-burning energy combines both Heaven and Sun in equal proportions. This beam, like any technique, combines more than one type of planar energy. It exists for only a few moments until the chain reaction begins and the subsequent explosion or its analog. The legendary artifact could not prevent such a thing, but the creator of the Needle was not after combining incompatible things.

The beam, an extension of the blade, stretched out over many dozens of meters and was powerful enough to slice through an entire fortress. That was exactly what he had done in the recent past when the previous owner of the artifact had tried to reproduce me with it, using the amoeba method, breaking the Stone and damaging the base of the spatial fold. The artifact did not prevent the planar conflict but created a kind of super-strong vessel, directing the flow of energy to the right point. A kind of lightsaber, but not a saber or a light.

Even in normal mode, the blade could slice through artifact steel if enough physical force was put into the strike. Some activated techniques allowed to change the type of planar damage from Heaven to Sun and back, selecting a more suitable "refueling" for a given target. However, the use of the strongest of the techniques available to the owner of the artifact, merging both planes at once, increased the output by almost an order of magnitude. Probably, the Golden Needle was not particularly cool because there were even epic artifacts that were as good as or even better than the sword in terms of damage. The ability to shuffle Heaven and Sun was certainly useful, but only two planes, even if they were very close to each other, could not cover all possible situations.

And only when it came to the final ability, which among all of us could use only Losius, as the owner of the highest rates of fencing skill and one-handed blades, the legendary of the Needle revealed in all its glory. It was indeed a weapon capable of extinguishing siege shields along with a fortress, sweeping entire tribes of giants off their feet, and bringing young dragons down to earth. Maximum power and speed of impact, multiplied by the cumulative effect of a combination of planar forces. It was probably kept in Stone, too, solely as a means of preventing something huge and bad from breaking into the fold.

I'm all about the fact that a direct hit with this ultimate ability can really do a lot.

And nothing would say more about the inordinate strength of the hapless golem than the fact that he was not killed by this blow, at least not immediately. On the mechanical body of the android, which is not for calls, flashed all the runes and sorcerous signs in a cluster, creating not even a barrier but a conceptual closed field in the shape of the golem's body, simply nullifying any damage values. But the inertia was not so good because the sword, which was lengthening and lengthening, and the glow of which made his eyes water, continued to lengthen, literally hammering the automaton into the wall.

For a moment, his body resisted the impact of the Golden Needle on one side and the pressure of the ritual covering the walls on the other, but only for a moment. Too brief for the golem, already somewhat damaged by the wave of fleur inside the ritual hall, to do anything about it. Deceptively slowly, his defenses faded, and the armor covering his body began to sag inward.

I didn't have time to see the ending, launching into my own attack.

Despite the difference in levels and actually being in Soft Touch's personal domain, I recovered a little quicker. The little thing was coming back to the real world astonishingly fast, but holy imageboards, if there was anything that could give me an even greater advantage against a Lust Devil of his level, I couldn't imagine it, let alone find and use it.

I attacked from a lying position, once again ignoring the bad feeling deep inside my long-suffering and slightly swollen self. There was no time for any structured shadow attacks, and I wouldn't be able to deliver a strong enough pitch. Not against such a fattened creature, not in the place of his power, not in the state I was in today. Once again, I turned to Form as the most adaptable for rapid close combat, in a fraction of a second, going from the human state to the ultimate amplification.

The nearly four meters separating us is not a jerk or even a shadow step. I literally devour the distance separating us, ignoring all the defenses and powerful rituals, simply manifesting Shadow on reality and making reality Shadow. Touch froze in place, small, low, deceptively puny - at that moment, it seemed to me and the Shadow that had almost taken me that the devil didn't stand a chance, that the devil had already lost.

It wasn't a fighter but a ritualist, even an impossibly powerful ritualist. Ritual defenses could twist me at any second and stop any attack if the creature had time to even want to use them. Yes, there were automatic defenses, working both on foresight and on captive souls monitoring the situation in the area. In a different situation, those defenses would have been enough, but now the situation was exactly as it was at this moment.

The use of Repeated Depravity on Giver of Caresses had created such a disturbance that even the most advanced defenses, the most attentive sensors, the extremely subtle rituals, and the most loyal of captive souls... no, they didn't fail. The same rituals, even infused with Vice, made to Hell's mold, remain marginally vulnerable to pure fleur. The storm had knocked them out of tune, slowed them down a bit, and, figuratively speaking, ruined their aim.

That was enough for me to get close enough to make my strike.

It didn't make sense to use the huge form I'd flaunted in the battle with Dreamer. Instead of an enormous scarecrow with dozens of jaws and limbs, I had become a surprisingly humanoid abomination, only a little taller than me, but as thin as a silhouette made of cocktail straws. You know how kids draw a typical stick man on paper? It was funny, frustratingly fragile, and completely non-threatening, but the saturation of the shape was such that if it weren't for the protection of the ritual hall, I had a good chance of cutting the fabric of the space with an awkward movement.

Five thin straws of the extended straw arm reached Touch, pressed into his passive defense, and, almost without resistance, began to sink into the flesh of his pseudo-body, which was bleeding with such a desirable and delicious power. I felt with all my being how close to me this nutritious broth of ground souls was. Touch was in every sense decomposing these souls within his sonm, turning his body into an essence factory. In pure essentialism, it was far stronger than I was, and the techniques it used, for all their ugliness, left my vessel of essences far behind, if not far behind, then far behind.

The straws stuck into the body, breaking through, sprouting, and branching deeper and deeper inside that body. Meter by meter, the straws divided like a multidimensional fractal and should have long ago pierced through the creature a dozen or two times, but Touch was noticeably larger inside than outside, and the basis of its somn was hidden somewhere in the depths of a huge essential cauldron, within which even now hundreds of groaning souls were being systematically cooked.

I realized too late that the little asshole is not the real body of Touch but only a projection of him. A manifestation of the essence of him, a boil on the flesh of the universe. This entire ritual hall is not just an extension of his will, but literally it itself. Even so, the small body and the entire ritual complex are just the tip of the iceberg, the bulk of which is hidden in Hell. Even if every single devil, one way or another, has a partial connection with Hell. They exist there and here, at the same time, but among the representatives of their bleeping species that I met, only Touch is not a standard devil but a living factory and assembly plant in one compact bottle.

And if the mighty but so tiny creature my sudden attack could still destroy, then against what Touch turned out to be, this attack would not be enough. And understand this sad truth Kostenka deigned to understand at about the same moment when the shadow tubes sprouted a good forty meters in all directions and even in a couple of extra dimensions, but did not reach the vital organs or what this abomination has instead of them. Or rather, they did. However, there were too many of these organs, which duplicated each other reliably, overlapping the loss of individual elements. I managed to tear apart a few dozen important structures. I let a hundred or two souls captured and almost digested in Lust fall into oblivion, but I couldn't reach the sonm. I stay vulnerable to Touch's retaliatory attack.

Realizing that I didn't have time to deliver a fatal stab with the poisoned Shadow pin, I stopped maintaining my super-dense Form, letting the power invested in the blow go free and hit the creature's insides with an energy battering ram, hoping, if not to kill it, then at least to hurt it enough so that the devil's retaliatory blow wouldn't multiply me by zero. I managed to do it at the very last moment, but it didn't help much. His touch shuddered with a maddening pain that even the nature of his Viciousness could not quell. It shuddered, not outwardly, for the little childlike runt did not move, but inwardly, as if the whole cauldron, as it was, had been shaken up, and the essences boiling in their juice had boiled even more violently.

And then I got hit back.

Apparently, to control the ritual Touch still needed to have a material body. His outer shell, a small genderless humanoid, served not only as an antenna but also as a kind of calculation module for the rituals, linking all these magical patterns with the contents of the cauldron, like a video card in a computer. To tell the truth, I could have guessed it earlier, but somehow I didn't have the time. And Giver hadn't told me because she knew so little about Touch and its nature.

It belonged to a completely different "social stratum." That could be understood already by the level of the creature, being subordinate only to the Sovereign directly, so that they could only know about the nature of the essence of Touch from the stories of the employees subordinated to Touch himself. He was not just an elite but one of the first deputy chiefs of the entire domain, accountable to no one. Giver, of course, knew of his power, but among the scattered scraps of information she had collected over the centuries, it was too difficult to discern the truth.

So.

The body, the outer body, was the antenna, and the ritual hall was the receiver. The power hidden in the drawings covering the hall was such that it could smear three Kostiks like butter on a bun. But, at the moment of my attack, the creature was forced to cut its connection to the ritual. The boiling cauldron of essences could unwittingly sow instability and spoil the delicate wiring of the ritual threads through which the essences flowed into the necessary points of the ritual. It was a simple reassurance, completely natural and understandable because even in Hell, they had heard about safety and did not like to take unnecessary risks. However, by separating itself from the ritual, the creature lost, even if only for a split second, until it stabilizes its gut at least partially, the opportunity to use direct reality control and make a big zucchini out of me, and out of our entire woeful team.

Thus, I managed though not to kill but to noticeably wound my opponent, depriving him of the most terrible weapon in his arsenal. The trouble, guys, is that the other tricks in the creature's deck were not much weaker than the claimed domain control. This thought came into my head at the same time as Touch's blow, which was delivered right at point-blank range. The essence in the cauldron seemed to crystallize around several souls, deliberately stacked in the right order, like water freezing around oxygen bubbles. And now this construction, though composed of material surprisingly nourishing to any Shadow, was no longer devourable but hard, sharp, and fatally saturated with particles of souls that still held some of their former power.

Direct conversion of essence into battle charms, even if it was done literally inside its own body..... it sounds silly, but it wasn't funny almost immediately. The charms, this crystalline and multidimensional abomination that wasn't even magic to the fullest extent, struck the Form sprouting in the middle of the vessel, instantly annihilating the fuck out of it. Neither durability, defense, nor resistance helped. The damage done inside Touch's body was only the final chord of this technique. The crystallized essence's main job was to shift the constants of reality within range a bit. For one heartbeat, the Form's defense was, if not nullified, then drastically reduced.

If my gripers hadn't been literally shoved into the multidimensional guts of the devil, I would have had something to respond to. I could have strengthened the Form even more, used my Manifestation to stop reality from distorting, or even just used Aegis. In another situation, it would have been different, but all I could do now was exhale rumblingly as I felt my arms taken from my shoulders and the rest of my body flying backward, hitting the far wall of the ritual hall while bleeding inky-black blood that was beginning to eat away at the thousand-fold magic-strengthened stone of the floor.

The Shadow Form can regenerate such injuries that the user of this skill could easily be mistaken for a distant (or near) relative of Alucard. Not to the level of regenerating from a piece of nostril, but I was likely not to even notice the usual amputation of limbs. New arms would grow faster than the old ones would fly away. Simple steel and magic wouldn't scratch the Form, but even very powerful sorcery, having inflicted damage, wouldn't be able to stop the process of renewal of the shadow body. It was useless to chop the shadow, useless to tear it apart.

Touch's blow was not powerful sorcery only because this technique was pure bullshit elevated to the hundred thousand-five hundredth degree! I felt as if my arms up to my shoulders had been annihilated at some deep level, after which no regeneration could restore them. If my mind hadn't dived into the embrace of the plane so deeply, I would have died on the spot from the pain, so to speak.

Black blood continued to ooze out of me along with magic and life, pain threatened to flood my consciousness with agony, and a creature greedy for everything and anything, sensing my weakness and eager to seize control and claw at my hated enemy once more, was tearing at me from the inside. Realizing that the count still goes on seconds, and I spend them not reasonably at all, I begin to move my ass in order to save my ass. Remembering the nature of my opponents, it is necessary to save my ass in multiple senses at once.

Shadow Theft works with some interruptions. The atmosphere in the hall was too intense and wicked to rely on subtle techniques under such conditions. Where subtlety didn't work, brute force worked well. By investing rivers of magic into shadow theft, I deprived the technique of the stealth that characterized it, and in return, I gained the piercing power and ability to literally burrow into the shells and souls of cultists. If a standard theft remains invisible to the victim until the very end (or until the technique is dispelled, which is much more often), now even a chump completely devoid of any premonitions could be aware of death tugging at his heart, cold fingers creeping under his skin.

I should have taken human form first and only then tried to treat my injuries, but given the situation, I would have died instantly in human form. So I just poured in streams of power, spending enough reserve in a second to cover an entire fortress with powerful shields or send that same fortress into a shadowy rift. I wasted it without doubt and without pity, giving those who were caught by the technique my wounds just as ruthlessly.

I gave it away.

I gave it away.

But I couldn't give it away completely.

It was no doubt having some effect, because the pain was easing, and the blood was not flowing like a poisonous stream, though it hadn't stopped. And the trauma, the void in the place of my hands, was gradually leveling out, and the Form was starting explosive regeneration.... but it was slow to do so! Layer by layer, the loss was returned, and, believe me, the sensations of this process were not pleasant at all. A handful of cultists, the most human and the least mutated from their masters' gifts, were falling in stacks. No one had taken much care to protect themselves in the middle of the already protected hall, and if they had any amulets, the explosion of ecstasy had removed them completely. The cultists were just enough for my purposes, and the pure creatures or possessed were no match for my self-healing. I was lucky that even those had kept their souls and shells relatively intact; at the moment of the blow, they were in a separate segment of the ritual hall, enclosed by their own conceptual barrier, powered not by Touch but by an artifact.

There was no time to wait for any significant recovery, so without changing the Form of the drawn man, I tore apart the humanoid with a faceless mask instead of a face (I think that mask tried to show the face of someone familiar, but the creature had no chance to get into my brain and pull out the desired image) and another devil, jerking closer to the one who had hurt me so badly. One thing made me happy. Although the devilish ritualist's response to me was bad, I managed to do badly to him in return! And, to be fair, I can't say that I was much worse off than he was. And that's taking into account the devil's characteristic racial ability to enjoy even the most horrible tortures because the liquefied Shadow in his insides would be too much even for these guys. Actually, it is Shadow that turns out to be too much for them time and time again - it's a class debuff. You can't go against it!

The closest description of what happened to Touch was exploded. His body remained small and light, but around this body, the space itself was covered not even with cracks but with bleeding wounds. From these wounds, an unstoppable stream of disgusting pseudo-flesh, even less material than the usual bodies of devils. As well as rapid streams of essence and some other fragments that had not yet become essence but also had no right to be called souls. It was as if he'd opened the belly of a gluttonous beast, and the half-digested mess of last night's meal was coming out of the torn intestines.

The pain of loss was still there, but it was slowly receding, and I was not happy about it. The coming cold and emptiness were closing in on the last bastions of will, and I had stolen the shadows of all the cultists who had survived the flare explosion, giving them as much of my own suffering as I could. The Hall of Rituals was a huge structure, and it was also divided into sectors, separated by all sorts of barriers. Even though most of them, the most unprotected part of the creatures and servants, were covered by the first blow, even though some of the barriers could not withstand the expulsion of the deviless who had fallen under the Repeated Corruption, some survivors were only slightly affected by the blow and the rollback of the ritual that had gone wild, and who recovered quickly. They are our doom. If they coordinate their attacks and give Touch time to react. Our song will be finished on a ludicrous note. They are my personal salvation, my desperate hope to be able to throw off the harmful effects, to steal their lives and destinies instead of mine.

Touch still stands between me and salvation, but I, by some miracle of Fortune's own will, am once again ahead of him, attacking desperately, without attempting to restrain myself or conserve reserves, seeking if not to slay my enemy, then at least to sell defeat at the most favorable rate possible. A confluence of circumstances and blind luck allowed me to first hit something important inside Touch, and afterward, catch a steal of shadows from a group of nearly untainted cultists who had just fallen from beneath the collapsed barrier but were unaffected by the fleur. Two rolls of the dice, two thin straws. One of them held back the creature that was trying to stabilize its damn cauldron, preventing it from carrying out a reprisal, because Touch was clearly aware of my pitiful condition and knew how terrible my wounds were. The second one gave me a much-needed opportunity to push back death, moment to moment, in the moment of my most desperate need.

The dice are thrown.

And so, instead of dying, unable to keep the Form under control, I rush into a new attack, and the creature is again unprepared to repel it. It simply does not have time to defend itself, to use at least one of the whole deck of trump cards collected in its cauldron for a long, very long existence. Soft Touch, the oldest creation of Sovereign, a creature-domain placed in the main domain, a nightmarish matryoshka doll with equally nightmarish contents inside, a nurtured instrument not of battle but of a victorious feast, a court cook and executioner in one role, one who dissolves in himself the servants of his Sovereign who have failed to live up to his expectations, creating from them the basis from which Sovereign will raise new ones...

Clairvoyance is maddening and driving me mad, coaxed by the bits of my shadow flesh still floating within this abomination. I am so close to it now, so aware of its nature, that no defense can help hide the truth from me, but I'll be damned if I wouldn't wish that knowledge out of my head and unseen it! Though... frankly, I've been damned long enough without such a statement.

I suppress the Shadow's instincts to claw at the enemy again, to torment and devour him, replenishing his strength at the expense of the already prepared essence, recovering faster than receiving wounds. One can dive in, seep into the cauldron through the ripped space, and then devour Touch from the inside, simply not letting him repeat his trick with crystallization. Frankly speaking, this plan is even more workable than any other. It really won't have time to digest me-us before I-we eat, take, take too much. Alas, but it won't be possible to keep my sanity in this case. Along with the broth from the defeated souls, I'll eat myself.

Instead of close, ultra-close combat, it was a ranged attack, even though there was still a distance of five paces between me and the rift-covered Touch. The cracks around it widened, reaching up to the ceiling and seeming to touch the ritual construct. It saw me but didn't have time to do anything again. It's only widening its wounds and trying to create some kind of barrier while addressing the ritual signs around it. The creature had enough strength to control its torn belly. To hold its punctured cauldron and even to heal itself quickly. The barrier and attack through the reality control in the hall didn't even have the full will of this one.

Never before had he worked such intense magic so quickly and ruthlessly. And ruthlessly, not to my enemies, but to myself! Shadow Control was just the trigger to start the process, and then Creation, Manifestation, and even Form took over. I had already had a lot of flesh ripped out of me, and then I continued what Touch had started. The blood and remnants of my body became the basis for the spells, allowing me to create not the small Shadows that were at my fingertips but myself. Did I mention I was in pain before? Forget what I said because this is when it got really bad!

The attack took the form of dozens of drop-like balls the size of ping-pong balls, each of which was a kind of pocket in space leading directly into the Shadow. And already there, in the Shadow, it was not a drop, but a huge lump of structured shadow power, packed by Manifestation into a miniature formation. The filler in all balls made the same - hundreds and hundreds of shadow ribbons with primitive, not even self-consciousness, but rather an algorithm of actions. The task of the ribbons, once inside the cauldron, was to cause maximum damage to the devil, aiming to hit not the essence or the souls floating in it but the insides of the creature. If I haven't had time to grope them, my spells will.... that didn't sound good.

