Chapter 21 (Patreon)

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Has it ever happened in your life that you want to shout in your voice about how cool you are, that you have done something outstanding and in general you are the coolest guy in the neighborhood, in the region, and perhaps even on the entire continent? And then, at this very moment of realizing your exceptionalism comes the Head of the Dormitory and kicks a little inadequate and a little drunk you out of sweet dreams, threatening eviction and subsequent expulsion, after which only the native army awaits? Agree, this is far from the sensations that you would like to experience twice in your life..... or once, for that matter.

There was no moment of returning consciousness as such because you can lose your brains and fall into the mode of a furious hamster-kamikaze when trying to stand in line at the post office, but if you fight with a cursed creature of mythical grade and three-digit level, you'd better kill yourself right away. My reason was not pushed deeper into my subcortex, but on the contrary, it became concentrated to the maximum, stretched to razor sharpness, and only at the same time concentrated on a very narrow list of tasks. And if it wasn't for the high concentration, as for the one characteristic I didn't pump in, I would have been torn into a hundred small Konstantines without the devil's direct participation and even despite his active opposition.

The trick I pulled, figuratively speaking, was taking all the techniques I knew for safe work with planar energy, wiping my horror-stricken ass with them, twisting them into a tube, and shoving them back into the same ass. No, I realize that I am a fan of throwing out a frankly idiotic act, taking a mortal risk even where it is not necessary, frankly useless, or even harmful. But even the show-off of Pypysh's name during the confusion in the Library seemed the height of adequacy against the backdrop of my latest clowning. I can't even count the number of times it could have been the last one because I'm going to lose count. It's a very familiar wording, and I lose count all the time. Either I count badly, or I take too many risks.

Planar forces can't be mixed. It's a fucking axiom of "don't stick your fingers in sockets and your dick in a vat of molten metal" level, but when did Kostik ever think with his head, or think at all? We are isekai, summoned heroes, powerful 4chaners. We do not honor the laws of not only the criminal code but even physics, logic, common sense, and common decency! This idea, which came into my head not spontaneously but finally formed from disparate pieces of the mosaic at that moment of final tension, was very interesting, requiring further research and experimentation. I would catch this idea by the tail and then develop something digestible out of it.

In the end, it came out the way it did.

One can't help but think, as a man picking his nose, "How about building a nuclear reactor at home so that my light bill would be lower?" And instead of long calculations, calculation of risks, preparation of precautions, and leveling of inevitably arising dangers, this man simply sent the girl to the cellar for a couple of kilos of good weapons-grade plutonium. Immediately, at once, without thought or doubt, as if it could not be otherwise. Probably, if it wasn't for this reinforced concrete confidence in my strength, reinforced with mifril studs and adamantium plating, I would have died in the first second. Or rather, it wasn't even confidence. It was just the absence of even a shadow of a thought, a single hint of the possibility that I might fail.

Thus, I got one more reason to look for information about what the Hero phenomenon is and what its influence on the probability of certain events is, but it is definitely not today, not now, and not like that. I was killed neither by the devil, nor by my efforts, nor by the rollback from the use of an almost unfamiliar and hastily, without mercy to my essence, pumped class skill, but the delay now will kill guaranteed.

Poets' Square had turned into something even more shattered than mere ruins, becoming a natural soup, a mush of stone crumbs, the honeyed rot of Hell's sprawling matter, and the Shadows coming and going through the established cuts. In the last moments of his existence, Sovereign, may the Shadow be his torture chamber, tried either to remake himself on the fly or to discard the affected areas like a lizard shedding its tail, but he was just textbook. The dying Touch swelled and turned inside out, dumping out its giblets hidden in multidimensionality, but the remains of the gentleman were the size of the entire area, even if you do not count its dying petals. I'm a hundred and forty-six out of a hundred sure that those guts were part of him, too, a separate organ, like a turtle's shell. Maybe a little alien to the main body, but still integral.

It was a natural mess, and being in the epicenter of it would be a ticket to death for anyone. I have good resistance, but I can't survive even a minute in such a background of fleur and energy storms without protection. The protection is there, working in the background, being a perfect sphere of monochrome with a radius of three and a half meters, a piece of the world on which someone has manifested the laws of Shadow. To some, such a capsule of salvation would not seem a powerful enough frontier, but I knew and understood how reliable this armor was. As long as I did not give back what I had torn from reality, no power in its raw form could penetrate this sphere. There are plenty of ways to counteract it, I was shown these ways time and time again by the late asshole, but there's no way to sell such a trick just by increasing the amount of energy invested.

My head did not immediately remember how to think in its normal state. When the enemy was dead, I stared at the place where the devil's embodied vessel had recently sprawled into slices, turning its multidimensional receptacle outward in a surprisingly disgusting display. I would have sat like that for an hour, but my intuition kicked in, telling me more and more intrusively how unwise it was to sit and wait for nothing.

A hint of a thought, a decision just beginning, but even that hesitation, the barely perceptible contraction of muscles in a body reeling from shock and overload, was enough to bend in a violent spasm. Coughing and not even vomiting, but a real seizure, as if you were about to vomit out your stomach, not to mention its contents. The first thing that came out was the undigested food, which, after so many changes of form and the transition from the energetic to the material state, was not left in the intestines. Streams of black and unhealthily hissing blood, bubbling with evil power, poured out of me like a fountain, as if I had drunk a cola and eaten menthol dragee, making my frozen body shudder with pain that cut to the very gut.

Pieces of equally black glass, shards of devoured mirrors that have wasted all their reflections to the end and still above that limit, are almost invisible in this mess. The glass cuts my throat and scratches my mouth, but mere wounds are complete bullshit against the consequences of my adventure. The use of the essential shell that coated the mirror blanks like a layer of caramel soft filling made it possible not to tear myself apart by planar displacement, but that's only half the battle. In the Shadow Form state, as well as simply by overuse of the planar saturation, alchemical skills, if not disabled, then weakened to the point of obscenity, forcing one not just to make caramels from the mirror shell but also to create caramels in advance in such a state that they could be manipulated even without access to alchemy or the essence vessel.

For all its qualities, the Vessel is a structure tied to the human body, and in the form of an eternal hungry fear-beast it, of course, remains available and feels the same as before, but those parts of the essence that are responsible for working with the Vesse of Essence you no longer have. Or rather, I'm saying it wrong again. They are there, but they are completely different. Different every time. Different for every Form. With such inputs, it was very difficult to interact with caramel in any meaningful way, so only the simplest manipulations remained.

The hardest thing was to activate the prepared mirrors, Dream embedded in them, without stopping the battle and being in the state of "more Shadow than Kostya". Without a layer of essences, any activation would immediately activate me, and I would become an activated isekai, similar to activated charcoal. The same kind that sizzles and disintegrates into dust right before your eyes. The use of higher alchemy as a cushioning layer between two planar techniques, of course, stretches to the analog of the local Nobel Prize, but I'm sure that even if they gave it to me, it would only be by hitting me over the head with it.

The feeling of imminent blows began to change from a whisper to very loud cues or even to the cries of a guardsman, a concentration camp warden, or a kindergarten teacher building his charges, hinting to get away as soon as possible. I stare at the almost black petals, which now look so much like melting wax skyscrapers, gradually falling into the stone-igneous slurry that the square and the surrounding area have become. And above me, the stolen sky lights up purple, as if someone were pouring into it not the poisonous passion of purple and violet but the bloody rain of primal rage. And there is something wrong in this rain, something not as Hell should be!

In that bloody color was the clang of weapons striking shields, the crush of infantry, the mud, the screams, the shouts, the shrieks, and the rivers of blood that had been and would continue to be spilled for years to come. Somebody objectified their Miracle right within Hell, and all the vices retreated, unprepared for such a confrontation. I really don't want to wait until the one who's so eager to come here gets to the Eternal because my reputation isn't up to par, and I don't have the right alignment. The mental rigor had already dissipated, the new tasks and goals were being digested, and my brain was starting up again, but there were too many things I had to do before I could escape.

The easiest thing was the summoned Armada, right now eating its most delicious buffet that could be set up and served. Even without listening, I could feel what was left of the dead creature's domain trying if not to push back the affected areas, at least to keep the cuts from growing into the Shadow itself, which was exactly the number of petals of the deceased devil. Strangely enough, I wished the devil luck. I didn't want to wait for the bastards to finish eating the tidbits and move on to the easier food. I didn't want to wait for the bunches of defenseless and ready-to-eat souls to be the sweetest food for them, but they wouldn't refuse mortals they could get their hands on, either.

The mechanism of the breach-call I created is such that I can know relatively clearly who exactly and in what quantity these breaches let through. Having estimated the quantity as well as the quality, I can say only a few angry swears, then some more swears, and a strangled squeak in which one can hardly recognize the phrase "pot don't boil." There were more than two dozen Highs alone, and something much stronger, more evil, and more Ancient was slowly being pushed into reality in three examples. If I had originally created a single mega-crack, even a mythic would have crawled into such a hole in one second, but thanks to the fact that the Armada rift was divided into several surgically precise cuts, the number of relatively weak creatures has grown avalanche-like, but the really powerful Shadows get through reluctantly, very reluctantly, which makes them even more furious than usual.

Of course, the rift created by the active perk imposes on the Shadows the obligation to obey me in return for the wildest force of strengthening benefit, at the same time leveling the ejection effect of the real world, but the more powerful the creature, the angrier and hungrier, the weaker the effect of the contract. People in general, and the Eternal in particular, were saved by the exceptionally high nutritional value of the almost gutted Domain's coffers. Against the backdrop of this feast, it was simply stupid for them to search for and kill ordinary humans because they were already well-fed. But the real fun will begin the moment they finish eating the remains of the petals and their creator, and the remaining creatures in the Domain will cut off access to their guts.

Oddly enough, I wish good luck to the devils and the Heralds arriving right here, or even the Incarnations, so they can kill my beast and die in the process while I munch on popcorn on the sidelines. Correction, I'd munch it if I wasn't right in the middle of the fucking carnage! And if I had popcorn.

I stop my motionless sitting, sharply shrinking the monochrome sphere, merging it with the Aegis that never stopped working in the non-forced mode, turning it into a kind of dense armor around the body that has not yet recovered from throwing up the spent mirrors. I don't feel well, but my reserve is relatively full. My strength is enough, and on the border of my consciousness, there is a kind of rope, an iron anchor chain that binds me and the feasting Armada, allowing me, if I wish, to claim a part of my tribute simply by the right of the Overlord. This will not only restore the reserve but also add experience, devoured attributes, or something else "good," which I am not going to do and even categorically do not want to do.

In general, the Armada connection is for the very last resort, and for now, the situation is not that catastrophic.

As soon as I narrowed the sphere of Manifestation, I nearly fell into a vat of shit, souls, and Shadows because it was the sphere that kept me afloat. Reflexively using the Leaf on the Wind zeroes in on the weight, allows me to glide through the rippling doughy mass like a water viper on a water surface, only the surface is very shitty. A quick look around reveals only a few very important things I personally would like to bring with me before escaping.

The only part of the environment that stands out above the general mess is the marvelous fountain, for which Poets' Square was beloved, which survived the whole massacre with nothing less than a real miracle. However, the fountain's construction has turned into hints that throwing coins into it is no longer about luck or a long-lasting buff but about a lethal dose of fleur. On the other hand, I told the team I wanted to throw a coin...

Oh, who am I kidding?

When has a sign that says "Don't get in, it'll kill you" ever stopped me?

The Shadow Theft on one of the already disintegrating souls, whose light was dissolving into the gradually blackening mush beneath his feet, was almost unopposed, even easier than on ordinary, possessing bodies of the reasonable. The abomination that ran through the connection literally tore the soul apart, killing it for about a minute and a half faster than it would have extinguished itself, a wide, as wide as the body of the fountain, a stream of rot and honey was rushing upward, and I was already rushing to the place where I had last seen the late faggot Eternal, whose name I never learned... If you think about it, I never learned any of them by name, and I don't know if there are any of them left. They don't take care of themselves at all, even though they're not students anymore.
T.N. It's reference to this movie 

I didn't need the prince's body, which was still alive, even if it had its soul removed, as well as his cheater armor, even if I wouldn't give it up. But the blade, that incomprehensible two-handed weapon that even the mythical devil feared, or even outright feared, and which, apparently, is capable of killing anything if you hit it more than once - that's the one I'd like to have. I have just here one mythical monster, which does not give me a break and brazenly seeks me with a bad purpose. It would be more useful to me than to a dead man or his family because they are also dead.

I can't find the sword right away, and if I can't find it in ten seconds, I'll have to run. I can only retrieve the blade drowned in this filth if no one interferes with me for at least a couple of hours. There's so much background there now, so many multidirectional currents mixed, so many disintegrating souls and Shadows eating them, that my sensors resentfully tell me terrible things. Impulse by impulse, the shadow sphere, and clairvoyance work together, but they only fill my brain with nastiness and veneer, which I have to burn out separately.

Dream might help, but I don't have time to find or create a mirror and turn it into a support and a disposable search altar. Not to mention that switching from Shadow to Dream would leave me without the protection of Manifestation and Aegis, which could be a frustrating experience under such circumstances. And I have enough experience today as it is as if I had a cat working in an experience factory, and I don't even have a cat! I've had enough of the risks I've been taking. Now, I need to run away and do it with all the skills I have.

But the opportunity to get a mythical pickaxe, which I dreamed of from the very first day of my arrival on Alurei, which is really mythical in its awesomeness, I want to tears in my dry eyes. In my life, there are too many of those entities that only such a pick could kill. However, there are enough, and those against whom and pick will not help. I don't want to miss the opportunity to get this weapon because I won't be able to get a second one shortly.

In one swoop, I put my reserve and will into the execution of the Call, slapping the chains of my power on the nearest Elder Shadow, which looked like a headless eel, eating another portion of the sparks that had almost disintegrated in the fleur-shadow bath, immediately throwing the second and third leashes. I can't intercept the whole horde. I can't change their vector of action. I can't even dream about it - there are too many of them, they are too close to the source of saturation, and the source itself is unrealistically tantalizing against any background. They will ignore my order at best, pretend not to notice it, and if I risk to press further, they will try that order for strength. And all of them will be able to crush my strength, forcing me either to retreat or to fight with my own Armada.

I could, of course, try to break the mechanism of my buff, which levels the back pressure of reality, allowing me to not fall back into the Shadow and weaken away from its deeper layers. But with the souls devoured, it wouldn't matter if I could close the breach or break the contractual blessing because, with that kind of feeding, they'd have a good chance of not feeling my actions, losing whatever vestiges of control they still had left. It would be very likely Eternal would be destroyed by a different kind of creature if I didn't feel with my gut and failing clairvoyance that reality was cracking from the effort they were putting into it. Whatever was going on outside, the rescue forces were already rushing in and would be here soon. Whether they will rescue us, kill us, or loot derelict valuables (in the process, making derelict those that still have owners) I have no idea, and it will take too long to find out. I don't care because my angry face is not going to do me any good when I meet those rushing people.

