Chapter 14

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  Stepan did not take the promotion by investing the free points the next morning or even the very next day. He decided to take a little rest, to rex after the hardest tension. It even seemed a little strange to him at first, but the revenge he had experienced was more mentally draining in many ways than the battle with a horde of evil spirits. There was something ironic about it, but also understandable. That fight had been forced upon him, but here he'd come himself, and killed people, even if many of them didn't deserve to be called such. Why not give himself some positive emotions, since he had closed the most important cases anyway? Torture Meld with tasks to develop his mind, drink wine in the inn, chat with Kirik, just lie in the snow at night, and look at the stars. All this was of no avail, but Stepan felt the vise of stress slowly releasing him, loosening its merciless grip. No one, but he should keep an eye on his cuckoo and not let it fly away to warm nds. This world will survive a simple young psycho, a magically gifted one, too, but a magically gifted psycho with a System is not a sure thing.

  However, he had been doing nothing, blessed and holy, for exactly forty-eight hours, and he couldn't stand it any longer, starting to put back the load he had reduced. This was primarily a test of his increased abilities, and this test in itself lifted his spirits and made him forget some of his worries. The young man had noticed before that his abilities were limited not only by his knowledge but also by the ck of development of his magical potential. A too-shallow reserve, insufficient power of auric nodes, weak control, and, of course, ck of Spirit and Sensitivity are his two main characteristics, the heart of the shaman css itself. The sudden upward spurt had an expectedly positive effect. It was felt precisely in the fact that those tricks for which he had had to fiddle around with intensified chanting, more preparation, and a lot of precautions, now worked without them. Well, at least without some of those preparatory precautions.

  There was another important circumstance: since Stepan didn't mind either preparation or caution, he could jump even higher now, using the same preparation and cunning tricks. The work was not less, but it was much easier. What used to take half a day to accomplish before he had two elite properties at once was now done in a couple of hours, and what took hours was done in minutes. The Spirit was the key to understanding the high realms, and this very spirit in his performance reached twelve units, which even for a master was a lot. And he rose to three divisions at once, where each was much more significant than the previous one, and the higher he went, the brighter the gap became. In many ways, that was why he did nothing for the first few days. He was getting used to how the world around him had opened up in a new way, how the universe had embraced him as if bestowing a drop of grace on its child.

  The high Spirit allowed him to draw power from the world, compensating for the retively modest Reserve, allowing him to work more closely with the spheres, pushing their ws with his own will, allowed him to order weak and small entities without calls, with a single wish. It was impossible to tell how much it allowed, both the things he had noticed earlier, just to a greater extent, and something completely new! Stepan was simply lost in these changes, habitually cautious, not wishing to injure himself. But the Sensitivity had also grown. That allowed him to understand what exactly had changed in him and his surroundings! The young man caught himself thinking that he could switch to magic or spiritual vision almost effortlessly and without the need to concentrate, very confidently adjusting the crity and depth of each type of perception, their intersection with each other. And without magic, the world was opening up from new sides to the point that he slowly learned to look through walls, or just around him, as if perceiving the world not with separate senses, but as a whole, creating a circle with himself in the center, where he just knew. He knew the boot had rolled under the bed without even looking under it. He knew that one of the threshold steps was loose and might crack. He knew that the threads of the seam on his shirt sleeve were slightly separated. He knew, he knew, he knew, he knew.

  That's why he didn't hurry, bringing himself in full order with pleasure and calmness, at the same time testing the limits of his abilities. He intuitively, even without the help of the help, understood that he was on the verge when the System would recognize him as a Senior Shaman, it was only necessary to put in the st points, and it gave him a kind of pride. Mastering the new took almost a week and a couple of small quests from the System with a penny reward, which he used to test himself. Tested, mastered, and assured, began the intended remodeling of the clearing into something more comprehensible and even made some progress before he decided to raise his attributes. He had been thinking about what exactly to raise, where to invest the invaluable two points, and what to spend them on, for a long time, and after the spurt that had happened, he was only more convinced of his rightness.

  There were many things he wanted to increase. No path would be useless. Everything would have its use. Constitution, which would increase survivability and reveal more fully the aspects of working with one's life force. Source, which determines the giftedness of an individual and increases the reserve. Power, which will increase the value and nourishment of his strength, strengthens the spiritual form and the nodes of the auric sheath. Control, which will work well in conjunction with the newly taken multiplicity of awareness. Even the Resistance, which was frozen at a dismal one and, once raised, would make him more dangerous and less vulnerable in spirit form. There wasn't a characteristic that couldn't benefit, it wasn't a game after all, no matter how much the System made you think otherwise. Not a game at all, but a reflection of the real properties and characteristics of subtle bodies. All the options remained archipotent, each of them could move him forward, diversify the doctrine of development and approach to it, but in fact, the options were still obvious, like Stepan's css, chosen on the first day.

  He is a Shaman. The essence of his nature is Spirit, which gives power over Spheres, strengthens that power, and imposes it on reality, on its underside, on its inhabitants, as well as Sensitivity, which makes it possible to apply this Spirit in the right way, to understand what it allows you to see, to reveal the hidden and highlight the obvious. Yes, any option is avaible and any of them are useful, but it is not for nothing that these two attributes are called css attributes for him, is it? There would come a time when he would raise the gging stats as well if he couldn't raise them through quests, but that time would not come now. Stepan spent the next three days investing three free characteristic points, even if it was technically two. The additional free point received for taking a ten in an attribute hinted very strongly about investing one in the Sensitivity, bringing it up to the same ten.

  He put it in, and then another, bringing the Sensitivity to eleven, and the Spirit to thirteen, each time taking a pause and spending at least a dozen hours in continuous meditation, trying to see and understand as much as possible, as best he could adapt to the changes. He was doing quite well, combining rather zy calls with a gradual exploration of new horizons, and he was not surprised when another message from the System caught up with him. This time it was of a completely unfamiliar hue, the images had a different interpretation, and in general, it seemed to him as if this message-image was even a little solemn.

  The Shaman css has reached a developmental milestone.

  New Css: "Senior Shaman."

  Css features have changed: every tenth level you gain one more talent point; bonus talent point can only be spent in the meta-skills section; unique elite-type meta-skills will be avaible for selection. One of the main css skills can be upgraded by one level without spending free talent points.

  The choice of advanced css specialization will become avaible at the twenty-fifth level; avaible options for advanced specialization will be granted based on status modifications already in pce.

  Subcss choices will become avaible at the thirtieth level; avaible subcss options will be provided based on status modifications already in pce.

  Stepan smiled a tired but satisfied smile, compining mentally about the way the System evaluated its adepts. He'd been in the Senior Shaman css for quite some time now, not to mention his knowledge. But no, he was recognized only now, though he should have been recognized a long time ago. On the other hand, such indignation is like compining that his pearls are small and his diamonds are not cut well enough. The manner of the System to take into account any ranks and the degree of understanding of individual knowledge on the highest of the pnks, on the contrary, should be a sacred cow to him! What did he care that the system did not recognize him as a senior, if he could consider himself one in fact? Well, a little bit, just a little bit, in certain directions? Now, now he could do more than a little, but it was still better to stay away from battle mages of the same rank and not to piss off the powerful assholes.

  He was more excited by the mention of the possibility of choosing a subcss and specialization of the main css, but a slight resentment and irritation quickly repced this excitement. Taking into account that status modifications would be considered for specialization and subcssing, he already guessed what options would be offered to him, as well as understood that the Autogoddess could give some gifts herself, without asking. He could only hope that he would not be handed some "Caller of Passions" by force, but would be allowed to choose one himself. They had allowed it before. He had the option of not picking that special css. Moreover, Stepan did not doubt that he would be able to choose himself. But they would just start waving a suspiciously shaped carrot in front of his face again, showing what cool development options were avaible to him out of the goodness of Milf heart. It seems that nothing of this kind has happened yet, but his ass is burning already now as if his ass suddenly acquired prophetic abilities!

  The possibility to choose not only a property but also a meta-skill of high awesomeness at a multiple of ten levels was certainly appealing to him, especially since this choice would be a normal one, not an Autogoddess one. And even if she added something of her own, it wouldn't change the fact that Stepan would choose at least one meta-skill himself. The hell knows what option he will choose and what kind of options will be avaible, but he already likes it a priori very much, give him more, and you can do it right away, without waiting for thirty level.

  The st in order of priority, but not in importance, he was occupied with increasing the basic css knowledge: either calls or dialog, up to a new level. It was possible to choose only one of the two, the usefulness of both areas was undeniable. They were not in vain considered the backbone of the css power of the shaman. In principle, Stepan intended to invest in the dialog, as he always did. He was accustomed to not rushing into the higher level calls without being allowed to speak intelligibly to what he summoned. Yes, the Spirit that had grown to thirteen and the Sensitivity that had crossed ten, would allow him to compensate for the g through high stats, but it would still be an unnecessary risk. So Stepan, having finished preparing for the creation of another cloaking boundary in the clearing, - channeled excess power and spiritual reflections into an additional totem and from there into the deeper yers of the spheres, so as not to shine either in reality or the near yers of the spiritual world - returned to the house, had dinner, pyed a little with the transfer of the training chair from the world of spirits to reality, and raised "advanced developed practices of spiritual dialog" to a new level, receiving "master practices of spiritual dialog".

  As always with this pair of knowledge, the wave of information touched all aspects bit by bit, equally enhancing the interaction with whatever knowledge was avaible. The spiritual dialog of the new rank was revealed not only by an increase in the quality of understanding or the transmission of images as before, no. The change was noticeably deeper, as was the transition to mastery itself. Images acquired multiple shades. It became much easier to py with halftones, partial truth, or btant lies, to disguise one thing as another or another as one thing disguised by another. Different and branched methods appeared, which would help to recognize such attempts on the part of the interlocutor or opponent. The skill of dialog is not only to confuse or deceive but also to subdue, to transfer the will of the spirit not only by the power of the spirit itself but by the subtlety of its use, to confuse and confuse, to change the accents of the contract to almost opposite. Here is a very significant synergy with the skills of suggestive, spiritual form and its use, as well as patchwork echo.

  Methods of interaction with different spirits within different dialog paradigms. Some tricks and types of communication for combat summons, are quite different for healing ones, even if the same spirit is summoned, just for different tasks. Combat use isn't monolithic either. Calling a spirit to attack or defense. Against sentient or beasts. Against mindless creatures, or quite intelligent bastards. Work with the concepts of debt and promises to pay ter, ways to persuade to work on credit, dey payments or get rid of them altogether, convincing the spirit that he has already been paid, that he has already received the necessary payment, or that he is still owed. Precise instructions to the spirits-healers, cursers, or masters of the curse to remove the curse, to charmers and suggestors, guiding them even in the smallest details, leaving nothing to chance and thus increasing the effectiveness of the work of spirits with subtle specialties, while also reducing costs.

  Dosage of power when investing in images or feeding the spirit is also a form of dialog. The ability to force spirits to do more for the same or less pay, so they are not angry or angry but still do the work. Strengthening the resonance of images through totems, spell territory, the use of the resonator as part of the overall defense array, reliance on the source, and turning it into a de facto beacon-semaphore for a variety of purposes. Up to summoning a huge crowd of hungry scum in order to organize a small and pocket magical apocalypse in a small or not-so-small town. Although, okay, just in the cities magical sources protect very well, including from such an approach to organize the destruction.

  Stepan learned all this with a satisfied smile and understanding that he had not made a mistake in his choice, especially when he began to analyze the pluses to combat skills and agent work. It all ended with an unscheduled trip to the beach, to sit on the bank of the ice-covered river and throw pebbles into the river. The fact that the ice covered the river completely did not prevent him from doing this important work. Small pebbles in Stepan's hands acquired a strange shimmering and with a slight movement of his finger were sent into flight at a distance of up to a hundred meters, on the way glowing red-hot, or even white-hot. So by the time the pebble fell on the surface of the ice shell, it pierced the shell like a red-hot butter knife, quickly cooling down in the icy water.