Almost all of the drops dived into the rifts, opening up there, which Touch obviously did not feel good. This shit, by the way, is much worse in turning the damage received into pleasure, even if compared to not the strongest representatives of their tribe. Some kind of restrictions are related to the nature of the devil, which is an artificial domain to a much greater extent than the devil itself. There were no cries, nor was there any response, only a shudder of something hidden behind the small outer body of Touch. It was just a small, barely perceptible convulsion and trembling limbs, but I could feel it convulsing inside itself.

I came even closer, changing my Form again. Now, I'm no longer a drawn stick man but a worm in a spacesuit - a segmented body with closely adjoining rings-parts. Kostenka is not very smart, but he always learns his lessons quickly. Each segment can be instantly thrown away without unnecessary injuries and regrets, saving the essence hidden behind such a peculiar living armor. Again, I used Manifestation along with Form and Creation, only not as painfully, again without really understanding exactly how I managed to create what I did. Discovering new tricks right in battle is undoubtedly very pleasing, especially if the tricks are necessary and to the point, but the bell itself is alarming beyond belief. If you manage to use new tricks before you understand their nature with your mind - it indicates too close fusion with other creatures' instincts. I have done such tricks before, but never before have I been eaten up so rapidly. I continue to cripple myself without stopping, without having the right or the opportunity to do so.

Not fully regenerated, continuing to disappear without being able to steal another's shadows, worms-arms, worm-whips, bursting out of my back and shoulders, splitting into dozens of separate outgrowths, making me myself look like the epicenter of spatial rifts, only not in flesh color, but in black. Two rifts collide, and my limbs continue to torment space, tearing it deeper and deeper, trying to exhaust the barriers set by the weakening ritual cling to the breaches leading to the contents of the cauldron. From the jaws at the ends of the worm-me poured venom, liquefied and concentrated Shadow, as if dragged into reality from the deepest layers of this plane.

Tentacles tearing pseudo-flesh, spilling essence, turning streams into rivers and rivers into waterfalls, widening rifts, making the living factory of Touch literally turn inside out. And, of course, a flood of the most powerful charms I can give out in this position, without thinking about the reserve or possible damage to the brain. There are no simple spell techniques in my arsenal. It's just a combination of all my class skills, sometimes, all of them combined. The pain grows, and the wounds continue to bleed, making the Form lose density, but I only let the blackness flow out for another attack, filling the hellish cauldron to the brim.

And it's paying off. It just can't help but pay off!

Touch catastrophically unlucky, so unlucky that it becomes a little ridiculous. It could have destroyed us all a thousand times, but the events were formed by the only order that gave me the victory. For a moment, I realize it won't get up. Yes, the creature is still alive. Its talents continue to patch its insides, trying to etch out the shadows infused into it, continue to crystallize essence, trying if not to save itself, then at least to arrange at last a very powerful explosion and a death curse. But if earlier I felt behind every action of the enemy a malicious and concentrated will, a thirst to get up and give me a beating. Now, these actions have lost coherence and purposefulness. It began to resemble the convulsions of an agonizing organism. Even if each such "convulsion" remained an extremely sophisticated technique of mastering internal essences, they had lost the very guiding will. It was like the workings of the peripheral nervous system when the brain was destroyed.

At the same moment, he realized that Touch paid for its multitasking and power with some vulnerabilities that were uncharacteristic of ordinary devils. For example, if you damage the creature, not even the somn (which this abomination did not have in the form in which devils used to embody it), but the central organ of its cauldron, the effect would be comparable to a very cruel lobotomy. The creature, unfit for direct combat, was not meant to fight, though it could do so. The ritual hall was so well protected for a reason. When it got within striking distance of me, delayed my defense by the ring trick, and finally mistakenly thought I was mortally wounded, it signed its verdict: the autonomous and not-so-autonomous spells already inside it would be enough to finish off the mindless Hellspawn.

And all I had to do was scream as fiercely as I could, shrieking and laughing and tearing apart anyone who had the wit to get too close to me and carry Hell's markings. Touch had only misjudged my ability to fight when I was mortally wounded, but there was no doubt about the lethality of my injuries.

Trembling and continuing to spew, the ball of flesh remained in place. The ritual circles and contours were rapidly becoming out of sync, and I, for the first time since the massacre had begun, was able to look around without focusing all my attention on my only opponent. And immediately, without a chance to think, I start a new massacre, not even trying to hold back the laughter and shrieks of the Shadow sitting inside me. There is no reason, no desire, and no strength, perhaps, either.

I jerked, slithering along the floor glistening with symbols. I changed shape again, becoming almost flat, or even without the "almost," and let a dozen attacks pass over me. Rays, clumps of energy, several energy blades, each of which contained a captured soul, a couple of nets, and one very powerful battering ram were hitting somewhere behind my back, hitting their allies, while the distance between me and other people's insides was shrinking at a rate that made the owners of those insides very nervous.

At the last meters of the distance, the group of devils, who had managed to gather themselves into some semblance of fighting - as far as this concept applied to specialists in rituals - star, directed their attack downward, covering the oncoming murder carpet with rainbow shimmers of their perverted magic. Unfortunately for them, the colorful illumination proved to be the only result of their labors, for the strength of the ultimate Form did not depend too much on the size of the adopted Shadow. At least that disappointment was the last of their existence as I unleashed hundreds of thin ribbons, piercing through their bodies and somersaults while beginning to give another batch of wounds.

Torn, desiccated, rotting, and molasses-sweet bodies just beginning to fall to the ground, and I'm already changing my appearance, continuing my dash, and leaving my victims behind. I can still take a lot from them, I can give them more. I can replenish the reserve of magic at the expense of their perverted life would not be superfluous, but I dare not stop. If I stop, the glow of the soul-releasing sonms torn apart by my blows will be unbearable, and the last thing I want now is to test my composure against hunger.

Again, the humanoid appearance, again the hands that never stop bleeding, only now every touch of these hands deprives the enemy of his limbs. It is no longer a spell but a theft, saturated with power and therefore almost irresistible in its brutality, devoid of the usual elegance. The first is a touch, hitting the few fighting creatures, preferring their deaths to those of less dangerous specimens of the infernal host. Following the touch, theft, and return gift from my side are full-blown enchantments, rich and straight as a stick. My speed is too high now, and the creatures have not fully recovered from the flare explosion, so they simply do not have time to use the souls prepared in the somns that could save them from such blows. For the few that did manage to drop the steal or fend off the first attack, I gave them a second, more subtle and plastic one, simultaneously enveloping a small area of reality around my victim with Manifestation, preventing them from retreating, raising their defenses, or snapping back.

I spat the hooked spear straight at the giant who was charging at Taria. I did not pay attention to the fact that he, covered by one of the souls, was caught in a net of dozens of shadowy threads, each of which ended with hooks embedded in his body. The soul took only the blow of the spear, which turned out to be hollow inside, and the barrier of manifested space, which separated one layer of attack from the second, did not allow the conceptual barrier to neutralize both layers at once. I lengthened the third claw that had sprouted on my back, turned it into a whip with a mouth at the end, and with that mouth clawed into the void, where a moment later, the Trail led the flaming devil. I habitually gave him a part of the injuries, pouring through his mouth almost a barrel of shadow poison, and not without pleasure to state that this bastard was not Touch, and he died much faster.

I rushed past Tia, who had already dissected several creatures, hitting several of her opponents with my limbs and charms, nullifying their attempt to coordinate blows, and without waiting for the elf to take the chance, I finished off an abomination wounded by Losius, who resembled a slime girl from some manga. The only difference was that it was a slime boy, but its goals and somewhat obscene appearance were similar to those of Japanese culture. Another spit of a dozen blades drives away from Taria, another beau who was about to put some crap into her brain, and then his sonm suddenly tears the creature from the inside. The circuit of attention shifts to the merrily chuckling Giver, who is now surrounded by a dozen former associates, tearing up the associates of others. And there's something about the colleagues she's subordinated to that makes me want to check her status and the abilities she's been given.

I burst through the barely-holding barrier around the five cultists, unaffected by the carnage, relieved to transfer my pain to them with unbearable and frightening relief. I spend at least a second preparing, raining down a full rain of primitive but powerful shadow magic on the entire hall, continuing to drain the life out of the cultists and being careful not to activate my Grip. The slightly restored reserve immediately sagged as the patterns of the ritual flashed around me. Two more groups of cultists, supported by a couple of creatures, stabilized a section of the decaying structure and struck at me.

One of the creatures explodes again as its sonm detonates, and the second becomes erratic, beginning to tear through the focused ritualists. The third group is hit by a poisonous seed thrown by a Dark Druid, and the leader, who has time to bounce, catches a throwing dagger in the throat on a very crooked path. I manifest reality around me, dampening the already unstable ritual, which, without Touch, has lost its former irreversibility and ability to directly break reality.

I gave out a shadowy battering ram in the direction of the still agonizing freak, noting the danger to my team at the same time. The essences continuing to pour from his wounds, having found themselves outside the cauldron, began to conflict with each other, not to mention the fact that even just touching such a cocktail with bare skin is fraught with very serious injuries. What was it like in there? The floor is lava?

I created a few shadowy ribbons, taking out the struggling creatures dragged to the ceiling by the misty tentacles. The Mist that surrounded them was slowly but inevitably taking away their strength, energy reserves, and even the souls of their sonms, but they could do serious damage to Hestia by fighting back. One almost managed to blow himself and her together in a paroxysm of masochistic pathos. Hestia, having lost the most dangerous victims who had almost escaped from her grasp, finished the remaining captives of her cold embrace with a single effort and, without changing the appearance of a misty cloud, rushed downward. The ceilings were high, so she managed to hug a couple more wing-wielders and a levitator on the way.

After that, she attacked my position and Taria, who was distracted by another devil wounded by Losius. I used the same Manifestation to close the distance between me and one of Hestia's winged foes. The blade strikes exactly in the center of his chest, piercing the barrier and forcing him to use some kind of tricky blink. He never let go of control of the instantly subdued by some very tricky one-time contract against the adepts of the Mist sharpened. But before the tentacles of his frozen ally could reach me, he had already begun to spread rot. I managed to feed the beholder of his sonm the deception, putting him right under Tia's blade. And he had almost no seer in his collection. Either he didn't get them, or he accidentally disembodied them in spasms of pleasure.

Instantly regaining her senses, Hestia did not venture further into the hunt for fear of another surprise at her already weakened will, instead nestling herself to the floor, wrapping herself in a ring around Touch's death throes. Without even attempting to attack or even touch the creature with her mist, she began to siphon off and give the Mist an entire pool of essence. Judging by how quickly the mist began to thicken, the benefit of that action was more than just the ability to walk safely across the floor. Essence was the essence, but it came out of the gut of a devil as old as mammoth shit who had worked with it.

Again, I rush into close combat, breaking open the remaining segmental barriers, fearing the moment when the enemies will run out, and only my comrades and miraculously alive victims will be left among the shadow theft recipients. The devils had shielded them from their fleur to the highest standards, not wanting to spoil the material before its time. So, if there was anyone in this place who was almost unaffected by the fleur, it was the sacrificial lambs. Well, the most valuable and, therefore, the most protected of them because the simpler ones were covered worse, so not everyone was unaffected.

The pain from the wounds had eased, and I had a right to cherish the hope of a favorable outcome, were it not for the crushing madness and the creature in the depths of my being that had gotten too close. Toward the end, I even went out of Form to reduce the damage to my psyche. By then, there were almost no enemies left. Giver, and more specifically, her subordinate dolls, helped a lot, as much as I hate to admit it. It was possible to use Theft on them without hurry, giving wounds not hastily but slowly and with a spacing. She didn't even need to say anything. She brought her toys closer and removed all the protection from them.

Up close, I felt the strangeness of her subjects even more strongly, but when I realized the reason for this strangeness, I did not flinch solely because the creature inside me was eating up all my attention and mental strength. Fear had no place to settle. The communal roof was overcrowded as it was, and it had a long way to go.

Her gift - and it was clearly a gift, for at her level, she would never have such abilities - allowed her to copy her personality and record it on a new host. Each of the creatures she subordinated was, in fact, a copy of her, only with different bodies, somns, and sets of techniques. Is it worth mentioning the complete retention of all original memory, skills, prowess, and combat tricks? I'm not even mentioning the ability to directly adjust the memory of her copies or those simply affected by the talent bestowed upon them, even to the point of taking the embedded personality back, leaving in its place a third one, completely rewritten from the original.

I'll be honest, if Giver catches me without Shadow Form and Aegis, I won't even be able to react in time under that attack! And she was obviously using it really fast since she was able to enslave half a dozen of the tastiest victims in a quick battle. This trick of hers is even more incredible than Hestia's Mist! At least, because it is perfectly complemented by the other talents of the deviless, entirely well supporting this gift.

Catching my attention, she only smiled, not hiding her thoughts and her loyalty. She wasn't going to use this technique on me to change me to her liking. But the very fact that she had the ability at her disposal, that she could make me do anything for her, make me anything she wanted, was giving her a whole carload of smugness. As if she really hadn't decided to use her new talents just to "play around and get things back to the way they were."

I turned my face toward her with a barely audible but echoing hiss in every shadow, realizing that she'd let that thought out and allowed her sonm to form it into an image on purpose to taunt me. No, definitely, her desire to get me to react in any way she wanted, whether it was sheer hatred or equally sheer disgust, had become even more infuriating and unbearable after reapplying the Ring! And if you think about it, she was the second most important contributor to the battle, and if you count the effect of the ring on her, she was probably the first.

"Tin?" The slightly awkward and tense silence was broken by a cautious question from Losius, who, thanks to his class, had an excellent sense of the abomination bubbling inside me.

"Is this an appeal or a question?" I can't stand it, letting sarcasm into my answer, but the sarcasm is lost behind the barely audible words as if I'd torn my voice, smoked it, and hurt it at the same time. "I feel bad, really bad."

And, confirming what I said, I sit my ass right on the fading glow of the floor. I have about three-quarters of my reserve left, but only at the expense of constantly drinking the life of my opponents. That kind of recovery is useful in battle, of course, but it doesn't add to my health, either physically or mentally. The potions in my blood barely react, as their effects have been literally washed out of my body by my actions. The only consolation is that, along with the potions, I also got rid of all the intoxications I had, transferring them to my victims along with my wounds as I went along.

"We're shitting ourselves, right?" Taria, too, like myself, jokes absently, forcing herself to be habitually cheerful. "It didn't work to open the passageway to the outside."

"It didn't work out." I agree, barely holding back a sudden burst of anger at her, for her misplaced mirth, at myself, for failing, and at everyone else, for failing too, and, of course, at my fucking life. "It didn't work. It didn't work. Touch was the key and the heart of the ritual. It was the ritual itself. Even the hall was part of its essence. As it died, it activated the fuses, shutting down the entire structure. Bitch."

My anger was especially strong, and I gave in to its impulse and changed the shape of my hand, turning my fist into a clawed grip and punching with all my might at the unbreakable wall of the ritual hall, releasing the resentment that had built up. The wall wasn't so unbreakable, for it was dented, much larger than my fist. And then the indentation deepened as I kept hitting the same spot, hissing angrily as I did so, and the volume of shadows that had grown since the ritual had broken down was picked up by the rustling of the shadows as the glowing sigils flickered and faded.

Tia's hand on my shoulder stopped me, clutching it tightly, wrapped in armor made of withered leaves clinging to my skin. It was that armor that brought me to my senses, or rather, to the realization that the elf had to use protection to even touch the Form that was gradually covering me. The long-forgotten feeling came again. I had to remember what it was like to have a normal human body. The flesh that had been turned by the Shadow did not want to take its original form.

"I reviewed the ritual." The druid speaks calmly and deliberately, showing no fear or apprehension, but I know well what it takes for her to stand calmly beside a walking disaster who can barely hold himself together. "Not much has been revealed to my eyes, still less have I been able to realize from experience in the craft of drawing, but you have been able to understand the hidden things. There are no doors here and never have been. This ritual is not a door but a chain that pulls us all down."

Right.

This does not mean it was impossible to at least try to break through the cutoff, breaking the fabric of the universe at a weak point and diving into the resulting rift. But it would only be possible to do this if Touch did not interfere and it had clearly said its word. If only there had been a different boss here, more simple, understandable, and not this bullshit ...

"I didn't know." Giver sensibly does not approach me or my companions, standing a little apart next to the trio of her latest toys. "Touch has always been there... and always stood apart. I did not know its nature. Or I did, but I was ordered to forget. I don't know, I can't tell."

I don't even turn around, silently trying to figure out what I should do next.

"Anyway, we came, made a mess, tore out the nostrils of the bastards like auditors, but to little avail." Hans summarized, taking off his leather breastplate, which had been burned by some bad magic. "How are we going to get out of here, or are we going to try to stay locked up? There's no way to break in here."

We can't wait.

"We can't wait." My thoughts were echoed by both Losius and Tia, but only the elfess continued. "The path to salvation must be sought in the temples of the Ascended. They are gathering defenses there, and there can be no doubt that they have at least some communication with reality. We have all recognized the coming of their Servants, and where there is a place for the Servants, there will be a way back that is as good as the way they came."

Either Tia is overworked, having switched from fatigue to her usual high style of speech, or she deliberately speaks that way, making me think about the meaning of what she said and not listen to my predatory instincts.

"There's a huge crowd out there, and we'll have to get right over their heads." Losius objected, unobtrusively preparing to cover Tia from a possible blow from a distraught Kostenka. "And even if we get through, they'll hardly open the door for us."

"And if they do, that door will lead to a place you'd rather not go," Hestia added, growing a tentacle out of the misty cloud, the end of which took the shape of her misty body, while her base continued to give the Mist tons of essence. "Alternatively, I can try to guide you myself."

Hestia only giggled in response to the puzzled stares from all sides, including even me, who had almost stopped freaking out. It was uncharacteristic of her personality.

"I'm almost breaking from the power at this moment." She explains the obvious truth. "Even a small vial of low-quality essence is not easy to obtain, and there's a lot more of it here, and it's of higher quality. The Mist Takes. I get a fraction of what I took, not much, but I'm giving her a lot now."

I, as well as Losius and Tia, who were the most enlightened, probably had standing hair on our asses now, except for Tia, because she hardly had hair growing on her ass. I thought Hestia was just using her body as a portal, throwing the dangerous essence out like garbage, but the technique she described was suspiciously similar to my Shadow Grip. It's not so terminal, but it's very similar, and accepting gifts from any plane in return for sacrifices can quickly change your Status to something else entirely.

I glanced at Tia, and only now did I realize that I hadn't noticed what she'd done, as if her real actions were hidden in the fog, lost somewhere behind the wall of indifferent darkness. And I wasn't the only one who screwed up! Tia, too, was only now realizing what had happened!