The late prince's armor doesn't entice me as much as the desire to seize the blade. I'm tired of hiding from the Weaver under a figurative bedchamber, and without a trump card of this grade, that veteran of labor and defense will eat me up without choking. With him, though, he'll eat me too, but that way, at least some chances will remain. One fight with, in fact, not the strongest myth was enough for me to realize my place in the food chain. Even with the support of the whole Chosen One, the fucking Prince of Ages, and another allied fearshit, who reeked of such concentrated misery that it made the Shadow Form's teeth whimper, we barely broke him. If this horny shit hadn't missed my trick of opening the Armada gate and not another flying shit, which inexplicably sees a clear connection with Losius, the devils would have celebrated the victory, not me.

One of the Shadows I've been exploiting to keep me from enjoying my meal has managed to find the blade with its tentacles. I immediately take direct control of it, literally killing the beast and turning it into an extension of my body. My reserve is sagging, and I'm feeling worse, but I can't risk it. After all, any Shadow hates me a priori, working only on fear and fear of getting hit, and with such a tool in its "paws" it can try to scratch me with it. Not that it would think of it, not that the artifact would work in the "hands" of the creature, but I didn't want to check. I'd already experimented enough for today to make me sick.

Shadow crawled out a little ways away, dragging the blade through its body, and I immediately intercepted it, wrapping it in my cloak and letting go of Shadow's control. The Shadow, for its part, died silently without a peep, but if I didn't know with absolute certainty that there was no consciousness or thought there anymore, I'd think it was looking at me a little judgmentally. I didn't dare to dive for the armor. The prince's body was sprawled with rot and honey foam, and the kit had disintegrated into its individual elements, sinking deeper and deeper. I was watching the blade with all my might because I needed it so much, but I couldn't keep track of every piece of armor in such a mess of energy. I needed a sensor much stronger than a tired and wobbly me.

But the other trophy, on the contrary, I didn't need to look for the surface of the fleur literally pushing it out, preventing it from sinking to the bottom, but I wasn't very sure about the need to even pick it up. The remains of the old man-martyr caused an underlying desire to burn them in the alchemical flames. The only thing that stopped me was the realization that I couldn't create such a thing quickly, and my current resources wouldn't be enough. The single link of the chain seemed to be the most ordinary, only blackened and partially corroded. Even the Hero's gaze did not help much. The casket that had fallen to the ground after the dedugan's spraying appeared to be stored not in the pockets missing from his tatters but right inside the mangled body. A very, you know, strong argument for not messing with shit, an exemplary argument!

But an old man helped us.

He helped me at once, without a second thought, without counting on anything, only wishing to die, but he helped me, helped me to the very end, and if it hadn't been for his voluntary sacrifice, I wouldn't have had enough time. I can't say it was exactly a request. We had neither the strength nor the time nor the desire for such revelations of will, but until the last moment, there was a hope smoldering in him that I would do something about his legacy. It's obviously a trap for the curious, a cunning curse, which I don't even doubt. It doesn't even need intuition, just a pinch of knowledge.

And my dear Tia, tyrant ears, worse than the teachers in all subjects at once, quite an accessible language explained the nature of cute Demons, their strengths, and weaknesses, as well as the reasons why no one with a drop of brain in his head will not mess with them. Neither for enmity nor, even worse, for friendship. Another victim, another unfinished and not-ending terrible fairy tale in which the beautiful prince, his princess, and their white horse have already died, but some served the prince and princess.

Dead Gods and dead Faith are scary not because they will betray you, deceive you, and devour you, as devils do. What is scary is that you can fall into their arms, even just by touching them, by sharing even a little of their indelible burden. I know, even though clairvoyance has far from heard everything in those moments when we all, four doomed lunatics against one myth, were bound together into one whole, what exactly is in that box saved. And I also realize that even knowing the danger, I dare not ignore this request.

Someone has to finish the scary tales.

Especially if this tale, a couple of minutes earlier, prevented someone from finishing my tale.

With a quiet, on the verge of hearing, hiss, from which all the Shadows in a considerable radius became nervous and began to eat faster and more greedily so as not to be taken away, I tear off from my belt the rest of the vials, from which all the magic and essences had already evaporated, leaving only pure glass-insulator. So many transitions to the Form and back, several almost complete destructions of the main body, and regular pumping of raw power to obscene values. All of this threatened the remnants of the compositions hanging on my belt, which could not be used against Sovereign anyway. The alchemy had to be used in another, much more suicidal way.

But it is the insulating glass I need, which I crumble in my flesh-returned hands, covered in golden mist, using essence manipulation to glue them into truly closed containers. I take the chain and the box not with my hands but with the paws of the Form, throwing aside the pieces of flesh affected by other people's Sins. Until I have sealed both relics in separate hermetic capsules, and then I seal them again, already in a common box for both vessels. There was not enough glass for the last one, so I had to use pieces of stone and floral crumbs lying under my feet. No matter how paradoxically silly it might sound, the fleur, thickened by essentialism, being an abomination, did a good job of isolating the influence of the cursed objects. Yes, yes, Konstantin Yurievich invented to isolate radioactive materials in a container of pure dimethylmercury, sprayed with the famous "Novichok" for a pleasant smell. I recognize myself, damn.

I hang the resulting bullshit on my cloak, which covers the family double-edged sword that I honestly stole in payment for saving Eternal, remembering sharply the old proverb. I mean the one about the need to run away quickly after you've done another good deed. Kindness is the kind of thing that requires quick feet and the ability to avoid being caught on camera...

I shook my whole body, which for a second took on a shadow appearance, like a cat after a sudden and unwanted bath, and sharply accelerated. The body strengthened by the Form allows me to push off from the area of space subordinated by the Manifestation, starting with the speed of a racing car and without much acceleration. As if waiting for my actions, there comes a feeling of... I don't know how to describe it. The closest analogy I have with that bouquet of experiences is when you are relaxing in the bathtub, diving into it with your head, and then someone throws a firecracker into the bathtub. Or, say, you climb into an iron barrel, close the lid, and a kind soul from the neighboring yard smashes the barrel with a stick!

Someone not only knocked on the door of the stolen city, but someone almost kicked the door open with a decisive kick, being at least a local God, and well, if only one. As if the already existing problems were not enough, there followed a stirring of space, as if someone scraped a huge nail on the glass and chalk on the blackboard at the same time - a sound inaudible, felt rather by his magic and sensitivity to energy, but no less loud. It was the Ancient Shadows who were entering the party who realized that the very Gods could try to take away their food.

If up to this point, the mythical creatures of my "favorite" plane had not been in too much of a hurry to get through the breach I'd left, sticking individual tentacles into the remains of the petals and subduing individual shadows and making them carry soul lights for themselves, now they were getting nervous. And they were hiding pretty well, bitches, pretty well. I wasn't paying much attention in my haste, and they (two of them, apparently, as well as a third, weaker one, still just trying on the breaches) had managed to figure out how the Armada contract worked, deliberately not coming here completely. Instead, the Ancients had almost entirely subjugated the little things, temporarily making the little things part of themselves, squeezing out most of the honestly devoured, strengthening their essences, and driving away the Highest, smart and quick to recognize the danger, who were simply not profitable to subjugate in such a crippling way.

They were also trying to take control of the rifts, to imbue them with the power pulled from the souls, to make rifts their own, not mine! To retain the ability to level the penalties for staying in the material world, but to get rid of the forced contract of obedience! If I used the skill granted by the perk correctly, creating a single huge cut, they wouldn't have been able to do it... so quickly, taking at least half an hour and much more effort, so much more that it's easier to accept the contract. Only I wouldn't have been able to create a single rift because the bridge between the Shadow and the Hell without any "almost" was the petals and the supreme devil himself - there was no room for a full-fledged Armada gate.

The Ancient creatures think differently. Their hunger and hatred are all-consuming and immense, but they are not stupid in any way. And when they saw a chance for themselves, they took it, managing to do so in secret from an arrogant Overlord who thought too much of himself. Now that they were out of hiding, I could sense and feel their hateful contempt and envy. Their desire to punish me for the very thought of them submitting to my will. To do what they were ordered to do. In a normal state, I could have closed the breaches, could have worked my way to the bottom, overpowered the will of the Ancient, and forced them to retreat into the Shadow.

One.

The weakest of the three.

Probably.

There were some chances.

Small one.

In my current state, beaten and tired, I'd only make them laugh, so I pressed down the angry desire flared in my heart to punish the creatures who thought they were nothing, to show the right and will of the Overlord, which were described not by level, not by attributes and not by reserve, but by the things that made the hungry scum bow their heads long before I got at least the fortieth level. I pressed down and gritted my teeth in a gloating grin. The Gods would come, as would their Heralds, and if the former could still slack up, the latter would be in the assortment. And whoever wins in the coming battle, I'll be the winner. No matter how hard the Shadows try, the ban on devouring civilians is still in effect, as well as the basic directives of the Armada.

They had subjugated all but the Highest, but the desire to devour more lights, to outrun the competition, to conceal their actions had prevented the contract from shaking loose enough. God's armies would come early, forcing the creatures to grapple with the natural enemy. There will be casualties, of course, but I force myself to believe that the celestials will try to level them as well. Without the slammed Armada loop, the creatures eager to fill the void of their Loneliness could start a guerrilla war, running from the Heralds and eating defenseless mortals. But the loop was still there, and the Celestials wouldn't let them work to break it, forcing them to fight rather than eat just to survive and not get beaten.

A chuckle erupted from deep within, a laugh that turned into the shrill laughter of a hungry hyena worthy of the Shadows who heard it. They are silent, only rustling, hissing, and eating, tearing and tearing at the chains of the Ancients that bound them, and the Ancients are silent, too. It was as if they heard in my laughter all that I had told them, conveyed to them, told them in the heat of cruel mockery. They deceived me, outsmarted me, left me on a fool's errand and pointed out the place, questioned my very right to be the Overlord, answering this question in absentia by my actions.

And they were right.

But with my laughter, my mirthful anger, and my sense of superiority, which I did not really feel, I made them believe that they had not deceived me but themselves. That I had calculated everything from the beginning, had constrained them by deceit, and compelled them to play to my music, to my laughter! And they, who saw the approach of the celestials, who understood the inevitability of the battle and the fact that they would have to do as I wished, who felt the nonexistent chains of will already on themselves, believed me. Had it not been for the laughter, for their faith, they might have twisted, deceived, changed their minds, retreated at last without entering the battle, breaking the chains of the contract. Now, I realize in a prophetic trance, they can't. They won't have time to change tactics.

Congratulations, Kostya. Now you have three angry Myths besides Weaver, who will very, very much want to take revenge for the humiliation they've suffered. Of course, they are not so dangerous, and they can't block my Shadow the way Weaver closed Dream, but they can make my life difficult. From eating up all the summons I've made or will make contracts with (I don't need rituals, sacrifices, and entreaties for every evolved creature. An ultimatum like "work or I'll make a stuffed pony out of you" will suffice), to trying to catch me swimming in the depths of the Shadow, or even trivial answers to questions posed by mortals interested in me. Well, if there are those among these Shadows who work with mortals, and there certainly are, I can see the contractual stamps of mutual oaths on some of them.

It's kind of embarrassing, but I'll be rooting for the angels to get all three.... or at least the two strongest myths get fucked without lube.

The Ancients watched my departure away from the remains of the square and the remains of the archdevil in silence, restraining their shrieks and furious yells, which frightened far more than their weaker kin. The level of self-control that even the High, who had once been summoned, did not possess. Though, to be fair, I did not put them in such a rough position as with that unlucky Legend. That's why they are angry. I pressed them, fucked them, but did not push them to the edge, beyond which anger is buried under a layer of fear. So I walked away, until my stealth and distance, as well as the busyness of the Ancient creatures, overpowered their attentiveness, hiding me from the Shadow's gaze.

My clairvoyance was working as hard as I was. It was obvious to me that it would take me a week, maybe even a couple of months, to recover from today, but as long as I could fight and run, I had to take advantage of it. If I survive, I'll let Tia beat me in the skull as a giant woodpecker about my safety and self-preservation instead of sawdust. In the meantime, I have to take advantage of the fact that I can do something and nobody cares about me.

There, a huge mecha made according to Hell Inc's blueprints continues its leisurely battle with a comparably huge golden snake, above which hangs a cheerful one hundred and thirteenth level, from time to time rising by a couple of points, then falling by the same values, ten times a fraction of a second. Unstable levels happen, of course, but I've never seen anything that unstable. I have not met anything similar to this cute snake, which reeked such unnatural greed, desire to possess, the desire to take payment, the intention to close the deal, that instead of the Snake, one can involuntarily imagine some Toad or even Hamster. A huge golden hamster would look much more conceptual, I think.

The thought of trying to poke both of them with my trophy blade flickered, but it was just a flicker. Even aside from the fact that I'm far from normal and being slightly out of shape. The other day, four of us were trying to take down Myths alone. And we had both the sword and its wielder, who, to be honest, was stronger than me in direct combat. I could still try to help the Golden Serpent, whatever that thing was, but the blade would probably be of little use against the News Bringer.

It's not the armor, which in many places is thicker than the length of the blade. A scratch would be enough, and then another. The problem was the essence of the mega-creature, its modularity. The Archdevil constantly changed itself and was what and how it wanted to be, but at the same time, it always had a basis, a core of essence, which took the role of the leading link. The Golem, on the other hand, has no such foundation at all, permanently, and I am almost certain a blade strike would only destroy part of the Bringer's structure, scorch a chunk of his flesh and the souls that comprise it, but not destroy it. Not in one single swing, that's for sure - and I can't even get enough of a return swing to turn me into a pickle. It'd work against the Ancients, but they'd have to wait to attack, too, so it'd be up to will. Would I be able to restrain Shadow for even a fraction of a second and get to her flesh or not? And if I could, wouldn't the abomination be able to discard the base of the body, leaving only a piece of it to grow back into a whole, just as I had done with the devil? If I can do that, the Ancients are no strangers to such tricks.

The Golem, as I had noted earlier, was almost unconnected to the deceased archdevil and, therefore, did not suffer any consequences from his death. He continued to fulfill the assigned task, while those who could have changed this task were preoccupied with their survival. The death of the invasion commander not only deprived the coordination. It not only weakened but also opened a wide field for settling scores, for attempts to take revenge or subjugate, to take what was theirs or return what was someone else's. The devils of high levels, who were least affected by the rollback of the disconnection, were no longer interested in humans, but fights with each other among them happened regularly. They did not descend into total anarchy and mutual extermination, but that was only because they had to escape from the city being pulled back into reality and also because of the hordes of Shadows who were happily using the remaining dead bridge. They would have crawled through Sovereign's body into that Bank by now. If not for the resistance of the higher creatures, the Domain still had.

The city was indeed being pulled upward, and the sky was slowly changing color in the opposite direction. The blues had not yet appeared even in dreams, but the purples were becoming less and less rich and fleshy, lightening to the hues they had been just after the dome had appeared. The devils, weak and strong alike, tried to get rid of their pseudo-bodies and leave the material carriers of possessed flesh as quickly as possible, returning home and starting to divide that house. The elite needed time to retreat so they wouldn't lose most of their sonm on the path. And since mortals were not in a hurry to give them a five-minute break, the elite scattered like rats, hiding in corners and starting the process of transition from those corners. Sometimes they succeeded, sometimes they were found with their pants down, and often it was not people, but their kin. Sometimes, they died and sometimes changed their position, but no one was willing to fight for Eternal. Even the cultists, for the most part, were killed by the devils, replenishing their sonms and compensating for their expenses. The bank was closed now, and there was no one responsible for transferring souls from there to the sonms, but they needed something to fill their pockets.