  Further pns for the next levels were slowly emerging. It would be necessary to increase the call practice, as well as to strengthen the dialog again, up to the maximum on the current characteristics. Then it would be worthwhile to take up spiritual transformation and maybe the same agency work, which could be increased to the avaible maximum one more time. Paranoia said that the tter should be raised right at this very moment, but he, thank the gods, has not yet so legacy, and the worldwide search for the ass of one owner of the System, modest and not arranging world cataclysms, is not yet conducted. From this thought for some reason a wave of cold drops ran down his back, as if he slipped into the river, at the bank of which he sat down on a stone warmed by spirits, making him shiver and shrug his shoulders. Trying to listen to the sudden chill, or the fsh of strange intuition - for the owner of high indicators of Spirit and Sensitivity, such omens and fshes of intuitive sense of threat are not so unusual - the young man with some excitement moved the prospect of increasing the agent work a little higher in the list of priorities.

  He finished his reflections by tossing into the air the same boulder, the size of a watermelon and a half, on which he had been sitting all this time, also warming it up with the spirit of the fiery and hot sphere, and accelerating it and directing it into flight with the aspects of feather and lightness. It was only when there was a resounding smack in the middle of the river, a muffled pop, and the hiss of boiling water, that he realized he had overdone it a bit. The vilge was asleep, and no one seemed to be wandering by the river in the middle of the night, so there shouldn't be any witnesses, especially given the brightness of the red-hot cobblestones in the near-darkness. The shaman ughed quietly, even embarrassed and ashamed, and looked at the vilge from a bird's-eye view, took stock of the disgruntled boatman's face - the same one who had finally recognized Meld as a nice guy - and looked out the window to see the source of the noise and went back to his pce with a quick step, covering his tracks with another call. Well, in childhood many children liked to py with matches, so he, apparently, is falling into that very childhood. Although, if anything, he will tell everyone that it was he who patented a new method of killing fish with simultaneous boiling of fish soup, right in the river.

  Early in the morning, after hearing new rumors from Meld that some beast had fallen through the ice on the river that night. Nodding with a deep thoughtfulness on his face, Stepan said he could go to the forest again for a while, so there was no need to worry if anything and began to create new lines of defense. Now, with an approximate understanding of the concept of the final version of his works, the work went more cheerfully, and he was interested, himself interested, and such an attitude was always the best incentive to work, along with sary and bonuses. Since no one paid him any money, except for the System that issued currency for the store, Stepan had to compensate for everything with the pleasure of his bor. On the other hand, even if he were given a million dolrs in cash every week, he wouldn't be able to do anything with those papers, except sell them as funny pictures or use them instead of kindling and toilet paper.

  So, pondering whether the burning of several million eternally green monetary units would be considered a valuable sacrifice if the shaman-sacrificer knows their value, but the offering itself is worthless in this world, he finished another call. Six spirits, all strong, albeit on the border of the usual trifle, rose above the clearing in a strict circle, creating a rainbow barely recognizable even at close range, but quite a real rainbow, and then began to circle around the clearing, raising a light breeze-vortex, as well as putting their changes in the surrounding reality. Their influence created an artificial whirlpool in the magical currents, masking the sensors of both cssical magic and witchcraft. This vortex should not just appear to be a natural fluctuation of the magic field, slightly enhanced by the calls of a young shaman in the rank of apprentice, it should become such without arousing suspicion. To hide the second and much more amusing fact behind the first yer. At any moment, this vortex could be put on the afterburner, destabilizing the work of amulets, shields, or simply weaves of supposedly unkind guests, the spirits and totems in the center, on the contrary, feeding additional infusions of power, which do not need to be pumped out by force, which themselves flow into the reserves and spiritual bodies.

  It will also strengthen the other spirits, but that's what totems are for, to determine by marking those to whom this strengthening will go, to unfocus the vortex into small streams and direct them not anywhere, but exactly to the right pce. The same witchcraft practices had to be countered by the same witchcraft change of the surrounding earth, its reflection in the spheres: this earth was tightly bound to totems, making them, in fact, removable altars. The totems themselves were still transportable and portable, as totems should be, even if rge, but as long as they were in that pce, their resonance with the terrain served as both shield and amplification. Of course, such a bridge could be used two ways, and a strong spellcaster could attempt to subdue or damage totems through this same connection to the nd and terrain. Only it would have to be a very strong caster, not much weaker than Stepan's shaman, and there was a defense there - simple, not refined, based on guardian spirits sleeping in the ground, on cunning traps and self-locking circles, but also very powerful. Banal poured with power to the most wow-oh-oh, so longer to take off, even if you take off. And beneath the bright and powerful protection, which a master, a true master, could simply bypass or intercept, were as thin signal webs as Stepan could make them thin with the help of his ghostly grasp and the summoned spirit-silkworm.

  The six creators of the rainbow continued to irradiate the clearing and the shaman standing in its center with rainbow rays, who from the fshed association barely kept the whole connection under control, not destroying the chains of sent images only due to his super-property for simultaneous control of spirits. Yes, that's what a real magic rainbow is, only without gay radiation. Thoughtful shaman even calcuted what spirits he should call to create not just a rainbow, but really changing the orientation of all under its light caught. It should not be a simple suggestor or charmer, which will rewrite the preferences of one victim, no. Area impact with reference to non-material light radiation - such a straightforward he will not even tell how to pull off, and even if he did, he would not dare to take on more levels ... many levels ... many levels. If anything, it would be his most terrible weapon, his st argument in case of a decisive battle with his own common sense!

  Returning to the subject of changes installed in the structure of the clearing. Most were still reted to masking and diverting attention, turning this "boratory" into something inconspicuous and perfectly merging with the surrounding background. Specialized spirits covered the outer barrier with another barrier, blocking parasitic effluents, and masking them under the natural background, some of the specific suggestors created the effect of wandering, not confusing traces, but literally turning the brain to find nothing and "naturally" bypassing the uninteresting pce. Here the second yer of the same suggestion was just set up to break the sense of distance, to change the consciousness, to deprive the will and drive insane, or even simply, to make one lie down, fall asleep, and not wake up. Dark nature spirits in the roots of trees, which will braid the persistent sleeper, drag the dying body under the ground, and feed the guardian spirits, were included in the package. He had to ensure he didn't let his inner and deadly defenses overstep the line of ordinary and non-lethal disguise, and he didn't want mushroom pickers to disappear in the forest.

  A strong, very strong, and unpleasant spirit of the same suggestive type was summoned and settled in a small totem that Stepan hung on the tallest tree in his clearing. He had to deprive himself of almost all his weight, like a feather or a leaf, and then blow a stream of wind up his ass, controlling his flight and correcting his course. The totem was housed in an old hollow tree, deliberately expanded from the inside, and properly treated both by the spirits and Stepan himself through his spirit body. The store-bought wood dust of an old and very magical tree from the far north, even in the bitter cold, made his hands even stronger, but the spirit wanted just such bedding for the totem. He could demand it because it was an excellent and extremely rare specialist who created not just a deafening barrier to consciousness, but carefully diverted other people's attention in another direction. So as not to arouse suspicion or trigger protective amulets, which, in standard and even advanced equipment, are almost useless against its effects.

  In addition to the main property, which only strengthened the already imposed effects, this summoning had another, much rger one. The essence did not allow itself and the protected by its will to be seen by any fortune-tellers. Of course, a good fortune-teller or cirvoyant who can with sufficient confidence find the right person or pce, not in every state present and to stop such a spirit it will not work, only slightly confused. But more simple specialists, and from indirect search and without reliance on the auric-spiritual impression - he almost bit his tongue when he thanked Milfosaurus for the spiritual echo on reflex - such an essence will protect and shelter. It was not that Stepan didn't need more, it was just that he couldn't achieve more at once. Unless he binds himself to a pce. If he doesn't buy insanely expensive supplies. If he doesn't stoop to bckness, hiding himself and his pce behind the fate of a sughtered victim. If he doesn't take crazy risks in summoning elder spirits.

  Another call was no longer a Suggestor or Charmer - oh, Stepan smiled at Mr. Burns from The Simpsons every time he called up brainiacs for normal, not Autogoddess, work - referring to spirits without a clear sphere, but he was just amazingly good at working with methods of installing barriers from the spirit world. He put up these barriers one after another, while Stepan only had time to throw offerings into the bzing greenish fmes, and with his phantom hand to throw the most primitive chunks of totems into the spirit world. The spirit itself helped to summon younger brethren, also without sphere and clear specialization, generally useless trifles, but it charged it with a part of itself. Not even "he", but "she", for this entity felt as if it had become a mother marked by it. And the children of such a mother acquired part of the properties of the one who had forcibly and without asking, strengthened this totem, creating a cellur and self-fueled barrier. Totems, having disappeared from reality were not carried away by the currents in the world of spheres, but as if to grow into it, exactly on the pces where the necessary sign-symbol was carved or hollowed out on trees or stones. Such rooted points of support will exist as long as there continues to be a central structure feeding the cells.

  The symbols, by the way, had to be cut not even with daggers for rituals, which, frankly speaking, were too small and weak for him, but with his fingernail, which had lengthened and strengthened like a beast cw and was also red-hot. The essence did not like obsidian or bones, so its children would also go to such signs reluctantly, so I had to twist it with the sub-settlement of the spirit of the beast in myself at the same time, and without a clear beast, this cwed and predatory something, and then polish it with a second sub-settlement, only already fiery essence. The sensations from the partially spirit-like flesh and therefore able to morph into a cwed grasp on his arm were indescribable, but they were not particurly disgusting either. The simultaneous presence of two different entities in the same body caused more problems, because they involuntarily conflicted because of the difference in perception, and Stepan had to keep both of them in check. Also, we can not forget the annoying need to remove all his clothes and climb through the forest naked, otherwise, the contact with the skin fabric began to smoke. And the clothes themselves were wearing out a bit during his stay in the new world, though he tried to take care of them, and at this rate, he would have to renew them. Well, or to buy in the store, there, as it seemed, were appropriate sections, both ordinary and armored, and even enchanted (and, optionally, armored) clothes.

  The spirit was too much death and necrotic presence to leave it unattended, but he preferred to eat the offerings only after they had passed through a mixture of fme and death, like another ghost. Strangely, the spirit had no connection to death but preferred to eat the offerings only after they had passed through a mixture of fme and death, like another ghost. An unusual creature, but compliant and, more importantly, one that had nothing against complex and punishing contracts to ensure that no one would then use the bond of "mother" and "children" to bypass the barriers. Apparently, the entity didn't give a sneeze about such peculiar offspring at all, let alone remember them, connect to them, use them to merge with the defenses, and make a treacherous strike against the shaman. However, this did not prevent Stepan, after the transaction was over and the sun had set, from crawling through the same snow drifts and sprinkling the signs and beacons of the totems absent in reality with a mixture of the power-saturated blood of several gifted ones, strongest alcohol and a couple of herbs to finally break the bond of "parent and child", preserving the other effects.

  He had to drink the rest of the reagent, about one shot, and exhaled a cloud of fme from his mouth in response. He still hadn't let go of the fire spirit, simply because he had to keep himself warm all this time. And no, he drank not to warm himself, but to close the ritual knots on himself, beginning to feel them fully, not just through his reliance on the totemic base of the clearing. Actually, Stepan's blood would have been suitable here, not the substrate bought in the system store. But it was already calmer for him to make additional efforts and spend than to leave his blood here and the connection on this blood with a bunch of totems. That was obvious even without the knowledge of agency work, but with them, it was triply so. Stepan never would have thought there were so many different ways to use such a connection and misstep against an isekai.

  The young man sat for a while longer, resting, sipping on a mixture of wine, honey, and strengthening herbs, gncing at the next offer of the week and wrinkling his face with an involuntary toothache. No, not because it was an item from Autogoddess, oddly enough. It was a contract anchor-totem to connect with a very powerful spirit, not even an elder spirit, but a full-fledged higher spirit, albeit a weak one, who specialized in curses, rge-scale and area curses that penetrated even through standard defenses and were very difficult to remove. It was not worth it to call against individual and experienced sorcerers, there are many better specialists even among the lower-ranked representatives, but against armies, besieged cities, and rge units it was a cheat, imba, and perdition.

  The spirit inflicted tooth decay and tooth rot, which only seems frivolous, but not when the whole army and even the weak gifted in a cluster become toothless. And not when, without full-fledged magical treatment, tooth decay and bite marks turn into rotting bones of the jaw and face, necrosis, gangrene, brain damage, and mass death. A very cssy and reliable way to take beautiful revenge on a city you personally dislike and make the whole world go after you alone, nothing to say. Stepan wasn't sure that if he had had enough purchasing power - about a third of the asking price was missing - he would have held back from buying it. Because to buy this sinister shit was very much wanted, as well as carefully and well prepared to burn this totem together with the inhabitant. The price, common sense, and the understanding that even with such a treacherous blow there was a risk of getting the death kicks from the offended spirit. He already dislikes dentists from childhood and reacts to the sound of the drill with Vietnamese fshbacks.