"Oh, stop making those faces," Hestia said, still having a good time. "I realized as soon as I saw those rivers that there might not be another chance. I'm not human, and if it distorts me too much, I can be subjugated again by that very artifact. And if you start playing the champion of purity and endowment now, Tin, I will take serious offense. It's too late to react... too much of this... too much."

"How much?" I squeezed the question out of myself through the force, unwilling to recognize and accept another's sacrifice.

"A little over two hundred character enhancement gifts and almost two dozen more free elevation points." As if it were a small thing, Hestia admitted. "And my own talents have taken a few boosts."

There was a lot I wanted to say, but I had to focus again, going through another bout of inspired hunger and anger, quenching the raging essence, so the chance to yell, "What the fuck, huh?" - I missed a little bit. Instead of me, it was Tia, as the chief expert on rituals and questions in the "consequences of a missed endowment" style. Well, the main theoretical expert, because the practitioner in my person was ahead of the whole company anyway.... was, until now.

"How are you still even remotely like your old self?" The surprise, sincere, and almost childlike in Tia's voice does not prevent her from very quickly moving Hestia from the category of allies to the ranks of the creatures preparing to attack, which is now distracting us with the conversation, having in fact long ago lost herself on the road to power, only pretending to be a shadow of her past personality to extinguish suspicion.

"Surprisingly, almost effortlessly." The mist maiden replies, pushing the tentacle with her body a little farther away. "For the spawn, such gifts are far less dangerous in that regard, and the effect of submission serves as an excellent anchor. I can't say I don't feel the change, but it's far from complete madness and turning into a dumb creature. And certainly far from losing my loyalty."

Tia doesn't believe her on a dime, just out of habit, though she hasn't really believed her before, except on that very dime. Ever since the monster's nature was revealed, the elf has always kept a note of her companion's danger in her head. I, on the other hand, picking up on her feelings with clairvoyance, was inclined to believe. Hestia's peculiar nature. She a spawn on the edge of the creature, which makes it easier for her to apply the analogs of the Grip and the monster, whose nature gave her a lot of resistance to even greater changes, coincided here. The picture was completed by an inherently perfect anchor of self-control in the form of an unnatural and ultra-strong loyalty to me that had once already managed to save her from complete dissolution into the Mist. The finishing touch was the presence of a perfect, three hundred thousand times perfect source of strength that could be given in exchange for strength. And it was perfect for the spawn of Mist because I had not once noticed the amusing relationship between Hestia and essences, and any essences at that!

In a situation like this.

With that.

I took off my mask, then ignoring Tia's attempt to hold me back, walked right up to the cloud of fog that covered Touch and, without even letting myself think about my idiocy, stood almost right up to the monster, which raised the danger level to a whole new level.

"I believe you, Hestia," I speak with absolute sincerity, without wryness at all, and without being able to look into it with my clairvoyance weakened by the fluctuations of mental pressure, relying only on my own opinion. "And I believe in you."

The word "thank you" remained unspoken. Unspoken because what she had done was far beyond gratitude, regardless of whether she managed to get us out or not. Nor did Raimel say a word of thanks for exactly the same reason. I turned sideways toward the cloud of Mist, falling on my ass and then on my back, staring at the ceiling with a blank stare. For some reason, just when it seemed like a good time for another attack to begin, the madness pressing in on me snapped at me one last time and then went silent. It doesn't go away or disappear. I'll have to pay for this useless battle for a long time to come, and I'll never pay for it because I've already given away something too important, but still, the madness subsides.

Canvases of messages fly before my eyes, but I ignore them. I toss them aside, not reading them, not wanting to see what they say. In my heart, I suspect what I will see.

"Ten minutes to organize ourselves and finish Hestia's dinner." Indifferently and somehow too tiredly, I issue an instruction. "Then we'll break from here to the nearest temples."

Next to her, after a few seconds, Taria sits down, grinning cheerfully with a white-toothed smile. Only a moment later, the rest of the ruffians join us, and after a while, Hestia takes human form again. Touch is left lying there as a big mountain of flesh, with slits in its depths that lead somewhere inside the already dead subspace. Dead and devastated, except somewhere at the very bottom, there were still some reserves of a product rapidly deteriorating without proper care.

I looked down at my arms, now bare to the shoulders, because the alchemically reinforced clothes had been shredded to shreds by the dead creature. And they weren't my hands anymore. My pale skin had turned parchment-white, covered with a fine mesh of black veins. Every single one of my fingernails was radically black as if I'd gotten some kind of gothic manicure or light-absorbing paint. And the hands themselves, though they retained their human proportions, now looked like something else, as if their bone structure had changed, more sharp angles had appeared, and their joint movements had become different.

"I suppose my face is really ugly?" I specify since it is lazy to look in the mirror and, moreover, to create one.

"Your eyes have darkened, though not to total blackness, but they are no longer brown." Taria, lying on her stomach, waved her legs carelessly in the air. "Also, the lips are black, like they've been smeared with charcoal or this, what's-it-name, hipstick."

"Lipstick." I corrected her absently. "And the rest of it?"

"The facial features have subtly shifted." This time, it was Tia who nailed the truth. "That's what happens when you draw too much power from sources that should only be touched at the final limit."

"And now it wasn't the last one, was it?" The tracker grumbled, checking his worn gear.

"Didn't seek to rebuke." Waved the elfess away.

"Is it so bad?" I ask her, as she is the most experienced and not inclined to spare my ego.

"The shape of your skull is unchanged, which is quite good when you consider what you experienced and your condition a moment ago." She pondered the answer, trying to probe my nature with clairvoyance. "The body shouldn't have warped too much either, for the face is traditionally the first to suffer in such cases. Smile, please."

In response to my good-natured grin, the big-eared dentist only nodded as if I had just confirmed some of her theory. I ran my tongue over my front teeth and realized exactly what she wanted to see.

"The teeth are sharpened, if only slightly." A brief pause, followed by a verdict. "To someone else, I would now prefer to grant oblivion for the sake of his salvation and my peace of mind, but you have clearly been affected by planar contamination before while remaining adequate... in general. I can only advise you to take it easy on yourself for the next couple of years, but I suppose we won't all live that long."

Moment of silence.

It was followed by an explosion of laughter from all sides, even from the starborn herself. It was a sad laugh, except Giver laughed without the slightest bitterness, but a necessary one for all of us. The last chance for escape seemed to be lost, the strength was wasted, and salvation was as far away as it had ever been.

But we're still alive, aren't we?

It might seem ridiculous, but I had the distinct feeling that the creatures and mortal servants guarding the entrance didn't realize that their guarded object had been destroyed. Or rather, they realized it, of course, but not immediately, when they were informed about the fall of one of the main pillars of the ritual from the other pillars, and they were unable to contact the forces inside. It was only then that they realized the extent of the failure and the probable punishment they would receive soon for having allowed it to happen.

We spent some time relaxing and exchanging pleasantries. And use most of the pauses. After all, if the freaks standing outside the gate to the complex wanted to smoke us out, they would not be hindered by the fear for the integrity of the circuit, so they would break into our stronghold without unnecessary delay. Yes, the same gate is terribly strong, but without the resistance of the guards and with the opportunity to calmly prepare or even combine attacks. Breaking through such a barrier is still difficult but no longer prohibitive. I, as practice has shown, would have coped, and there would easily be stronger creatures than Konstantin Yurievich. Both, in pure firepower and general terms stronger.

Hestia fell out of reality as she began to distribute the gifts she had received for the largest sacrifice ever made by a citizen of Melareth, even a former one. For the money needed to extract and harvest as many disemboweled souls as she had given to the depths of the Mist, one could buy, if not all of Melareth, then half of the kingdom or even two-thirds of its total area and a royal family to boot. When I think about how many people Touch had managed to digest and how many centuries this stuff had been brewing in it, I immediately want to kill it once more. Then, resurrect it and repeat it a hundred times. The only thing that stopped me was the inability to resurrect and a clear understanding the second time the creature will unwind my guts faster than I say fuck it, even if Touch was non-combatant at all.

"Sweetness Lovely, fifty-second stage of elevation, thirteenth wing, sixth branch." Giver, at once in three throats (her own and her puppets), enumerated the most odious congeners stationed on this point and apparently desiring our deaths. "Sonm is brimming with Darkness and Depth. She has many recoil contracts. Adept at switching places with affected mortals, instantly and through most defenses. Specializes in close combat, preferring to apply area anti-sensory fields. It's dark, you can't see anything, but she can see everything. One touch and her sweetness is on the mortal."

I listen to her report, more akin to an erotic recording of a porn actress reciting a hybrid of Lovecraft's work and porn novelists, purely on residual principle. Most of my attention is focused on tinkering with my new set of alchemy and updating the buffs on my companions. No one has washed away all the alchemy with a flood of power, but if there's a chance to strengthen them a little more without killing them, now is the time to take advantage of it, and we'll think about the consequences later. The more so because shadow theft allows us to transfer the strongest symptoms to ourselves or the most useless of the remaining dolls of Giver.

Taria and Hans were helping Tia with the rituals since the elf clearly intended to revive some of them and turn them into a minefield if not traps for the enemies and defenses for us. Losius was meditating, trying to adjust the optimal flow of the heavenly blue. As the first to come to his senses, he managed to thin out the devils (in two quick swings of his legendary blade), but a couple of times, he almost dived too high. Now he's pulling back.

He finished that mechanoid by holding the Needle's attack long enough for it to pierce the breastplates, after which the blade of concentrated force burned out the delicate artifact stuffing. The retaliatory blows, delivered by something that reminded me suspiciously of laser turrets and plasma cannons, although very accurate and struck from a distance, were taken first by the defense from Heaven and then taken aside by the Trails. Hans woke up second, even before Tia!

I should be looking at my stats right now, distributing what I've received for the battle, but I don't want to do that. I don't want to. I'm sure that if I distribute even a single stat, even a single skill point, something extremely bad will happen, worse than even the blows I've just taken and the consequences of emergency healing from those blows.

The experience, I know this for a fact, allowed me to reach the fiftieth step, but something was wrong. I haven't looked at my messages, looking for any little thing just to keep from opening them, but even so, I can't stop feeling a sense of lack. There was something that I didn't have right now that I should have gotten at level fifty, but instead, I only lost something far more valuable. A level is dust and ashes. It was something else that mattered, something I was about to lose, and I said goodbye to the hope of gaining it again.

I can't put it more precisely, but it's enough for me just to know.

The next twenty-four hours, if not hours, will answer the one and only question of who I am now, having given up too much to win, to be.

And who I, at the end of my journey, became.

"What do we do with the captives?" Taria, having finished helping our ritualist or simply boring the ritualist with her pranks, came right up to me with that question, managing to get there just in time for me to finish my meditation. "They're almost all either paralyzed, charmed, or just turned off, but there are all sorts of things there are."

I'm happy to shift my focus from my worries to something new. If I let myself dive into a vicious cycle of self-exploration, I will end up here. There are no words to describe this feeling of emptiness in the place where recently, there was something, something intangible in any way but so important.

Better to really take a closer look at the victims while we have the chance.

As strange as it might sound, the victims were lucky, though it was strange to talk about luck for someone who'd gotten into such a mess in the first place. As a matter of fact, the only lucky assholes were those who had managed to leave the Eternal before lunch today, avoiding all the risks involved. As for the rest of the unlucky assholes, we can only talk about different degrees of bad luck, but even here, the ones condemned to sacrifice stood out. Well, at least the ones who hadn't been crushed in passing during our battle.

For the purity of the ritual, it is very important, you know, that the prepared material was as unaffected as possible at the time of the beginning of the ritual. Not always, for many of the victims had been processed for weeks beforehand, but there were also those whom the cultists, under the guidance of Touch, protected from any vices, keeping them spiritually pure. As it was not easy to keep them pure in the Hell-filled hall, the victims were kept in isolated cages.

I had noticed these areas of the ritual pattern before. They created areas of purity in the corrupted space, where even completely defenseless captives could not fear corruption. As long as they weren't dragged out of there, of course. What really amused me was the durability of said areas. Not only were the ritual bubbles assembled into systems independent of the main complex that didn't bend after the base collapsed, but they also survived the fleur and the ensuing carnage.... some of them. The ones that didn't get hit directly.

Already on the approach to the point indicated by Taria, I realized that something was about to happen. I didn't even need to use any kind of intuition, deductive abilities, or excessive attention. In this particular cage lay paralyzed but fully conscious elves and elven women. To be more specific, three elven women and six elves, neatly stacked in a flower-like pattern - heads in the center and feet closer to the edge. And the effect on them was much more severe than simple paralysis. Not devil magic, but a mental network built on unplanar influence, which made its victims forget that they could move, use class abilities, or even speak. The creatures clearly did not want to spoil the sensitive shells of the starborn with planar influence, and their skins were not in a hurry to torment them before the time.

But now it was clear why they'd been so happy to accept Giver's gift of some more ear meat. They were clearly needed in this ritual, and they could have used some backup. The dome of protection didn't protect against anything but the effects of the fleur-de-lis. Or rather, it did, but on a purely cosmetic level, and it was silly to compare that protection to the main type of armor. There was nothing to stop him from simply stepping inside the bubble and taking, taking, taking...

With some difficulty, I gave myself a mental kick, looking away, shifting my gaze to the silent and motionless Tia standing outside the bubble who, in turn, was staring fixedly at one of her 'sisters'. The second most powerful, second only to a battle mage with two epic classes of level forty-two. The martial artist didn't even seem to dignify her gaze, unlike the Hypnomancer and Master of Ceremonies of the forty-second level in a surprisingly beautiful guise.

I was about to say something profane about having to rescue another damsel in distress for the sake of her eared tits when Tia leaned over and went through the patterns of the protective ritual with four taps of her fingers, completely disabling the physical barriers. Slowly and thoroughly, she got to her feet, walking over to her.... acquaintance? Girlfriend? Mistress? She dragged her away from the rest of the prisoners (but not out of bounds), leaned over her, and poured one of my mind-clearing potions over her face.

The potion was relatively simple, brewed in case of too close communication with Ygra, and I didn't know that she still kept it. Or rather, I knew, but I couldn't understand the meaning of it, except for the banal unwillingness to throw away an expensive potion brewed by the owner of a mythical class. She had found out on the day of that picnic in the swamp, not far from the walls of the Eternal, that she could successfully level the effects of ogre pheromones herself. But even this potion was enough to make the prisoner's gaze meaningful, even if her body still couldn't move. The mental effects of mere alchemy couldn't be removed.

"Greetings." Tia said only that, and then she took the stiletto and stuck it between the ribs of her companion. "And goodbye forever."

The hypnomancer's eyes widened in a startling mixture of recognition, horror, and crystal-clear despair. Tia struck quickly, working the stiletto like a sewing machine, clearly trying not just to kill her apparently familiar but to make her feel the approach of death. The funny thing is there was no hatred, anger, or desire for revenge in her actions. She kills her with the same attitude people use to pull weeds at the dacha as if she were doing a job she didn't like but needed.

It was just that once upon a time, she had made a decision and assigned a list of those she felt should not live. Some of these lives she cut off even before she escaped from the native forests, but some of her once companions, who took a direct part in granting oblivion, which was supposed to heal her wounded heart, were out of reach. I have no idea what exactly the dying elven woman did wrong, and I don't want to find out myself - each of us has the right to our secrets and bad memories that should not be touched. If she wants to tell me, she will tell me herself, or at least she will open the shadow that covers her fate, but if she doesn't want to, let it remain a mystery.

I can't help but notice an amusing fact that speaks volumes about my companion's character. She strikes not with her legendary dagger but with ordinary steel, as if the revenge calculator in her head deemed the hypnomancer's misdeed not severe enough to be killed by a soul-striking weapon. Or was it the other way around, deeming it so severe that she wished to give the departing soul to Hell rather than grant it instant oblivion?

I'm not going to ask, of course.

"Uh..." I won't, but Taria's not gonna be able to resist commenting. "Old girlfriend, huh? "The kind of girlfriend that's you don't need enemies?"

"Taria." The elf's impenetrability hadn't gone anywhere, but a faint weariness seeped through her, either from life or from Taria. "Would you be so kind as to be quiet for a moment longer?"

Taria responded with a gesture of the door closing where her mouth had been, then looked as innocent and harmless as possible. Tia, no longer paying attention to her, wiped the stiletto on the victim's clothes and stretched her muscles with some relief. It looked like she'd been hit a few times in the fight and badly. She had avoided wounds by covering herself with her magic and the enchantments embedded in her armor, but right now, it was better to let her rest. And she kept quiet, the bastard, not wanting to give any reason to cover her more than necessary. Whether it was selflessness or just too used to not showing weakness... No, she just didn't want to slow down the whole group, realizing the value of time. Now that the escape attempt had failed epically, she no longer saw the need to show her toughness.

"I suggest the captives be left here." Indifferently and deliberately, she puts forward the suggestion. "Oddly enough, with the creatures and their servants dead, this place is much safer for them than trying to leave it. To top it all off, they are protected by segmented bubble-type rituals. Without isolation, they, weakened by their captivity and the preparatory measures applied to them, will be taken by the environment itself, even without considering the influence of the devils."

Losius clearly agrees with her words. He, too, would not want to abandon the miraculously survived and failed victims, but he realized that no one would rescue them. And he would not move to save them because they were nobody to him, unlike his companions, but it was awkward to just turn around and leave. The rest of the company also accepted the offer quietly because Hans had come to the same conclusion, but he didn't voice it. Taria, like Asterium, didn't care about anyone and everyone she didn't consider her own, only to an even greater extent, and Hestia was busy trying to maintain herself amid the unexpected power that had been thrust upon her. And surprisingly successful at it.

"Rest is over," I said, pushing the thought of using the survivors for my own survival away. "Let's get ready and try to get out of this place before those bastards break through the wall since they can't break down the door."

My thoughts, obsessive thirst, and hunger are very right because I can really use these lives, exchanging them to the maximum advantage to strengthen myself and others, but I crush these thoughts at the root. Even though I have already crossed a place where there is no return, where people should never set foot, I know with all my heart it would be a mistake to follow my instincts even further. Ridiculous hope, and maybe something more, like the feeling of falling into the abyss, the very first second of this fall. When you have already fallen to the laughter of merciless gravity, but there is still a ghostly hope to wriggle the snake and grab, if not the edge of the cliff, then a tuft of grass growing just below.

The chance is ghostly, the hope foolish but never fading until the last moment.

And that moment has come and is happening right now.

The creatures really couldn't break down the vault doors immediately. They are, after all, masterfully strong and resilient. The enemy forces outside the ritual hall had no idea what we had going on. They knew about the interruption of the ritual, but they couldn't know about complete destruction of the entire circuit. From their point of view, they could still, if not fix what had happened, then minimize the loss by saving what could still be saved.