I don't get distracted by the battles, especially since people mostly win them, only occasionally giving out single and meager shadow arrows, needles, or pins, saving those who would be guaranteed to die and didn't deserve to die. A daddy with a couple of kids and an unconscious wife, who he knocked out with a punch to the jaw because there wasn't enough sleep grass to put the kids to sleep, and the fleur made her crazy. A twentieth-level preacher with a mace covered in holy symbols, in the company of five shabby guards and the same number of militant townspeople, defended the entrance to a small church shelter, where non-combatants were crowded in like sprat in a jar. A lone adventurer, drinking expensive wine from a collector's bottle, right next to the bodies of his team, which didn't live to see the final battle for a few minutes, not noticing the lurker cultist creeping up from behind.

There were many more. There were many more places and people where my help would be vital and where, without that help, there would be no life, but I had chosen my measure of altruism for several lives ahead of me, so it was time to do the honors. I was much more concerned about my companions, who had been scattered to all corners by the late bitch in the imperial rank with the activation of some insanely powerful artifact of spatial orientation. No, I understood that the defense had benefited from it, but I'd only gotten one fucking problem.

As I walked, I returned my partial shadow body to human shape, shattering another mirror that came to hand, grabbing a handful of shards, cursing at the lack of a cloak occupied by the stolen blade, and trying to put them on my belt instead of potions. It didn't work well, but I managed, and with the first shard, I hovered in the surrounding space, trying to find my lost ones. Hans was the first to be found, but I wasn't happy about it because my call search was noticed by Giver, who was next to him and directed me to the right spot. Now, the old tracker will have to be checked because there is not much trust in the deviless, despite the obedience. She could easily throw something for the sake of the opportunity to get to know my person better or to gain authority in the eyes of the tracker. And well, if only for the sake of it, limited to questioning or reading memories. To forget about the nature of the devil is stupid, and to kill her now, bitch, is unwise.

The two-story house, with the whole family now snoozing in the basement stash, was only slightly damaged in the battle, though on this street alone, a quarter of the buildings were razed to the ground, and half were damaged. Both of them are there in the company of some athletic-looking cultist with a Brether class and a body covered in lewd and disgusting tattoos in equal measure. Giver looks somewhat transparent as if losing density, leaning over the unconscious and seemingly completely devoid of any vestiges of reason. Apparently, she intends to change the pseudo-body into a controlled possession and in a gentle style. As Bane of the Library did so outwardly, there are no visible marks and no waxed canvas of flesh.

When I appeared, Hans just waved his hand tiredly, suffering from a wicked migraine that had been partially transmitted to me through clairvoyance. He had used his legendary artifact too much today. Giver looked at me with such a look that I was involuntarily ashamed and confused. So much disbelief, defeat, happiness, passion, and other incomprehensible emotions were there. She certainly didn't believe in my return on a dime, and I had killed her last boss, which, even without the effect of the ring, would have earned her respect, interest, and passion. She's silent now only because she's too busy flowing into her new vessel, which is aided by the numerous nonexistent threads sticking out of her body, and she's also well aware of my attitude towards her. She's getting high on the latter, too, of course, which pisses me off even more. My mind is already tired, and I've seen and felt the thinking and nature of Lust's devil during the battle with Sovereign... I'd say to the point of nausea, but devils made me sick long before that battle.

However, even without Giver of Careses, there were things worth paying attention to:

"Congratulations, Hans." The most life-beaten wielder of the group's only regular class no longer possesses it, having replaced Pathfinder with Master of Trails, effectively, as I see with my third eye, the Caster analog of the already-available Walker on the Trail. "With the promotion, or whatever it's customary to say."

"At the very least, it's customary to throw a feast, no less than a wedding." Judging by his voice and his slightly slurred words, he was really tired, and it would be better if he didn't strain his reserve and body too much, or he might even get question marks in the Status. "You just didn't see what the Blue one was doing while you were out there partying. And the look on her face when their chief died was like a balm to the wound!"

Giver hissed so expressively that if I hadn't intercepted the impact with a Shadow Theft, Hans, in his current state, could have easily passed out from pleasure and pain and then spent a long time cleaning the laundry from the effects of the hiss. Well, yes, of course. He hinted that she didn't believe in my victory, setting her up for my anger and frustration, looking for an opportunity to shake her position and climb up herself. With her brains, not stupid brains, she realizes that people think and act a little differently, but it's hard to get her instincts under control, especially under this kind of stress and pressure.

Giver was silent and bowing her head in shame, and expressing guilt for her unwitting attack with a hiss, returning to the partially interrupted work of acquiring a material body, though I could feel the bitch's out-of-control desires physically, almost without clairvoyance. She really, really wanted to take a moment and fix Hans's memory so he couldn't tell me about her doubts. I mean, not doubts, but the absolute certainty that I would die in a (un)pleasant way and would be the end of the story, and she would never taste me in any sense. And now the wildest joy and jubilation in her is mixed with shame and horror that she allowed herself such thoughts - if it were not for the need to hold on to reality and create a billet for a new vessel, she would have tried to rewire her brain as a punishment and a reward at the same time.

The power of the Ring is frightening after all, and in the example of such a perverted mind as Giver possesses, that frightening nature of it becomes simply unbearable. Any standard submission is simply doomed to failure when dealing with a deviless, especially one of such an aspect of Lust. Just too shifty, a depraved mind capable of changing itself at will. She could easily rid herself of the effects of the Ring, even if not immediately, but gradually and measuredly, but she could. Blur some directives, slightly distort others, and change attitudes and perceptions while remaining within the limits of her invested desires. She could make them into something else. At the same time, she would not stop believing that she was doing everything for the benefit of the new master, even under the harshest interrogation!

The key peculiarity of the Ring is that after touching it, Giver desperately and infinitely strongly did not want such an outcome, even feared it. She wished to avoid it by all means. I'm not talking about the "can't want to get free" method, which is used by all kinds of brainiacs, but exactly the deep reluctance, not superficial, but sincerely belonging to the deviless herself. For each victim, the artifact selects its ways to ensure loyalty and even such an unstable entity continues to be subject to the Ring. Giver in a subordinate state is in every sense a standard of herself, on this subordination her personality and will are built, she, even knowing a thousand ways to rewire herself, to gradually break the shackles of a naive mortal, will kill with the cruelest destruction anyone who tries to her even a hint of such actions. And it would be good if she just killed, but not if she used her fantasy in all its versatility. The search for pleasure, its new facets, had already partially ended for her, giving her absolute ecstasy in submission, and devils would do anything for their pleasure.

I shook my head, shaking off the prophetic obsession, assessing the situation, and came to the decision to leave the couple here and look for the others. If I can drag Hans with me, the deviless is busy. It's too early to kill her. She can be useful. And it's dangerous to throw her away like garbage because she knows a lot. Her fate will be decided later when we all get out of this madhouse, if at all. Even though I was still wrapped up in nothingness and didn't give away my thoughts in any way, the creature relaxed when I made my decision. Or maybe it was just another stretch of tension. Its body became even more transparent, and its fingertips began to crumble with flower pollen into the lungs of a measuredly breathing body with a scorched mind and defiled soul.

"I'll get the others." I tossed it to both of them briefly, eliciting zero emotion. A tired nod from Hans and an incomprehensible range from Giver. "I'll drag them here, but don't fight."

Both could probably comment on the last part of my statement, and it wasn't even clear which one would have been more indignant, but I wasn't listening anymore. The clenched shard of the mirror had fallen into disrepair but managed to connect me to a tired as hell and barely able to make the psychic connection, but apparently alive and not dying Tia, who was not alone in finding support in the form of Hestia. I had to run very fast, no longer even in human form, turning into snake-like shadow moray eels, slithering between the battle-damaged buildings. Sometimes, it was even necessary to dive into the lower layers of the newly reappeared Shadow under the dome, falling out of reality to get through the hottest parts.

The two girls had set up in a remote area and had chosen a nice little inn, which looked like a restaurant, perched on a small hill. The view of the failed invasion and the final battle was indeed picturesque, complemented by the crimson sky and the glow of the many fires. Both of them, I had to admit, were arranged beautifully, with a share of pathos and even somewhere majestic. Only two walls remained of the tavern, and the roof had not fallen but had been torn off and carried three hundred meters away, but it was even better that way - instead of a small window, albeit covered with real glass, there was a wide breach with a good landscape.

The ladies sat down at the only surviving table, obviously custom-made from a special type of wood, having found a couple of chairs, a few glasses, a bottle of wine, and some cold appetizers from the cellar. Cheese, hard-smoked slices, fresh bread baked just before the fall, and a huge smoked leg of a shrouded striped horse, which on Earth would have been a close relative of the good old zebra.

Tia, pale and, judging by her slightly absent eyes, a bit concussed, was silently watching the landscape, not even trying to cover her face with a mask, holding a glass of wine, while Hestia, sitting next to her, was eating quietly, cutting small slices of meat with a knife. The picture was a bit surreal, especially if one knew the degree of professionalism of Tia, who would never allow herself to do such a thing, even if she was dead tired. Open face, open touching, snacking right during a battle - it feels like she's been hit by a fleur and somewhat reduced critical perception.

"It was her idea, I hasten to inform you before your outrage." Before I could inquire, or at least take back my human form, the elfess nodded at a contentedly smiling Hestia putting aside the cutlery. "I was hit with something very unpleasant that I cannot recall now and even remember for fear. The honorable Hestia has erased the memories of the last forty minutes, and every time I try to find the lost again, it immediately gives me a headache to the point of a splitting migraine."

I swear quietly, starting to prepare something from the shards for mental and psychic scanning, since that's what I'm expected to do, most likely. Judging by my gut and Hestia's relaxed demeanor, the situation is under control, the crisis is over and the druid's brains aren't going to compost anytime soon, but the scan is vital.

"If you try to tell her what she did in the withered moments, immediately the control is renewed." The Mist Maiden was tired, too, but in a different way, exhausting the mind for lack of a way to exhaust the body. "I didn't risk influencing excessively, and the minimal impact was only enough to temporarily block it."

I can see that without her, as I can see the reason why Hestia organized this tea party. The table, chairs, and infernal candlelight dinner itself is a kind of trigger and suggestion. The part of Tia's subconscious mind that is enchanted by the fleur believes that she is not in combat but in a peaceful setting and, therefore, does not attempt to deploy again by overriding control. Any attempt to go into a "combat" state would force Tia to harm herself, cutting off her flesh piece by piece, starting with her breasts and intimate parts, and dying of blood loss. I'd love to talk to whatever devil had gotten to Tia's brain with his contrivance, but that devil was already dead. He was killed by Tia a fraction of an instant before she started killing herself.

"I can't be silent about the fact the sensations of the tentacles of the mist creeping into my ears and my mind going blank are hard to call pleasant." Tia clearly has experience or specific training, or more likely both, but she's doing a good job of not thinking about the white ape while finding the boundaries of the thoughts and knowledge that will reassert control. "Perhaps I should be deprived of the ability to move?"

Instead of answering, I activate the mirror, pulling perception onto it and causing the bookmark to unfold. The elf even manages to grab the table knife with a fighting grip, intending to cut both pairs of lips, but the effect is immediately transferred to the freshly created illusion reflected in the mirror. The druid, with a look of disgust on her face, puts the knife aside and shakes off the relaxed, almost light trance she had put herself into without standing up or making any sudden movements so as not to disturb my work. The gallantly smiling reflection slices itself to pieces as I set the mirror aside, casting Dream out of my body, using Shadow Theft, dragging the now obviously discernible crap over myself, dissolving it into shadow energies.

"Done." My words cause a very noticeable relief in Tia, who immediately puts on her mask, adjusts her robes into battle mode and sprinkles everything around her with small, semolina-like seeds that eat away all material and energy traces, including even part of the psychic imprint. "Time to go."

As if to confirm my words, the dome takes another blow, and then another, forcing it to lighten even more, cutting off the devils' tap of available energy more and more firmly, forcing them to speed up their escape. And them, and us, too.

"Well, thank you very much." Hestia stretched out with slight resentment. In her hands, Tia seeds, finishing off a cut piece of meat from the ham she was about to bring to her mouth.

"I apologize." Without a shadow of remorse and rather hastily, the elf replies, distracted only to cover the mirror with wood chips, in which her reflection continued to mutilate itself. "But we really should be going, shouldn't we, before the... the eternal Stars!"

I felt exactly the same as she did and at the same moment. Everything seemed to be, no, not normal but within the bounds of what I was used to, and a new scenery came into the horror and bedlam of the capital's shambles, entering the existing picture of events with a barrel of twisted paint. Somehow, it reminded me of my adventures in Stone. That very feeling of tearing space, as if hundreds of glass blades were screeching against each other, inaudible and invisible, but damn scary. I wouldn't have been surprised if such a premonition had come from the side of the broken dome, for it was justified. Only the spatial metric was already stirring here, under the still purple sky, making the real world around the center of the capital a mesh of transparent cracks. Right in the very neighborhood where the anchor of the Eternal Library was located.

I remembered my sensation of the presence of something very nasty sleeping in the altar room, all those details I'd pulled out of Pypysh's memory about the rules of behavior in the Library, where silence was a prerequisite, and it was closely monitored and punished, up to and including execution. The likelihood the entity sleeping in the depths of the all-stone structure, watching over each of those who dared to enter under the shadow of those walls, breathing invisibly beside any librarian, would wake up at the sound of a loud clap of hands was very small, almost minuscule. But all the same, everyone who has lived in those walls for more than a week, without any training and fines to the salary, acquires the instinctive habit of not making noise. Also, as the same Pypysh knew, the adepts, even the most disenfranchised ones, tried not to be awakened suddenly and abruptly, letting them sleep and using alarm clocks in the form of various charms, rituals, and self-insertions.

Because the wrong entities could have woken up.

Because there, deep in the depths of the stone stronghold, was no Dream.

But someone in that altar slept, dreamed, and looked at the world through the eyes of those who swarmed in his sleeping body.

If the presence of Sovereign, like that of the News Bringer, overwhelmed me to the point of shameful trembling and the desire to weep at my inferiority, just a small glimmer of its power paralyzed me, Tia, and Hestia, who turned into a cloud of mist. It was as if not a small, harmless arch-devil-matiz, but a huge Belaz loaded with coal and rubble was coming at you without slowing down, ramming into you. It seems that both of them when colliding at full speed, are guaranteed to kill a fragile pedestrian, but the sensations are still very different. Whatever it is, it can wipe the floors of its Library, squeeze out the rags, and throw them on the dustbin of history.

The cracks widened a little more, causing a barely perceptible shudder in Tia's shoulders, a twitching eye under the mask in mine, and considerable interest in Serpent and Bringer, who interrupted another fight, breaking the distance between themselves and the center of the city. I thought it was going to explode, but it didn't: the rift shrank and collapsed, deflating and shrinking to about four times its original size before my eyes. My clairvoyance works very unpredictably. Even the mirror doesn't help, as if my attempt to create a stable image had run into television interference, but the desperate and selfless actions of the librarians, who had been sitting in their hiding place for the whole mess, were obvious to me-they spared neither reagents nor prepared charms, nor even themselves, trying to keep the spatial lacunae from closing and the sleeping shit from waking up.