  Nothing, tomorrow this lot will change to a new one and, I have a hunch, it will be something from the Big Milfs category, so today's cause of irritation will be safely forgotten behind the new one.

  * * *

  The work on the clearing was not suddenly completed, but for a moment Stepan felt a slight surprise that there was no need to do anything else, no need to redo anything, no need to urgently search for a repcement for the spirit that had gotten restless, no need to send a second batch of hounds after the restless and bribe-taking smart guy, because he had managed to fend off the first one by some miracle, or anything else. It was a good time, filled with bold decisions, original use of familiar techniques, and a lot of mental swearing, which in the most difficult moments ceased to be mental. Stepan had covered the central clearing and its totems with such a dense yer of territorial and spiritual influences that the clearing was partly a world of spheres, not a boring reality. This was an idea he'd picked up from his little knowledge of the protective distorting shield dubbed the preternatural. Of course, it was impossible to drag all the totems to the spirit world, as well as the clearing, but he had created something close to the spatial cuna, where the metric of space became a little alien. Now, it was impossible to find the clearing with totems by purely physical search, even if you threw searchers with a catapult.

  Received: "advanced basic techniques of territorial influences"; increased affinity with higher spheres; increased probability of acquiring knowledge and properties of the branch of witchcraft; facilitated the process of gaining control over the territory.

  The acquired talent is added to the overall Pyer Status.

  Stepan hoped a little that his work with totems would increase. But in the end, he was too much carried away by territorial spells. He did not make new totems, only improved and modified the old ones. In any case, now all he had to do was shake off his hands and make a sham, a kind of pce where an ordinary apprentice shaman could call for the whole winter and part of the fall. And the young man would definitely do it, as soon as he learned new knowledge and habitually took a short day off. He deserved it. The increased talent is direct evidence. It was not surprising that he had improved, for he did a lot of work with an emphasis on the very basis of the necessary knowledge, which was always cking, and had to be compensated for by calls of the necessary spirits, or by direct influence through the ghostly body, or, yes, yes, by relying on totems. The tter really helped and Stepan was tempted to start a new cycle of improvements, but now to develop these totems to a new level of system skill. The only thing that stopped him was the camoufge, which was perfect now, and the work with new elements would start to undermine it, especially if it was done immediately and without preliminary calcutions.

  He had learned his new knowledge in the clearing, ying on the ground warmed by the spirits and falling into a trance. Much of it he'd used in one way or another over the weeks, on one side or the other. Different tasks, different goals, different skills, but it was enough to let the System fill in the bnks and increase Stepan's magical erudition some more and some more. As in the st time, the main synergy came from the connection with totem shamanism, because the totem in its essence is often associated with the territory and therefore the newest knowledge is close to it. However, other directions were also not left out, including the techniques of remote influences, which unexpectedly revealed a new side. The ability to pull a part of the power over a piece of nd and space to the pce where the thread of control over the spirit, could be an extremely pleasant addition to the already familiar methods of supporting the retinue at a distance.

  Countering curses and their imposition with emphasis on the territory, spell tricks with the same support or against it, methods to confuse traces, minds, consciousness, and perception, creating enchanted forests or other "byrinths" in which it is possible to lose attackers or simply enemies. Using the support in the form of territory for powerful calls of the proper type, hiding these calls or in general any interaction with spirits in order to maximize the sudden impact or other impact. Accelerating gaining power over the territory by infusing reserve, reagents, one's own life, or whatever. Especially memorable was not even a ritual, but a whole methodology of quickly gaining power over a castle, pace, or rge mansion, if you sleep with its female owner (or the owner's wife), using specific tantric practices.

  Healing yourself or someone else while they are within the power of territorial control, imposing mass blessings and curses. Methods of powerful calls, especially with the use of a full-fledged magical source, when you call at once a swarm of all sorts of crap binding them together with a common will, and the rollback from the load dumped on the subordinate territory. This often results in the fact that the earth literally drinks dry, killing pnts, expelling or also killing animals and insects, mutiting or destabilizing sources, but you can for some time call as if you have, figuratively speaking, infinite ammunition.

  There were many such tricks, new recipes for summoning, and even some interesting charmers, though not the kind Stepan would have summoned. He wouldn't have summoned them, but it was possible to evaluate the approach and look for someone simir, with a different role and specialization. For example, a funny spirit and a description of the necessary ritual that allowed a vampire or a vampiress drunk with his or someone else's blood, to immerse him or her in forced sleep in a special grave where the power over the earth was extremely high, and then to start fixing the victim's brains ignoring the defense of consciousness and the natural resistance of the inanimate essence tied to blood magic. Yes, you can't bend a strong bloodsucker like that, and yes, you have to catch the victim first, - although there were ways to do it all without being noticed by the not quite-alive recipient, - yes, it's still a bit hard, but it's a fact! And no, Stepan didn't want to get a pale and gothic beauty of a couple of centuries of age and with hands covered in blood up to the top of her head, thank you, because it was somehow dangerous to get involved in gothic.

  But it is a great idea for a ritual trap against the undead or even a specific exorcism, just change the mediator, remove the charmer, and call a spirit with the aspect of the same light or life with purity, supplementing it with an anchor, not on blood, but based on a curse and the remains of one of the drunken victims and it's done! If not kill the bloodsucker, then at least localize and weaken it before the battle, which is a lot, especially if it is an old and experienced creature. Yes, a mighty ancient or experienced supreme will not make such a mistake, he will clean up all traces of his meal, making the body of the drunk a useless piece of meat, and most likely not leaving the body in a visible pce at all. And so, yes, even the higher ones, from the younger ones, could be picked off by such tactics, especially if they don't know about such tactics or have never encountered them.

  "Call me Stepan van Helsing." The young man said a little pompously into the darkness of the night, but immediately thought back and corrected his hasty phrase. "No, it's better not to call. Don't call at all. Not at all. I don't want to get hooked on hunting deadly filth."

  He ate a dinner of cold porridge and fried fish with a wild amount of horseradish as if Kirik's wife had accidentally thrown his entire stock into the dish. Tears flowed even more profusely than those of female students after watching Titanic, and his breath, already without the presence of a fire spirit in his body, was ready to start setting fire to the furniture in the house. Having breathed and resolutely told himself that it was a clear overdoing with spices, but he would definitely try it again, - and what to do if any spices are very expensive, since the Middle Ages, albeit magical, and you want to eat spicy food, - Stepan... no, he didn't go to bed, he didn't feel like it. Instead of sleeping, he pyed with the protection on the house until the morning, modifying it and making it as imperceptible and durable as possible. He'd still have to leave this house for Meld, so he'd let the little shit live better here, his health would be better, and his dreams would be more pleasant. Nothing outstanding, but still a decent job, on par with the older man he'd become, even in the eyes of the picky system.

  He fell asleep only in the afternoon, literally drowsy, thanks to his completely disrupted sleep schedule. The young man did not resist, covered the window with the very spirit that he liked to eat light, creating a cozy darkness for himself, and turned off. He dreamed, as he always did tely, of some fierce nonsense, the kind of nonsense that one would have to try to think up on purpose. Pepe's battle toads, casting fiery Inferno on the squares, leaving only one complete ash heap, Pinocchio covered with prison tattoos, asking something about "hit with nose in the eye or in the ass once". Stepan poured fmes from a fmethrower on him, but the fmes fell powerlessly from the shining magical protection of magic partakes. The male Commander Shepard, sobbing desperately, dropped his hands into his palms and screamed that he didn't sign up for this, while the female Commander Shepard comfortingly cpped him on the shoulder of his armored suit and told him that he was strong and therefore he could handle it.

  Some elements were less memorable than others, like a fantasy town where a seductive female figure in a tight bck shinobi costume was quietly sneaking forward, dragging an unconscious body on her back. Others, on the contrary, were memorized even too clearly, imprinting in the head with persistent images. Here Stepan, out of breath and tired of fighting off vaguely from whom, jumps into an inconspicuous wooden door, but behind the door awaits him only half-darkness, torch lights, and an athletically built elf in a spiky gachi harness and with a whip in his hands, and this elf's face is naturally old, like that of a man under fifty. And this man says: "Looks like you've come to the wrong Forest, friend-pie. Do you know what Uncle One here does to people like you?" Stepan naturally didn't know, but he guessed, and so with the battle cry of a castrated saiga, he ran in the opposite direction, leaving the strange gachi-elf behind.

  SpoilerT.N. Gachi it from gachimuchi.

  [colpse]It was a dream in which Stepan had to fight off a crowd of people of different races, professions, and specialties, but he only had to look at the empty faces of the assholes attacking him, and it began to seem to him that he was being attacked by some mannequins with the faces of rag dolls. And from each of them stretched invisible threads leading to the spider puppet, but he could not see it clearly, and there was no point. At some point Stepan realized that was dreaming, though he never stopped running, still trying to see his main opponent, as if it had become very important. But the image of the enemy was double, changing from an old and scary negro with an indifferent face to a sexy bck-skinned elf, dressed only in silk ribbons and nothing else, with a predatory and confident grin, full of thirst to possess everything and take everything. With a shriek, a battle cry even, into which Stepan put all his strength and will, the young man yells: "Bck magic! Fucking sorcerer!" and a huge and equally bck piano falls on the image of a spider breaking and crushing the enemy.

  He was dreaming again, but now Stepan was sneaking around the territory of the confectionery factory, covering himself with every possible perfume at his disposal. The tension is growing, his nerves are fraying, and it seems to him that he is about to be caught and will be doomed, but it is not clear to whom he will be caught and to what exactly he will be doomed, and now the moment has come. The tension is such that Stepan feels his heart ready to burst out of his chest. Fear chains him with steel chains, and then comes a sharp sound, as if the hermetic doors were locked and in the workshop of the confectionery factory a whole avanche of cupcakes poured out, ughing loudly in female voices, burying the sleeping shaman under them.

  SpoilerT.N. cupcakes in Russian fanfiction have the same meaning as lemons.

  [colpse]Stepan woke up and gave himself a vow - to follow the sleep regime and not to break it even more, because it would be better if he had not slept till the evening, than if he had dozed off like this and almost lost his mind under the avanche of murky images.

  * * *

  In general, vilgers rarely celebrated weddings in the spring, at its very beginning, at least locally. It was the hungriest period when the supplies for winter had already been eaten, and the new harvest had not even been pnted yet. Only in Upper Lyady the barns were literally bursting with grain, the cattle were fat and numerous, fishing was permanent and allowed not to be too afraid for a hungry stomach, and therefore the wedding was decided to be. It was the same couple who had not had time to get married st time because the unfortunate Barrel of Doom had turned the celebration into mourning. Well, and also, of course, the morons. Without the morons who decided to open that barrel, there would have been no mourning, but here, what luck, there is no need to judge anyone because both morons were the first to die from their moronic behavior. And now the vilge has to celebrate a new. Even if a couple of newlyweds have already lived all winter under one roof, and in general, the daughter of the bcksmith is said to be pregnant already, but the traditions should be kept.

  You cannot be without tradition. It is above all things including reason, logic, common sense, and divine authority.

  In general, they prepared for the first day of spring thoroughly, it was a festive occasion in itself, and with such a successful winter, when no one not only died of hunger but even did not lose weight, it would be a sin not to meet the appearance of Gaia in her aspect of Youth, thanking her properly for letting the Granny-Winter survive without any trouble. Also, there was something nervous about the vilgers. Everyone remembered how the st wedding had ended, so they felt uncomfortable. And, of course, they called the honorable magician Pann to the celebration, because how could they not, since he had treated them all st time. Of course, no one was going to catch anything in Dantra. It seems even suspending fishing for a couple of days wouldn't be a bad idea. And according to local traditions, not inviting him to the wedding table would be rude, even a vagrant would be given a cup and a pce at the edge of the table. And a gifted man, who had been living nearby all winter, was teaching Meld and had really taught him something.... you couldn't not invite him, people wouldn't understand.