If it had been otherwise, we would have had no time at all. The creatures would simply break into our temporary shelter, overpowering the defenses with their techniques and blows. Even I alone could break through this safe if I had laid out to the bottom, and among them, there are enough characters not inferior to me or inferior not too much. In general, the only thing that saved us was the awesomeness of the deceased Touch. The creatures concentrated outside the walls of the hall could not fully believe in his death.

Especially since the carcass of this abomination wasn't quite dead yet. The base of the higher devil had been destroyed by my attacks and the Shadows inside it. The limitless supply of essences and nearly dissolved souls were taken by the Mist through Hestia, but the remnants of the... let's call it the peripheral nervous system, even if it wasn't the most appropriate name, continued to mimic the activity. As I said, it was an objectified factory, a giant combine and conveyor belt. Now the combine is left without a driver, without gasoline, without anything, but it will continue to jerk its arms a little bit more before it goes completely silent, thus deceiving its good friends, who, in another situation, would have already fucked us in all holes.

It's not a joke.

There's a whole army out there that we don't have a chance to thin out with our strategic charms. We don't stand a chance in a direct fight because we won't even be crushed. We'll be squashed. We don't even want to fight, and we don't intend to, planning to make a breakthrough at the moment of weakening the hall's defenses right in front of the attackers. It's a long shot, but it's better than nothing. In fact, come to think of it, I had even less of a chance against Touch..... but it wasn't ready to fight, and these guys are gonna be extremely ready.

My instincts demanded to sacrifice everyone, everyone at all, starting with the prisoners, continuing with Giver's puppets, and ending with my team, just to win a chance to save myself. I have a great mission. I can't die here and leave it unfinished, and they will understand, and if they don't, what kind of comrades are they to me? The abomination crawling from the depths of my soul was surprisingly convincing precisely because it was me. There was no inner voice, no split personality, or some demon planted in me that I could destroy with pathos, even if together with a part of myself.

It was just me and the worst that I had in me.

Always had.

The silence wasn't much fun, but somehow the gloom never came. We all gathered in a tight group, sitting in the corner farthest from the slowly yielding gateway to the hall, leaning against the wall, clearing it of any trace of the ritual and drawing a protective circle around it. Even the Giver in her main body stuck to our suicidal company, and I didn't bother to deny her that. We'd all be dead in an hour anyway. Or not, but that would be worse than just dying.

The defenses on the gate were weakening. I continued to chase the dastardly thoughts of my salvation under my imaginary bunk. Taria was polishing Valerium with a rag. Hestia was distributing the gifts she'd received for being taken by Mist. Tia and Losius were meditating, and Hans was just dozing in silence. It was probably the craziest time I'd had in a while, if not in my entire life, but despair never came.

In a way, I almost wished it would overwhelm me, bury me underneath, erase everything human from me, make me make the right choice, and try to save my skin by removing the responsibility for what I'd done. It was the same wish of Giver, who, I'm sure, would have tried to influence me in some way to force me to make the right decision if she had even the slightest chance to convince me of the rightness of such a decision without direct influence on my mind. The deviless' guardianship, like her defense, doesn't always take pleasant forms. Or rather, it never does, I tell you, as a psychic of not the shittiest sort. She wanted my salvation even more than I did. Much more. More than anything in the world.

If she had a chance to get me out, she would sacrifice herself and all the others, but without my consent, she was powerless. If anyone can make the ritual work and get from the Eternal through the depths of the Shadow with the power I've gained from the ritual, I'm the only one who can. I suppose if she attacks suddenly, she can subdue me for a short time, but in such a state, I won't be able to make my escape. And Konstantin Yurievich himself hasn't become such a creature yet, no matter what Status tries to tell me.

I suppressed the urge coming from deep inside me again. Only now, I suppressed my curiosity. I wouldn't open the message tray, not until my last breath. It's a stupid thing to do, but I've done so few smart things in my life that no sense to start doing them now. As long as I still believe, even without faith, as long as I hope without hope, as long as I haven't seen ruthless confirmation of the obvious until then, I am still me.

And fuck it.

In the life of every person in my home world, there's a right to a left... I mean, a chance for a miracle. On the expanses of Alurei, this chance is actually much higher because Miracles happen here regularly, sometimes even on schedule. Alas, it was the Miracle with a capital letter that could not save us because the devil's army had quite sensibly reinsured on this account. So our miracle was with a small letter, but it did not become less desirable. To be honest, it was not even a miracle, being a consequence of our actions multiplied by a fraction of luck and the presence of a very good clairvoyant in the defenses of the capital of the Eternal Empire.

You see, but when our suicide team gave the ritual a little blue screen of death, most of the Golden Feather Guild's occupied devils tried to smoke us out. And in doing so, bare their defenses, focusing on trying to save the unsalvageable. And the human forces, bitten in the ass all the way down to their throats, were able to grasp this moment and decided to use the sudden openness to their advantage.

To be sure, the army defending the Golden Feather had not suffered much, at least not numerically, from the attempts to take out those who were trapped in the ritual hall. But quite a few of the elite and senior officers were not in their positions but in front of that very door. Among the Imperials there was a person influential enough to be able to sharply and quickly raise all the forces entrusted to him to attack on the mere cry of the clairvoyant "guys, we have to take it". And the Empire of the Ages, even taking into account the sabotage and unpreparedness for battle, had more than enough forces left.

I realized this truth when the attempts to open the door, which had almost succumbed, stopped, as did the pounding into the walls, and the pressurizing atmosphere of imminent and inevitable doom faded. It did not disappear or even weaken, but where clairvoyance used to say: "Kostik, tu es mort.", there was room for maneuver. At that moment, I was almost ready to believe in world justice, universal equality, and the triumph of communism. This moment quickly passed, but the increased chances did not disappear.

"Wow." Tia was the most surprised by the sudden appearance of a ray of light in the dark kingdom, as the one who knew for sure that last-minute salvation only came in fairy tales.

Then there were a few expressive expressions from each of us, waiting for death, after which our fixed determination to meet death transformed into no less determination not to meet it, and we began to act. Actually, we couldn't open those doors either because only Touch and a couple of his closest assistants had the keys (physical, magical, and intangible). And now, after the almost complete destruction of the door, we could not open it. But we were perfectly able to break it down because there was almost nothing to break down.

The description of the situation took much longer than our actions themselves. Each of us realized the enemies were distracted for a short time and would prefer to get rid of possible problems in the rear as quickly as possible, not trying to carefully infiltrate (especially since the corpse of Touch was twitching less and less, finally dying), but breaking through. We did the only thing that could give us a little more life - we broke out first.

Giver got her finest hour, her moment of glory, when she simply detonated all of her puppets, along with their sonms, and in a few beats of her heart, she emptied all of their supplies, putting them all on one blow. The puppets died with groans and smiles on their lips (on those who had those lips), but they had accomplished their goal, dropping the gates along with pieces of the wall that held them.

Each of us was hit by the storm of energies she'd released, but I covered everyone from it by simply Manifesting a piece of reality around us, making it too Shadow to obey the laws of the rest of the world and overlaying standard shadow barriers on top of it in a slightly obscene amount. It crumpled that defense quite noticeably, washing away almost all the barriers and reducing the volume of manifested space threefold, but nothing got to our fragile bodies. Most of the defense, to be frank, was eaten not by the echoes of the dolls' detonation but by a wave of distortion born from the displacement of the ritual hall's space and the rest of the world. It was not for nothing that the exit from isolated parts of the universe should always be as soft as possible - if there was no softness, it would be easier to jump into an industrial crusher, and at least it would be less painful.

The same wave, even if it was incomparably weaker than the one we'd gotten, hit the creatures gathered behind the breach a little. They were also crushed a little by the gate, but that would not have held them all back for a moment. Their shields held, though, for they had managed to put up a whole bunch of barriers, combining them into a monolithic armor that combined Vice, planar manifestations supported by captured souls, and even conceptual influences. What they didn't hold back was Giver, who rushed forward ahead of us all with a frenzied caress, starting to replace us right in a leap.

The mixture of the creature's personal talents, the reinforcement given by the Ring, and even more reinforcement from reapplying the Ring showed itself in all its glory. And while before I was (not)much afraid of what came out of it after my modifications, now I was really scared. She rushed forward, literally on the wings of the blast wave and spatial vortices that had not had time to dissipate, which caused Giver's body, covered by some grayish barrier, to receive several deep wounds, but it didn't stop her attack.

A dozen gray, invisible threads that could only be distinguished from the side, only if they were not directed at you, rushed toward the creatures that had just begun their attacks. The barrier does not stop them because these threads simply do not exist anywhere except in the imagination of her and the audience. A conceptual defense could have reflected such a thing, for the sheer punching power of the talent used was not inspiring. But the monolith of enemy shields was not against her fellow devil, and Giver knew perfectly well the tactics of her yesterday's comrades-in-arms.

The threads passed through the barrier, touching each of those she directed them at. Each of the creatures saw the attack that was directed at the others but could not realize that it was also directed at them. A moment later, not even a trace of dust, not even a trace of energy, was left of Giver Caress when six powerful blows converged on her, practically ignoring her defenses, none of which she could even dodge. It was impossible to dodge, as several closed fields and deployed auras prevented any attempt to retreat. My next addition to the ringed ones was gone, erased, gone to zero.

Immediately reincarnated in the body of one of her assassins. It wasn't a replacement teleportation or even a personality rewrite, but something more contrived and devious. She transferred not only her memory but added her sonm to that of the assassin, and even the appearance of the new body, I'm sure, would also change in a matter of minutes, becoming familiar to Giver of Caress. But before those minutes came, inside the cohesive and indestructible devil formation were eleven dolls with overwritten identities and one Giver, gradually sprouting from her receptacle.

Devils are by nature very good at fighting such tricks, for it is the most popular weapon in their arsenal, even if it is usually much smaller in caliber. Yes, they were taken by surprise, but the most Giver could hope for was the destruction of the formation, nothing more. Unless, of course, she repeated her trick... but without the repeated use of such an ultimatum weapon, her dolls and herself would still be slaughtered. Not without loss, not without difficulty, but without a chance of victory.

The only time was playing against the devils again as if the capital of the Empire itself was invisibly helping the people defending its right to be, playing with the Law strictly in favor of anyone opposing the invaders. The creatures were just beginning to realize that Giver's attack might have done something since it had not been repelled or even paid any attention to its existence. Giver and her puppets were just beginning the parade of treacherous blows in the back, and our troupe was already crawling onto the stage. And that's when the music began to play in a new way.

Usually, I was the one who played first fiddle because my shadow barriers could withstand a lot, but today Hestia took over the role of defense, and I literally dove into her mist, hiding inside like a fucking matryoshka doll from a nightmare. She hasn't fully adjusted to her new abilities yet, but she and I are bonded so closely now that she's temporarily accessed my clairvoyance. It's not an all-clear, but it'll keep her from making the dumbest mistakes, and she has her own experience and instincts.

A wave of dense, milky-white mist shot out of the breach, straight toward the enemy attacks, a whole wave of them directed by fighters who hadn't realized Giver's trick in time. Following that wave, close contact specialists were rushing into action, seeking to finish off those who survived the wave by some miracle. We were not going to be underestimated since even Touch could not stop these strange saboteurs.

The attacks went into the mist, and the attackers stepped into the mist and left as well. Out of at least half a dozen creatures of about forty levels each, only six had time to leap backward out of the misty wave as if scalded. And they looked accordingly. The defenses that covered their bodies were barely smoldering, their shells were bubbling from a sharp drop in reserve, a fair share of their souls had disappeared from their hosts, and even their memories, the basis of their twisted minds, were gaping holes. They couldn't even remember what had happened to them in the misty rampart. They were saved only by the same instincts, honed by centuries of battle, that had crushed all thought with one short order to flee without a backward glance.

Those whose instincts did not reach their brains, whose instincts were too quiet, or who simply failed to follow the advice of their gut in time were no longer a problem. Something like a fifth of the gathered elite had already been incapacitated. We had just started and were not going to stop.

Hestia did not continue the attack, though she could still do much. Bristling with their techniques and released sonms, the creatures were not the most comfortable opponent for her, even after all the essence she had given away. Instead of striking, the mist soared upward toward the ceiling, making way for the second wave, represented by the good old Shadows.

When I emerged from the mist, exactly where I wanted to be, unlike the unlucky devils, I immediately unleashed my creation. A piece of something extremely cold, absolute blackness in the guise of a shapeless blot aimed precisely at the center of the enemy formation. Only the power of Manifestation keeps this nightmare, this embodied breach in the depths of the Shadow, wrapped in the wrapping of battle charms, in one piece, not allowing it to tear and suck everything and everyone into this breach.

Perhaps this attack is comparable in strength to the previous one, which I used to kill Touch, but the principle of its operation is completely different. The attack is down, directed, and does nothing. Lulling Song of the sixtieth level meets my surprise with a blow of its own, consisting of several huge souls of power, bound together by contract magic and the power of Hell into a united mechanism. He was able to discern my preparations under the cover of the mist, create countermeasures, and unleash them exactly at the moment of my greatest weakness, full openness, because Kostenka is so fond of neglecting defense in favor of the attack, relying on the third eye...

Five screaming and moaning spheres of aquamarine color surrounded the blot, wrapped around it, and simply disappeared with it, taking my creation to the same place where the souls of the dead should go. A dozen more spheres are lined up in an attacking formation, woven into a network, the central nodes of which these spheres are. And this formation is already near me, almost touching me, guided by Legend's will, preparing to end my story with the same ease with which Song leveled my attack.

I see my finale and smile at it under the mask, rolling an inhuman maw full of needle-like teeth.

A shot from Valerium, a chaotic weapon and therefore very hard to predict with any kind of clairvoyance, passed right over my left shoulder. The veil of illusion dissolves, revealing the Dancer following me, and Song, too open to attack as I was, is involuntarily hit in the face by the projectile. He does not hold back a groan of joy at his mistake, and I manage to step toward my death.

There is no point in dodging or trying to overpower this attack. It's too powerful, honed against even tougher opponents than a mere isekai. These spheres... they are unique and were given to Song only for the most extreme case, when without their use, without irreversible waste of irreplaceable treasure, it would be even worse than it would be if he lost what he had been entrusted with. I need not dodge. I needed the time of his absent-mindedness when he was filled with delighted joy that a fallen enemy had managed to outwit and hurt him, Lulling Song, even in the moment of ignominious death.

Aegis covers me with its blanket, only now there is so little left to give to Loneliness, delaying the inevitable, especially after having given almost everything, or maybe without the "almost." The spheres are too sophisticated, too powerful the unfortunates imprisoned within them. Each of the captives was once a contracted mage of monstrous power and an equally fervent believer, and now all their faith is turned to their last bargain, their last and most dreaded contract. They wrap the net around what has become a two-dimensional figure, but without even attempting to touch that figure.

If the net did hit the activated afterburner, the void of Loneliness would swallow the attack just as it can swallow anything at all. Souls are obedient to the will invested, eager to fulfill the bargain as it should be fulfilled. A sort of auto-targeting system, waiting for Aegis to come out of the afterburner to complete the strike. Only now, they are so close that there is no chance of avoiding my fate.

The two-dimensional figure continues to dash toward Song's throat as if in the vain hope of taking him with it. Song moves to meet it with an almost friendly smile, wanting to get a closer look, to memorize this moment... One of the dolls' backstab is stopped by the ghostly silhouette of an activated soul, and the counterattack simply vaporizes the doll. The second and third dolls, from those who had time to notice and react to Song's actions against beloved me, did not even have time to strike. The souls of the seers told the creature where to strike ahead of time. But like Valerium's shot, this betrayal required distraction, time, and attention.

The frenzy with which Song dealt with the puppets that had interrupted his spectacle was impossible to convey in words. But he finished them off very quickly, simultaneously shuffling his and a few lulled allies' somns with wild speed, drinking the souls of the nearest cultists, creating a new set of defenses. It's a waste, the bastard, but he's created another bastion, this time tied only to him, so the puppets can't destroy it. The creature is clever, realizing that even after my finale, there will still be those who follow me, and the creator of the Mist should not be underestimated.

Three dozen, perhaps all of the remaining spheres are now manifested into reality, making another bargain with reality. As long as this deal is in effect, no one can or has the right to attack Song or his allies. Heavier artillery is hard to come by, and this deal will not destroy the spheres but only give them a brief respite. Yeah, right. Kostik is the one for whom one can finally waste an irreplaceable resource, and the rest of us don't even need that.

The dolls and the revived Giver, who had just managed to deliver several successful treacherous blows, are forced to stop hitting and start defending. Without much result. The devils, who do not need to spend their strength on defense and are not afraid of retaliation, methodically swaddle both the dolls and Giver of Careses. Either they want to try to reverse the process of re-recording, or they just want to study this phenomenon in detail.

My heart had not yet taken a single beat since our counterattack, and we were almost fucked. It's sad, really - you can't hit, and you can't retreat. I don't attack either, closing in on Song and, still being a two-dimensional asshole, just running through him. A shadow is still just a shadow. It can't be harmed, but neither can its touch do that harm. It's not an attack. It's not an attempt to hurt or hurt bad, right?

Just for that brief moment, when our shadows merged, I managed, without realizing how to partially manifest myself to reality. Not to apply Manifestation because that would require stopping the afterburner and dying, but to manifest myself, who had become an ordinary two-dimensional shadow. And let this trick cost me a particularly painful blow to the remnants of my psyche when Loneliness strengthened its presence even more, although once again, it seemed there was no further to go.

Shadow Theft.

A skill that once allowed me, among other things, to transfer damage from myself to someone or something. But with each new level, each skill gained, and each improvement point invested, this trick revealed new facets to me. Who cares, after all, what to steal and what to give away? Wounds, blows, alchemical intoxication, auric sheaths, sensory lighting... or obligations. Like a contract between me and the spheres, made unilaterally, but when has it ever bothered the other side that can afford such contracts?

It would be really cool if I could just take a bastard's weapon and smash it into him without any resistance. I guess I wasn't tough enough to pull it off. Song, of course, was surprised, so much so he even forgot to enjoy it, but he reacted in time, simply destabilizing his control over the spheres, thus forcing them to self-destruct. All of them, not just the ones that were supposed to destroy me.

If it hadn't been for Valerium's shot, or the attack of Giver's dolls, or Hestia's constant presence from above, from the ceiling, forcing him to take her hostility into account in his actions, he would have been able to keep control of the weapons entrusted to him. But he didn't, in an instant, allow devils who cared little for defense to find themselves in a situation where defense would have been sorely needed.

They were crushing the puppets, almost managing to swaddle them all. Some of them hit Hestia's misty body unsuccessfully, but the most they got was a few wisps of disintegrated Mist, a couple of them even managing to attack or indicate attacks on the companions behind. Especially hard on Taria, who would have been killed if it hadn't been for Hans. Even so, Tia had to smack her in the forehead with a vial of a ninety percent essence of freedom and sanity to interrupt the order to rip her heart out imposed by some bastard.