"They seem to have managed to counteract the effect, thank the Stars." Tia comes to her senses even faster than a particular isekai, and Hestia, in her misty state, can only get shocked if she consciously wishes it. "I don't mean to sound like I'm panicking for nothing, but we really should hurry. The coming of the god's army is not the only event I wouldn't want to be caught unprepared for."

We open the channel of image exchange, and I'm almost drenched in the bubbling soup of everything Tia would like to say about my suicidal tendencies, but there's no opportunity to exchange pleasantries. Just an unspoken and, therefore, much more sincere congratulation of me for accomplishing the impossible a couple of times in a row. I don't know what struck her more - my recovery to a more or less adequate state or the fact I had defeated the archdevil? The former, in fact, could hardly be considered merit, whereas the latter had been accomplished in the very difficult company I'd endured as the last survivor.

"Glad you made it, Tin." Deafeningly and as if from all sides at the same time, Hestia. She can't work with images yet but has a mountain of feelings. "But..."

"You realize I can't promise not to do it again, right?" I wondered, shoving the still intact mirrors into my pockets, at the same time dropping images of where Hans and Giver were hiding. For both girls simultaneously. "Even if I really want to?"

"Then next time, I'll go along with you." Ominously, as if passing judgment, Raimel assures me, and as soon as I'm close enough for obvious and understandable explanations, objections, or convictions, she ends the argument immediately. "And, if that is my fate, I will die with you. You made me who I am. You became what kept me myself. And if I have any right to demand anything, I ask you not to decide for me anymore. Not like this. Not like this. Otherwise, it's no longer caring, Tin, but simple hypocritical selfishness on your part."

She was obviously very hurt by what had happened, just as she was hurt by the helplessness, the realization that both she and I were rapidly losing the endowness, or her illusion, that the end was near. And that I had, even at this moment, gone to battle without her. Just as then, in Stone, where she had become Mgla for my victory, waiting for me until the very end, only hoping that I would come. That was why it was so painful for her to wait now, to wait for me from the new battle, to which she could not come, could not help, and again remained to wait for the inevitable outcome, as it seemed to her and me at that time. It was a distant realization that that was why Tia had remained silent, why she hadn't spoken her mind, that she couldn't have hurt me more than Hestia.

Somewhere again, it creaked, rusty gears rattled, and ached where normal people hide their conscience and guilt. Not in the brow, but in the eye, Kostenka. There is some truth in this accusation, maybe a small, barely noticeable, but very bitterly recoiling share of truth. To some extent, I really left them all behind, not only because they had no chance in the battle against Sovereign but also because that little shit part of me did not want to be without the personalities dear to my heart.

Not for their welfare but for my peace of mind.

I disagree, not completely so, but there is some truth to it.

"I..." I don't know what I wanted to say, but I went on much more confidently. "Fuck such life!"

My wild yell was reinforced by the same wild yell of my sense of danger, as well as by the newly revived clinking of glass knives, which it was impossible not to feel, even if you were not a mage. I couldn't be sure, but some melodic and singsongy utterance in pure Elvish that Tia, who had slipped behind my back and under the table, was definitely profanity. Even refined elves speak with such intonation and in such situations, and it can't be otherwise!

The space broke again, cracked, and began to twist backward, all over the city, in various parts of it. It was the mutual amplification of distortions from the broken dome and the Library itself because, in these breaches, I can clearly see. I see some halls, corridors, spell chambers, living quarters, storerooms, and even a decent-looking latrine. A breach a couple or three meters wide, leading into this corner of marble-carved brooding, opened up a hundred meters above and to our left, followed by a wave of distortions and new cracks that threatened to whip us all like cream with a mixer.

My shout came at the same time as the gentlest and densest Manifestation possible, which covered us and the ruins of the tavern with a monochrome sphere that the wave of distortion crashed against like the tide against the rocks. A couple of cuts went a little further, gnawing their way through the not-so-dense monochrome, which I couldn't make too hard without preparing a proper defense for both women. Hestia, however, dealt with the cracks, spreading out again in a thick misty cloud, literally devouring both cracks in its depths, which fell into it as if they'd been sucked up like pasta.

Hm.

They tried to kill me with a toilet spatial distortion. This, even after the fight with Sovereign, is somewhat surprising, almost awe-inspiring. Conceptually, however, Alurei is trying to kill me, and not just keep trying after trying, but with fantasy! It's obvious that I'm not to this universe's taste.

The situation had stabilized again, and moreover, the cuts had not only stopped expanding, they had resonated with the dome, helping to direct the divine blows so that they would not just open the city's gasping defenses but would not tear it to rubble. One of the Library's ritualists is a real genius, even if he's a bit crazy... I'd have to talk to him if I had the chance, just so I know. Even I have a lot to aspire to in terms of being badass and making dubious plans on my knees.

Here and there, new charges of spatial whirlwinds erupted from the various rifts associated with the Library. In another flash of insight, I realize that all these blasts are coming from the most useless parts of the Eternal Library! Bedrooms, blind corridors, unused laboratories, or warehouses with not-so-expensive products and provisions. Ritualists and masters of space use these places to relieve pressure. If such a term is even applicable to such a matter. That's why these rifts appeared in different parts of the city because they were deliberately placed in a wide front, covering the thinnest and most problematic areas. Well, now someone will definitely be a prize, and detractors will not say, say, bookworms all the mess sat shaking in their hole. Or rather, they will say that, but they will be poked in response with this ritual, pointing out that the capital was pulled out in one piece only by God's will and the grace of these bookworms. I do not doubt the city will be successfully pulled out, which, by the way, is not good for me. There'll be more traces. Although, they'll find them anyway, even if you don't count the information-eating altar.

The shithole rift again accumulates another distortion, preparing to release another reset, but I don't wait for it, grabbing Tia and Hestia, who had quickly regained her false body, with shadowy tentacles, growing a dozen legs, a wolf-like body with insect features, and launching myself into maximum acceleration. Even the acceleration through the Moment was not too lazy to use. It was very flexible, much more flexible than before, after those strange balls that had nearly killed me, puncturing my entire personality from heel to ear.

The toilet destroys the poor and miserable restaurant, along with the table that's been turned into a miniature druidic bunker, but we're not there anymore. Tia yells in my ear, shouting over the sound of the wind in her long ears and the screech of tearing space, giving me Taria's coordinates, which she managed to catch a glimpse of when the Emperor's artifact triggered and scattered her companions to different corners. And all this before the massacre in Poets' Square had even begun! By God, the battle itself was relatively quick. Although I was sneaking up for the first blow in the back for a very long time, almost dying and boiling a losing endowness in the process. It still affects me despite the subsequent insight, which, if it didn't bring me back, saved me from falling.

I send back an image of gratitude. Tia may have only caught the point Taria was originally moved to, but searching from there is much easier than sifting through the entire city. Especially since, in Shadow Form, I can't use the shards to search... I mean, I can, but I'd be chutzpa to do it again. Whatever limit of patience Ms. Fortune chose in my case, I have overcome it forty-two times. I use pure clairvoyance, at the same time, trying to ask the shadows glittering in the purple lights what they can see and touch. It's not my favorite trick. It is seriously inferior in smoothness and quality of results with comparable effort to mirrors, but it has its charms. For example, the ability to use such a technique in conjunction with active shadow class techniques, as well as the ability to ignore some of the defenses that Dream can deceive.

I was just in time because the dancer was just finishing slashing the throats of some cultists, who were maddened by their losses and the ruinous backlash and who were almost more damaged by the destruction of the central figure of the invasion than the devils. The latter was strange, though. Usually, the creatures' toys were less imbued with Hell than its original inhabitants, and the connection to Sovereign himself was illogical. Looking deeper, I realize that this rollback didn't belong to them but to their guide-devil, who simply threw the mental damage at them, ripping out the most valuable souls for himself and fleeing in the process.

Taria would have done it herself, having already finished destroying the enemies, only sometimes helping with Valerium's shots, in which even the tip of the barrel was glowing. Obviously, the strongest active skill of the artifact was used at the moment and twice or three times if it cools down so slowly. The three of us interrupt her entertainment.

No, seriously. A six-meter Form accelerated to the speeds of the best racing cars, if not the bullets fired, attacking from stealth and quite suddenly on a group of yesterday's civilians pumped with borrowed power, among whom only two had passed the twentieth level, and hardly a quarter of them had combat classes if any at all. I felt like a truck driver and the truck itself, which had met a small cloud of midges and butterflies with its windshield, but not more than that.

"Wow, they're sputtering." Unlike all the companions I had met earlier, Taria, in particular, didn't seem too surprised by my survival and victory, either simply not understanding the depth of the phrase "mythical creature," or trivially believing in me to the end or again masterfully playing the chosen role. "You owe me a new dress. And a hunting suit. And lingerie, silk, of course!"

Right at that moment, I couldn't help myself and exhaled with all three mouths, simultaneously lowering the elf and the monster from the back, and even the shadow speech turned out to be not just angry and harshly cutting the consciousness with the rustling of blades on the throat, but also sincerely indignant:

"You didn't even get any of that blood on you!" Realizing that expressing indignation in that voice was more like a prelude to dismemberment, I turned back into a humanoid. "Only the walls and the sidewalk are splattered!"

"Nope, nope!" Instead of trying to hug the miraculously surviving me, or at least being startled by the first part of the scream, Taria mischievously points to her shoulder, where a small, dot-sized drop of blood can be discerned, which has been absorbed without residue by the layer of dust and dirt the dancer had to squirm in while surviving in Hell's invading territory. "There! The costume is ruined. It's your fall. Period. I don't know anything."

From such an exchange, Tia, who was watching it, only audibly puts her palm to her face, removing her mask and trying to wipe her tired face. Too tired to believe that she was absolutely fine.

"Overreacting, friend." Taria also noticed the elf's unusual emotionality, stopping her from playing on my nerves. "Are you all right? Does your head hurt? No desire to organize the chaos of debauchery and the heat of a high orgy?"

"Fleur didn't hit me that hard." Negatively, she shakes her head but still doesn't have a good look. "Potions, battle, and a few insidious web techniques that lay upon my mind this day are the three pillars of my ill health. AS inseparable is the trinity of exaltation... I'm sorry, my speech is slipping. I'm starting to slur my words. I'm fine, but I'm going to spend the next week in a healing trance, preferably drinking something calming and dampening carnal passion before bed. We can talk about that later."

If she openly admits that she's a little off, she's definitely not a little off. If she's jumping from combat speech to high style without her noticing, then things aren't really going well. On a superficial scan, when I extracted the behavioral bomb from her, I didn't really see any serious problems other than the bomb itself, but here, apparently, dozens of small influences had simply exhausted even such a robust mind.

"I guess..." Again, I don't have time to finish what I said, and again for the same reason as before, switching to swearing. "Fuck such a life!!!"

Again, the monochrome sphere of Manifestation. Another spatial cut, only more sudden and more dangerous than the first. I thought the Library's ritualists had spotted us and had decided to eliminate us in such a clever way! Several new rifts-portals leading to different parts of the continent's greatest book-and-not-just-book repository sprang up across the city, also producing waves of distortions and secondary rifts, and the sky grew even lighter, taking away most of the purple but not returning to its former blue, only adding a sharp, almost transparent, golden streak.

Obviously, this rift did not lead to a latrine of any kind but to a vault of very serious artifacts and rare volumes, which were simply dangerous to keep near other books or ordinary exhibits. Both are dangerous for the inventory and possible visitors. That's why this wave of distortion caused so much trouble, as it was joined by the blows and effects of the vault's protective charms. A few curses of all sorts, some black suspension, not directly threatening, but putting a mark on a possible thief or intruder, a couple of semi-intelligent closed fields that tried to deploy themselves on the other side of the portal, automatically enrolling us and a couple of losers hiding in the basements in the enemy elements.

I held back the blow, staggered, and felt the blood flowing under the mask from his nose and bitten lip. I'm sure this blood started to turn black again, which is not a good sign, even if I was filled with optimism. Some of the cracks, like last time, were fed to Mist by the misty cutie, but the rest of the gifts I had to accept personally, at the same time pulling the harshest consequences of being in the manifested zone on myself by stealing the shadow, because I had to manifest it much more powerfully and sharply. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to hold it.

I redirected the curses to myself and burned them in my energy. The blackness marks dissolved into monochrome simply due to the conflict between Darkness and Shadow. The closed fields seemed to have realized they were going somewhere wrong, only wasting energy, so they rolled back to their previous dimensions and went into paranoid siege mode. But they had to dodge a dozen of high-class defense containers, which were pushed out of the vault due to the effect of stretched space, which snapped like a rubber band, sending the objects in a kind of "lens," purely physically. There were such materials that passing through the not-quite-stable rift did not damage them, and if it atomized a container or two, it was no easier for me.

"Holy shit!" Taria spat, trying to get rid of the smoking boot, which had been spilled on by the bloody ink of some living and evil grimoire that had slipped out of a container that had shattered in contact with the wall of the nearest house. The book had dutifully died from Valerium's shot, whose bullet took on the appearance and incomprehensible properties of a slightly glowing crystal but managed to douse the girl with acidic blood-ink. She closed herself with a material illusion but ruined her shoe. And I know perfectly well without intuition, she will demand new shoes from me, too. She's such a bastard!

Most of the vaults were only cracked but were in no hurry to release their stuffing, and the stuffing itself, though not all of it, was as evil as a grimoire dead in every sense and almost universally.... uh, page-by-page, cursed with all sorts of effects, though not all of them I was ready to identify without a long, hard look. As I knew from my own experience, my heroic analysis was no panacea, and cursed artifacts, as both Losius and Tia had told me at the time, were quite adept at hiding their most insidious effects from scanning. Just as you can fool a hero's gaze and hide your level with your class, a cursed artifact can hide its nature.

A brain-eating, almost unwritten notebook with a cover whose pattern, if you look at it for any length of time, sucks away knowledge and makes you stupider, a tome of fine diction that makes the one who reads it speak more and more mate, the more you read it, a cuneiform tablet that rewards the mania to kill anyone who makes you angry or disappointed, a collection of a thousand stories that are called jokes but turn the reader into a bloodthirsty scumbag with no empathy. .. Some of them are not particularly dangerous, kept only for the interesting method of creation. Others test my brain even with a cursory touch of clairvoyance.

The few treasures that fell out that weren't cursed were either dirt, historical treasures, valuable contracts, or all of the above. Letters from one of the Eternals to his Alishan mistress, an interrogation report from a large landowner on the border with the Empire of Arms, supplying "seemingly burned" ship timber of a very rare and difficult-to-grow breed, a collection of poems by some Tarak Fuckunderthetale (funny name, it would be better if he took a pseudonym or introduced himself only by his first name), quite well written and increasing the skill of poetic skill at reading, Japanese manga hentai content. ..

Stop, what?