  Also, they would not understand if Pann refused to come, because he is certainly gifted, but not noble enough to express such disrespect directly. That is, they wouldn't kick him out or spit in his back, but they just wouldn't understand, they would consider him a little bit of an asshole. This the young man, who didn't care much what the vilgers thought he was, realized from his conversation with Kirik. The headman, of course, said nothing of the sort, but Stepan had been given the spirits of words pnted in his body for a reason. The man looked a little tired, and it was evident that he had made a lot of effort to organize this wedding, for it was his sister's son who was to be married, not strangers. Stepan, of course, had seen noisy vilge festivities and intrusive conversationalists in his grave, but there was no reason to refuse her categorically.

  "I'll come in, Kirik. I'll raise a drink to the health of the young." From a young man, who had not even begun to shave his beard, it sounded particurly funny, and the headman caught the humor, grinning too. "I'll come by for a little while, just to congratute you and give you a gift, and then I'll train. The night will be important and the morning, the first day of spring is not only a holiday for you, but for the spirits too, you can do a lot of things on this day. I have to make it."

  Kirik listened attentively. He only nodded at the mention of the importance of the change of seasons. He already knew it from his turbulent life. Stepan was not the first to share such information with him, but the others reduced everything to "stay out of it, I'm too busy this day" rather than full expnations. But he dared to speak, choosing his words as carefully as possible, smoothing his wording and showing his diplomacy. He had this ability to find an approach to the interlocutor and not to pester him more than necessary while getting what he wanted.

  "You, your magic, don't think that they are waiting for a gift from you, it will be considered a bad deed, and whoever says otherwise is a complete bastard." That is, they will wait for a gift, but silently, with hope, not demands, because it is very risky to demand something from the gifted. "You are a guest at a paid feeding, not our own. From each house, from each neighbor, everyone will bring what they can. If there is enmity between you and the retives of young people, you can just symbolically put a coin, but without offensive connotations, like stale goose feathers, or get a beating from the whole vilge. A guest's attention is enough, especially from you, honorable. Everyone remembers, and I don't let the dumbest people forget who saved their lives from a shitty death."

  Stepan listened to the lecture on vilge traditions of gift-giving with interest, and even asked a couple of crifying questions because it was a funny topic. There were no complicated games with meanings or clear rankings of gifts, for they were not aristocrats with stable and verified etiquette. Those who can, give more, especially retives, there is a direct competition, who outdoes whom. Those who can not or do not want, there and a trifle is enough, especially if really dislike each other. Not coming at all is a demonstration of the level of hostility, when you should be wary of walking alone at night, or else. In many cases, long-standing feuds between stubborn vilgers at such events involuntarily cease when everyone gets drunk and swears to be each other's brothers forever. Well, such feuds are born at such festivities, which is also not uncommon.

  The shaman didn't want to give something to the newlyweds, but he had no reason not to make some student crafts. It wouldn't be difficult for him. He would have some experience, and he would also have a chance to practice. All this could be done even before D-Day, and on the first day of spring, he could meet the dawn in the shaman's circle and meet the sunset there as well. Between these two states, he would have nothing to do, there was nothing pnned, and the necessary rituals would eat up all the reserve and durability of the clearing's totems, so there was nothing special to do. It was not in the honor of a real senior shaman to be bothered for the sake of a measly crumb of experience.

  Stepan successfully made the totem gift. He carved it literally from scratch, carefully, deliberately rough movements of the ritual knife from obsidian, drawing on the chump cubic patterns, merging into some vague and as if constantly moving picture. For good health and warding off random curses or no less random diseases, for warding off evil spirits, undead, beasts or even humans, for counteracting fires or carbon monoxide, if something happens to the stove, for quality heating of the house, for strong and always sharpened steel in the house and not spoiling food on the gcier. Separately screwed the block of blood communication, so that the gift could take only the descendant, guaranteeing the free transfer of the totem to a new pce of residence. A little thought and built in a mechanism that would make the totem useless in the hands of a thief or robber. A little more thought and added a mechanism that would make the totem useless in the hands of a thief or robber. He thought about it a bit more and refined it, the first time he used, by the way, a rather amusing structure - actually inverting the totem in case of theft.

  In normal conditions there were guardian spirits, hearth warmers, a few air blowers for air filtration, a powerful firefly-clean to disinfect and counteract diseases, and a couple of iron-workers on top, which help with working tools, stealthily sharpening or even fixing things. But this is in a normal state, as long as the totem belongs to those to whom it was given. But if the thing is to steal or just take away in an orderly manner by the will of an important boss, the spirits in the totem will be released and dismissed. But the totem will automatically attract all kinds of evil-doers and other bad guys, even strong ones, who will want to take advantage of the new owner's connection with the totem, only the thief will not like the consequence of such a connection. Then he began to modify and negotiate more gentle contracts, so without an infusion of reserves or life force, without complicated rituals, without any bckness, and with safety locks. If you don't fulfill the requirements for taking care of the totem, then the spirits in it just go into hibernation, not start viciously attacking the owners who forgot about the deal.

  In the end, he reduced all the requirements only to the necessity to expose the totem to the sunlight every morning, preferably dawn, but it could be just morning, as well as to the necessity to water the totem with a few drops of wine every full moon, and a few drops of clean water from Dantra during the new moon. Yes, moving farther away where there wouldn't be a river nearby wasn't best, but as a st resort, he did make arrangements with the spirit cleaner to repce the river water with well water. Grinning proudly Stepan looked at his work and added protection against the rotting strengthening the wood and adding the ability to heal serious wounds if you put the totem on the chest of a wounded patient. He evaluated his work, thought about how to improve it, finalized the contractual basis a bit, and even thought about adding the ability to take oaths and promises on this totem, so they really work like a contractual assurance. He thought about it, prepared new reagents with a little extra from the store, and then it came to him that he had, to put it delicately, overdone it a bit.

  After scratching the back of his head, looking around as if looking for someone to ask for advice, Stepan exhaled tiredly, cursed a little, and then began to work on disguising the totem as something simpler. He couldn't break the work he'd already done. The disguise was much more complicated, the spirit with aspects of mystery and illusion also settled in the totem, choosing to limit the number and quality of spirits living there, smudging their imprints and making the auric representation of the totem dimmer, so that in true vision it looked like a simple craft of "some talented apprentice". The tter took about the same amount of effort as creating the totem and all the previous modifications, but the thing was really good, and if he had pns to live in Lyadya for a long time, he would have made one for himself. Come on, he would have made a much better one for himself.

  And so, two days ter, having had time to perform the first part of the ritual in the morning, having caught the first rays of the spring-winter sun in the outlined circle, he closed these rays in the circle, making them wander and fly in a looped loop, leaving the caught light to infuse until evening while the necessary spirits fed these rays with new shades of spiritual meanings, dimension understanding. And then, after all, he went to the wedding and without pomp, though out of turn, handed the newlyweds, directly to the groom in the hands of a very beautiful looking totem, certifying at the same time the transfer of rights and contracts.

  "Own it, Sniro, it's yours now. It will protect the house from disease and fire, keep it warm in winter, even if the stove is burning down a log and a half, and if it's bad and you hurt yourself or someone else in the house, put it on the sick person's chest, but not too often. It's not a healer, but it will do something." Yes, it will do something, and much better than a standard healer, because there are two healer spirits on the border between strong and small, but he won't say so, and he seems to have overdone it, judging by the newlyweds' faces, that's why Stepan decided to spoil their mood a little. "But be warned, the spirits need to meet the first rays of dawn or at least morning every day, they need a few drops of wine or other liquor on the full moon in the morning and the same drops of river water, from Dantra, on the night when the moon is not in the sky. If such a ritual is not observed, nothing will happen, but my gift will also be lost, the spirits will not help those who do not show them respect."

  And yet he overdid it because they thanked him as if he had given them a new car in a premium configuration and the keys to an apartment in the center of the capital on top. Having somehow got rid of all this crowd and their attempts to hug him - it was enough to get a frantic look from the shaman who didn't like contacts without asking and an equally frantic sp from Kirik to the most daring - he drank a huge shot of fierce wheat vodka, which here was considered to be elite alcohol and expensive because nobody would transfer so much wheat to drink in normal conditions. The drink, which also had horseradish added for heat, almost burned the throat of the young man, who forgot for a moment that he needed to breathe and on reflex pnted a healer's spirit in his body. But the poison catchers, more out of habit than out of real fear, had not noticed anything dangerous.

  The crowd of vilgers, who saw how the magician, who was bulging his eyes, swallowed his scream and with an indifferent look, but with the same bulging eyes, ate a piece of well-cooked pork on freshly baked bread, murmured something approving and persistently continued their attempts to drag the guy into the circle of festivities. The situation was saved by Kirik, who saw the process of transformation of the already slightly irritated face of the shaman into a very infernal mask of rage and with the grace of an experienced counter-abortionist took the allied magician out of the hostile environment before the blood flowed.

  "You'll have to excuse us, of course, but, you know, it's good to have a couple of amulets for the vilge. We have five of them, and this is such a gift, there are no words, ugh." Stepan made a note to himself to look at Kirik's thoughts this night through dreams and, if necessary, to send those suggestors who would correct these thoughts if he had blundered too obviously. "Remember my word, you will be remembered by the grandchildren of these two, with such a gift. I feel really uncomfortable now, and they probably do too. But yes, I'm sorry for them, they're all used to it, if you're happy, then embrace them, they're all their own. But I can see it's uncomfortable for you."

  So Kirik, chatting away the others who wanted to communicate, sat Stepan on the pce of honor almost at the head of the table, closer only father and mother on both sides and Kirik himself, as the headman. Judging by the man's slightly nervous demeanor, he noticed something in the shaman's gaze and decided to take him away before these morons brought him to sin and blood. Stepan was very grateful to him and did not make excuses, though, in fact, he was not his namesake, physical contacts of this kind were not really pleasant to him, especially taking into account the dubious odors of some huggers, but he did not want to kill anyone and was not going to. The reason that caused his ass to fme up and the anger of his absent Scandinavian ancestors to awaken was exactly the same as before: Her Milf-hood, or rather her next assignment.

  System assignment (small): to suggest to Baika, Lopra's daughter, and her husband that the best way to thank him for the gift for their wedding feast is to have oral and anal sex with the giver and then enjoy the grateful girl's body; at the end of the thank you, both victims should be completely sure that nothing strange happened, because the bride's pussy still belongs to her husband. It is acceptable to use the gifts of Liarat si Merrinal, Lady of Gifts and Giver of Gifts, loyal servant of Innes Inney.

  Reward: one-fifth of the current level's experience scale; the gift of one random knowledge from previously undiscovered knowledge; a random material reward from the special collection of Liarat si Merrinal, Lady of Gifts and Giver of Gifts, loyal servant of Innes Inney.

  He even wondered if there was a limit to the cynicism and some kind of cynical way of perceiving the world that this dy pissed him off with. However, he realized there was no limit to the Autogoddess's weirdness and there could not be. But the suspicion was growing stronger and stronger that no one could thank him, but the whole world owed Stepan Normal a very serious debt for the fact the originally pnned Stepan had not been brought here. Because the fat one would have accepted the assignment, Stepan was ready to bet his left kidney on it. He wouldn't just accept it, he'd do it with a great margin of safety and a happy smile, and if the assignment didn't exist, he'd think of something of his own. It couldn't be said that the Earthman was somehow angry or reacting aggressively to the memories of his namesake. It was silly to bme a young man, already hurt by life, for something he hadn't done and, thank the admins, wouldn't seem to do anyway. There would be no pce for him to expand on Earth, and no one would give him a System to expand.

  Probably.

  Stepan wanted to believe it.

  After a little talk with Kirik, receiving thanks from the retives of the newlyweds, as well as eating a few more pieces of all kinds of tasty things, albeit bnd due to the ck of spices, if you do not count the vilge horseradish and some other spicy-salty root, the analog of which in the earthly spices Stepan did not find, the young man left the feast in the English way. Having covered himself with a light attention-diverting dome, he calmly reached home, where he changed into clean clothes and washed his face and hands in a specially prepared bucket with very cold, literally cold, water, which was strangely colder than zero degrees but did not freeze. The final stage of preparations was a very specific meditation, attunement to his spirit, and even a partial exit from the body. He seemed to be hovering over himself, still connected with his body, but with most of his spiritual essence out of it, looking at the world with material and not-so-material eyes at the same time.

  Stepan steered his body like a character from a third-person video game and walked toward the clearing, there was nothing unusual about him, except that someone gifted would have noticed the ghost hovering over the partially devastated body, but there were no gifted people here. And if there were, the shaman who covered the area with tracking nets and patrolling spirits would know about it. Unless the real pros, who have nothing to do here in Lyady, were to oppose him because an hour of work of such pros costs more than the whole vilge with its inhabitants.