The creatures were preparing for a protracted battle to our exhaustion when they, hidden beneath the treaty created by the spheres, were in no danger, and we could only defend ourselves desperately. The treaties were nullified, there was no one to pay the penalty, and the Mist fell on them, lost, disunited, and unable to regroup for the third time in a row.

Hans went last, covered by the glow of Heaven, Taria's illusions, and his instinct for self-preservation. Last, yes, but his role was far removed from his position in the ranks. Hestia could not repeat the crushing power of the first blow for many reasons, the main one being her unwillingness to further transformation, which would have been inevitable if she had decided to ally herself with Mist for the second time in a few seconds. Having friendly targets at her side and Song, who absolutely would not fall for the same trick twice, were also taken into consideration.

Instead of a powerful but brief impact, it stretched that impact, concealed it, and divided it into a thousand small steps, hiding each in an endless fog. A flash of pure Darkness fell, which Song and his lulled simultaneously tried to close themselves off from the attempt to take them in an instant. A second of invulnerability for every single one of Hell's allies ended, but nothing tried to challenge that invulnerability. There was no attack, no strike, and no attempt to analyze or bypass the imposed effect. Nothing happened.

Forty-two creatures, entitled to be considered elite with the support of one strong Legend, along with about two hundred smaller creatures and the occasional cultist, were in the middle of the wide corridor leading to the hall with the destroyed ritual. Yes, the corridor was narrow relative to the hall, but even so, it was at least two dozen meters wide. At the point near the gate to the hall, the corridor widened very noticeably, in fact, creating another hall, a sort of ante-chamber.

Such a crowd could easily block the passageway, preventing the insidious saboteurs from escaping, but it was still difficult to fully place them here. That's why they let the elite go ahead, put the tough elite behind them, and only then, as the last reserve or reserve material, they used ordinary fighters. They were only ordinary fighters against the backdrop of the elite fist, of course, with good levels and excellent equipment (the latter was mostly for the cultists).

But the mist came, trying to confuse the formation, to break it, to divide them, to deny them the advantage of a coherent group. The Mist, the real Mist, not the ghostly remnants of what the Eternal still had after the raising of the dome, touched the devils with its softness, enveloped them in its gentle embrace.... and failed to push through. The creatures may have been unprepared, but they remained the elite. At that, they already knew the plane had been thrown into battle against them. They held their own. Somewhere by a special soul, somewhere by some unconventionally used talent, and somewhere by a simple release of raw power. And covered even those who had no way to defend themselves.

Almost.

Wrapped in mist, Hans, who'd bonded with Hestia as I had bonded with her a second earlier, put all of himself into one decisive attack, taking a particularly unpleasant and very short-lived potion that boosted his Trail control abilities enough to try to do what he'd planned without dying from the strain. I guess he didn't die. I did not doubt that he'd accomplished what he'd planned, so no "I guess" about it.

Hans's effect was not an attack in the literal sense, but it was able to do the most important thing - to separate the enemy's fused ranks, even if only for a brief moment, making them lose sight of each other, aided by the mist. Hestia reacted as if she'd just finished what Hans had started, finally dividing the enemy and preventing them from regrouping. Wandering in the Mist could be done in any direction, but getting where you were going was not a task for novice hikers.

Waiting for the moment, Hestia begins to press on the enemy, making his reserve sag and flow out to nowhere, sucking out strength and confidence, weakening the chains on the souls imprisoned in the sonms, and making every movement require additional effort and cost. At the same time, we are all getting much easier. The mist is thinning, opening up a view of the enemy's silhouettes, helping to coordinate attacks but not exposing us to the enemy's eyes.

I complete the combination, grinning even harder at the masked face, merging back into Hestia as much as possible, followed by the rest of my companions. It's not a mind fusion, but each of us knows and sees what the others know and see. Mine and Tia's clairvoyance, Hestia's sense of space, Hans' awareness of the Trails, and even the whispers Giver receives from her and the puppets. At this moment, we are all something like the lost people under Tavimark, navigating perfectly in an unbearable environment for everyone else.

And the creatures start dying.

The blows of the Crooked Root, even one scratch of which is worth everything, the swings of Hans' alchemical daggers, the flashes of Heaven and Sun from the use of the Golden Needle, another shot of Valerium (what an unforgivably long reload time it has!) and, of course, Hestia herself, with all her tentacles, boas, hooks, jaws, and hands. The omnipresent Mist, who guides us and destroys the enemy, becomes the last note in the symphony of bloodshed.

I have my melody now. As much as I want to, I can't afford to help my friends in battle because my enemy will start helping his own. Song can't be shackled, tricked, or confused that easily. He knows how to counteract the Mist, and he has something to answer to the power of the Trails. Hans and Hestia's technique was exotic, unpredictable, and difficult to understand, but the devil's arsenal, with his experience, his sonm, and his level of access to the Soul Bank, had something to answer for that.

So, he should absolutely not be given time to find arguments.

There are no shadows in the mist, except those created from the shadow of my own, and I cannot overcome resistance, for that would damage Hestia and destroy her and Hans' Labyrinth. I have enough of what I have, and in as compact a form as possible, to keep the legendary creature at bay. In a different situation, it would be more dangerous, but in such uncomfortable conditions, Song can only keep on the defensive and wait for the right moment.

Once more, the faithful daggers were in my hands. For the first time in a long time, it was used in a serious battle. Daggers were wrapped in shadow until they lost their materiality and turned into embodied slashes in space. Once more, the boiling of a desperate battle close at hand, as then, in the forests of the wild lands, against a horde of green-skinned men, only now the enemy was not an orcish chieftain, but a more dangerous animal. Only the pounding of the heart in the Shadow's chest was not heard. Only the cold night air did not fill the absent lungs.

Step-strike-retreat.

Blades plow through barriers, and the barriers themselves shake and weaken in an indifferent mist. Flame is replaced by Depth. It gives way to Hardness, and following Hardness comes ordinary fire magic, which lacks the profound power of the native plane but has a great deal of invested power. Soul after soul burns out, weakens, and slips from the devil's grip, hiding in the jaws of the Mist, but Song does not stop attacking for a moment.

Step-slash-somersault-strike.

He tries different approaches and constantly presses on my mind, as if choosing a lullaby melody that will have to slow me down, if not to wash out my brains, then at least for one short moment. I have to give him credit. These melodies of his do disturb me, make me distracted to overcome them, to burn out of my mind and memory the tainted poison, the nasty stuff that resembles memetic viruses. Even once having heard such a chant, an ordinary person will forever be alone with it, having no chance to get rid of the melody stuck in his brain, having no chance to stop singing along to the one who created the melody.

Retreat-retreat-feint-block.

The pink ray on my forearm, which had taken on the ultimate Form, fell powerless, fading into the mist, but my counterattack was also met with frugal, calm blocking. Even in such a situation, Song doesn't lose his gloss and confidence, now and then forcing me to stop my attack and go on the defensive. So far, he's been unable to open up those defenses, just as he's been unable to force me to defend for too long. I've had to step up the pressure a few times, especially when four souls of users of the Mist at once allowed him to start influencing Hestia's consciousness. If it hadn't been for our shared connection allowing Giver, Tia, and I to notice this influence, at the same time, he would have had some chance of turning an overly battle-focused Hestia against us by simply swapping friends and enemies in her mind.

Whip-blade-needle-barrier.

Me too, at times, help my side, even if it's almost by clairvoyance alone, guiding blows and pointing out the right tactics. Only occasionally, when my battle with Song passes one of the enemy, I have time to strike a blow or two with my dagger or the lash that continues it, killing or wounding an enemy who is too close.

I'm getting bored with this fight where neither can break the other. The sonm of Song seems almost inexhaustible. I can't bear to forget about Hestia and the pain she'll be in, to breathe in full force, to assume my most combat-ready Form, and to tear the Song to shreds. Only two meters tall, thin, and frail, he'd be no match for me in close combat if I could take him on in my usual Shadow style.

That's how it seems to me now, though, with me and my entourage pushing the bastard around, preventing him from using the strongest of his tricks. I distract and wound, provoke and deceive. Forcing it to focus all its energies on me so a slightly recovered Hans would emerge beside me, throwing and directing his blades with Trails, wounding the creature in the back, forcing it to spend one of its souls, transferring the damage of the fire essence to its captive. Tia strode out from the other side, leisurely and gracefully clipping the supporting leg with the Crooked Root. The Golden Needle gleamed, interrupting an attempt to reach for the Pathfinder, who had no chance to defend himself, cutting off not only the attempt itself but also a couple of fingers on Song's left hand. Valerium roared, and its shot flew through the open hole in the middle of the impenetrable wall of Mist, hitting the same spot where the previous shot had hit seemingly an eternity ago. The misty hands closed around Song's neck and shoulders, slowing Legend for a brief moment.

So Giver of Caresess, in the body of one of her puppets, put that puppet under a fatal blow, and while the puppet was beating in agony, the real Giver, who had already made her new body change its appearance to the one she was accustomed to (but subtly different to be as desirable as possible for me alone), was exactly opposite to Song, who clearly recognized her.

A shadow whip, concentrated beyond common sense, finally cuts off the left hand that Song had a chance to reach for the pet devil before his death, and Giver's palm rips through the snow-white flesh of the devil's ribcage, reaching all the way to the sonm, grabbing it tightly and ripping it the fuck out of his body. Song's eyes widened with disbelief and unwillingness to end such a wonderful duel. I see his exquisite hatred and unsustainable resentment at such a betrayal. At the same time, I realize that Giver of Caresses has deliberately chosen just such a death, just such an attack, and just this moment of maximum tension.

Giving the kind of death that brings no pleasure, only disappointment.

Arouse and blue balling, editorial for Hell, the domain of Lust.

Contact me.

Taria grunted, rubbing her ass where the kick inflicted by Losius had landed, bringing her out of danger. The nobleman leans tiredly against one of the few intact sections of the wall, wiping his brow of dust and sweat, slowly coming to his senses. Hans is lying starfish right on the floor, staring up at the ceiling and cursing very harshly, only quietly. That attack on Song was clearly unnecessary, and he shouldn't have overstretched his shell. Tia meditates again, seemingly checking herself for influences from Hestia or Giver, which is actually a very sensible approach. Hestia has taken on the appearance of a human woman again, and it's even more believable due to her enhanced talents and enhanced characteristics. Giver was gutting the still-living remains of one of her dolls, pulling souls of particular interest from her sonm, adding to her already growing collection.

There are sounds of battle in the distance, and at least once, a strategic enchantment based on Darkness, Light, and Shadow has hit the territory of Golden Feather. Such an attack was clearly the work of either a very cool artifact or a very cool team of specialists, and most likely both, and something else. One should look for more intolerant planes to each other, and it is not a fact that you will find them! However, the result was just as it should be, simply crushing the outer layers of defense, breaking the main domes of barriers over the guild, and thinning the defenses.

It was not for nothing that the Golden Feather was considered an underguild, for the combat potential of their magical defenses, even after switching to the side of the devils, was not particularly inspiring. Yes, cool. Yes, powerful, but the traitors did not have trump cards similar to the suit used by the Imperials to survive something comparable. If we were not all in the heart of the guild, it would have covered us as well, especially since Mr. Imperials clearly tried to hit this point but missed a little. Or, more likely, the passive barriers helped them miss.

The potion rollback hasn't come yet, but it's coming up at any moment, and once again, we're forced to drink in extra boosters. I'm again transferring some of the effects to myself and the dolls. We don't have time to rest or at least take antitoxin concoctions. The caged timelessness of News Bringer is almost released. Even without clairvoyance, you can feel it due to the nature of this super-mega-porn golem. We need to get away from the guild building, preferably without running into either the enemy or the Imperials, because both sides will obviously want our blood.

"And Tia's a boo." Taria summarized out of the blue, tossing aside the last of the vials handed to her and wiping her lips with an "oh-my-god-what-a-shit-I just drank" expression on her face.

"Justify," I replied lazily, stretching out the last few seconds of rest while the drank elixirs were still being digested, glad that their taste and effects distracted me from the desire to rip out the hearts beating in my team's chests.

"She wanted T to squeeze her tits while we were sensing each other in the mist, and Taria just to feel it." Hans ratted out the dancer at once, for which he received first a kick and then a hurt look.

Such jokes made my eyes widen, and the maddening whispering receded not the second but the fifth priority. No, the request itself wasn't surprising, especially from Taria, as she loved, knew, and practiced it. But, with all my respect for the talents of the former townswoman, with all my fantasy and power of imagination.....

"When did you ever find time to ask in this mess?" I stood up from the floor to get a better look at her shameless eyes. "I didn't even have time to breathe, let alone talk! Words are just too slow!"

"I took them both out against a coordinated twosome of devils, distracting the creatures with a few attacks." This time, Taria's indignant look was bestowed upon a faintly smiling Hestia. "They destroyed them, but before they did, Taria had time to voice her request."

"As if that were hard to do!" If the dancer was offended, even I couldn't see it, but I could see her genuine indignation at being thought stupid. "You had one hand free, by the way!"

"In the other, I held plates of prepared ritual sigils." If I'd known her worse, I'd have thought the elf was making excuses, but that's impossible, so I guessed. "And though I spent them all on the two against whom we were set against by the guiding will of our ally, I had and still have enough billets to occupy the idle hand."

In confirmation of her words, the druid raised her hand, showing everyone the thin wooden plates clasped between her fingers, densely painted with all sorts of symbols. They are disposable, very fanciful, and work strictly against one type of attack or defense, but if you have a lot of them, and the skill of a ritualist allows you to activate them selectively and strictly at the right moment, then you get a very unpleasant and effective surprise.

"You know what..." At this point, I almost sincerely wanted to say something pathos-like in the style of the unforgettable WH40k or at least give out an anecdote or two.

Naturally, I was not allowed to finish, not by the devils, but for a change, by the dear imperial troops. In addition to the very first strike, which I have already described, strategic spells were used three more times, but those were quite ordinary, albeit very powerful structures, which are just very inflated "standard" spells. Two ice ramparts and one rain of fire, the latter of which was almost redirected right into the creator's face.

Apparently, just for this attempt at redirection, the warlocks took offense and produced something really scary. Most likely, the basis of this crap was the manifestation of the Fringe, as Tia calls it, and which people used to call the Edge. An absolute void, a pure disintegration of the very fabric of reality from which there is no defense or escape. Whatever this feed was created by, it was as if the Edge had been coiled into a kind of cocktail straw, stuck somewhere in the center of the enemy formation, and then Flame, Light, and Storm began pouring through that straw into the unlucky formation in roughly equal proportions.

It was barely forty seconds after we'd finished Song and the ambush regiment. The enemies had not yet had time to react to our victory, and even if they had, they simply couldn't muster the strength for a second attempt to nail us. We had gutted one legend and almost fifty elites, a good third of the remaining strike force. The devil commanders, even if only in their imagination, were caught between the hammer (the assaulting troops) and the anvil (the saboteurs coming to break through, who had managed to open a portal right inside the ritual hall and summon a crowd of reinforcements), simply not having time to solve the growing list of problems.

If I were them, now that Touch's death and the loss of this point of the ritual had become more than obvious, I would not fight but would try to gather the most capable units and retreat. Wait for the release of News Bringer and then let the mythical weapons of the Domain bury both the stormtroopers and the saboteurs in the halls of the Golden Feather that they had fought off. I'm not in their shoes, of course, but they acted on a similar plan, which turned out to be interrupted by that very "straw." They say that the last straw breaks the camel's back, so what about this version of that very straw? There is a lot to say, but most of all unprintable, as we are all, for a moment, under attack right now, too.

A dozen cultists running towards us, supported by about the same number of rank-and-file creatures the combined attack of Losius and Hestia literally smashed and smeared them against the walls that were already battered from our battle. The next batch of fugitives didn't make it. Three elite creatures covered themselves with shields and tried to smash us with a counterstrike but instead gave three more puppets to Giver, hitting their allies in the back at the same time. But then it wasn't the devils that came to visit, but a blast of strategic enchantments, a river of lava rushing through the guild's corridors.

Shield after shield, barrier after barrier, constantly supported by the Manifestation, but still, we had to retreat rapidly, and there was less and less oxygen to breathe. The wild mixture of molten and luminous stone, on which lightning patterns were running, was constantly in conflict, unstable, and literally boiling from the continuous mutual destruction, but for already released battle charms, it was normal. What's worse is that all this nasty stuff should not be boiling but, bitch, detonate, but for some reason it does not happen. I don't even know how much of it was clairvoyance and how much was logic, but my thoughts formed a clear realization almost instantly.

Well, look.

Through the tube of concentrated emptiness, a bubbling planar mixture pours into the guild territory. Somehow, this mixture, reacting and mutually reinforcing, does not explode in the same second, which is clearly a consequence of a very, very cool artifact, a few powerful planarians, or a divine Miracle. However, taking into account the situation, the Miracle can be excluded from the list with a guarantee close to absolute.

Attention, isekai - the question!

What will the Imperials do when this mixture floods the guild and the surrounding buildings to the brim? A guild that's a maze. And storming would be a huge loss of life and expense due to the territory they've prepared and the devils' pile of casualties and under the constant pressure of the fleur. Why should they storm it when they can legitimately care neither about trophies, about collateral damage, nor about the safety of the property of traitors to humanity?

The answer, I think, is obvious.

"...whatever." I finish my unspoken thought, and then I put all of myself into the defense, and, oh, miracle, even the I-creature doesn't come out in an attempt to eat my brain.

I think Hans still had time to start saying "fu..." but he didn't have time to finish. The flooded streams of power stopped boiling and did exactly what the energies of three different planes in close contact should do.

It blew up.

"E-e-e-e-e-e-e-e-e!!!" Taria's delighted yet terrified shriek somehow miraculously echoes all the other sounds I can pick up with my rapidly regenerating eardrums.

I was thankful for my newfound intelligence and, to a much greater extent, for Tia's experience, who had managed to create a plan of action in time and literally beat it into my head through clairvoyance, paying for it with a ringing migraine. Her suggestion (if you can call an image expressing the elven equivalent of "quick-bitch-do-as-I-said" a suggestion) was not to even try to stabilize a piece of reality through the Manifestation and to wait out the blow under a hastily created bastion.

The trick was to manifest a polygonal barrier around us, a closed field of spherical type, which I closed in on itself rather than linking it to the nearest shadows. The shadow superimposed itself on the shadow, losing the need for stable support, making our shelter very strong but at the same time (relatively) light. This is not a portal based on Shadow but rather an anti-portal, an inside-out technique for creating a spatial fold, only without the fold itself and, most importantly, without a clear fixation on a certain area of space.

When the territory of Golden Feather turned into a blazing and shining Inferno, in the earthly sense of the term, our shelter, held stable only by my swear and the mercy of 4chan, was simply carried upwards along with the blast wave. It was lucky that this particular planar reaction was an explosion because we wouldn't have survived anything more exotic.