My surprise seemed to be as genuine as Tia's, who caught the relic with the tips of her leaf-covered fingers, looking very perplexed at what was obviously a magazine brought in by some Summoned. I had been summoned, along with my wallet, credit cards, and even a lighter, and if I hadn't been in the habit of keeping my cell phone on the desk under my arm instead of in my pocket, I would have taken it with me. The librarians, apparently, decided to keep a unique piece of other-worldly creativity, shoving it somewhere deeper.

"What's in there?" Taria sighed bitterly over her burnt boot, putting it back on and trying to peek over the shoulder of Tia, who was slightly slowed by what she saw. "I hope this writing isn't trying to eat you or leave you shoeless?"

Instead of answering, Tia promptly tosses the manga into the corner where some predatory shit had sprouted even before it landed, making a look of utter indifference and the epitome of steadfastness. I didn't even get lazy and spent one of the mirror shards to peek... I mean, to scan Tia for possible damage from the cursed book because it was kept in such a safe container with the rest of the artifacts for a reason. And the fact I managed to accidentally capture the reflection in her pupils, rewind it in time, and see the memory of that reflection, realizing what she had seen in those couple of seconds was just an accident.

However, I also got a little frozen from this accident because, damn, the power of the Japanese drawing industry, as well as its numerous adherents, is infinite! The image of a haughty elfess sitting on a carved chair, almost a throne, in a strict and frank dress and stockings at the same time, resting her perfectly drawn feet in the face of some man, judging by the ears, came out right on the lookout! And the inscription-title "Method of subjugation of a disobedient summoned hero-demon-fighter with the help of hypnotic elven feet" caused me absolutely not heroic half-sneeze-half grunt, in response to which I was showered with an unreadable mixture of emotions, in which the prevailing message was "just try to laugh." Yes, yes, Tia, be strong, my dear, and be glad that I'm not so crazy.

Honorable, the relic you destroyed is not destroyed." I was just about to finish the scan I needed to run after all, even if I hadn't started it for the sake of it, which is to say, I started it exactly for the sake of it when I was interrupted by Hestia's words. "The ravenous vines seemed to jab into some sort of barrier, and then the recordings just disappeared, as if by teleportation."

Now, we were all looking at the swarming plants, including Taria, who had stopped pouting, and it occurred to me that keeping manga stolen from Earth or a similar world in an isolated high-end container was really unnecessary. And I could keep the amusing cartoon porn in the general section because its role was purely museum-like, and such storage measures were unnecessary.

Well...............

Maybe the Library didn't want to complicate relations with the elves, who were always ready to be offended by such a cultural treasure. But then it would be logical to put it in some deep archive, not under the protection of the highest grade, which would also eat up a lot of money. Storage containers alone probably cost an obscene amount of money. Once again, I checked Tia, who checked herself from all sides, but, apparently, it was necessary to hold this thing not just in my hands but also without direct touch. I found a dozen traces and consequences of fleur poisoning, a couple of unpleasant after-effects from potions, traces of overstretched psychic gift, and magical exhaustion, but there were no curses or mental effects.

Well, it wasn't a mythical cursed artifact, and even if it was, it wasn't instantaneous, right?

Or am I making a fool of myself, and it's all the fault of banal sloppiness? Some VIP librarian ordered to "remove this abomination out of sight and away," and his order was immediately executed, shoving it deep into the fold to lick the ass of the bosses. The same sheets with many years of outdated and now useless dirt are also unworthy of such a powerful defense, and the arrogance and poncey of the local high-level population allow not such overconsumption of useful resources. But then, how did this manga teleport out of harm's way? This is clearly a magical ability, which a sample of narrow-eyed creativity taken from another world should not have.

"Perhaps..." I was going to suggest that we put the panic aside and follow the escape plan, figuring it out at the same time because we'd already lost a lot of time, but the evil, evil *cough* Library didn't let me finish again, turning to swearing. "Fuck your lives!!!"

I met the new blast not with a sphere but with a wall of Manifestation, blocking the blows, changing my form to an eight-meter-long but very flat centipede with tentacles on its back, grabbing the team with those tentacles, and running in the direction where the huge creature had last glimpsed, which was no less blue than the Ancient One's hunger. I put my thoughts about the strange manga aside until a better time, which was about never.

Taking Losius away was quite a problem because it was our company that was out of touch with the defenders, either working out of sight or having their memories wiped clean by those they worked with. Taria managed to whisper into her specially grown shadow ear (Shadow could hear with her whole body, but it had to show I was listening) about what it cost her not to slaughter the narcissistic peacock, next to whom, I quote, even Losius would be a champion of modesty, how she was fed up with his prying and undressing looks, how Pierre managed to piss her off with his mere presence, and how quickly she would have killed him if she hadn't needed at least some cover, which a well-powered warrior with epic class could provide. The rest of the story of her adventures and the enemies she encountered took less time to describe and show emotion than this hulking little guy, which made me respect him. It took a lot to piss people off like that. I didn't tell Taria about it, of course.

He was fighting on the steps of the temple of some god, a local incarnation of Justice, to whom the Godfather from Tavimark had begun to pray after the massacre provoked by the expulsion of the Guiding Spiral. The temple was one of the largest points of resistance, and the devils had thrown all their forces at it, which meant there were plenty of defenders, and they were not weaklings. The result was very unpleasant for all of us: our red-haired nobleman took part in the battle to the glory, right to the super glory of the level of the Beatles who started to rock, which was unobtrusively evidenced by such a small detail as the mythical summoned creature connected with him.

No, that's not serious!

Even I started summoning Mythic later than this asshole, and my summons almost fucked me, and his summon not only defended the summoner but didn't even try to kill him! That is, the mere presence of this multi-winged lady, as well as the established connection between the two of them, through which there was a calmness that would have made even other Archlichi pacifists, was a danger. But the winged lady herself kept the connection, covered Losius, and even helped me to communicate with him and coordinate our shared strike against Sovereign.

Friendly.

Tuned.

Myth.

Ready to fucking cooperate!

I get it, I'm genuinely happy that Losius survived and got his own personal piano, a piano factory, an antique piano warehouse, and a small accordion factory, but at that moment, I clearly asked myself a question - which of the two of us is the central character in this fucking story? My arrogance told me that it was me, the obvious sight proved the opposite, and common sense quietly reminded me that I was not a fucking book character in someone's porn story and a thrice fucking Alurai is not a fantasy world with elven princesses on fighting unicorns.

The crux of the problem is the same summoning, which, if I understand anything about summoning planar creatures, is very firmly tied to Losius. No one would ever let a man with such a trump card up his sleeve go free. It's a weapon on a strategic scale. Such a cadre will not necessarily knit under white hands and "either you are with us, or sit on the bottle with your ass until you change your mind" because they are not completely idiots. They will start with attempts to buy, lure, offer everything he wants, and even more. And honestly giving it all in return for service.

But if it does not work, the methods will be applied harsher and harsher, just to get ahead of competitors, who will not hesitate to use such methods. The power of the summon is not equal to personal might and does not give power and connections by its mere presence, forcing it to bend or break. A good Seductress, a master of her craft, or other similar guys can make it so that the personal summon contract does not notice the trick, and the integrity of the brain of the summoner is important but can be neglected. If the connection with the mythical, not legendary creature turns out to be unpredictably strong, partially protecting and making it very difficult to work with the victim's consciousness, then the stubborn young man can always be killed. If not to us, then to no one.

Of course, no one's going to do that right off the bat, if only because it's a little early to be scheming when the city hasn't returned to reality yet, with the mess and the unkilled creatures and their accomplices around, the golden sausage and the infernal tin can at war, at the same time shooting at the library rifts, closing them and trying to get the librarians. And there's a huge mob of Shadows, led by two or three Ancients, who will soon reconfigure my rifts to the proper format and get into this coop with their whole bodies and power. However, it wouldn't be possible to simply approach Losius and say, let's go, there's a cab here to pick you up. No mess would prevent them from noticing some of the details of the "cab drivers." For example, the connection of their personalities with the murder of the nameless prince, for there will be more than one pair of eyes near that temple that will be able to bypass my and Tia's disguises, if not break, then partially bypass. Enough to realize who we are just by circumstantial signs and start making bad moves. It's possible to prevent it, but you need preparation, creation, and creation of the necessary shadows, making templates, and all that - you can't do it in a minute, and you can't do it in ten, either.

Instead of showing up in front of the honorable public, I went around the very shattered but still standing temple, around which the echo of the very bad and colorful death of something extremely strong, in terms of danger comparable to the same Touch, even stronger than it. Reflections of the images of the past battle can be easily collected and decoded. The movie would be glorious, even at once, to submit to the Oscars, but if the masking forces are not enough, it is not up to the movies here, and those are not enough even for the necessary things.

We hid in another building, not even destroyed for the sake of variety, where several families were still hiding in the basement, who had successfully survived the invasion and even had every chance of surviving until its end and the end of the subsequent mess without any losses. There, he regained his body, but he didn't look for a mirror. He immediately transmuted a brass doorknob into a reflective surface, making it flow on the floor. Tia crouched beside me, preparing to take the rollback, while I began to create a connection with Losius, and now, when I was getting worse by the minute, it was not as natural and easy as it had been during the battle.

And at that moment, I was literally on the wings! I was on wings of pure and enthusiastic hatred, anger, and a thirst to kill the bastard before she made me into a female Konstantine and made hentai with hentakles. I was motivated beyond belief, and I was at the peak of my powers, not yet suffering from the effects of the potions I'd taken and a bunch of amplifications from the chronomancy and government magic branches. The Prince, the bitch, could amplify anyone on his land and in his city, even though I was nowhere near his subjects.

We were both battered but still cool visionaries, and setting up communications would be a doable task even without Dream. The mirror class was, if not the ideal means of communication, then something very close to it. In the Empire of Arms, the dreamers were used for super-fast message delivery, in addition to the more obvious espionage, brainwashing, and sleep-killing. It's not really hard to transmit a short image that intentionally appears in the mind, especially if you've done it before and created a whole alphabet of conventional signals.

Here's where the really unusual stuff started to happen.

I'd expected objections, an attempt to keep a useful staff, or to send a stakeout, not to let go and recruit. I was ready to burst into that square in all its splendor, which was risky. The priests of a god whose power is Heaven and the Depths would have found something to counter the Form. And it wouldn't save that they're all battle-weary and partially knocked out. I'm not in the best condition either, and it's getting progressively worse. A full-fledged battle and an attempt to evade the chase could easily exhaust me and kill, not to mention risk the rest of the team, so I was going to act as quickly as possible, ideally by teleporting Losius away with the help of a Shadow that had been properly maimed by Creation.

Instead, Losius simply said he had to go, and, having finished cutting up a small group of sluggishly resisting devils who hadn't been given time to escape from their pseudo-bodies, he turned and ran, making a wide arc just in case, so as not to lead anyone in the direction of our lay. Whether I was too paranoid, whether the people around me were not yet far enough removed from the battle and were doing more important things, or whether I just didn't understand something, but no one followed him! I mean, I couldn't say with any certainty, but the forces I'd thrown in to scan him hadn't found any trackers or other surprises. In fact, a lot of people there, realizing they could do without them, ran to where their loved ones or friends should be.

After a few very long minutes of waiting, during which the Bringer suppressed a few more rifts, slowing the dome's opening again, Asterium came straight at our position, flying through the broken window with a blink. The pal looked brutal, as he was wearing only the bottom of his mask and tattered pants, revealing a view that would have had the girls stacked on top of him if the surroundings had been right, especially with the light illumination from Heaven's not-so-subtle pumping, for speed of movement and to counteract the remnants of the fleur. Not even the heavy and thick half-cloak-half-jacket, taken from the shoulder of some corpse, was helping, just to cover, if not from the stares, then from the small fragments of stone or splinters generously thrown into the air by the battle charms.

The most eye-catching detail, however, was his sword, not the alchemically reinforced iron he carried with him all the time, but a trophy sword, taken for the battle for the Eternal because we didn't give a shit about conspiracy. Previously, the legendary artifact had intertwined the powers of Heaven and Sun, like two strands of magical threads, only in steel. The powers of the two planes did not merge into one, combining into something new. Otherwise, the artifact would no longer be considered legendary. Both planar manifestations acted in parallel, combining only when using the final attack, the very blade extension that could cut fortresses in half. It was a powerful thing that had already saved our lives and souls during the mess in the ritual hall of Touch by killing the evil magical robot secretary.

Now, there was not the slightest presence of the sun's rays, not a single glint of its gold, only a boundless, beginningless, and endless Blue, the quintessence of the Peace that comes at the very last step of any journey, the reward for all the feats or basenesses done - one final, one nature, one truth that admits any other, accepts anyone and gives its embrace to everyone. Even looking at the blade covered with patterns of slightly moving feathers was hard, especially for me, as a shadow man who would not accept anything that infringed on my Loneliness. The rest of us had a harder time, even to the point of possible injury, if the duelist hadn't hidden his blade in the jacket he'd quickly thrown over him. The fabric, by the way, was unusual, very strong without any magic, and decorated with a strange embroidery, not magical, but awakening magic effects due to the pattern itself.

The girls, even Tia for that matter, jolted when the sword was out of sight, coming out of their involuntary trance. This artifact is dangerous. It won't fall into the hands of anyone but Losius. Why am I so sure of that? Well, besides the visible connection in clairvoyance, there was also a trivial understanding. If the artifact had pressed on Losiгы the same way as on us, then he, especially in the case of tight hand-guard contact, would have lost every last bit of his brains.

The celebrant himself glanced at us, assessing our battered but lively condition, first asking the most important question of all:

"Hans?" Because of the broken mask, of which only half remains, and there's something wrong with it, something I didn't put into it when I created it, the voice seems muffled and echoes faintly.

"The bastard is alive." Taria is ahead of me, rushing to be the first to tell me the good news: our company hasn't dwindled yet. "He is resting in a far corner with Blueass."

The mention of Giver gave everyone but Taria a synchronized toothache, though both Tia and I made particularly nasty faces. Leaving the devil, no matter how confident I was in the ring's power, next to an exhausted companion was very inconsiderate. But she could cover him with ease, just as she could pull him out of the problem if someone dangerous came across them. Except, fuck knows what would cross her mind at any given time and what she would see fit and right to do. No, she knows human or, say, elven psychology, thought patterns, and other aspects of manipulation to a tee, being able to adapt and do what's expected of her, but that doesn't make it any easier.

"Then let's hurry," Losius stated the obvious, trying not to shine his celestial light in my direction. "There's not much time."

"I didn't realize. A little more, and we'll be cov..." I answered with sarcasm, already starting to transform my body into a shadow state, but I was again interrupted in the middle of the sentence, forcing me to replace it not even with a swear word but with the angry roar of a monster wounded in the ass. "Fucked such a live. Damn!!!"

Another blow from the Bringer trying to thwart the deities was of little use, but it had certain effects. For example, a series of new ruptures in the place of those that had been forcibly closed, or closed not forcibly but deliberately, to prevent the next autonomous spell from entering the Library. This time, it was reflexes, multiplied by the anger inspired by the Form and a slightly floating psyche, which made him not only put up a defense but also hit back. The more so because this particular gap was smaller than the previous two, as well as the distortions it generated.