  The clearing was still illuminated not only by the evening sun but also by ribbons of pure light wandering in a circle, the first rays of sunrise caught in a ring and conjured in that ring. Specific spirits slowly flew along with the ribbons along the same route, transferring their energy and part of their aspects to the light. Stepan assessed the processes taking pce, analyzed everything he could, then undressed and entered the circle, letting the ribbons ovate themselves like mummies before returning to the same route. The quiet throat chanting kept gaining and gaining strength, as did the trembling of the spiritual body. Stepan the Spirit acted with his two ordinary arms, having lengthened them a little and added joints to the same elongated fingers, and with two extra limbs, turning them into multitools, which he used to work both with the outlined circle and with the ribbons that fshed brighter and brighter.

  The singing reaches its limit the moment the sun begins to set over the horizon, and the moment the st rays of sunset fall into the same trap as the first of the dawn's rays it falls silent, leaving the body and allowing it to slowly settle to the ground. A special air spirit with an aspect of, hard to believe, feathers and pillows was useless in combat. However, it was surprisingly good at using his elemental sphere in all sorts of mundane details, like having to pick up a fallen man and gently y him on the ground. Stepan in his spiritual form doesn't even look at that. He tries his best not to let the merging light of dusk and dawn ruin the ritual and deprive him of the well-deserved contract he had spent so long preparing.

  The chanting was gone, but the reserve was running out even faster, forcing him to use the system's cheater replenishment in an instant when he had less than a third of it left. It was absolutely impossible to feed on totems right now, the power for the ritual had to be infused from his reserve, to remain exceptionally pure. Still, the young man underestimated his gifted meta-skill realizing how much this thing could be useful in such specific conditions. The very, very hard hours expired minute by minute, demanding more and more attention, but the infusion of power had temporarily stopped, all that was left was to keep concentration and not to spoil everything at the st moment, because it would not be possible to make a second attempt until next fall. The sky was as clear as Stepan's contract with a couple of strong weathermen, which had dispersed the already sparse clouds so the moon was visible and shining brightly.

  His personal Lunar and two others, contracted with considerable effort for this particur ritual, helped with the rays of moonlight, just as the Sor Spirits helped with sunrise and sunset. He had divided the sor spirits into groups, those who helped with the sunrise and those who helped with the sunset, and they helped keep the rays caught in the right state, and now the threads of white-gold and red-violet were joined by the light blue rays of the moon. A new infusion of the reserve, generous, to empty his aura, and then, before he felt sick with exhaustion, before ill health interrupted the ritual, he reapplied the meta-skill. It had been well over an hour now, the skill had replenished the reserve fully, not three quarters, so the shaman who'd been stoning his invocation felt reasonably confident.

  But his reserve had increased by two characteristics. And these two units added up to a total of so much that the reserve was not multiplied by three, but by two for sure... But still, it was not enough, this ritual was very demanding to his own magic, it did not accept neither accumutors nor feeding from totems or sources, only you, only your own light, which you let through yourself and make yourself. That is why few of the shamans, even of his current rank, confirmed by the elders, can successfully summon what he is summoning now - the shamans grow the sources' reserves much more slowly and reluctantly. They have all their training and development methods set up in such a way that the amount of reserve is quite secondary to them. Of course, the world is not a game, the System here is only Stepan's, and the volume of forces still evaluates any gifted person. But the brightness of the Spirit serves as no less powerful "certificate", but it is useful to a shaman not to mention the fact that his reserve is already quite developed, as a full-fledged adept of a cssical and energy-intensive school of magic, like Pyromancy.

  So, praising himself and trying to convince himself that he was not a bottomless bottom, but a man, almost an alpha male, especially with the gifts of the Autogoddess, the young man waited for the key moment. All the ray-tapes are tied together, twisted into a Moebius spiral, freezing in this form, and the Sor and Lunar spirits go away. In front of what will come now to the call, it is better not to shine them in every sense of the word. The call, the final part of it, goes nowhere, but from nowhere, this call is answered. The light of the moon and stars, any light at all, disappears, and absolute darkness comes, not darkness as a concept, but the physical absence of light, any of its manifestations, and this darkness comes even in the spiritual world, where colors and radiance are much more than usual. Complete blindness is not only visual but also magical, even magic vision sees nothing, as if the shaman was pced in space. Well, or in some bck box. Stepan reflexively suppresses the desire to strike towards, break through the veil with his spiritual body, and call the guardian spirits, which are quietly waiting for their moment but do not do anything stupid. He would fight back, and he would tear the veil, moreover, having prepared for it in advance, he could even kill him with his support and at his pce of power, but he called his interlocutor not for that.

  The shaman mobilizes his will and slightly presses the still invisible luminous ribbons, shifts them closer to his essence, saturates them with himself, and, behold, their light becomes visible to the eyes. His guest in this light is also visible, showing himself in all his splendor, revealing to the spiritual eye his ghostly body, reminiscent of a sea octopus from the deepest hole of the Mariana Trench. A strong spirit, almost on the very border with the elder, and at the same time very, very powerful and dangerous, the closest analog of which can be considered that terrible bear, which Stepan once tried to eat. Only the sprut was more contractual and not even particurly evil, just whimsical and thinking so that without a developed spiritual dialog he would not understand Stepan, and Stepan would not understand him.

  This entity was still weaker than the notorious Creep Bear in a direct confrontation, not as ultimate, but also very strong, both against spirits and when working in the real world. A set of exotic abilities based on the animal and water spheres made him very dangerous, but his main strength was his contact with the sphere of light. Yes, yes, that's right, not darkness, but light, which this something fed on and the absence of which it used to create its blinding field, which turned off both vision and magical analogs of perception, and a lot of other ways to perceive the world, except that only hearing and smell only muted, and everything else, including the sense of touch, top-bottom, and perception of vibrations was also muted. To see this miracle is possible only in the light of the moon, sunrise, and sunset at the same time, and the maximum pure light, no recordings, pulled from memory, or created illusions will not help, you will have to seriously strain as Stepan, or bypass blindness with skill and sheer force. The young man had achieved his goal, after all, with a slight smirk at the phantom form extending a looped ribbon of light toward the guest. The entity was not evil, not even dangerous, they had both made preliminary non-aggression pacts, but still, the young man was nervous, too memorable was that fight with the bear and the rest of the gang.

  for you

  accept

  conclude

  The images on Stepan's side hang in the void as if the spirit is thinking one st time about whether it needs a contract like this, but then it makes its decision. A pair of tentacles gently close the ribbon around itself, and then the light seems to be drawn into the perfectly bck surface of the entity's body, as far as it is possible to perceive color in the spirit world. In reality, it would indeed appear as a bck octopus, only no one would be able to see it clearly anyway. The spirit absorbs the st drops of light, but it does not disappear from view, on the contrary, it becomes much clearer and therefore more intimidating, in size and perception it is even rger than a bear, although not so armor-dense. Stepan exhales with relief. Since he could see this spirit and would always see it. The most important part of the transaction had been successful. The triple light had been assimited by the entity and only formalities remained.

  accept

  The sprue slowly and leisurely leaves reality and the yers close to it, going back to where it came from. Powerful, tenacious, able to use some pretty serious tricks, extremely confident in maniputing its spirit flesh, able to poison its victims, very stealthy, and able to penetrate defenses. That already makes him deadly. But the most important thing that he could do, even to an older spirit like the one protecting Evil Tit, was his cloud of darkness. It extinguished any perception, and almost all opponents of a comparable level, except for very specific and, often, no less cheaters, became almost defenseless. Of course, Stepan had to wait for the day of the change of seasons, try very hard with the ritual and preparation for it, buy some consumables in the store, and y himself out to the bottom twice, which would have been unrealistic without the meta-skill, but it was worth it.

  After all, it wasn't just a one-time deal for one or two summons. The spirit was very fond of this kind of triple light, the kind that couldn't just be made, and the recipe for its creation was not known to anyone in this world except the system's bearer. No, the contract was not an ordinary deal, as Stepan had made, even with powerful entities, quite confidently and without such a mess.

  Received: "Strong Spirit Contract: Sneaking Reflection"; increased affinity with animal, water, and light spheres; slightly increased resistance to blinding attempts.

  The acquired talent is added to the overall Pyer Status.

  Thirty summons per year, lifetime service with the possibility of transferring the service to descendants, once every ten years it is necessary to repeat the ritual of the gift of light, but if it is not carried out, no penalties are not introduced, just freezes the contract until the ritual is not renewed or the shaman dies. Of course, this is not a system cheater contract, which can not be updated at all and does not feed, you need to make some effort, but still very good, powerful, cool, and a lot of epithets. A legitimate reason to be proud of himself, yes, but he also beat out in the contract terms for a more complex ritual with the same rays of light, but much more diverse. He couldn't gather that light from several points of the world, preserve it, blend it together, and only then present it to this gourmet, but he would do it in the future.

  And will receive eternal service without further obligation from the spirit as well.

  In general, he had been very "lucky" with minor knowledge contracts during the winter, which remained after the css rank increase and the completion of work on the clearing. Well, he deliberately dealt with them, simply and safely transferring some of the strongest elements of his retinue from one-time contracts to full-fledged service. The kind of service dispyed in the system status shows the awesomeness of one particur shaman. And this Sneaking was the third permanent contract he had received, but both of the previous ones, with the Lizard and the Milker, had been so simple and trouble-free that Stepan wondered why he hadn't done it before. He concluded that it was only because he didn't need it before, he had enough to do, to grow in breadth, not to replenish the status lines, but now, winter began to end, it was time to think about leaving for new pces, and so Stepan began to gather a loyal squad.

  Minor knowledge: contract with an elder spirit: Sleepwalker (GIFT); contract with elder spirits: Shroud of Touch and Creator of Decisions (GIFT); contract with strong spirit: Eater of Diseases; protection by distortion of the antechamber of spheres; contract with strong spirit: Cheesh'sh'shuya; contract with strong spirit: Jolly Milker; contract with strong spirit: Sneaking Reflection

  The Lizard, whose real name-image was impossible to pronounce or even to write down if not to use the system images hinted from the very beginning that he was ready to serve with a permanent contract. Stepan had to go broke again on reagents, which were purchased through the System Store - that's why he didn't look at the elite offers of the week at all, so as not to get upset - and also recognized the spirit's right not to make any deals for the blood of his descendants, only for the summoner himself as if that was a problem for Stepan, honestly.

  The summoning is every five days, not more often, and unused summoning is burned, but additional payment by the reserve will allow summoning a lizard outside the contract, and it is much cheaper and very quick, with the most simplified call. The contract is renewed once every five years, and the conditions are the same. If there are no necessary gifts, which are enough just to throw into the fire and accompanied by a minimal call, the contract is simply frozen until a new offering or the death of the shaman. In principle, Stepan had enough skill and currency to buy eternal service without additional complications and upgrades, but, damn, it was expensive. And the earthling didn't need this particur lizard that much, because he had every reason to believe that in five years he would find more necessary and powerful summons, so there was no reason to overpay now.

  It was a funny thing with the spirit of coziness. A completely unspoiled thing was surprisingly happy to sign such a contract, and it cost the shaman much cheaper than expected, though not for free. The spirit did not have a name, the entity simply did not realize the need to have a name, so the Ыystem named the new contract as it caught in Stepan's subconscious. This contract was eternal until the death of the shaman and his descendants without the hassle of regur offerings. But restrictions were also in the assortment. The spirit could be summoned only in the pce Stepan considered home, and the spirit itself served the pce, the house, but not the shaman. It could not be summoned while moving through the world, nor could it be invoked in battle if the enemy did not come home. But for such an entity with such a great talent for mass reinforcement of small and point strengthening of strong spirits, such trifles could be considered a normal payment. Especially, since Stepan had no intention of taking the fight where he had no fortified position and no prepared line of defense. Unless he attacked from ambush first.

  Actually, the work of concluding and certifying such eternal contracts, of drafting the letter of the coming agreement, is no less complicated than the process of call and summoning, frankly speaking. Spirits are still bastards, at least a significant percentage of them, and if you make a mistake in the formution of the flow of images, the creature may well count ... stuff. Like the fact that if the shaman dies, then his descendants who do not bring new gifts, and use the old contract, can die too, to relieve the burden of responsibility. And some of them will help the shaman to disappear in their free time. The most advanced ones will even be hired by the enemies of the shaman, will leak all the data about the tricks and cunning of the employer, will get paid, and then will, figuratively speaking, eat popcorn, while the loser will be cut in his sleep, having passed through all the protection.