And now we're flying under the dome, so close to the purple sky that it's easy to make out the very cut-off dome over the Eternal, almost palpable. I crush the shit tearing out of me in every sense at once. Taria lets out her trademark shriek, and everyone else yells too, just not as loudly, interspersing pure decibels with inventive swear words. I couldn't vouch for that, but it seemed to me as if even Tia hissed something singsongy and poetic but far from censored under her breath.

The flight was impressive but short, sending us not parabola to fall at the very edge of Eternal (rather, flying straight into Hell through the dome boundary), but almost vertically upwards, so we had to land closer to the center, even if far away from the brilliantly neutralized Hell stronghold. I bet a sack of gold against a cherry pie - the Imperial soldiers will attribute the entire victory to themselves and don't care that it was us who took out two Legends, one of which was the strongest in the enemy's lineup. Although, it's even better. No one will deny our existence more than the commander who wants to get another medal.

Damn.

What the fuck am I thinking? What the hell are ribbons? The city continues to fall, and the chances of saving it are not increasing. Although I must admit, the Imperials had stirred up quite a bit. In flight, it was perfectly visible, the number of devil raiding groups had dropped to insignificant values, and the main lines of defense hiding the focus points were crumbling under the steel heel of guards, adventurers, personal squads, guards, and just concerned citizens with high levels.

There was someone who managed to take control of the situation and direct it in the right direction, and even managed to implement on the fly the most complex plan of maneuvers, ensuring almost simultaneous deployment and attack on multiple borders at once. Or, more likely, not on the fly, but simply asking the world to wait a little longer. The Eternal Dynasty, the Emperor's essence. They can do more than that. They can stretch five minutes before the alarm clock rings for any time.

Bastards.

The landing was soft and surprisingly smooth as I adjusted the fall slightly, directing the shadow manifested in me to the right point. The most amusing thing about this situation was the very tolerable waste of reserve. The initial blast wave, of course, hit hard, but then we were just pushed to the back, and I almost didn't need to reinforce the manifestation with an additional infusion of power.

"I want more!" Taria, as always, is typical Taria.

If Hans hadn't slapped her, it would have been Losius and Hestia fighting for the right to give it to her. And that was only because Tia would probably have preferred to kick annoying her human daughter in the ass.

"And I would do it again," I admit more to myself. "Three times."

They didn't slap me, but I moved away from Tia anyway because my gut told me that my ass was in danger of getting acquainted with an elf's shoe. And it was good if it was a tangential acquaintance because she had such a look that it could easily turn into a deep acquaintance.

"Really?" I asked, especially strongly addressing the question to the druid. "The view of the whole city from the top is great, so you don't have to waste your powers on clairvoyance, and you can draw the whole layout at once."

She didn't seem to believe me, and for good reason. It was really fun. I even forgot about my hunger for a second. I liked it so much. But if I were to do it again, I would prefer to take off not with the same kick but thanks to a simpler explosion, not belonging to strategic charms of the highest type.

"Looks like the execution's off." What no one could take away from Losius was his ability to tell a joke with such a serious expression that even with clairvoyance it was hard to realize it was a joke.

"The theater of sad masks..." Tia only sighed tiredly, but following the established tradition, she could not finish her speech.

The octahedron in which the News Bringer is imprisoned cracks with a ringing sound inaudible to the ears but so distinguishable. For a second, his tentacle, which he uses to lick the inner wall of his cage, shifts and, as if cuts through this very wall. As if it were a package of waffles or, say, a zipper on the pants.

The ringing is no sooner deafening, and it is immediately silenced by yet another Time control technique, but where the masterpiece of this trend used to be used, a cage capable of holding a mythical beast, it is now just a patch. A comparatively primitive, pathetic parody of the inimitable original, but it will win some minutes.

The jokes die down, and without discussion, we descend from the roof of the small mansion I landed us on. Our plan has failed, but we all decide without discussion to support the plan of those still twitching in the noose. Whatever the Eternal Dynasty is up to, at least their actions look like some kind of plan. Or, rather, a variation of our plan - to take out all the focal points and then try to shove the city back into Reality.

Or at least escape themselves, which is far more likely.

One could actually go to their palace and, smiling innocently, ask: "Your Majesties, do you need a couple of extra guns here, eh?" - and shuffle your feet, shyly. I wonder if they'll execute us right away, or if they'll get a little pissed off first, and then break us in. I'd give a lot to see how these guys would react to Tia coming to do her part to help resist the invaders. So much I wanted to, I could barely resist the suggestion to do just that.

Kostik is incorrigible, even on his deathbed, having almost lost his humanity, but still, the desire to troll others is stronger than any other instincts, including the thirst for life and banal self-preservation. It's good that at least something remains unchanged in this world, and it's good that there is something unchanged in me.

At least something.

It happened quite suddenly, I would even say SUDDENLY, without warning or declaration of war. News Bringer moved a few more times, once again blocked by another patch. The huge portal in the air was slowly unfreezing too, coming out of the freeze frame. Under the dome of the doomed city, strategic charms flared up now and then, and the army of the Empire of Ages, as well as those who joined this army, were desperately crushing the resistance of the joyously laughing creatures. With mixed but non-zero success, I must say.

There were no omens except for a brief jab of intuition just a second before the accident when nothing could be changed. And even if I had known beforehand, there was nothing I could have done. At most, I could have tried to send word to one of the commanding officers, but he would hardly have had the means to counter such an argument.

News Bringer was a mythical creature, a creature capable of cleansing a medium-sized kingdom in a couple of days, a week at most, barring interference from the gods. But Bringer, while still mythical, was not the most fearsome thing the devils had to offer, albeit the most powerful in direct combat.

First came the glow, coming from somewhere in the center of the city, where the human forces were strongest and where the invaders were most quickly squeezed out. A glow as purple as the vicious skies above us, as soulless as an executioner's smile. Its flash seemed to simply ignore the usual defenses and mental barriers, penetrating to the very soul and even deeper. The fleur of vice was famous for such effects, but this was simply beyond any fleur, incomparable to anything at all.

The light was followed by a presence. It was a sense of something so beautiful and desirable that no amount of power or experience could make it seem like anything, not even a bad thing. It was no longer brainwashing but a rewriting of personality on the fly, as Giver had learned to do, only not for a limited number of targets but all over the place. Perhaps less subtle, but extremely large-scale, incomparably larger than anything else I've encountered. It had just appeared in Eternal, but the defense was already lost simply by the fact of the shit coming. It didn't even need to fight. It was enough just to be because it was beyond the very nature of any being with a mind and soul to resist it.

That's not to say the humans didn't try. As soon as the glow came, they worked the point of its arrival with everything they had and everything they had, hacking without mercy right into the positions of their fighters. Because, said the knowledge planted in their hearts, they could not help but know that their allies, friends, or loved ones were no longer there. Because they had already looked, had already looked Lust in the eye and could not turn away, never could again.

Some might have believed, for a second, that they could at least hurt, if not kill, the one who had come, but that faith died as the color of the sky over the city changed. The glow opened into a rapturous flower, pure rapture embodied in energy, a marvel of infinite, immense beauty. Each petal was like an unbreakable wall, composed of tens of thousands of souls, continuously learning their happiness to the very bottom, dying and being reborn, sobbing and moaning. And in the center of the flower, where the Square of the Seven Poets remained, with the refugees and troops stationed there, remained the one who opened the flower.

As Touch was a living domain, so the source of disturbance that arrived in the city was the same. Only where Touch sprouted into itself, this thing easily turned outward from its internal position, sprouting into reality, becoming akin to it and imposing its will on it, turning the surrounding world into a domain. The same thing Touch did with great difficulty only through the ritual contours and in the closed microcosm of the ritual hall, this something did with the entire Eternal at once. Or, at least, with a significant part of it.

As if it weren't enough to understand who had honored the city with his presence, every cell in my body felt the exorbitant weight of the structure of the Ritual holding the city together. Tired of dragging his super-prize back to his native Hell, the wise Sovereign appeared in person to expedite the pull. And now, even the most complete optimist is forced to admit that the happy ending has become even more unfulfilling.

The petals opened and unfolded into titanic canvases of debauchery, taking on everything the desperate humans could counteract. The blows of elements, planar energies, battle prayers, pure magic in all its manifestations, battle artifacts, and something suspiciously similar to a high-tech volley fire system simply spread over these petals. The canvas of souls forever bound in a colossal orgy of souls sagged only slightly, not even shifting under the onslaught.

Some particularly lucky prisoners were disembodied by the blow, only to have their oblivion reversed by the Master's will, returning them to their former place and role. The will of the creator and maker of his domain denied the very fact of death and denied any enemy success or his failure. For long seconds, this confrontation lasted while the petals held, effortlessly held, the onslaught of the defenders. The doomed parts of the hellish mechanism died and revived, only rarely managing to die fully enough to be unable to return.

And then, when the devil that had been holding its defenses enjoyed the powerlessness of others, it began to respond, and no one else was able to attack. Deceptively slowly the petals, which had already bonded with a piece of the conquered world, joined the top of the dome and sprouted their shoots into it. The change of configuration was characterized by unhurried, measured, and deadly calibrated, impossibly precise strikes on each of the positions that had been illuminated by the previous attack.

Not a single miss, not a single failure. Every attack was of the type that could pierce any available defense and penetrate the very shields that needed to be penetrated. Just how many enslaved and fallen to the bottom of the Seers were directing their Sovereign's blows? A hundred? Two? A thousand? Probably even more, as the threads of probability swirled around the epicenter of the germination, obscuring any attempts at insight, turning them into another form of self-sacrifice if one looked too deeply.

The flow of elements and fleur swept over the large mansion of a lord, passing through the protective domes without even slowing down, covering the entire building and the surrounding area with a blanket of fire and ice. The front of the convergence of the two opposites landed precisely on the most fortified part of the defenses, tearing it to dust, and then the fleur hit. The forces occupying the building, who had managed to hit Sovereign with artillery enchantments a second earlier, were dying in pure ecstasy, their souls rushing toward the walls of the petals. It was as if Sovereign's blow had laid a channel through which it now drew the prize for a successful hit. Like in the shooting galleries in amusement parks on old Earth - hit the target, take a plush bunny.

A black blob, only the size of a truck, falls on top of the magical dome that shelters someone's temple. Concentrated Madness eats away at the defenses, so a flash of violet light of an incomprehensible nature burns out the souls of exactly half of the priests and civilians trapped there. One more flash and each burned-out one gets instead of a soul a primitive inferior devil, all talents of which are directed on control of such soulless bodies. A massacre begins, in which the still living must repeatedly kill the worn bodies of their kin and loved ones, and a powerful mental influence falls from above, which in a few seconds turns the fight to the death into another orgy. The still living sees each of their visions and give those visions all they have left.

The whitish fog with shades of pink, extremely distorted Mist was ramming straight towards a hundred elite capital guards caught on the march, accompanied by a couple hundred more mercenaries and noble militiamen. Their commander, who had earlier managed to recognize the incoming one in time, at the same moment discharged all the artifacts entrusted to him in an attempt to repel the ram but did not succeed. The Mist covered the army, only to dissipate a moment later, leaving only a few dozen possessed creatures, each of whose bodies consisted of chunks of flesh fused into huge lumps of meat continuously pummeling each other. Atop the largest of the possessed flesh was the screaming of a fully alive commander who had challenged the wrong opponent, going mad with insane pain and pleasure every second, then immediately regaining his mind only to lose it a moment later. If this was a variation on the theme of Mists of Vice gifted to my dear Hestia, I'm a little shocked...

The battle magic tower, from the top of which a continuous beam of astral energy, directed simultaneously by a trio of extremely strong mages and a legendary artifact, continued to beat until the very last moment, was enveloped in shivering air, as if caught in a desert mirage, which, a heartbeat later, dissipated along with all the protection. One hundred and fifty translucent souls, the same number as the tower's defenders, surrounded the tower and howled in a final burst of bliss, finally finding their oblivion. They, including the three most valuable prisoners, were gone forever, but in return, they gave their captivity to the tower defenders, who were immediately teleported right inside one of the petals. The flesh and clothing dissolved, revealing the ghostly silhouettes of new souls who would now wait for the moment when they could pass on their service to the new unfortunates.

The circle of sun bunnies merges into a huge blade that descends on the dome of a small palace, either the residence of someone close to the Eternal Dynasty or even the personal cottage of one of them. The defenses flare, countering the impact, but the blade disintegrates again into a thousand tiny glares, embedding itself in the barely visible gaps in the defensive circuitry, immediately detonating all at once. The palace collapses under its weight, and the second wave of impact covers the ruins with a simple, two-by-two flood of fleur.

The hull of some of the magical guilds, where the defenders from all the surrounding areas have flocked, begins to fall underground as the power of Hardness turns the enchanted foundations to mud and sand. Acid rain drips down from above, not much in the way of force, but its constant damage will not allow the doomed mages to prevent their doom in any way. A moment more, and several hundred souls fly straight through the quicksand, each with a different curse hanging on them, giving the burden to those closest to them.

Another wave of fire vaporizes the icy crust that covers another temple, where there is not a single priest left standing, but there are a dozen mighty mages and warriors who managed to fight off the first waves and even found the strength to retaliate against the Sovereign. The flames fall without even touching the stones of the temple, withdrawn by the captured soul, and the executioner's blade serves as a cloud of oily black smoke that easily gets into any crevices and under any armor. The smoke stops when one of the planarists in the temple sacrifices himself to the Light without a second thought, scooping up insane amounts of power and building on its basis not even a barrier but a solid monolith of defense.

The Darkness is shattered and expelled. The souls of the warlocks who summoned it retreat into one of the petals. A stream of fleur gently washes over the glowing sphere, also retreating, not even seeking to make its way inside. The first attack, without pause, is replaced by a new one. The fleur is bubbling, changing tones, testing the barrier with all the shades of Lust, most of which the human mind cannot imagine or understand. The tone is selected, and the Light begins to melt, to rot, to ooze like blood from wounds. And the Truth given by its radiance is gradually changing, distorted to please the great devil. The point of protection was to seal certain truths, like the inviolability of those inside, but the truths have changed, and with them those trapped inside the monolith.

Some were a little luckier and managed to retreat, at least partially. Even with the dome and the spatial mess it had created, some could move a couple of blocks away or use an existing high-grade artifact. The devil was directing additional strikes in their direction, but somehow lazily, more trying to suppress the capital's defenses as quickly as possible, and so some may have managed to slip away. Or they were allowed to think they had miraculously slipped away. Who knows?

No doubt I could have struck just as powerfully, picking the moment and the target with clairvoyance in the same way, and I admit that I could have repeated such a blow two or three times in a row, though it would have been extremely exhausting. But the devil was literally giving out blows of strategic charms in one breath, several combinations completely different in their style and method of application per second! This is simply beyond any imaginable and not-so-imaginable limits, a clear difference between Legends and Myths. And if the former, as I have long known, can well be sent to study the netherworld in the earthly sense of the word. What to do with mythics, I do not understand.

The first moves were entirely the Sovereign's, and he wasn't going to stop, having every opportunity to finish the battle almost single-handedly. Somehow, without any clairvoyance, I didn't even doubt that the Eternals wouldn't have another trump card to stop the mythical something from having an unnatural connection to their imperial asses. They were, however, desperate to dispute that fact.

At least two of the time-stopping abilities were almost gently swept aside, freezing the blocks around the breach point, thus adding another layer of defense to the Square of the Seven Poets that now covered the enemy. There was still a stream of a dozen diverse energies based on the use of astral emulations that had clearly been released from the mythical artifact. But the blow that could otherwise crush the army without any additional investment was completely useless against the devil.

The flower petals shone especially brightly. The fleur shuddered once again, and the monolithic stream of charms, which looked like a very angry and rich rainbow of acidic colors, divided into thin streams, each of which belonged to its plane, soaking into separate parts of these petals. If the blow had been weaker, the creature would have devoured it completely, only reinforcing itself, but still a mythical artifact, not a joke! At the point of impact, the petals faded for a full second and a half, and the artillery fire on the Imperial positions weakened a bit, reducing the heat. The latter was not a consequence of the damage but of the fact that all worthy targets in the near and not-so-near radius had either run out or were hiding very well.

As we are, for example.

"Dear comrades, this is a fiasco." I summarize, being in such a strange state of mind that even the anger coming out of every crevice is a little weaker. "We're fucked."

It was an unpleasant thing to hear such words from the commander's mouth, but the crew reacted surprisingly calmly, only nodding in agreement, like, yes, we're fucked, it's really a fiasco. Either they were hoping that I would once again perform a miracle, or they were just tired of preparing for a fate worse than death to be discouraged by the next bad news.

"I suggest we break through the Mist," Hestia said, slightly intoxicated by the power that had descended upon her and therefore obviously overestimating herself. "Anything is better than folding our arms and dying in hopeless despair."

The Imperials could have won this game for us, for we had helped them and helped them a lot. The very fact that the ruler of the domain came here, under our gaze (Giver, by the way, was shaking from the horror piercing even through her perception more than all of us put together), leaving his precious domain almost unattended, ignoring the spending and the sagging reserve of souls, meant a considerable success. Ideally, he would have run everything from his perch, putting force operations under the tutelage of News Bringer. But the porngolem was stuck in time a little more reliably than originally expected, and the humans, on the contrary, were more active than calculated, and some people had to get their asses off the metaphorical couch and go to disperse everyone, like your forest from the joke.

"It won't work." Me, Tia, and Giver answer at the same time.

I know the dangers of traveling through the plane, especially the deeper layers of it. Tia knows it, too, even if she hasn't had much personal experience with it (but I'm not sure, given the hardships she's endured and the missions she's completed), and Giver knows about the tricks the devils used in case of such tricksters. It's too obvious a path for me to take, only for me, who's not afraid of losing anything. And, with reservations, Hestia, if she's lucky enough to still be there by the time she can get out of the Mist.

"Listen up, guys." Taria's pretty face darkened with a shadow of heavy thought uncharacteristic of her frivolous nature. "I realize the suggestion is as dumb as my late father, but how about we try to escape to the palace? I mean, if anyone can escape, it'll be from there. They won't let us into the temples. I mean, that's where the gods are, and you can't hide from them."

The gods are clearly biting their elbows right now, even if they don't have elbows. For such an occasion, they'll grow elbows, so they have something to bite. It's not every day that they manage to steal the capital with their entire flock. I don't doubt that they are trying in every possible way to crack this problem from the outside, though it's hardly that simple. The city has already been stolen from reality, and even a god would have a hard time catching up and bringing it back. Somehow, the priests inside are helping, but they have been hit by a very bad blow. All of them are weakened, so there is no feedback, and it's getting worse and worse every moment.

"Taria, believe me, the realm of the Eternals will notice us sooner or later, especially now that all defenses are maxed out." Tia knows enough about these defenses, even without planning her last operation, just by virtue of her position. "The temple option is better. But I don't believe that even the first priests are free to open the gates of the Divine."