I still managed to make out the faces of a couple of very surprised guys in their early twenties, dressed in junior staff robes, accompanied by a small crowd of emaciated-looking living dolls that googlers. And then a counter-attack, combining the grayness of the Manifestation, barely visible against the blackness of the multi-component shadow ram, and a handful of small Shadows, modified by Creation and launched into this structure for the sake of multithreading, slammed into the rift and almost broke through it backward. It almost did because the Library's automatic defenses closed the space back up, but the two librarians dragging the spent resource to be sacrificed to power the next ritual structure were atomized by the rift's closing effect. The impact was blown backward.

We didn't see it. Our company was running away. Or rather, Kostik was running away, and the others were sitting on my neck, in Taria's case, literally. I was particularly pleased with Losius, who, of course, had completely disabled the halo of blue, but his sword, even in its sheathed state, even with maximum control and deliberate reluctance to do damage, stung so much that only flakes flew from the Form!

I could literally feel with my whole body that the winged creature connected to the sword was also feeling me. Even though it had been pushed out of the Eternal, despite the action of the dome, or even thanks to it, shoved into the high Heavens, it did not lose contact, continuing to discern something of what was happening.

And she didn't like me, though I won't guess in my heart why.

I guess it's because I'm black - I can't think of any other excuse.

A white supremacist.

We made it to the rendezvous point in time to let the rest of the group greet a slightly fresher Hans and glance in the direction of Giver, who had almost finished merging with the cultist's body and who now looked like an indistinguishable haze, barely above the motionless victim of vice. She merges more and more with her body with each passing second. We had time to exhale, regroup, and prepare for the dash. I had time to start describing my, not surprisingly, slightly suicidal escape plan, and Taria had even started telling a joke. We even managed to congratulate Hans on his new class, which he flaunted with a satisfied smile despite the dangerous situation. I'd noticed before that being the only holder of a perfectly ordinary class in our company was a bit of a weight for him. He'd outgrown his pride and arrogance a long time ago, but it wasn't very pleasant anyway, and here he was immediately promoted and clearly on an epic. This, however, is not surprising if we take into account the constant contact with the legendary artifact, issued for personal use. Here, rather, it is strange this has not happened before.

Anyway, it seemed to me that we were having a good time.

It was the past tense that was the key detail.

It seemed.

This time, there was no wave of inaudible rumbling as the barrier broke, no intuition stimulated by the panicked cries of the subconscious, not even a banal sense of danger. It was just that, at some point, all the rifts to the Library quietly and almost without parasitic energy loss collapsed, and in the middle of the barely preserved purple diluted with golden streams, a perfect circle of clear sky was formed. It wasn't particularly large, about half a hundred meters in diameter if I judged the scale correctly; from below, it seemed ridiculously tiny, like a needle prick, and it didn't stay blue for long: they rushed through the open door.

Involuntarily, a picture of another Black Friday arose in my mind. So densely packed into the narrow aisle of careless customers, but the laugh faded on my lips before it had time to emerge. The composition of this crowd involuntarily inspired respect. It was the first time I had seen the Servants of the Gods and their Heralds in person, and I was surprisingly impressed. First, the background and quality of their power combine traits of more than one plane due to the connection with the deity. They were far from the virtuosity with which a celestial could take equal parts of the power of two (or more) planes, mix them, and get a multiplier effect of a stable tone. The same Servants were mixed with Aspects of divinity, only barely seasoned with energy of a different nature. Even so, their efficiency was amazing, causing black envy. I could produce something similar at the expense of masterly control over my planes, thanks to the Overlords' classes of mythical grade, squeezing out of every crumb of power its maximum and a little on top. For those who have simpler classes, even if it is simpler and carries an epic grade, who have magical attributes less than two hundred and class attributes did not get to a hundred and fifty, it is painful to even dream of such a thing.

The Heralds made me realize that I could still beat them one-on-one, especially if I struck first and suddenly, but in a fair chest-to-chest fight, I'd be in trouble if I didn't pull something like that trick of encapsulating mirrors through essentialism. The weakest of them were on the level of very strong Legends, while the strongest reached even full-blown Myths if you can say that about non-human beings, but endowed. They had an eerie power that belonged not to them but to something behind their backs, which was not much weaker than that of the supreme devil.

A fair share of the Celestials clung to the edges of the rift, starting to pull it apart as if taking some chthonic asshole to tear it apart. The rest began to descend on the city, launching such a wave of charms ahead of them, compacted to an incredible force, the embodied Glory of their Gods, that I was very, very glad to be away from the rift.

Part of the heavenly army - though it was closer to the earthly term than to the Alurean realm of Heaven - carried forces familiar from the temple from which I had pulled Losius. Depth and Heaven, the sense of pressing pursuit, recompense for everything, and catching up even after many years, the proclamation of balance and the inviolability of a given word. I could feel it in them. Their appearance, in most cases, resembled that of warriors wrapped in heavy judicial robes, hiding heavy armor under their robes, and holding battle hammers, grimoires of holy writings, or even strange scales like those depicted on the statue of Themis. Other selected instruments of Grimdentrei seemed to be inhumanoid streams of sea water, multi-winged clumps of eyes and feathers, something without body and matter, present only in terms of pure knowledge.

The personal PMC of the honored Retributionist, first of all, flew to the First Temple, on the way not being lazy to arrange laughter of the devils that got under the hand, shooting fleur effects in the square, on the whole blocks, taking full advantage of Heaven's tendency to calm the violent crowds, healing the survivors by the dozens and hundreds. At the same time, the few but very unnerving Servants of Avernair Asyll, revered by elves, some druidic cults, and just a few pagans, nicknamed the Revitalizer, the Life Giver, and a hundred other such epithets, were not distracted at all by the fighting, or rather, the killing. They went straight to wherever the surviving Firstborn were still defending or hiding, apparently intent on evacuating them first and then helping others, if at all.

Elven angels tended toward a "nature" theme, incarnated by all manner of sentient trees, earthy hills with angry faces, soaring wooden idols, almost ordinary humanoids in dumb cloth robes covered with flowers and mosses, clouds of foliage, or wild beasts with eyes shining with unfathomable wisdom. Life, Water, and Earth were the nature of the Life-giver, with the Deep and the Earth caught only at the very edge, the part of her that gives rise to flowery meadows and slumbering thickets. Her servants were more like a guerrilla unit and rescue team than a battering ram of evil paladins, which they were.

There were other Gods who had sent their messengers, showing their participation and the flag, so to speak. But all of that was of little concern against the backdrop of the main driving force behind this protracted party. I had heard many times before that it was the Ascended Warrior, who had no name of his own, who had refused to have one, or who had never lived even a single second as a mortal, who was honored, willingly or unwillingly, by every soldier, mercenary, brigand, thug, murderer, desperately fighting back peasant, at the moment of any battle for the sake of life and victory, who was rightly considered the strongest and perhaps the oldest Deity of all Alurei.

Now, I believed the books and notes my companions had told me, the ones I'd seen through other people's dreams and mirrors. I believed the Warrior was the most dangerous creature in the observable piece of the universe. His power, his nature, and his essence were battle, fight, slaughter, and merciless massacre. Whether it was for high ideals or profit, whether it was a battle of honor and dignity or a dastardly huddle of desperate scoundrels, whether it was a well-oiled battle under the command of an experienced general or a mad scramble of scattered barbarians, he was War. This creature had never had a High Priest or a High Temple, only the highest adepts, comprising many separate assemblies and clerics, freely in conflict even with each other. The Warrior embodied the truth of exaltation, the annoying maxim that any man or wench who picked up a sword could become on par with the Gods.

The Warrior was neither good nor unambiguously evil, neither condemning lies nor meanness, but not laughing at honor and valor, accepting anyone who wanted victory, anyone who was ready to snatch it from other people's hands, who lived and died in battle. In a flash of insight, almost the deepest I'd ever experienced in my entire life, based on titles and my clairvoyance. I realized instantly this bitch would kill me if I ever caught his eye. Because the very nature of a Summoned, who got his power at once and for free, not by wresting it from the world but by taking it in advance to prove his right to it, was like a constant toothache to this creature.

I still haven't quite figured out who came up with Yoke and how.

I still haven't deconstructed the knowledge stolen from the Library, preserved in mirror shards.

But I know for a fact that it was the forceful influence of the Warrior who entered this project, in addition to the other players, that allowed Yoke to turn from a theoretical development into a harsh and real tradition that has been poisoning the lives of losers like me for millennia.

His Guard came swiftly, clearly, pathos and uncompromisingly, carrying behind them the irrefutable radiance of their Truth. Pure Light embodying the truth they wished to be true. The Light that was the fuel, the Sun, whose power and absolute authority over where its rays would fall, and yet the intangible and unplanar concept of the Blade, or rather, any instrument of lethal killing put to work. This Blade, the shadow of which every Servant, Messenger, and Herald carried, was itself a weapon capable of sweeping legendary creatures off their feet. It became very clear why so many forces had been thrown at the destruction and support of the Warrior's temples. Maybe they had all sucked in their methods of countering sabotage and the underlying influence of Vice, but if the guys had gone into battle, it was not certain that the humble me would have been needed.

Warriors, humanoid and not so humanoid, armed and unarmed, naked and clad in armor, no form at all, just the immortal idea of battle. They came, and that made the rest of us sad.

The first to get hit was the Bringer, who started beautifully but ended poorly, which was especially frustrating for the creature of Lust. He simply demolished a couple of legendary Servants with his very first counter-strike, gave a resounding kick with his heavy arm to the four times smaller Herald, who managed to put up a dozen barriers, but without taking any damage, he embodied the idiom of the strong but fucking lightweight hedgehog, and even separated himself from the others by some strange field of negation, giving off such indicators of fleur and Lust that reality itself, space, concepts and abstractions were desecrated. Primitive in appearance but complex in essence, the tin was armored and protected from everything, ignoring almost any damage, and its kicks only seemed like kicks, in fact tearing down any barriers, damaging souls, tearing thin bodies, and destabilizing protective techniques like my Aegis, preventing them from deploying.

The first success was the last. At least two of the Heralds were over a hundred level, and five more were not far behind them, immediately taking the golem in hand and systematically dismantling it for parts. Their odious blades were not blocked by the golem's armor, leaving lacerations on the Bringer's bulk as if from a can opener of comparable size to the Bringer. The point was made by the forgotten Serpent, which was almost comical for its size, shortening its distance from the distracted golem, shrinking in size, and becoming thinner and more flexible to sink its golden fangs into the severed leg.

I couldn't see. I couldn't even guess what the poison was, what price it was charging its victim, but the Bringer began to fade. Souls began to disappear from its construct, not burning out or disintegrating from overload, but simply vanishing, like money from a bank account after using a card. Hop - they were gone.

The Tin Man had time to tear off his leg, throwing it away like a superfluous part, to give a couple of kicks to the Heralds around him, forcing them to go into short defense, and even began to rebuild himself in the likeness of a turtle, as if a Transformer from a movie or an old cartoon. But not in time. All the Heralds summoned the Sword, thus manifesting the Will of their God, and all that remained of the Bringer were the melted hulks of limbs, and the torso, as well as every single soul, was not left at all. It was such a hole that you could not see the bottom of it. I can say that even without seeing the hole.

The golden viper himself almost got in trouble. The army of Good, which would bring Evil to its knees and brutally kill it, was obviously not happy about the snake's interference and did not restrain itself. The Serpent did not hold back either, receiving only a couple of blows and simply disappeared, considering his payment taken and his obligations fulfilled.

My poor brains were ready to come out of my ears from the whirlpool of energies, but it didn't prevent me from acting because I had to hide my ass in the bushes very quickly. Even without taking into account the presence of the Giver in our company, who at the appearance of the heavenly army almost atomized into components, with difficulty squeezing into her body and now trying not to die together with it, my meeting with these guys is contraindicated. It is absolutely contraindicated, up to the lethal outcome.

Shadow is etched from the body, replaced by an unhealthy amount of Dream, from which the appearance and length of the limbs have flowed again. All the mirrors are brought in by Hans, who woke up abruptly after a couple of area divine buffs, having pulled them out with Trails on my tip. The defense is erected at about the same speed with which I produce bricks at this moment. I'm telling you right away. I put up the defense extremely fast because there were a lot of bricks. I put it up without worrying about reliability, not even particularly concerned about its safety, just to divert attention, directing it away. So far, they are busy not with us but with devils, so it's a little easier.

Honestly, if I'd been allowed to go back in time, even for a few minutes, I would have killed the deviless just out of reluctance to get hit, but now it was too late. The search for the devils' signatures is already underway, and even if I killed her, there would be imprints and death images that would find us even faster, but as it is, she's hiding herself. My original plan was to use her to slip into the Library through one of the rifts. I'd stabilize the passage, and she'd take control of some of the ritualists, opening the way for all of us, and if we were lucky, she died in the process. I've been having a hard time with either planning or the Library lately, always having to twist my brilliant ideas into a tube and shove them deeper, right up against the techniques for safely operating planar energy.

The situation was saved by the Ancients I had summoned, without whom we would all have been found by area search impulses if our defenses hadn't been completed and made too quickly. It's surprisingly difficult to resist Miracles of psychic orientation, and it's constantly necessary to clean up traces of their presence to total zero, which we didn't have time to do. The Warrior's servants did not expect to see three mythical Shadows. From afar, if you didn't look closely, that swath of blackness looked like a pile of Shadows, not half a company of Highs and three Ancients who had turned the rest of the armada into an extension of their wills. In stealth and camouflage, the Shadows would lose to almost no one, if at all.

The Shadows were ruined by their greed and my impromptu move, which I'd given them without expecting or even trying. I deceived them and made them prepare for a fight where they could try to shake up the Armada and get away with their souls. The crux of the problem was that the baffle pledge hanging over them was strong enough that right now if all three decided to back off, the escape would rip everything they'd eaten out of their bodies. And yet two of the three had taken a level each, with one ready to take the second and the third the first. But my deception led them to believe that the chains of the contract were still strong. Although, in fact, if they continued to tear the chains instead of preparing for the inevitable battle, they could have already left quietly, laughing mockingly in the process.

The Ancients were devouring Sovereign's domain, taking advantage of the incredibly convenient bridge, shrugging off most of the devils' attempts to break the link. They should have taken a moment to control the rift instead of devouring ready-made souls, and that would have been the end of the fairy tale. Now, they are stuck in a very uncomfortable position, forced to either defend the breaches, blocked by their bodies, or run away, losing all the fat at the expense of the unfulfilled contract. You can still break the contract and get away with the profits, but you should have done that earlier because now you have to fight.

Neither side of the conflict is accustomed to running from battles, though the Shadows are still closer to the tactic of hit-and-run.

About fifty Legends and three Myths on the side of the creatures, about an equal number of Servants and Heralds, and they clearly underestimated the threat and did not ask for help, even refusing it in an ultimatum form. This is their battle, which was already felt Serpent on his golden skin. You guys went to extinguish the devils and had to fight with the Shadows. For a moment, I felt sorry for these God's warriors, but it was such a gloating pity, say, it sucks to be you. Due to the missing mouth on my body, the laughter came out wrong, but the mirrors reflected and complemented it, causing a reflexive flinch in the entire team and a backhanded smack by Valerium's grip.

"Why are you scaring us, Tin?" Taria looks at my current, almost Nightmare face with no fear at all. "Don't do that!"