  In addition to the small knowledge tied to the contracts, Stepan managed to raise one full-fledged knowledge and got a boost to a random meta-skill. A consequence of completed quests, of course, not from the Autogoddess, but the usual ones. Milf also offered all sorts of things, including one average assignment to organize a real orgy between all the pretty women of Lyady and Stepan, and the orgy had to be arranged right in the middle of the vilge, in front of everyone, paralyzing the men and then, when they finished watching, erasing their memories (optionally, it was possible not to erase, just banned telling). Stepan habitually sent this task away, although the maximum closure offered as many as five items from the elite list of the store, with a choice of twenty options, and a point of characteristics on top, in the most underdeveloped stat.

  The two normal quests were both small but quite challenging, he thought. The first one required a permanent contract with a powerful spirit. It was closing after the contract with the Lizard, but the second one... The second one required summoning a very powerful beast spirit at the maximum distance from the clearing without leaving the clearing. The summoning was really difficult, although the spirit could be chosen by himself, it had to be of the beast sphere and not below a certain level of power. He had to sweat, but he did it, watching a cheerful and bloodthirsty ferret tearing out the throats of a slightly mutated pack of some kind of wolf-like creatures, or just wolves, but very rge and strange. And then put even more effort into getting the satisfied ferret to scramble back and not turn a piece of forest into his hunting grounds, having taken up residence in the corpse of a beast dying from his spiritual fangs. He managed it, though not without spending zero reserves and having to renew it with the power of his meta-skill.

  From the knowledge, the "basic foundations of fast calls" increased, becoming an advanced foundation, making the shaman chuckle merrily. Long ago, when he first came to this world, he had taken this talent to enhance his combat abilities and had even used it quite successfully, but that was then. Now, when he had such a powerful retinue that he was ready to come to reality at the snap of his fingers, this talent was used mainly to simplify long ritual chanting, at the cost of pouring more reserve or overconsumption of reagents. In fact, this was one of the main uses of this knowledge. Although the original combat knowledge was not to be forgotten, especially with the acquired property of multiple awareness: with it, the idea of summoning mass and fast with the simultaneous shuffling of newly summoned people, who would become a shield and mass for the normal retinue, took on new features.

  In terms of synergy, the knowledge turned out to be quite compatible with that facet of healing which requires immediate reaction and stabilization of the patient, when everything is decided not in seconds, but by fractions of seconds. And it is possible - even necessary! - calmly spend a rge share of the reserve, completely inefficiently, but effectively stopping the dying process in order to heal oneself ter with specialized entities of high rank. The response when working at a distance was also greatly reduced, the method of rapid call itself allowing to send the necessary images without accompanying deys or reducing them to a minimum, especially with the support of totems and terrain. The same support could also drastically accelerate any action at the expense of rge expenditures of not even the reserve, but the resource of the totem and the subordinate territory. It was a risk of damaging his creations, but usually in situations where such techniques were employed, such problems would be the st thing on the shaman's mind.

  In terms of brainwashing, it revealed a methodology for the accelerated creation of sves. Combined with undercover work, this approach unfolded in a whole bunch of combinations using disposable involuntary agents, decoys, and traps, which was still figurative cannibalism, but effective. The skill of combat call, for which knowledge opened up a lot of tricks and techniques, but, however, much less than expected. With his current retinue and skills, almost any battle would begin with the summoning of an already contracted and always retained retinue, rather than an instant summoning of something worse.

  It is necessary to either speed up the fast calls to mastery or not to show off, because this knowledge, the further, the less it resembles the knowledge of combat, approaching a universal amplifier of certain directions. However, Stepan had studied a number of techniques created for the quick search of the enemy's vulnerability and the equally quick summoning of a suitable spirit to strike that vulnerability very carefully. Of course, his retinue was growing and growing, and it would eventually become difficult to find an enemy against whom he would not have a suitable summoner, but all sorts of things happen, and one should be prepared for them.

  The meta-skill had failed him this time. Stepan was very upset then, because the assignment was nowhere near Autodivine, but raised to a III the damn lecherous development. Even, maybe, he would have gotten drunk, if he had time for it with his schedule. The " lecherous development III" that had been increased to a new level had not only increased the amount of experience gained from any lewd and scivious actions, including even thoughts, fantasies, looking at pretty girls, and the use of spell magic for lewd purposes. No, at rank three there was an additional feature. Now, having sex with a partner, the young man received a kind of vision-understanding of what to do, to py out fantasy. For example, to spank his lover's buttocks or to take her in a certain position, and in return for this he could get some small reward. A little experience in addition to the already received or some material reward with characteristic features, and the tter will not appear in mid-air during the process, but only when the will of the pyer "manifests" it in reality, even after a couple of days, but not ter than a week.

  No, if he ever got into a full-fledged retionship and there was nothing excessive in the assignment, he wouldn't mind it in principle. But he had a suspicion that the conditions of such micro-assignments would also be in the style of Milfosaurus, - at this moment, for some reason, the same Autogoddess presented herself, only in the concept of a giant lizardцщman, not a human woman, which made Stepan chuckle mentally, - so he would not want to accept and fulfill them. Otherwise... well, a wasted point, where from the pleasant only that the line in the status was missing the mark "GIFT", which slightly raised the mood. Of course, he wanted to get a boost to the same reserve replenishment, bringing it up to a three, or transferring something from the one he'd already gotten to a fourth level. Yes, now he could increase meta-skills by another rank, there were enough characteristics. Even the gifting could be pumped to a new level. This made him think and wonder about how to further develop himself, whether to sacrifice a couple of knowledge to raise the same "system assignment" or "peaceful development", which are bound to become even more powerful at the fourth rank. On the other hand, too difficult tasks can become a danger to the good, even definitely become such if there is something impossible or excessively difficult to perform.

  Thoughts, doubts, and decisions, and he can only ask for system help.

  At times like this, you can't help but think that the idea of going to some dwarf king and elf queen with the proposal "Take me to work, just so that I have a cozy bedroom with a soft bed and unlimited access to the library" is not so stupid. It's not stillborn, that's for sure, yes. But Stepan couldn't predict how anyone would react to such an offer, but he assumed that he would either be fucked or killed out of precaution. It's in a fun manga from the inventive Japanese elven women, including queens, can be fucked by a random pack of goblins because she took their word for it, but in the real world such an elf, even if she was a queen, would rather fuck a fellow isekai. And not in the way he would like it.... involuntarily recalled images of half-forgotten dreams, where long ears also fshed in various qualities. No other way, the subconscious mind was pying tricks on him, and Stepan had consumed too much literature, cinema, and samples of the game industry.

  Or, as his namesake would say, offensively few.

  * * *

  The contract with Squidward Plus, as Stepan called the battle octopus, brought his experience to five-sixths of the new twenty-first level. It was the slowdown in experience gain, which came without warning after crossing the twentieth level. With such a limitation, even the "peaceful development" that had been brought up to three was a bit slow. But that could be assessed on the downside. He had almost taken the twenty-first level. Spring was coming more and more often, and Stepan had to deliberately dry the ground on the path between the clearing and the house, so that he wouldn't fall into the slush and mud. Quite quickly and, this time, without unnecessary excesses, having created a fake call pce, the young man took this breakthrough seriously, concluding many contracts with small and a few strong spirits, even a couple of suggestors called and brought to the contract, already beginning to think about charmers. Experience for the call of some senior spirits of this sphere will give a lot, and to call another senior, the guy is not yet able to.

  Fortunately or unfortunately, the barrier had been broken in just four days. Noticeably sooner than he would have had to go to extreme measures. And, as had become a tradition: one more regur training session, two summons of exotic small spirits from the shadow realm with aspects of stealth, communication, and sight - spy-watchers that could become a beacon for sending strong fighting spirits to their coordinates - and then the system signaled the acquisition of a new level. Stepan successfully finished the call, made deals, sending one of the spirits to the common totem, and the other to one of the elements of the bracelet, and only then sat down on a specially installed for this purpose and warmed by the spirits stone, which before that had to be lifted from the depths of the earth by the will of the spirits. Only then he accept everything the System gave him as a reward, including also...

  gift of mine

  ...that he could do without.

  Received: "Contract with a Senior Spirit: Joy of the Waves".

  The acquired talent is added to the overall Pyer Status.

  It had been a long time since Her Preomilfeischestvo had "pleased" Stepan with free and very useful contracts of the highest css, which were so multifunctional that they were like a human-Swiss knife, only three times cooler. Putting aside irritated sarcasm and no less irritated attitude to another surprisingly high-quality contract with no less surprisingly strong spirit, which is still useless a little more than completely, the young man began to deal with another suitcase without a handle. Only the Autogoddess has these suitcases covered with spiky dildos, and it's not a pity to throw them away, but it's still unrealistic if you don't tear your spirit and aura with traumatic means.

  The new contracted entity was a little stronger than the aforementioned Sleepwalker, a mix of water and animal spheres and a very strange suggetor with non-ordinary aspects. You couldn't even tell what kind of animal it was, but it was very professional within the contract, and there was no point in arguing about it. The image of the spirit had a clear form, as already mentioned, in contrast to the same Sleepwalker, and this form belonged to a fish beast. This creature could very discreetly and skillfully raise its rod upward, to the smaller yers of the spheres, or even directly into Reality, affecting the chosen victims.

  Three drafts a month. Unused ones are burned off. The draft itself is extremely simple. The contract is as reliable and precise as possible, as the system usually is. This essence could kill another spherical in a vacuum master of combat magic, or even a young magister if it struck suddenly. But a fish of someone else's dreams doesn't attack otherwise, only on its own terms and always ready to get away from a full-fledged battle if it becomes even slightly dangerous. As, - here's the odd thing, it never happened! - but a new contract could only be called into battle on the same terms as past gift contracts. That is, only if you were able to summon them yourself with a full-fledged summon, not a contract call, and in the same standard way of contracting. Having once again evaluated the "fish", its images, and the character following these images, Stepan clearly realized that he would not call this shit even if he could - he would eat it. He would find a way to bypass the protection and devour it, he couldn't help but devour it, because that was its nature, which made it strange that the system and the Autogoddess had been able to draw up such a contract with maximum protection for the summoner. Although, "impossible for Stepan" is one thing. "Impossible for the Omnipotent System and Omnipresent Goddess Milf" is a bit different.

  Returning to the contract: the spirit can be given a target, as usual, female and beautiful-sympathetic by the standards of the shaman, after which the sinister fish, figuratively speaking, gave a salute and crawled to fulfill the mission. With its fishing rod, the creature connects to the subtle bodies and mental field and then begins to change them slightly, barely noticeable. As a result of this change, the female victim begins, how to put it mildly, to cum under unusual conditions. Involuntary and very powerful orgasms are always sudden for the victim and are not realized by her. The victim realizes that she has just cum and it is nowhere normal, but immediately brushes this thought aside, not forgetting, but ceasing to remember. Also, during orgasm and for about a minute afterward, the victim's mind is in a softened, rexed state in which she is likely to agree to any proposal, as long as it is properly phrased and does not go against key aspects of her personality.

  In the basic form of the contract, the pleasure always comes when it will not threaten the victim's life, even in public. However if in a public pce or during a conversation the victim rolls her eyes, tenses up, and breathes heavily, twitching a couple of times, then in private everything will be much louder, wetter, and more obvious. The default effect is random, activated from two to a dozen or so times a day, guided by the algorithm embedded in the victim's subconscious. But it is possible to put specific settings: by some word, phrase, or sound, by a visual image, or even by a thought of the victim, so just thinking, say, about a particur person, immediately causes a reaction in the mental body, the transition of this reaction to the aura and the victim's aura itself will be distorted to cause the release of the physical body.

  Well, with some hesitation, Stepan recognized this contract as zero point one-hundredth of a percent more effective and useful than the previous ones. In a purely theoretical case. If he lost all the marbles, this contract could be used to create not a submissive sve, but a window of influence on a powerful woman, condemning her to spontaneous orgasms, which would become less and less frequent if the influence was not renewed. Well, or initially put a hard trigger to activate the invested non-curse strictly in the given conditions. In general, everything was clear with this spirit. It was immoral, but at least it was useful, and it didn't even piss him off so much, as if a little bit of sense in the circle of madness gave him a chance to stand firmly on his feet.