No, they will not open it because if they were able to build this gate, their patrons would get caught in this thin thread and pull it all the way out. So they won't. At most, they can send someone of value (like themselves) blindly without making a path, but even that will be done by a few if they haven't all run away already. However, the devil knows them. Being a priest imposes some obligations, and it may well be that there will be someone who will not be able to retreat, even if he is able to do so. In the fact that somewhere there is a holder of a high dignity who does not want to leave his flock to be fed to devils, I believe only a little more than in the triumph of world justice. Maybe there are such. This is Alurei, for fuck's sake, but until I touch him, I am filled with doubts.

"Listen, is it true that if you throw a coin into that fountain in the Poets' Square, you'll get a characteristic boost?" I ask nonchalantly, swaying on my toes like some tourist on a stroll. "I heard about that trick back in Tavimark."

"True rumor." The walking encyclopedia with the long ears confirmed, looking a little perplexed in my direction and remembering all the ins and outs of how this fountain could help us now that I thought of it. "Seven random attributes for a month if you throw in a silver coin, but better, still a gold coin. It only works once in a lifetime, though the embodied Miracle that formed the basis of the fountain can be tricked with a good disguise and receive the boon again. What is your interest?"

All our attempts are already doomed in all scenarios but one. The one in which there will be a suicide that will break the concentration of the archdevil, make him let go of the reins of control for a moment, and give them a chance for something. A microscopic chance, but a chance nonetheless. And Shadow was the only creature that was not afraid of the fleur at all, that could be stopped by it only by literally pouring it over its head with it, and then pouring it on top of it, with a lot more effort. Such a creature can really not fear automatic enslavement from the mere presence, the mere sight of Sovereign.

A man, even a top-ranked shadow user, would still get hit. Much weaker, multiple times weaker than anyone of equal level and strength, but it would still cover him. It will make him hesitate, spend his energy on overcoming the obsession, lose the initiative, and the targeted blow will kill him.

Or change him.

Or take him.

I wonder what it now says in the Status of the one who came under this cursed sky, granted that it was still blue then, not purple? Certainly not the aforementioned man, weak and vulnerable to the fleur to a far greater extent than what he had almost turned into. Bad choices, bad use of skills without regard for self-harm, trying to bite off more than one can afford...

How many times have I jumped on this rake? How many times have I avoided the result that caught up with me by the mere arbitrariness of Fate? It should have happened much earlier, much earlier, but I kept afloat, clung to something there, hoped, believed, forced myself to believe, killing any doubts, taking on impossible work.

Should we be surprised at the outcome?

The bottom line is that all I have left now is to try to buy a little life, a little chance for this life, not even for myself, because I have already fucked up, fucked up, fucked up, flushed down the toilet. That's the end of the fairy tale, another story, only now it's mine. It's just that any fairy tale, even such a silly and sometimes scary one, should end beautifully.

The Hero must come and save everyone, even if he was not called and not expected, because now the Hero is not sought by the mighty Eternals, under whose heel the very Laws of the Universe groan, not by rich and arrogant aristocrats, not by powerful mages and warriors. The hero was sought by those who voluntarily followed him because they would not have become his Companions if they had not wished it themselves. The hero is sought by those who were led after him by the evil and frankly obscene magic of the ancient artifact that belonged to the equally rotten creator of this thing. The hero is sought by all those who are doomed today, ordinary people, whom I always didn't give a damn about and don't give a damn about even now, there's nothing to lie to myself, whitewashing my bords-stained personality. I don't give a damn, but I won't wish such a thing even on those whom I would give no fuck.

"Well." I smiled, feeling the whitish flesh beneath the mask boiling, vaporizing, turning more and more Shadow, only without the ability to regain its former appearance. "I want to throw a coin. They say it's good luck."

Some time ago, I hadn't been so much surprised as amused by the way Tia had killed an old acquaintance and perhaps even a friend in her now infinitely distant past. Methodically and without the slightest emotion. It's completely in keeping with how chilled revenge is usually served. In her case, it was not even cooling but freezing at temperatures at which Satan Claus, from the depths of the Wildlands, would prefer to wrap himself in a blanket and drink something hot.

So when she drew close to me, grabbed my icy (under my skin and clothes, Shadow was now, and it was never warm) shoulders with both hands and looked me eye to eye as if ignoring the mask on my face and the cloth bandage on her own, I was really scared. The expression "infuriated to the brink" didn't convey even a hundredth of what I saw in her eyes. If it weren't for the creature's hardwired instincts, I might have really shit myself, especially if you took me from my time before my adventures in the Kraj.

"You promised me." Despite all the anger and almost palpable rage, even hatred, directed equally at herself and the world in aggregate, she spoke softly and almost pitifully, something I certainly didn't expect and could never expect from her. "You promised, Tin."

"So I'm a liar." I shrugged, at the same time regretting the very inappropriate addition about the troll and the virgin.

T.N. According to the Russian boards. Anonymous is a liar, a virgin, and a troll. He is 20 and he is bearded.

I am open to her now, like a book on a bedside table, and she simply does not have the strength to keep her defense, so I have to gently cover her being as well. We can say nothing to each other, nothing at all, because we already know the answers and the arguments. She doesn't accept my choice, can't accept it, is ready to die three times herself, but not to give up someone else's dream, someone else's legacy, the last monument to the glory of the one for whom she gave up everything in the world.

Not for me.

For his dream.

"You can leave." Already in a calm tone, removing the strangeness of the Stars and the rustling of leaves from her words, the elfess spoke, unable to bring herself to ask, realizing that I would not fulfill this request. "Even if only one."

I had a lot of things I wanted to answer. What would I be when I came out of the deep Shadow, even if I did? How much of myself will be left in me when I can no longer hold on to the emptiness that has settled in me forever? To say that even if I am no longer human, I do not want to be alone, because I know better than anyone else what Loneliness really is.

I might have wanted to say something, maybe even something clever or at least calming. Shut Tia up, give her orders, and kick everyone's ass so they wouldn't fuck around. Maybe I'd even add, "Don't be in a hurry to bury the bastard. I'll show you some more titles for killing that scarecrow." I didn't get a chance to say any of that because Giver of Caresess made her move, loyal to me to the limit of reason and far beyond that limit, not wanting me to meet her past master and knowing that master well.

There was a slight buzz in my head, but that was all.

If I were still that Konstantine who had entered the Hall of Choise, who had not yet had time to sacrifice all of himself on the altar of victory, covering his companions with the afterburner Aegis, crushing Touch with the power of the ultimate Form, grinding his essence into material for shadow techniques.... whether it was a traitorous blow or a show of extreme concern, I'd be hit by it. It would just rewrite my thoughts as if I had made the right decision, a reasonable decision the creature in me was pushing through with all its might. So, I didn't even have to influence it much.

In the mind of what I was now, the invisible thread through which Giver's attachment to me had come couldn't take hold. Two streams of thoughts arose in my head at once, but before Giver could push me to the point of shutting down and going into insane abomination mode, I wiped out its effects. Shadow Theft, used on oneself, opens up many paths, but not all of them are worth pursuing.

And Tia wouldn't have said a word, and neither would Hestia. They wouldn't have stopped Giver, even if they'd noticed her maneuver if they'd had a chance to intercept her. Hans, Taria (she'd been able to understand me since the first days of my acquaintance, sometimes better than I could), and Losius, who were left in the minority, would have been easily handled by the deviless, even faster than me. In fact, the fact that Giver's enhanced technique didn't work on me only convinced me it was better to end it now. The devil could have pressed on, could have hit harder, more densely, but then the submission would have become more complete, dense, voluminous, and under such a leash, I had no chance of getting out of the Shadow, where her will take me. Or, more likely, I'd go into a frenzy, and she'd have to either kill the mad creature or die in its arms.... she'd definitely choose the latter.

"Fool." She only uttered, backing away, retreating, tucking the colorless and nonexistent threads deep into her essence, ignoring the Golden Needle bristling at Losius and Hans stepping behind her. "Such a fool."

Hestia was silent, for she had never known how to show her feelings or to say goodbye, and now it was too late to learn. Losius and Hans had no words to say or answer either. Tia had already said everything and could say no more. Only Taria, looking uncharacteristically grim, hummed and asked the only question that surprised me in the end.

"What was your name?" She too, looked straight into his eyes, ignoring the mask that seemed to be grafted right onto my face. "Before."

In response to perplexed looks from all sides, the girl only shrugged as if perplexed in response to our shared surprise. Or maybe she was really perplexed without any pretense.

"You said Tin was just an abbreviation for your name, but no matter how many times I asked, you always guffawed or ran away." Despite the situation, she still smiled, obviously poking fun at my reaction. "Is it such a terrible secret?"

"Not that it's a secret..." I replied, suppressing a sudden urge to giggle. "It's just that you always got so ridiculously angry when I didn't say anything."

The Valerium in my friend's hand twitched slightly. It didn't twitch much, almost imperceptibly, but the urge to laugh was gone at once. Honestly, they have no sense of humor. They don't get my jokes. Probably because they are too often funny only to me, but not to the people around me.

"Full name Konstantine." I don't want to test the strength of the nerves of a man with a legendary gun in her hands. "If the full name, together with the surname, then my name was Konstantin Yurievich..."

I didn't have time to finish and for reasons beyond my control. It was not a good idea to be distracted from the battle, but it was possible. But not in the case when within the working distance there is a mythical creature with a sonm of souls, capable if not to crack my disguise from clairvoyance on pure skill, then simply to check the surrounding reality grain by the grain, looking for any dissimilarities.

It wasn't a full-fledged attack. If it had been, the outcome would have been very different... but I would have noticed it sooner than I did. It was just another fleur wave designed to draw out the likely lurker or saboteurs approaching the creature. I'm not the only one so smart as to launch a suicide attack in an attempt to disrupt the concentration of the devil stitching the Eternal to its Domain. Only if I'm the only one who has me, and yes, that "me" is already lost, the Empire's authorities had their own Summoned who could play the role of kamikaze quite well. A very expensive and irreplaceable kamikaze, but now they were ready to pay even a big price, any price except their own lives.

It was difficult to transfer the fleur strike through Shadow Theft because of the immense pressure, like trying to stop a small stream with your bare hands, whereas the standard strikes of typical devils were like a small leak in a water pipe. Back then, I could just plug it with my finger, but now all we had to do was try to blend into the stream, letting it all go around us without allowing ourselves to create waves that would be used to find us. The good news was that after my last loss, my resistance to any kind of brainwashing had increased beyond anything I'd ever seen and even more so to the devils' techniques. It was too easy to hold the multiplied focus of Lust simply because it called and caressed the parts of human essence that were no longer there.

Ha-ha, evil laugh.

It's time to end the goodbyes.

"If any of you die, I'll come back from the other side of the world to mock out loud at you." I can't even hold back the cold, razor-sharp, Shadow-filled voice giving the last command to the team. "So don't test the thickness of my sense of humor."

Everyone remained silent, though everyone wanted to say a lot of things, and only Taria managed even, at the last moment, to be indignant at the same time (honestly, I didn't have the strength to realize that I had told her wrong again), but wondered aloud with surprise:

"Do you have it?"

I chuckled, immediately sobered by the sound of my own laughter, which made me say the wrong thing instead of some kind of joke, addressing Tia directly:

"Take them out." I turn my head slightly toward the still motionless and seemingly unbelieving Giver, who was spared after her "rebellion." "All of them."

I didn't wait for a reply, not wanting to waste any more time, or the next scanning wave might be the last. The last one, for example, had outlined five separate saboteurs and a couple of full-fledged groups so that later, it could compact the impact and crush their will. Some of them were killed by the pressure, dissolving their souls in the Vice. Some of them killed themselves in their attempts to avoid this fate, and another part of them continued their way to the square, but now they were no longer hiding and preparing to serve the new Sovereign.

Tia has the best chance of getting them away because we're on the edge of the territory the Sovereign controls, so if she's smart, she'll get away from this danger and cover the others. And she will really cover everyone, even Giver, who, in the current fucked-up conditions, without my cover, becomes too important and can provide invaluable support. Of course, there was some apprehension, not a full understanding of what an enslaved creature could do, but the team had a much better chance with her than without her.

Avenge me for daring to die, leaving her without my presence, investing vengeance in my associates? Hardly. The influence of the ring is too strong. It's enough for her to know that I would not approve of such an approach to show restraint towards them. Then, if they do manage to leave the city... they'll probably run off in different directions, and it'll be good if there are only two sides - the core team and Giver, rather than each going in a different direction.

It's too late to talk.

It's too late to doubt.

I let go of control, fully transitioning into Form, diving right into the nearest shadow on the run, penetrating the upper layers as gently as possible without tearing the fabric of space, which would be overly noticeable in a dome. The body melts, melts, and changes like soft clay, becoming a snake, a worm, a thin thread, tiny and imperceptible, almost indistinguishable to even the most attentive eye. Once again, I note that reducing one's Form can often be incommensurably more useful than increasing it, which is senseless in such situations.

This plan of mine is ruinous from the beginning, and any outcome in which I have to fight in the open a priori means complete failure. That is why huge Forms, perfectly adapted for killing, tearing, tormenting, and taking other people's lives, are useless. In our duo, I am not even a weak part but an empty place, a ringing zero multiplied by another zero and elevated to nothing. Self-deprecation unpleasantly scratches what people call a sense of greatness, but only in this way, constantly reminding myself of the incomparability of forces managed to keep under control the thirst to burst inside any of the petals to devour every last soul there. I'd rather be devoured there, regardless of my class superiority, splendor, or flightiness.

The square is getting closer and closer, but the Shadow is getting smaller and smaller. If under the dome, it was as if a small scrape had been taken from each plane from the very top, here even this shallow cavern is becoming more and more shallow. The shadow is thinning, almost merging with reality, ceasing to be a phenomenon, leaving only Hell closely stitched together with a reality that is sprawling at the seams. I'm still creeping closer, but I'm already forced to put all available resources into stealth just to avoid the watchful eye of one of the souls embedded in the protective and sensory fields.

Even closer. At last, touching the stones of the sidewalk that framed the Square of the Seven Poets. Touching in reality, because there was no Shadow, no Shadow at all, only the purple waves of embodied Lust, only the unbearable glow of the materialized fleur. The thread-body thinned to the point of impossibility, becoming thinner than a spider's web, going completely into concealment, partially activating Aegis, using Manifestation around itself, adding Creation on top of it, and using it again on my own flesh. Without pity, ignoring the pain and the growing emptiness, because I had already gone too far.

The combination of all the class skills at my disposal allowed me to balance on the blade for such a long time, but I can't go back. I'll reveal myself and die in vain, so only forward, closer to the target, to be able to shit on it last, to spoil the party and kick out the clowns.

And here it is before my eyes - Poets' Square. Even the famous fountain can be seen from here, as can the crowd of merged people, very young, no older than ten, who now frame this masterpiece of architecture instead of a bas-relief. The stone of the sidewalk, too, is covered with a carpet of flesh, the individual details - people still distinguishable but inseparable. It is as if there is only one skin for all the multitude of bodies covering this place, like a huge vacuum blanket from Japanese pornographic films, and under this skin, the bodies of the victims continue their orgy, gradually dissolving, being carried away by their souls into greedily slurping petals. Part of the flower, part of their Sovereign's body, part of the whole domain, part of the whole.

In the center of the square stood the culprit of the celebration himself. My current Form has no normal eyes, and that's good because it hurts too much to even be aware of the creature's presence. The Shadow does not have, cannot have the strings on which the devil's appearance plays, so that instead of adoration, the desire to give all of oneself for the sake of a mere glance comes unbearable torment, the realization of one's loneliness, which, in turn, provides fuel for a chilling hatred. The hatred and pain all accelerate, and I begin to understand why Shadows are such dangerous opponents for devils. I don't even know what's more in my mood - the hunger to devour or the thirst for revenge for the experience, for the gift of understanding my nature.

The creature was signed by the all-seeing System shortly and concisely: Sovereign and I could see its level without difficulty, but there was no joy in it because the number was one hundred and eighteen. I probably even managed to see this level only because I am now almost inside the devil, and he, having revealed the flower, unwittingly revealed himself. It would seem that I should be happy that the enemy is in a vulnerable position, but something is not working.

He was not imposing in stature - and I, unlike the sexless Touch, perceived the creature in the masculine gender - but only slightly taller than the average man. The graceful stature, which seemed to glisten with golden sparkles when I looked at it, was also humanoid, as was the set of limbs. There were no horns, wings, tentacles, or genitalia on all surfaces of the body, so typical of his subordinates, whom I had already admired for a lifetime. The only thing that stood out was a bird's nest, or a keyhole, located strictly between the shoulder blades.

It was like a red-hot crucible, embedded right into his body, framed by continuously swirling details, ritual symbols, and pictograms. Inside this crucible were thousands of thousands of threads, thin and almost invisible, almost as thin as my body was now. Threads grew from the crucible, reaching out to the petals, touching the living carpet that covered the area, flitting around the body, creating magic, and speeding up the fusion process, all at the same time. And some of the threads were allocated to the prisoners - the most worthy and leveled of all those in the Square at the time of his arrival, as well as among those who had been sent to commit suicide in the name of higher purposes. I mean those who, like me, tried to prevent the fusion process, only acting on orders from the high command.

There were a lot of them, but my eyes were glued, glued even, ignoring the devil, not to several assassins continuously eating each other (for some reason, Kraj came to mind), not to the miniature and separately barricaded homoorgia of the owners of exclusively priestly and knightly classes, not to the turned into a puddle, but not to the dying summoned wizard, but to another sight.

A True Chained of sixty-ninth level that would otherwise be a full-fledged Chosen One without the ubiquitous Yoke on her. She was a young-looking girl. A sunny blonde with gorgeous forms that were aesthetically pleasing even in my inhuman state. And she was also a Flame, so tightly akin to it that even I only had to shake my head respectfully.... well if I had a head at this point. She probably put most of her points into one, at most, two classes, which was the basis of her power.

Which didn't help me at all at this moment.

I don't know if it was her perk, or maybe it was the ultimate skill, but she didn't fade even when she died, reborn from her flame like a Phoenix. And the level-a-hundred archdevil had found a way to take advantage of that. Slowly, he turned her body into nothingness with a stream of fleur, allowing that body to regenerate again and repeating the procedure. She can't have an infinite supply of rebirths. I just know that fact, even being right inside someone else's domain. But Sovereign's will replenish the charges of resurrections in some obscure way. Except every next time, she revives a little differently. This was probably the case even with normal uses of revival, but the devil only enhanced this aspect of her abilities by literally forging her in her Flame. It was an equally elegant and vile solution, just like the biggest pervert of all the perverts who had come to the party.

He also can't help but realize that his control will interact with Yoke, only he doesn't care. Either his pawns have already managed to capture the Controller, or he has the power to distort the Chained to the point where even Yoke has nothing left to grab onto. Both options are equally possible, as something third, fourth, eighth, fifteenth, or even all of these combined. I was grateful to my frustrated sister-in-arms that her training was taking any attention away from her own defense.