Just because of the slight degree of astonishment from such directness, as demonstrated by the dancer, I missed the beginning of the fight a little bit.

Perhaps the Shadows had a good chance of winning. They outnumbered the Warrior faction in numbers and level, though even the Celestials themselves were not creatures but endowed, retaining, as I realized, some of the advantages of those same creatures. In particular, they definitely had something wrong with the materiality of the body, reserve of magic and liquefied Miracle (and what else should I call this divine grace of theirs?) also seemed, from afar, too plastic and replenishable at the level of Legendary monsters, not mortal, albeit high-level assholes. Added to all this is the presence of super high-quality equipment and a strong cohesion that allows them to act in a bundle, helping each other and compensating for mistakes.

In turn, my summons hated each other as much as they hated the enemy, and if it weren't for the unified will of the Ancients, who had turned the bulk of the creatures into their puppets and simply frightened the higher ones, the mythics would have fought alone. But they were not stupid, knowing perfectly well when it was time to get involved in fratricidal slaughter and when it was time to delay sticking daggers in their backs. The Ancients, bulky and shackled by the need to hold the rifts, the Highs on the edge of their vision, waiting for the right opportunity to bite hard and get nothing for it, and the crowd of non-volunteers led by the three centers of will. The celestials, who were not prepared for this battle, lost the first moments of the battle. Ambush attack, after all, is considered the crown jewel of any Shadow.

To the Ascended Guard, the rift looked far more innocuous than to me. The very nature of the Armada helped me, making it clear to me exactly what had taken advantage of the passage. Even I had been cynically deceived by the bastards. What to speak of God's Warriors who had expected a very different outcome? To them, the black cloud of hungry jaws seemed to be a concentration of minutiae, with plenty of Highs and Elders to choose from. Quite a decent enemy, even if with their current lineup they would have crushed it, probably without casualties, unlike the Bringer, who fight back. They were coming to extinguish the Shadows because they were finishing off the one whose eternity the army had come here to protect. The Guards were supposed to fight Sovereign and all his puppets but came to finish off the tired golem (a fatal blow was made not by them!) and the remnants of demoralized devils. For such maniacs - the reason to resent the world and part of its population is weightier than ever.

They were going to crush the Shadows without letting them scatter, and then they were going to clean up the Eternal, even if it wasn't as much fun and excitement as they'd seen it before. Whatever maniacs of battle this company might be, they had come here with God's will, and they were going to fulfill it, and fulfill it themselves, without letting anyone else take the glory. Otherwise, Grimmentray's troops wouldn't be healing minds damaged by Lust. They'd be fighting, too.

An encounter with three myths. And I remind you that only two, maybe three, or four of the warlike Heralds made it past a hundred levels. With the support of the very Highest, and so sudden. It can't come without repercussions, Blade or no Blade. It turned out to be equally bad for everyone. Except, perhaps, for me. If I had a chance, I would have rubbed my hands in the typical gesture of a satisfied greedy Jew from a caricature picture. Well, if there were two hands left, but I had to grow some more to fix the mirror constructions.

Why did it turn out badly for everyone?

It would be stupid to think that the Guard of God, who embodies War in all its manifestations, didn't know how to fight the Shadows, didn't know about their tactics and other useful little things that allow them to turn even very strong creatures into new trophies. They understood that the Shadows gobble up the feeding souls of devils that lose resistance. Judging by the indirect images of those mirrors, which I allowed myself to allocate not for camouflage but for observation, the Shadows were getting deeper and deeper into the half-empty Domain, unable to disconnect from the Eternal without Sovereign. But kick the creatures, and they'd start scattering and hiding. And there's no bigger pain in the ass than playing hide-and-seek with the Shadows, who'll give the Eternal and the Servants who've come into it such a Vietnam that they'll be devoured, devouring the remnants of the civilian population and littering the territory with their dens and rookeries.

It was the unwillingness to spend a disproportionate amount of energy and time on catching escaped ones, who would not be pushed into the depths of the plan for a long time after such feeding, that the first attack, coordinated and worthy of the God they served, was aimed at preventing them from escaping. The flash of light covered half of the Eternal with a thin blanket, which in and of itself would sting and wound, if not disembodied, any creature, not necessarily a Shadow. But that was just the flowers, for such damage was only a side effect, the effect of parasitic losses of the main effect of the charms.

On the land marked by His will, new Truths appeared, new Verities, and new Rights, which were immutable and inviolable even for the Highest Shadow. Where the thinnest cover of light had removed any shadows, creating a perfectly flat and evenly shining piece of reality illuminated from all sides, it became impossible to hide. On a conceptual level, it's impossible. It just won't work in any way, that's all. Skills of invisibility, up-to-cheater stealth, special skills, class abilities, diversion of eyes, mental correction of attention, and even diving into another plane with the fall of the body from the material world. All this, in fact, is banned on a separate location of our server. This is crap because I can't call this shit, the nature of which I can't even realize, differently than crap, prevented even the Elders from breaking their way into the native plane and escaping, while the Highest would be forced to slow down and freeze at least for a moment before escaping so they would be guaranteed to be killed when trying to escape from the battle.

It's the case when you realize before you considered yourself a master of skill, knowing how and with what to shake the reality to make it wobble like the chimney of that house, but now, having seen the combined attack of a bunch of Legends, three Myths and direct infusion of God's power. However, I could still miss a couple of those who found it reasonable to disguise themselves and not shine with power... Kostik, be more modest, or you'll get your nose in the air, and it'll hurt to fall. Thank you, damn, Alurei, that if you start thinking yourself cool, you will immediately find out that you are not cool anywhere, you trash!

The canopy worked as intended, illuminating and exposing every single Shadow in and around the square, where they were arranged like chess pieces by the Ancients, ready to slaughter. Ah, yes! The Ancients were lit up, too, as were the many Armada cuts corked by their burly bodies. I'll just clarify one more time. The current Shadow forces in Eternal are not too inferior to the initial forces of Hell who came to storm the capital. Only they are not scattered in the territory, not beaten by the defenders, not demoralized by Sovereign's death. The Shadows are all here, fed up beyond their limits, so buffed by the Ancients who infused them with a bit of their power that even the canopy of the Inevitable Battle only burns and angers them, killing only the smallest of them and not immediately. They are more harmed by the Ancients' "buffs" and power pumping!

And this bunch has just been robbed of any chance of escape.

And at that moment the army of the Ascended somehow amazingly simultaneously realized that of course they were cool and everything, but now they were going to be beaten a little bit.

I'd say they'd be kicked, but I'm not sure about the percentage of Shadows whose forms have legs.

The crash was truly terrifying, especially if you watch from the sidelines. I managed to build some defenses, bring my body back to a humanoid state, and then watch with popcorn, only, again, without popcorn. The mirrors refracted the power of Light, even if with a considerable admixture of grace, holding the echoes of the distant battle, and all the attention of possible observers was focused on the battle itself and the remnants of almost dissolved devilish forces. So we could observe relatively quietly. The background of energies was such that the remnants of glass, walls, skeletal bones, underbones, auric sheaths, souls, and the meaning of life trembled.

Watching this massacre, I clearly understood two things, or rather, I understood a lot of things, but these two facts occupied all my thoughts and feelings. The first: after today, the retinue of the Ascended One will lose a little, partly by being eaten, partly by being disembodied, and partly by receiving long-lasting wounds that will not heal in a reasonable time. The counter-attack on the celestials, who did not expect the quality of the opponents they met at this moment, was really scary, much more dangerous than even I believed. Apparently, the gods had made some kind of contract that forced the others not to interfere with the Warrior's retinue, so they had to deal with it themselves, but they were doing fine.

Second. I literally, with a couple of images, which I have to communicate with the Shadows, organized and guaranteed a massacre comparable to the storming of the Eternal, which under other circumstances would not have taken place. I understand that, and the Ancients, whose anger at me is captured by being Overlord, understand that, and the Celestials have also captured that image, realizing someone brought the Shadows in specifically for them. Well, they think it's for a purpose, and it's just for them. Their patron and lord will realize that when he's going to clean up the pile of shit, his angels got into because of their excessive initiative. Even the System realized it, giving out some new list of messages, which I safely threw aside without reading.

A Warrior is very reverent about the choice of battle, about the right to finish it as it should be finished, and would not help, especially if the enemies of his retinue were God's servants or mortals rebelling against his clergy. But the enemies were creatures who held firmly to parity and threatened to utterly threaten to endanger the Eternal, or rather what was left of it, in the process. That was why the Warrior had chosen to intervene on the side of his fighters, and that was why he had expended a considerable amount of grace in granting the world the Miracle of his Incarnation.

For a moment, the battle stood still.

Froze Shadows.

Froze Divinities.

Every creature and endowed in the city froze.

Froze the hearts in the chests of the still living.

There was a half-squeal, half-whimper from Giver, who was also watching the battle with an expression that was a combination of bliss, pride, and astonishment. Hans and Taria swore quietly, uttering the same swear word in perfect sync, and Hestia and Losius echoed, but not in chorus. Tia was silent, only clutching the hilt of her dagger tightly, the palm of her hand trembling. I was silent, too, less affected than the others, not even trying to use the mirror cloaking system.

It's just useless.

The warrior appeared in person, vaporizing several of the Highs with his first strike, smearing some of the thinned-out controlled swarm of lesser Shadows into dust, and delivering a powerful upward chopping blow in a reverse motion that nearly cut open the Ancient One who had moved farther forward than the others, like a fish. The Shadow wasn't defenseless at all, doing something that looked like a combination of a breakthrough into the depths of the plan and the disintegration of any matter, like a forced Aegis, only applied not to itself but to the area around the enemy's body.

That's what got it through the first swing.

No, no, not a swing. The creature who had come at the call of his flock could not fight lightly, could not fight half-heartedly. Whether he was facing an equal opponent, a superior power, or even an ordinary child who had picked up a dagger, the Warrior made no difference - each was given equal deference, each was equally denied leniency, and each deserved in his eyes to die in battle, the last tribute to his courage to take the fight.

The Ancient tried to back away, shrinking into itself, shedding excess flesh and turning it into fuel for attack, forcing the Warrior to defend. His form was indistinguishable to the eye, cloaked in a halo of glowing Light. If it had been there at all in the first place, but the silhouette seemed to lift the hilt of a giant blade upward, shielding his face from the stream of ink. The light vaporized the thick and fluttering shadow matter, attacking once more with another mighty stabbing motion. The Ancient One's defense carries shades of Aegis. It takes more than that to fully utilize the technique, something this particular Shadow does not have, but its variation on the theme is not much inferior to the original.

The Shadow shrank to a point the size of a soccer ball, becoming closer to the Spiral of Tavimark, a phenomenon rather than an active entity. It was not a ball or even not a hole in space, but a wormhole leading to the deepest layers of the Shadow, simultaneously creating a capsule of refuge for the Ancient who had dived into itself. Without that capsule, which exists for a fraction of a second, it would be disintegrated by the pressure of the force, as if she were plankton at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, but she has a fraction of a second, just enough time for the blade to pass it by.

The Warrior did not pass by, using the tip of his Sword as if following the Ancient, penetrating the wormhole, trying to find the contagion hiding at the bottom of it. The creature jumped into reality as if scalded, though without the "as if," having to interrupt its defenses to avoid being left at the bottom, having destroyed the floating beacon beforehand. I couldn't do that. Too much of a "ball" was not here to affect it in any way.

The third blow, not with a blade but with a touch of the divine fist and a burst of weakly comprehensible magic so thick and dense that the Light in it became harder than Steel, finished the Ancient One, allowing it to leave only a few cuts on his fist. The divine blood dripped down, burning some of the Elders who hadn't been hurt or crushed by his presence, and my inner alchemist overcame the shock of seeing the carnage, demanding to get the reagent somehow. If it hadn't been for the shock and the self-control I maintained, I might have even tried.

The second of the three Ancients, the strongest of them all, tore through the remains of my leash, taking the Armada's structure for itself, and realizing how easy it had been, realizing it could have retreated forever but stayed only because of my false confidence that it wouldn't be able to break away, Ancient Shadow became a thousandfold angrier. The first wave simply tore through the remnants of the servile Shadows turned them into a toothy net with a radius of nearly a kilometer, a blanket of barbed wire, hungry and possessed of a single mind, disintegrating every second but existing enough to take part in the battle and die regardless of its outcome.

A counter-message, a pressure of will, the embodiment of the most unfortunate type of power for shadow power, a new Truth laid on top of the old, and the iron hardness of the Light turned to a heavy round shield, which the shining silhouette closed against the blow, turning sideways to the Ancient One who was spread out. The sword has changed from a double-edged sword into a short Roman gladius or a slightly curved cleaver, but the details are hidden behind streams of Light that hold too much Truth to find Verity. Appearance is unimportant, just as it is unimportant who the Warrior was or could be, because he is in all of us, living in every battle cry, whether it is spoken by a human, an elf, a halfling, or even an orc and goblin.

The pressure on our brains, which could turn an ordinary person, if not into a fanatical believer, then certainly into an unwitting conduit of the War's Will, was caught by the crackling mirrors, bent and sent to the sides, so as not to burn our minds. Giver was silenced with a single glance. Her offer to help was certainly apropos, but the moment the devil's presence manifested, the celestials not busy fighting the Ancients, and the Warrior would come out at us. Right now, our disguise is more of a cosmetic one. The need to do something about the pressurizing presence of an alien entity that imposed its worldview by the very fact of its existence forced us to seriously lose ground in terms of stealth.

The Ancient One grew taller, larger, and larger. Its snake-like body is like that of a deep-sea moray eel and a predatory subterranean worm from Dune. Its patterned threads are visible in shadow vision. These strands of hieroglyphics seemed to reveal the many contracts this creature had made in its time with those who had summoned it or its altered, subjugated, and corrupted brood. If I had bothered and spent enough time, I could have even looked at those contracts closer, learned about them, and gotten juicy information about Alishan's connections (a very distinctive school of magic that was easy enough to recognize through clairvoyance in such a direct encounter) and all manner of planar abominations.

Maybe the urge would come.

No one gave me time.

Taking the net attack on his shield, the Warrior sent a pulse of Light from the shield, burning out a cone-shaped clearing. There was no room for anything but Light. To the deity's credit, he sent the attack not along the ground line, where it would have wiped out many survivors. He sent it slightly over the top so the huge Ancient would be hit by the intentionally bloated growth. The shadow met the attack with dignity, causing the world before it to lose its colors, manifesting the laws of another plane upon it so that the divine will against this wall, no, not shattered, but slowed. This creature was the strongest of the trio and had gained two levels at once, gaining the most, as well as a disproportionate amount of free stats, and was willing not to fight to the death but to snatch a moment to escape.

The creatures struck in synchronization. While the remnants of the Highs, who had also been battered and killed by the battering ram, occupied the Warrior's retinue, the two remaining Ancients scattered like attack dogs, clasping the God on both sides. To be scattered to black ash in the glow of his halo a moment before the attack, turning out to be skillful, living, and animated deceptions. Personally, I thought the Warrior bought it for a split second. Only it didn't help much.