  After wiping away the sweat of bor and returning to the house, Stepan cleaned his mud-covered boots and the rest of his clothes, ate dinner, and thought about how he would spend the rest of the day and evening, but he began to slumber again. His attempts to restore his sleep patterns had been quite successful, but sometimes he still had to sacrifice that sleep and its patterns, which resulted in such bouts of drowsiness. Too tired and having decided in advance not to invest his talent for at least a couple of weeks, or even to wait for a new level, Stepan y down on the bed, closed his eyes, and gave himself a vow to sleep for at least five minutes, immersing himself in a whirlpool of strange dreams.

  He dreamed of the three pigs, taking up a fortified firing position and firing off a pack of sinister werewolves with machine guns, automatic weapons, even a mortar hidden under the roof of their stone house, and who knows what else. The well-coordinated trio even managed to inflict losses on the werewolves - not just werewolves, but werewolves in epaulets, though the insignia could not be recognized - but then the armored vehicles pulled up to the werewolves and the circus reached a new level. Another dream transported Stepan to a huge, gigantic multi-story building, not some self-assembled megakhrushch, but a real paradise on earth, only without nd. Spa salons, health zones, parks with artificial sky and sun, numerous restaurants, and live music, but the young man felt superfluous at this celebration of life, being dressed in a gray uniform with lead inserts and armed with a strange mixture of rake and automatic shotgun - they looked at him like an idiot, that's for sure.

  SpoilerT.N. werewolves in epaulets - it is also a Russian idiom for corrupt police.

  [colpse]I dreamt of a huge and pompously decorated hall, in which a no less pompous man was awarding some young and much less pompous man with an aura of giftedness, and somewhere there, in the crowd, but perfectly visible, a pretty girl, not a Yakut or something like that, was looking at him. The surroundings reeked of cssic elements of "five o'clock in the fog" and Victorian style, and there were guards, both obvious and not so obvious, armed with quiet firearms, albeit outdated. Mentally wished the guy success in the service and in his family life, and Stepan mentally blessed him for his exploits, his wife for her patience, and her child for becoming an archmage at least, and simply wished him to leave. It worked - the strange pce immediately disappeared, and dozens of cats armed with markers started running after the dreamer, who, he knew for sure, wanted to draw Charlie Chaplin's whiskers on him, so that he turned into a cat too, but not just a cat, but a real Catler!

  SpoilerT.N. Catler - Gitler

  [colpse]The young man ran. He made deceptive maneuvers. He called for heavenly punishments and a troop of pink ponies on drop-pods under the command of the rainbow generaless-unicorn. But he was still driven, deprived of maneuvering, and closer and closer the markers reached his face, he still fought back and yelled, shouted with a battle cry of anger "Nein! Nein! Nein! Nein! Nein! NEEEEEEEEEEEIN!", feeling himself being dragged somewhere. The hammer already pounding into the wood, which would be used to hammer the nails in the box in which he would be stuffed for some unknown purpose. Stepan strained his st strength, rushed forward, and... woke up falling from the bed and hitting the hard floor with his knee. He didn't have time to utter his favorite remark about the nonsense of the dream when he realized that there was a real knock at the door, and a rather insistent knock, which was the reason why he had dreamed it in his dream, the images of which were already fading into the oblivion of unconsciousness. Having thrown on his pants and shirt, the young man barefooted went to the door and opened it with such a righteous and angry face that Kirik, who was behind the door, even stepped back a little when he saw this anger and righteousness. However, the headman quickly pulled himself together, and Stepan regained control over his emotions, realizing that this man would not have made him angry just like that, because he was understanding and polite, especially with those who could punch him, and Stepan was exactly what he thought he was.

  "Your Magic, forgive me for interrupted sleep, but there's trouble in the vilge. A boat has docked, and with them a wounded man, that is, a wounded woman. Seriously. It's not just a bruised finger, we need a healer." Kirik said in one breath and somewhat hastily, and then in a slightly different tone he added what he had said. "The girl is gifted, honorable Pann, from the crew of Schirm the Goush. Their boat has docked. The sub-deckers go under it, good rafting on the river between Brosm and Kvar-Imalt. The piece is not the tastiest, but the man is respected, and most importantly normal, without a demon in his head. He keeps his men from doing mayhem, and he keeps others in line. He's not a wave-cutter, nor a humanbuyer. For that, I can vouch, but under him is only sub-deck merchandise, that is, contraband, no more. His river-knowledge woman, who makes routes and catches currents, is dying, and half the vilge knows you are a healer."

  Stepan grew more and more gloomy with each word, and he had already managed to reflexively summon the spirits of the words directly into himself, understanding much more from what he had said than the headman had time to say. Even more than he wanted to say. Subdeckers were really smugglers because of their well-known and long gone beyond the narrow circle of the initiated manners of hiding valuable and undecred goods in special hiding pces between the deck and the hold. Wave-cutters, by the way, were called river pirates, for their characteristic manner of swimming out on small and fast dinghies from a cozy backwater against the waves and river current, taking a heavy and much more massive merchant ship in pincers. Humanbuyer was the name of the local river version of sve traders for the fact that they formally bought people on the shore, both from any criminal element - which caught the goods - and from parents, if they give up the extra kids. According to the local "thieves' river code", as Kirik once told him, they sold debtors, rats, losers and other "deserving, guilty" people as sves, but in reality, of course, they caught whoever they had to, covering themselves with tales of their nobility only in front of the morons who eager to hear it. No one would refuse to catch a solitary traveler or a girl who had gone out to wash her undry, because that was their job - Kirik didn't like these types, he truly hated them.

  Now the headman found himself in an uncomfortable position. Despite what he had said, he did not have much faith in the honor and integrity of the honest and decent smuggler, nicknamed Schirm the Goush. Rather, he knew for a fact that this scoundrel categorically disliked to shit where he worked and on his sector of the river kept the illegal freedmen in check and prevented them from robbing the riverside vilges, raping the maidens, and burning the huts... too often and too obviously. But only how this type would behave with a young and therefore, as he would think, not particurly experienced magician - a big, big question. This headman has already ensured that the outwardly juvenile boy is in fact very competent, just very low self-esteem. After Stepan had gifted them that ill-fated self-made totem for the wedding, he had been convinced of that opinion. And the smuggler had no such experience of communication. They could start to be insolent, and the headman was also convinced Pann could respond to insolence. And how could he together with the whole vilge not get into trouble?

  The Reader of the Backwaters is a very important person. Especially for the river trade. Especially if one holds some small piece of the river. Their team, as soon as the ice cracked and freed the center of Dantra - and spring came quickly this year and was warm, as if in compensation for the cold and very frosty winter - the first thing they did was to walk along their section of the river, checking the backwaters, habitual pces and other things that only sea (river) wolves (otters) pay attention to, not for themselves alone, but for those who walk under them too. In one of such raids, the navigator fell overboard one quiet night and hit her head unluckily. And those who came to the first vilge in their control zone, where they could wrap her in bnkets and put her to bed, were very surprised that there was a healer there. And judging by how uncomfortable Kirik felt, the first thing they had been told about it was a certain Taram, Kirik's son.

  After the conflict that never happened, during which Stepan had become disillusioned with the boy and never thought of him again. Kirik had kept his word, and the young Social Darwinist, who slightly pissed Stepan off, never even came in sight of him, only a couple of times, but he didn't even come close. But here, he decided to show off in front of the visiting guests, maybe even sincerely considering himself a favor to the magician. It's advertising. But his father understood better that there was no point in talking and communicating with dangerous people, even if it was at the bare minimum, even if they were not the most dangerous.

  "Will you give this brat a spanking?" Stepan only specified, knowing perfectly well that Kirik would understand him, and he did, apparently believing that Stepan saw everything in his face. "Then let's go, I'll just get dressed."

  He also quickly summoned the spirit already in the neckce and a couple of his colleagues, looking at the riverboat moored at the vilge dock, which was massive and weakly enchanted. It was as if a gifted person had lived there for a long time, and had mastered the basics - not systemic basics, but basics in general - of both working with material, a primitive amulet construction, and working with territory. It was as if this gifted one had made the ship an extension of his will, and thus had become much better at it. Became. Because the spirits quickly found the victim's aura simultaneously bright and dim from her injuries. She had been broken really badly, both legs and one of her arms, and it seemed that she had suffered a severe traumatic brain injury: through the spirit's perception, one could clearly see how the sheaths in the area of her head were somehow unpleasantly shimmering and thinning.

  "He seems smart, but he's such a fool, eh." The headman confessed, waving his hand as if to ward off a pesky fly. "Honestly, I would not even be so upset, if he had done it out of malice, to make you, honorable, under the interest of sub-deckers, but no, just a fool!"

  If Stepan had doubted for a moment that the boy wished him harm, he would not hesitate to do something. To put a ban on meanness in his brain. A kind of horror attack at the first thought of messing with a certain Pann. But no, visits to his dreams and ter memories showed that Taram was upset and offended by his father's blows and the magician's attitude, but there was also a clear understanding that he was not going to fight further. Magik had forgotten about Taram's existence. That was fine, he wouldn't remind him of himself! And here, no other way, he saw a great opportunity to reconcile retions and, perhaps, even get a percentage for mediation. Kirik's son was impudent like his father, but stupid not like his father, he could ask for it ter.

  The young man dressed and put on a cloak over his shirt, warming himself only with spirits, and followed the headman, who was walking as fast as possible so as not to run. The headman mentally exhaled and praised himself that he had gone to talk, having persuaded the local captain Redbeard not to go himself and prevented a conflict. By the way, the smuggler's beard was indeed red with a slight graying. He took care of it and even lovingly braided it.

  "All right, magik, you pull the patient out, I'll give you gold, and if you don't... you'd better get her out, gotcha, damn?" This individual asked very politely and practically going straight to the point trying to take the healer by the balls. "Why are you staring like a child at your grandfather?"

  Stepan looked at him a little tired and more and more irritated every second, because he had hidden his aura to the level of a gifted apprentice again. But this river Viking, who had a gift that was literally a tiny crumb, which did not even make him gifted, should have seen that the keyword in the phrase "strong apprentice" was "strong". Or did he see, but confused taciturnity and pallor with fear and absent-mindedness? Or did he have a reflex, like any gangster, to test the strength of anyone he dealt with?

  "Man, if you go on like this, you might meet my grandfather early." He said with an extremely calm and really tired expression on his face. "I didn't find myself in a cesspool, and I came here to save a person, not to listen to shit about myself. Yeah, there's a lot of you, but I'm the healer here. So be fucking polite, because politeness doesn't cost anybody shit, but it fucking dampens any conflicts. You know what I'm saying, or should I be a little more clear?"

  Actually, in response to such a thing you could have caught a punch in the teeth in the middle of the phrase, but then the man backed off a little when two small fire spirits appeared over Stepan's shoulders, right in the middle of the phrase, as if lumps of translucent fire, and the smuggler himself turned to his gift and got a normal look at the shaman up close. The spirits of untold words and the catcher of thoughts, called by a one-time contract allowed him to realize that the man did not expect something significant from the vilge magician. Especially if this magician came at the first call of the usual headman, and Kirik's precautions considered that the old rascal was padding the price and decided to tell the boy in private how much to take and demand. Schirm immediately started to knock down the pride and cut the price, and suddenly it turned out that it was possible to get in trouble.

  "Quiet, for fuck's sake." He stopped his men from reacting in any way, and they, characteristically, shut up. "I fucking admit it. I jerked the rod like a bottom-feeding catfish, my bad. There, on the recliner is my adopted daughter, dearer to me than my own family, however many I left behind, gyh. I'm a nervous shaman, I'm stressed out. Let's start over, so to speak, with a new flight, okay?"

  "No problem, I'm a very non-conflictive person, and I understand other people's anxiety." Stepan didn't forgive everything, but the man didn't lie, and he appreciated the wounded girl and even loved her almost with fatherly love. He also needed her for his illegal affairs, and it was impossible to lose her at all. "I'll name the price after the inspection, but I won't haggle, I don't know how. It's either yes or no. I don't twist anyone's arm, if you want, you can compare it with the rates of guild healers."