It's just a pity that if he allows himself such games in a combat fucking environment, he's more than confident in his abilities. And given his age, strength, and social status, which a self-confident fool would have long been deprived of, then in excessive arrogance to believe comes out about .... no way.

I was tempted to hit it in thread form, but for all its virtues, this state of mine is obviously weak in attack. I could try to stretch out, to get inside the crucible without hitting any of its threads, but I could hardly do that. The only thing left was to use the instantaneous change of formation, repeating the same thing that I had already done with Touch a little earlier. I didn't really care about the consequences.

The thread stretches and coils into a ring like an attacking snake but remains just as invisible, completely enclosed by un-existence and stealth. Do you know many ways to notice the shadow of a spider's thread flying at a height of a hundred meters? I, too, remained invisible until I was noticed. One extra movement, the tiniest fluctuation of magical energy, even just a loud thought-intention, and it would reveal this disguise as if it didn't exist.

Nevertheless, I am still an Overlord once, fallen and deposed under my power, but still possessing at least a considerable amount of combat power, only increased by the fall that has occurred. I am about to strike at a creature whose nature is more vulnerable to mine than any other. A sneaky, insidious blow in the back, with no chance of repelling it, with no regard for my defenses, putting everything I can into it. Even going up against a mythical creature more than twice my size, I can still...

...the thread rises as if it were a snake, turning into a snake already quite naturalistic, even though it is shadowy, and although there is no poison on its fangs, I can release the rivers of Shadow through these fangs without full anatomical conformity...

...the rest of the body, humanoid but narrow, elongated and improbably skinny, hidden by the cloak that returned to reality, ready to continue the throw, to cling to the enemy with all limbs and a dozen new...

...the space around me instantly manifests itself, wresting control from the power of a world almost completely given over to Hell, sheltering me, further strengthening the Aegis that has unfolded in full force...

...I can't do anything.

The ghostly hand of one of the countless souls intercepts the snake made of my flesh, mockingly easily disembodied my creation, sending searing pain throughout my body. This soul is truly ancient, belonging to a creature the likes of which has long since disappeared from the skies of Alurei or perhaps never existed. As the eternal captive, enjoying his position was just beginning to fade back into the devil's fold. Sovereign turned toward me in an incredibly swift movement, moving closer and touching me almost intimately with his fingertips somewhere near where normal people have their solar plexus.

The viscous magic of Hell erupts in a honeyed flood, preventing the use of the afterburner Aegis, and a hundred harpoons seem to burrow into the defenses provided by the un-existence, displaying the attention of hundreds and hundreds of seers. The harpoons tear back, each in its own direction, tearing open the previously seemingly reliable defenses in an instant, and the mythical creature finishes its touch with an ironic and soft smile.

And then came the Pain.

I refocus Aegis in an incomprehensible way, gathering all of it next to my own heart, protecting what my soul had become from an unenviable fate, even after everything I had experienced. Only with a kiss from Fortune herself, who seemed to personally stand behind my back and embrace me on the gums as well as old Brezhnev, do I transfer the smallest bit of the damage I've received through Shadow Theft. Not being able to steal the shadow from anyone, I return what I stole to myself, only now in the form of kinetic energy, at the same time zeroing the weight of the already lightweight Form thanks to the Leaf in the Wind.

Pain.

The pain was spreading through my body like a thousand needles, coils of barbed wire snaking under my skin, trying to reach my heart. I cover the distance to the edge of the square more quickly than instantly, flying like a wounded and very proud bird that had been kicked to make it fly. The pain was no longer just pain but inexpressible agony, burning my icy gut with the heat of hell, bursting deeper and deeper, through all the defenses, through all the attempts not to stop it, but at least to slow it down.

Agony.

Suffering lies beyond the limits of descriptive possibilities that cannot be conveyed in any other way than by giving it to someone who wants to know its limits. Suffering elusive and unstoppable passing into absolute bliss, the wild ecstasy of endless orgasm bumping into the armor of cold and loneliness that became my shield without ceasing to be a curse. The symphony of sensations born at the confluence of two seething forces unfolded in new colors of torment, neither letting me fall into oblivion nor stay alive.

Suffering.

The stone of the first wall is turned to dust and rubble instantly, as is the one that follows it, as well as the ones that follow the first two. Even without a booster, Aegis allows to ignore any purely physical damage, protecting more reliably than any armor, barriers, and artifacts, but the main battle for the right to be, takes place not outside but inside, near the heart covered with all the forces, to which honey-colored streams of tainted poison, the embodied Vice, is reaching.

Hatred.

The distance of the flight is growing, but I can only mark the meters and blocks that have flashed by with the edge of my consciousness, the whole essence of which is turned into a lump of nerves that growls with anger, howls with pain, and is tormented by an unfulfilled desire. The crunch and rattle of stone, glass, and wood are but a sorry semblance of what is going on in the remnants of my soul. Hate burns, taking more and more of what I was, taking me, only to keep me from giving it to the poison I'm carrying inside.

Loneliness.

It protects me, protects me better than any shield, dooming me with its guardianship, its damned Aegis, forever separating the world from the one it shelters. Hateful loneliness, the essence of what I am, the flesh of what I have become, does not let me die even when I am ready to give any price for the right to oblivion if only the poison would stop burning if only the long-standing hatred would stop, if only all this would stop!

I don't wanna die!

The last wall, the outer wall of some rich manor house, was smashed through, allowing me to slam my bones into the inner wall, cracking it and falling to the ground, unable to hold even the basic Aegis. Black blood pours from my broken, torn, rapidly regenerating Form, pouring and burning through the carved wooden floor, the expensive carpet, and the stone chips. The loneliness burns away the poison, taking everything I could give away behind it, taking away feelings, smiles, laughter, desires, friendship, joy, happiness... taking everything. Taking and leaving me... alone.

The Shadow's nature saved me. It also killed me.

No emotion left, no feelings left, nothing left. I went to my death for a chance for others, and death was my reward. No more friendship, no more Hans, no more Losius, no more Taria, no more Hestia, no more Tia, no more Ygra. All that Konstantine had felt for them remained there on the stones of the square where he had struck his final blow. It remained in the carnage of the ritual hall, where he had scooped up more than even the most desperate man could hold. It remained in the altar rest of the Eternal Library, in the dungeons of Tavimark, in the streets of Arenam, and in the depths of the wild lands. In the catacombs of the Kraj and the ancient necropolis, the locked Spectre rules.

I still have a memory, but that memory is now empty, like the photo files on the hard drive of a home computer. You were once there in those pictures, smiling and having fun with those in those images standing next to you, but time has passed. The memory of him remains, but there is nothing to hold that memory. There is no one who held that memory, and the photos are being viewed by a completely different person. Only the Shadow remains, only a creature of immense power and endless hunger, no longer willing to give up its power and nature.

I get to my feet, or rather. I flow like Shadows move, not humans. Not a single drop of flesh in my entire body, and the mask falls to the ground, grinning its bloody smile at me, bouncing off into the far corner like a discarded skin. The face is gone too, just a black blur, a hungry maw, an insatiable gulp. Thoughts are jerky and sharp, like frozen ice flakes, and no warmth in them. Losius, Hans, Tia, Taria, Hestia, Ygra... The man had already done everything he could do for them and added to it a fair share of what was impossible.

I don't really care anymore.

With an effort of will, I open a small breach, tearing reality apart with a groaning wound, pressing into the lens the devils had created, making the hole as deep as possible. The road is open, and I have enough strength to survive the journey, to rip out the eternity of any creature that thinks I am less terrible, that dares to see me as prey. I have enough strength to escape from those who only see me as prey.

The play with the siege of the Eternal is over.

Let the rest of the cast play it out without me before the devil who kicked my ass takes his mind off the important things for a second and finishes what he started. Any creature should know when there's no point in fighting when it's better to run away and retreat, distracted only by walking through the nearest neighborhoods to gather the heat and lives of those still hiding in the corners. I have a long way to go, a long way to go, and the extra souls devoured by the Grip that gave me their memories, their souls that strengthened me, would not be out of place.

They won't be redundant.

They won't.

The breach is open, and the gates are before me, but why do I delay? For what, for whom, for what idols do I not save my life? The thirst to live, the thirst to be. It saved me from the poison, saved me from death, and allowed me to continue my tale, not to stop, not to finish the story. I thirst to live. I thirst with all my being. To live and to take other people's lives and continue my own, to take someone else's life and add it to my own, to take and add, to get my strength from someone else's weakness.

My peripheral vision catches the glare of flickering system tray messages. There was a lot of stuff piling up there that would be worth examining in detail, but not until much later, when I'd put the danger behind me. Nevertheless, my gaze fixes on a small section, literally two lines, that up until now had been scary to look at. The fear is gone along with everything else, but for some reason, the sight is still there, lingering in my mind, making me hesitate.

Name: K??s?a?t??e

Race: ????????? (creature; ????????)

Question marks.

Their designation is very clear and easy to grasp through clairvoyance and banal logic. I have received much for this day. For the enemies I have fought and the sacrifices I have made. All I have to do is to distribute what I have received, and I can get rid of the annoying absurdity, complete my rebirth, and leave my past life behind. I've already been reborn. I've already accepted my new self, and these signs are just cosmetic nonsense because the same bloodsuckers also look at the question marks for a while before the Status returns to normal after conversion.

And I am much stronger than the bloodsuckers, much more dangerous than the overgrown bedbugs, there is no doubt about it. Having distributed what I've received and then supplemented it, I can hope to accept the status of not even a Legend but a Myth. The weak myth, literally newborn, as was newborn Hestia, turned epic monster of the first level. But even a barely awakened Myth will gain power, incredible power, my rightful power!

Why haven't I stepped forward yet?

Just...

Just one step...

My cry raises every shadow in the neighborhood, within and beyond my sphere of shadows, making them quiver like shaking leaves in a storm. All my hatred, all my loneliness, all my fears, all the forgotten and given up pain that somehow stayed with me, not letting go even now.

I jerked forward, and my fist struck a large mirror, which was part of a huge sideboard that stood in the middle of the living room, destroyed by my "flight," abandoned by its owners at the first alarm bells. Shards of mirror crumble to the ground, silver goblets engraved with sea-themed engravings fall beside them, crystal decanters with various contents clink, and the sideboard itself falls on its side, opening a hole in the wall behind it and in the walls that follow it. Behind me, the rift, no longer supported, was collapsing, and from within, an unstoppable avalanche of madness burst forth

And I laugh, shrilly, choking and rustling every shadow in time with my laughter, laughing as only a Shadow can laugh, laughing at myself and the world, laughing, hearing how with each passing second this laughter more and more resembles my past, laughing without noticing how the laughter turns into hoarse sobs as if trying to speak with a crushed throat.

The shadows fall silent.

The rustling subsides.

I fall to my knees.

The eyes meet the grin of my mask again, and I involuntarily grin back, showing my newfound teeth, inhaling the air with my newly reappeared lungs, feeling my heart beat as it pumps blood through my veins again. In the shards of the mirror, I can see my face pale, alien, wrong, mangled by my power, but still mine.

How simple it all turns out to be.

Any fool can step over the edge to the point of complete creaturness and then go back as if nothing had happened. Absolutely any fool, if only he can understand, realize, and only independently, without prompting, accept such an elementary truth. It is not about nobility, not about friendship, or loyalty, and not about the best manifestations of our feelings. Otherwise, every second would regularly change the essence three times a day.

So simple...

And equaly emposible...

It didn't get any easier.

I still don't want to die. I still wish more than anything to escape from this mad city without continuing the battle, without repeating the agony I've experienced. I can do it now, can't I? No one will judge or stop me, and my companions will be the first to kick me out into the breach, giving me a chance at least. I can always find companions or raise new ones. The death of the capital and the fall of the Eternal Empire will benefit me as an Unchained Summoned. I have already managed to do the impossible from the point of view of any inhabitant of this world. The old System will not lie, having indicated everything in my status:

Name: Konstantine

Race: ?human?; ??????

There, in that square, death awaits me, unpleasant and humiliating in every way. One miracle has already happened to me today, and even my optimism and self-confidence are not enough to believe that such luck will happen again. It was a miracle that I managed to leave the square, a miracle that I didn't die from a single blow from that fucking Sovereign of all fucking bitches, a miracle that I survived the poison and eradicated it from my essence.

I don't wanna die.

I lifted my mask, leaving red stains on it - not blood, but a jam that had spilled out of a broken carafe, cherry jam, judging by the smell and taste (it took two seconds to lick my fingers). I look at the smile I painted a long time ago, as if an eternity ago, and realize I'm going to die. I don't have a chance in the battle with the mythical devil. I didn't have it before, and I don't have it now after the miraculous rescue.

I can somehow miraculously withstand one or even a few hits if I put everything on defense.

I can just as miraculously strike out on my own if I forget about defense and become a kamikaze

No more.

But no less.

Damn it, - although it is better not to, - but how I, almost dying, wanted to live! I thought that I had long ago resigned myself to the inevitability of the end, but somewhere there was still a little faith and hope for the best, even strange. I didn't believe in Santa Claus when I was a child!

I bared my teeth to the pieces of my reflection like a mouthful of solid fangs, then picked up one of the pieces of the shattered mirror with gold dust glistening fingers, crunching it to a crunch. A few seconds is an impermissible luxury spent on indecision, and the partially transformed mouth crumbles a small fragment the size of a child's palm.

Glass facets tear at my throat as the first shard is followed by a second.

Third.

Sixth.

Tenth...

* * *

Author's Note:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KVpfjfEshf2tV1pZg2KOurRxCQF_m-E_/view?usp=sharing - Kostya didn't have time to say his thought. (You know what,,, Well, fuck you.)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/160GHCGxnPwgsiAnwbMsx4qrfEMTaFkdI/view?usp=sharing - Approximately such goblets, only the engraving is different.

The rest is in the first comment because there's a shitload to write.

Good for everyone.

P.S. 52 fucking pages!

* * *

This chapter is the absolute champion not only in size but also in the amount of "omak points" spent on survival. It came from all sides in a cluster, sometimes lethally - I had to level it, which affected the result, but also, the reserves were reduced to a minus. Not a particularly deep disadvantage, but a noticeable one.

Twice, I was confused and rerolled the rolls, but both times, it rolled for actions in the capital, not for MC and Co. Once again, I recalculated, adding characters from Brinar's omak to the total cauldron, but it was my own decision. The omak is worthy of canonization and, in general, surprisingly successful in the Lore. I wanted to put in a word about the Stealers myself.

They had representatives in the capital without the omak, but the omak was the starting point.

That's it.

52 and a half pages is my anti-record, man.

There are so many dice in these pages that the thought of reprinting them all here makes me sick. I don't even want to reprint some of them here, but I still have to.

First, let me tell you about spending.

I spent a lot on the skirmish with Touch to make sure MC didn't get smeared by the backlash and then tweaked the odds a couple more times to make sure he had time to heal with a Theft instead of dying mid-throw.

Slightly tweaked Tin's second strike to give Touch a Lobotomy.

I helped Hestia. No, not with the essence absorption. She did it herself. I added resistance against the effects of the control. She's got her head screwed on high quality, and if the roll had been less, she would have been trying to kill all the people she knows by sight for another five minutes even after that devil died (very rare contract-soul against Mist in all manifestations, just crit of crit: 100 and 67 clear).

I VERY much helped MC survive Sovereign's strike - about a hundred and fifty points put into that branch alone. As sad it was there. Kostya could have gotten a good hit if he hadn't tried to play stealth. Sovereign's sensors are too good, and on the Square, right in the sprouting Domain.... Tin couldn't get close enough to hit him in the back, even if he had three hundred extra points, but still, the disadvantages were too hard, while the devil's advantages were too high.

The place of the lucky number one of the entire Arch was shared between Giver, who got just an extremely cool abilify (just due to two corruptions in a row), and Hestia.

With our Misty is fun. She had a pure crit at 100 and 89 and four more crit with bonuses. Don't swear at the dice. There were bonuses all the way up to +80 in the overall score, and the minuses were much less.

I both highlighted in the text and let it be noted before, back during the battle with the bloodsuckers in Arenam. Mist has a very cool relationship with Essence. In fact, this situation was as favorable to Hestia as favorable situations in my cozy Alurei can be.

Oh, she's had it, oh, she's had it.

And the consequences, on the contrary, are the gentlest possible.

However, a lot of guys are going to get a boost here. At the very least, if they do get out, they'll get the equivalent of the title for Stone, but with a higher rank. Remember what the reward was there and compare it to that.

Kostik managed to walk not just the edge, which is no surprise to anyone, but to roll (himself, by that point, I had too few points, and I was still hoping not to get into debt), effectively a "last hope save roll."

That was literally the last roll, and I was ready to close the chapter and rewrite it from scratch. Well, or continue the story of Kostik the Creature, but I didn't want to do that because it would change the whole mechanism of the story too much. And to rewrite the whole chapter (preferably together with the previous one, and even better from the moment when our guys didn't leave the city) is somehow unfair.

Pull out.

While unraveling one very spoiler-ish moment for the future.

To tell you the truth, I was really ready to rewrite the chapter, but the rescue straw pulled out (not on the first try, but still lucky, for the disadvantages were very significant) forced the credit.

The credit is justified by this.

What MC is trying to pull off now is a leap over his head. He may succeed. It's not against the Lore, but the odds are extremely unpleasant. I'm intentionally spoiling, so you don't worry that MC will die while trying to do the impossible.

This trick has long been in my mind. Hints of its possibility have been given here and there, and even commentators here have guessed, some partly, some mostly, about the possibility of such a technique.

Perhaps a little early, especially since the Dice were leading him to another route to solve the problem.... but it's not too early.

The credit I've given will allow Tin to... not level the playing field, no.

To have the odds of not dying in a fight against a Myth after one hit, as nearly happened now. Just the odds and Tin could use the omaks (even, God forgive me, the Green Fever mentioned with Tia, Hypnosis, and elf legs) **hinted, moving his eyebrows.**

However, let's be honest.

Omaks are needed, but they will NOT affect Tin's actions. I've already put a lot of bonuses into him, added credit, and given him every chance to succeed. Adding more would be unrealistic, so Omaks will help everyone but Tin. The others could use some help too.

That's it.

Giver rolled very well and with crits, often automatic. But she has so much advantage from her Gifts of the Ring that it's not surprising. Oh, and she also got into a stupor when she realized that MC not only didn't punish her "attempt at persuasion" but didn't seem to pay any attention to her. Very out of step with Hell society, very much so.

There was a lot of interesting stuff, even a shitload of crits, but honestly, I'm leaving already.

P.S. A variant of the first comment, which I thought about until the last and could not choose between the two for a long time, could still be these lines:

Enchanters!

A time has come for battle lines.

We will cut these knotted ties,

And some may live and some may die.