Instead of attacking, both creatures stepped back, pressing themselves to the ground, trying to summon new "troops" through the Armada's rifts, some of which had closed without support from the other side, and some of which had been closed by the mere presence of such powerful bearers of grace. Only now, they were in no hurry to go because there was no such feast as before, and the risks of getting hit had grown disproportionately high. However, the will of two Ancients at once allowed them to give no fucks about the reluctance of small things, and not everyone risked objecting. The two Ancients did not try to escape through the not-very-stable passageways and, apparently, had no hope of doing so.

At the same time as the call, both creatures began to shed shreds of themselves, like dogs shaking off dirt or black sand falling from their bodies. The magic crystallized from the saturation of shadow power, literally magic crystals of planar type, no worse than acid, dissolved and slightly manifested the blockage of Inevitability. Give them a little time, and they'd make a hole and crawl through it. Each of the two plans to do it first leaving the other to be slaughtered.

The Warrior swung the cleaver, which thinned and became flexible, taking the shape of a battleaxe, leaving behind a smooth and rapidly growing stroke. A waterfall of light pours out of it onto the remnants of the barely held gateway to the Shadow, as if made up of individual droplets, each of which is a Blade in miniature, taking the form of a variety of weapons, from clubs and axes to wall-breaking battering rams. The shaft of weapons closes the passageways and cuts out the newcomers who have not even had time to get into the city, the reverse movement of the whip disembodies one High, kills the second, severely injures the third and fourth, but the whip is already gone, as the unbreakable shield dissolved in the glare of Light.

The deity slammed his two-handed chaser against the netted ground of Inevitability, and the wave of divine proportions that came from the point of contact with the battleaxe not only repaired the crystal-encrusted barrier but also forced both creatures higher to avoid being burned by the Light. A spit of liquefied shadow power charged with an incomprehensible technique is met by the very same scratched hand, on which a heavy gauntlet appears for a moment, against which the stuff sputtered. The unfamiliar technique is cunning, like a virus or gray goo, being not just a force but holding hundreds of thousands, millions even of worm-like Shadows, only very small, smaller than a speck of dust, which in such numbers even a plan-antagonist would not destroy at once. Before the creatures try to chew their way inside the divine flesh, the palm of his hand ignites the Light as if it were a torch during a night assault.

Its light cancels out the lump of spit-out crap, and the artifact itself, aptly thrown, existing only as long as it is needed and summoned, fends off a second similar attack before it gets halfway through and pierces through the youngest of the Ancients not killing, but maiming, tearing to shreds the very essence of the embodiment of Loneliness, restraining and immobilizing. The spear was replaced by a spear with a broad leaf-shaped tip, long, as if it were a small blade rather than a piercing spear, catching the second creature, albeit with an edge.

Her wound is not serious, but it is painful, and the Shadow rustles with the promise of doom, changing Form, breaking up into a swarm of small creatures bound together but one entity. The swarm beats towards it, manifesting everything in its path, enduring the presence of the halo, aiming at the face of the Warrior hidden beneath the radiance, but the latter only momentarily cast a geyser of light and solar fury, from which attempts at manifestation do not save, the monochrome is scattered in a storm of white and gold, but when the fertile fury passes, a very unexpected picture becomes visible.

The Warrior slashed at the Ancient, whole and united again, with two sickle swords, almost breaking it into three pieces. It pretended to be a swarm, in fact, making one part of it the main part and the rest a sham. But he received two wounds from the long claws growing out of the multi-segmented paws hiding deep within the Ancient Shadow's body. His blood and flesh vaporized the creature's grip, but the wounds themselves were shallow and not dangerous, more like scratches that would heal faster than the mighty heart would beat in his chest.

The shadow can no longer keep its flesh in a superdense state. Both khopesh shatter it completely, and the smallest of the parts changes shape, becoming the same creature, only smaller, trying to crawl away, to retreat, to escape, to break through the shroud of the closing field, but it is too slow, too weakened, and the blow of the blade kills the second of the trio of Myths. A step forward, a full-footed U-turn, behind which one can feel the experience of not millennia, but hardly epochs of death-killing, a blow with a blade that has changed into a very long, even compared to the Incarnation's height, pike. The blow knocked out three of the freshest and most resilient Highs. The weapon changed again, now to an axe and a rough, sharp blow on the last of the three Ancients pinned by an artifact.

Which, for the second time that day, fell to the ground in fine black sand. The creature has turned most of its flesh into the very crystals that have pierced the cover of Inevitability right beneath it, shed its skin like a snake, and slither deeper and deeper into its homeland. The barrier over the city is already more of a formality, and not only God's servants but also the ordinary endowed ones arrive here now and then, whose anxious groups are thrown by point teleporters in considerable numbers. Reaching the Ancient One's home plane, even if injured, was possible. Only the power of the deity, not the fallen dome, stood in the way.

The Warrior's fury at the enemy's escape is inaudible, but it presses harder than gravitational magic, pinning him to the ground and making the mirrors shake, causing them to blacken and crack. And he's not looking for us, but for the Shadow who escaped. Oh, no. I get it, too, because I summoned them all, and there's a connection between us. The Warrior sees something, though, striking with a new spear, more like a short dart, right into the nearly closed escape portal. I'm betting he hit the fugitive, but I'm not sure if he killed it. I don't doubt too much that the Ancient, who was badly wounded by that kick, would be killed by her own. And even if they can't, she'll be licking her wounds for the next hundred years, and she won't be any danger to me, who dared to order her. The other Shadows, who were close to the point of impact from the other side, deserve a little sympathy - unlucky.

Yeah, and Shadows aren't my main problem right now.

Every second of being in the embodied state is worth a lot to a god, more than gasoline for a car with a leaky tank. The stronger the god, the higher the price, and the Warrior had just demonstrated his superiority by decimating three Ancients, at least half a dozen Highs, and an incalculable horde of lower-ranked Shadows. Yes, he had sustained some wounds, but only because his armor, a divine-grade set, in its manifested state, eats grace unmercifully so his Heralds couldn't provide a channel for the Incarnation of not only the Warrior but his armor as well. Even so, his wounds, though bloody, were comparable to a slap or a bruised knee, nothing more.

And he defeated his opponents.

And before being pushed out of the Eternal, whose sky was already almost completely blue, he spent the rest of his Incarnation's strength on a search impulse of you would not believe it, divine power. Separately, the Light, as well as the Sun, were much better suited for the search than the divine conjunction of Heaven and Depth once experienced. I should add, at that time, I had a prepared fortress of the antediluvian type, hundreds of deceptions and billets, which could easily be insufficient. Plus, I left much fewer traces and was in much better condition than now.

The situation was described by one short acronym.

No, I managed to do something, to strengthen something, but I quickly gave up even trying, starting to eradicate Dream from my body, replacing it with Shadow, but realizing I had no time. And I couldn't do it in time. I didn't have a window from the beginning unless you counted the fucked up plan to break through the Library, which now seemed very clever, balanced, and not at all risky. Now, all I had to do was change my body back to my Form, hoping my speed hadn't slowed too much and fatigue hadn't driven me to the grave, grab my teammates with my Grip, then dive deep and hope I could escape. I don't even doubt they'll find me.

And also with all my might I chased away the knowledge that if they had caught up with the fleeing Ancient One, they would catch up with me, especially with the load.

A ring of light, harmless and unthreatening, but so true, so truthful, so revealing, diverged at a speed close to a bullet's flight, creating many smaller rings when the marvelous search equipment stumbled upon something interesting. I had time to say goodbye to my life, but I didn't, spending my measured moments trying to survive and get us all out, even if there was no chance.

Maybe they won't notice me right away, giving me time to escape in the turmoil, and then we can hide more securely.

Perhaps it will be possible to slip a decoy, given that there are no mirrors left at all, all blacked out in complete disrepair.

Maybe the connection between me and the Shadow summoning won't be obvious, so they won't check our echo right away.

After all, Bruce fucking Willis might show up out of a shining portal and start saving everyone indiscriminately!

The motive is that one must fight to the end, even if there is no chance left - a truth that Alurei taught me so well that I will not forget on my deathbed.

I haven't forgotten, for that matter!

The ring of radiance, the will of the invincible Truth, from which there is no escape, for which no convincing lie can be invented, reached us, gave us all a wild headache, almost forcing us to abort our transformation into shadow flesh, and then.... it seemed to dive into the clear water, slid on a wave of sea breeze, flew over us and disappeared over the horizon without touching us even a little. A miracle of the highest caliber was parried by another miracle, perhaps more liquid, but not areal, but pointed, cumulative, and prepared in advance.

When a thin layer of purest sea water ran along the surface of the farthest wall of the living room of the abandoned house, which quickly turned into a portal passage, only very imperceptible even from here, almost without any energy, I really expected that a bald nut would come out of there right now and go to extinguish the terrorists. Then I realized that I was the main terrorist in this story, and I even felt sad. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, the man who stepped out of the crosswalk was not bald.

He was of medium height, not especially large build, dressed in a lavish and enchanted to the last thread, but rather shabby priestly robe, with the left half of his face turned into a blue-red chop, because of which only one eye was visible because the other one had swollen to a Japanese-Chinese cut, with a level and classes unreadable to my eyes, but emanating Grimmentray's power in many ways stronger than his Servants and even Heralds. Somehow, there was no doubt that through the eyes and a half of the uncle standing before me, soiled in the remains of devils, his God was looking at me, looking very carefully and ready to multiply us all by zero.

He appeared cool. It must be said.

"Greetings." Despite the background and the sense of grace bursting through the body of the man who had come, he didn't let the strength in his voice out. "You did not call me, of course, but I took the liberty of coming uninvited. My name is Jerem Steyr, and I would like to talk."

For some reason, his "I wasn't called, but I came" gave me a strange mixture of deja vu and slight jealousy, as if it was something I should have said, but I couldn't catch the reason for this strange mood. I'll admit that for the first time in a long time, I was thrown off balance right from the start of the conversation. I should have thought of a nice way to take the initiative, but the general weakness, the recent tension, and the coming backlash from my dancing today had knocked me off my game, even if only for a second.

"Hey, what the fuck?" the ever-eloquent Taria replies almost without pause and without any piety to our guest, who had saved our asses instead of frying them on the spot.

Thank you, sweetheart, what would I do without you?

The main thing now was that the priest didn't fuck up in real life because his one eye was looking at the swearing bandit, and at me, and Hestia, and Tia, and at Giver, who was occupying the cultist's body, looking like Lenin at the bourgeoisie, like an engineer at a humanist, like a tech support at a user. The only one he didn't stare at as if through a tank scope was Losius, but even he looked at him with coldness.

Not attacking.

He protected them from discovery and the inevitable battle that had no chance of winning.

I have no idea what he wants from us. But while he's talking, we're not being attacked by a Warrior's coterie. And a single High Priest - if he's not a High Cleric, I'll go to the monastery - if we're in a crowd, we can get even tired ones, even if it's our last feat. In general, he gave a reason for dialog, as well as developed a certain credibility, but I do not believe in his virtue, as I do not believe in the fact that they will let us go just like that. We'll have to be diplomatic and pull out the hard - and what else would they be? - negotiations.

It's okay. Diplomatic is my second name.

And for emergencies, I have Taria.

After all, how could I possibly screw this up?

* * *

Author's Note:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1eT55QYBdWhTN00YWolSnR3thfJQcAca5/view?usp=sharing - Typical Herald of War.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/132IiNv7dnmtZMQaeyQpNfjELSp2PLpyX/view?usp=sharing - Or such.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RBJT6zxzh_PRTXR0AAQAeRm9ed7rXVNQ/view?usp=sharing - And there may be such things.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1rfGr82CzopjST6gqJXskasB0T2BVLLpY/view?usp=sharing - Or such, though it's closer to the Grimentreys.

* * *

Well, I finished it and, if you're reading this comment, I also managed to finish it before the good people start hitting power lines. For the same reason, the proofreading is extremely hurried, even sloppy, so don't throw armor slippers - I was in a hurry.

38 pages. I had to add a bit after all, the chapter ended on an important note, and in the next one, the most problematic will be the rolls in diplomacy, as it could go either way.

The dice were not that nervous, but Hero was unlucky in almost everything, except for the sword he got on his penultimate attempt. Which he still has to learn how to use. The team didn't have any specialists, if only Tia knew how to use a two-handed sword.

The Manga, which was familiar from the omaks, was a pure reference, and yes, it was the same manga, but it didn't work in time because Tia only held it through the defense and immediately tried to destroy it by activating the manga's saving mechanism. It didn't hit her, did it? Right?

The cubes only give out the most epic ones, and they are almost entirely from Kostja, the librarians, and Warrior

The first one got another title from the Mocker branch, having caused a story-worthy massacre with a careless word, and no words at all. There were a lot of rolls, but the first pure crit only added bonuses and it was almost four hundred in a row (but they are not one throw, but separate, connected by a common frame). The outcome can be seen in the pages of the book.

And yes, with the failure of some rolls, and all of them at once, MC's class could have remained mythic but stopped being Overlord because he was really almost fucked by the Ancient creatures. I honestly expected him to pull out at the expense of reserve and shutting off the Armada tap, but the Ancient's disguise is still too cool. He noticed too late. I didn't even have time to really start cursing about the need to throw a bunch of dice for further movement with this problem, but the first roll, just on the Mocker branch, solved the problem.

The Library, or rather its main ritualist, gave out about fifteen hundred, all with bonuses, but still - they really made sure that the city, its remains, survived. Due to bonuses almost never fell below 80, and all the failures are the work of the Bringer, who, fighting off the Serpent, tried to prevent the inevitable.

Here, an example of already clean and counted throws including bonuses: 87, 90, 90, 92, 92, 100, 72 (the Bringer's blow), 66 ( avoiding its consequences), 100 (ritualists compensate, consequences are minimal), 95, 90, 84....

I'll also note that Hans finally improved his class because it stopped being funny. Of all the options chosen, not the strongest possible one, even closer to the weakest half, but still useful. The Trail Master is like a Walker, only whereas the one on the Trails moves himself, possibly leading someone else along. This one primarily moves everyone around him.

Giver has decided to wait out the trouble in the meat sack. It's not entirely obvious, but the cultist is the same one who killed the Samurai glimpsed in Farewell. And yes, it's even more non-obvious, but she was led by Giver, among other smaller creatures. That was why she had found it so clearly and successfully because she knew the imprint and sound of poor Maria's viciousness. The cultist herself was already a vegetable, though there were variants in which they would live together in the same body, but it didn't work out. Giver decided to be reassured and not to keep next to her the one who was loyal to Sovereign. Who knows what did her kind colleagues leave in her brain?

Jerem.

There are so many spoilers that it's even scary to write, but the main hints are given in the text. The most obvious, the very first layer, he would not mind warming under his wing Losius, as the bearer of the mythical artifact of summoning and as the one who saved his skin. What he thinks about MC, what he's going to do next, and why he intervened against the Warrior in the first place have also been hinted at, including this chapter, but they are vague and may yet prove to be false (even now I haven't fully decided on the next line).

As for the next chapter... everything is like in the status of VK. It's very complicated, starting from work and ending with probable precipitation in the form of extremely vicious hail, so I'll be cautious about guessing. Not in the next month and a half, most likely, and I just hoped to get into a normal rhythm.

T.N.
Q: If we assume that Sovereign's power is one unit, how many units is the Weaver's power?
A: About 2.8, maybe even a full 3.