  He knew them well, thank the gods, or rather one particur Life-Giving Goddess, thanks to Shera and her science, so he could demand as much as his service was worth. But he would still ask for less, or it would be hard to expin how an illiterate shaman from the Shithole had managed to cure all these injuries.

  "You, shaman, are right, of course, I know the rates, but you are not a guild healer with a patent either." Although the shaman was already on his way to Kirik's house, where the wounded woman was id on the master's bed, the man did not forget to bargain. "Or do you have one?"

  "No, of course not, why else would I be sitting here?" The young man answered conically and without even arguing leaning over the patient and taking her cold palm between his beginning to scan her body. "But I'm not practicing freely, I'm doing a one-time favor in return for help. The Edict of the Three Temples applies everywhere, of course, but only if it's not abused directly. I don't. What did you give her to drink, from potions, I mean?"

  The girl hadn't died yet only because she was sustained by some pretty good alchemical brew, literally increasing her vitality to the limit of biological possibilities and a little beyond that. But it didn't heal her by itself. Schirm didn't see it. He used his magic vision in a frankly clumsy way, but Stepan realized that without his influence the girl wouldn't survive the night. The fractured skull and the blood that poured into her brain didn't kill her only due to the residual effects of the potion. And also, probably, the support of the ship, which she instinctively and on the crumbs of knowledge turned into her pce of power, a kind of wandering territory, which is probably very popur among those adepts of witchcraft that prefer to connect their lives with the fleet. The first thing he had to do was to unnoticeably pnt the spirit in himself, and then, through the touch, to transfer the healer into the patient's body, assisted by a ghostly grasp that he also slipped into the patient.

  This is definitely not the kind of fisting the Autogoddess was expecting from me, but you're welcome. It goes through his head and he has to suppress his ughter as well.

  "I can handle it. It's not as bad as it looked. The fractures are not dangerous, the blow to the head is more serious, but the worst is over." The young man lies btantly without saying a word of untruth. For now, that he has taken up arms with this gift at the level of a weak apprentice girl, the worst for her is really over. "I'll stabilize her overnight, and tomorrow morning we'll take her to the riverbank and conduct a call. I have one contract, if it comes to the call, she'll be jumping in a week. Twenty in silver or, if there is nugget copper, iron ore that has never known a forge, a handful of good burning pepper, and the same salt, then only ten. I will have to get it myself ter to renew the contract with the spirit."

  "Shamaaaaaaans, you always have some fucking obscure shit, not like normal magic." The man thoughtfully stretched out, trying to hide how relieved he felt. If the boy was asking for that amount of money, then probably it really wasn't as bad as he thought, otherwise, he would have twisted his arms harder, right "I'll have pepper, as well as fucking salt, and other spices, cinnamon, if necessary. Unforged copper or iron, sorry, we don't carry such, the less weight we have under the deck the better, the calmer it is. Twelve?"

  "Fifteen." Stepan corrected him, pretending he was counting something in his mind rather than saying the number out of thin air. "Kirik, make me something to chew on, something I can quickly stuff in my stomach. I'll be calling all night long, I shouldn't do it hungry."

  The headman nodded silently and jabbed his finger at his son, and the tter went off on his errand while his father wiped the sweat from his face. He had been so nervous when Stepan and the river Moriarty had nearly at each other's throats. Schirm jabbed a finger at one of his own. He ran faster than Taram, apparently to get spices.

  "I've heard that your brethren, before your bullshit, start fasting on the contrary, afraid to eat anything but breadcrumbs and water." The rexed man had clearly become more good-natured. It was as if a rod had been pulled out of him. Even though he tried not to show how much he was pissed off, so as not to drop his honest authority. "No, I'm not going into the hold, I've no pretensions, I'm just interested. And let's get on with the names. My name is Schirm, they call me Goush. Not for boarding, they won't lie, I've been a cook on a ship since I was a boy, until I became a helmsman myself, and then I got a piece of our Dantra-chan under my eyes and ears."

  SpoilerT.N. Goush

  [colpse]"Well, call me Pann, then. I never got a nickname, except for the ones my grandfather used to call me when I was too stupid, but I wouldn't repeat them." Stepan was not deceived by his friendliness and watched the smuggler even more attentively than he did the patient's gradually stabilizing condition. "To answer your question, it depends on who is called. They mostly fast either by calling the extremely light so be as pure as possible in front of them, and by this purity incline them to the contract. Or calling to dark shit to harden the body and will a little, and not to shit themselves too."

  The joke finally defused the situation, the quickly brought and still warm food satisfied the hunger and finally improved the mood of both interlocutors, but Stepan could not help noting the fact that Schirm drank only herbal decoction, holding his hand with the amulet over it, and also did not send his men away. Nor did he miss the fact that there were no women in sight at all, only boys and men, and everyone was kind of nervous. Yes, Goush's smugglers knew the limits, and in general, they are good guys, they don't let the real scum go wild.... but somehow they were not in a hurry to welcome them with great joy either, they were nervous. Stepan, who had long ago covered himself with a couple of protective contracts, waiting for a traitorous attack, was not particurly worried. Some amulets had only a couple of fighters and Goush. He could not be pierced by such amulets unless he was too dumb.

  He really started calls in the evening, lit candles, his own, by the way, brought with him, and in fact quickly purchased, drew a small circle with a special chalk, sheltering the sick from all the crap that could come to the shaman's call just to look, and then rush, seeing the weak aura of the sick gifted. Everything was just according to the recipe: throat singing, pinches of herbs and powders burned in the fire of candles, the pale face of the shaman swaying and still holding the hand of the maiden. He himself had already repaired the worst of the damage, pumped the blood from the brain, and normalized the condition of the vessels, both by himself, literally with a spiritual limb, and by summoning several spirits working alternately. The task was not the easiest, especially with the need to hide all his actions within the confines of a mere strong and burly apprentice. But tomorrow's ritual was not a profanation because the girl's personality was quite damaged by the outpouring of blood. If he wanted to bring her back from her vegetable state, the spirit he had already mentioned should be summoned, and the easiest and cheapest way to call him was near the river.

  He'd worked on the fractures, too, but not so diligently, only preventing muscle damage from bone fragments and relieving swelling, and fixing the bones with special perfume. If she could get up now, she might even be able to walk. It was as if both of her legs had been broken - one below the knee, the other above, but she wouldn't get up now, so there would be no questions. He extracted bone particles that could get into the bloodstream or damage soft tissue with his spiritual limb, feeding one specific healing spirit that could restore some of the body's tissues if fed to him, and the easiest way to do that was to shave his head and trim his fingernails, which also counted. He would restore her brain physically by morning, but memory and personality, which suffered physically, would have to be written on the renewed brain from the subtle and spiritual body. The basics of working with subtle bodies in general, no matter whether through shamanism, witchcraft, or cssical healing with high magic.

  And while the night went on he had only to call, sing, and work at saving other people's lives. However, the reason for this was not only humanity and unwillingness to let a very beautiful girl die, albeit ft, with a boyish haircut and probably with a bad temper. The reason for that was another system assignment that popped up as soon as Stepan's eyes found the victim.

  Received system assignment (small): to ensure the healing and full recovery of Taira, the adopted daughter of Schirm Goush, to heal her body, and to maintain her cognitive abilities after her head injury.

  Reward: some increase in affinity with the spheres of Life and Regeneration; one-seventh of the remaining experience until the next level; one random meta-skill from those not yet unlocked.

  The reward is really decent and much better than one would expect from a not-so-difficult assignment. Though? Not having a spiritual form and the ability to directly manipute ghostly limbs inside another's body, as well as quietly pcing the right spirits inside that body's aura and directing them afterward, he couldn't do without summoning some really serious spirits with equally serious rituals and disguise breaking. The second assignment, which came at the same time as the first and did not repce it but only supplemented it, he rejected with indignation, even though he admitted that this Tahira was no innocent daisy, and her adoptive father was no better. It was a typical Autodivine trick: to organize a feast for a cured and very happy girl, in which she would voluntarily become the main course for the whole team, including her “daddy”, consuming no less than two portions of seed from each of the twenty-one participants of the coming orgy.

  It's not a bad way to get protein food, but let's do it without Stepan, shall we? He'll cure her, hand her over to the chief, wave a handkerchief, and let her celebrate or not celebrate, or gangbang her whole team, or castrate them all - without him. He, like that birdhouse from the memetic picture on the earthly internet, does not participate in this festival. However, they offered a free talent point for spending on meta-skills and the same free one for spending on minor knowledge. However, if Stepan had been greedy, his life could have turned out quite differently.

  In the morning he finally stopped talking, stretched his bones, drank a cold herbal brew - Meld had brewed it, proud of the fact that he was so cool and useful - and met the not-so-sleepy, though sullenly tired gaze of Schirm, who also hadn't slept a minute, having only gone to the toilet a couple of times. Nodding to him and quickly washing himself with cold water, the boy began to describe their further pns for today.

  “That's all for now. Let the local women wash her, change her into a clean shirt and nothing else, just a bnket to cover her with, then we put her on the burden and carry her to the river, there is a hill with a cliff nearby, just well adjacent.” The man listened attentively, and he was already calm and collected, he saw that his valuable specialist became noticeably easier and he was convinced of the shaman's professionalism, as well as of the fact that he had not lied about the fact that everything was not so serious. “There's somewhere around four or five thousand paces, but you can't follow the river, the echo of the river will stay on her. It'll be harder ter, so tell your people you'll have to carry the weights for a bit. First, I think, breakfast, while they change your sick one's clothes, and then let's get to work. I'm tired, it's time to finish.”

  Stepan bit his lip, almost calling the girl by her name, even though no one had told him her name, which would have been a failure and would have aroused suspicion. It was good that he realized his blunder in time and did not make a blunder. The smuggler, who listened attentively, chuckled audibly, then stood up and walked over to the patient still in the analog of a medical coma, stroking her sweaty forehead with some touching care.

  “To carry this fish? Fuck, such a burden will not break the back of a dead nag, Tahira has not had enough of the lord's bodies.” He joked, and he ughed himself. Stepan even envied such a sense of humor, at least he could not be sad and make stand-ups for himself. "Heh, we have enough strength for that, the main thing is not to fail, I beg you by all the gods, please note, with all the politeness."

  Stepan was already leaving the house, but then he turned and met the calm gaze of the almost-not-bandit with an equally calm gaze of his own, clearly seeing there a very simple truth. If a stray shaman makes a mistake, he will be beaten or even killed, despite his “ politeness” and kind attitude. Well, if they didn't want to sell him to someone to compensate for the losses from the death of their gifted one. Stepan realized all this and somehow he wanted to just cure the maiden, wait for the whole gang to leave, and then send something hungry and evil after them, so that not even pnks of their boat were left. He could, now he could. Although collecting the pnks would have to be a separate task for the spirit group, but he could still do it. And, hell knows, maybe that's exactly what he would do.

  Just in case.

  * * *

  Stepan was enthusiastically drawing all sorts of useful patterns on the wrists and ankles of the comatose maiden with a little alchemical blue paint: health, vigor, strengthening, tranquility, peace, and a bunch of other symbols, embodying a kind of reflection of the spirit world on reality. Not runes, not ritualism in its purest form, but a subtype of shamanism and witchcraft at the same time, revealed within the framework of general erudition in the connection of call practice and work with the territory. In fact, these signs, quite working and useful, were about as useful to the patient as a cold compress or, say, the sixth finger on the left hand, that is, nothing at all. It is of no use, but it looks beautiful and works for the public, which today is especially demanding.

  A dozen tall and not-at-all-righteous men did not go with them, and even if they had, Stepan would not even bring them to the treatment, but would simply go further away from the vilge and kill them all, having tested the retinue because it would be obvious that they were up to no good. All in all, six people went to the noticeable hillock, not counting the shaman and Meld, who had asked for the role of fetch-and-deliver, and Stepan did not refuse him. Four big men dragged a homemade stretcher, on which y Tahira considered the fifth, dressed and covered with a bnket, and the gloomily hopeful Captain Goush stomped along beside them. A warm breeze was blowing, and the weather was fine and even hot for those carrying the still-living load, the mud on the forest path had dried a little and therefore it was easy to walk.

  There was no special conversation. Stepan went straight to work, asking Meld in passing to give him this or that thing or reagent. The teenager tried his best to pretend he was not gawking at the almost undressed girl, because her father, though not her own, was literally two steps away, and he had a dirk. Stepan did not stare at all, even when drawing signs, because he had put himself into a trance and was calmly preparing the call of a long-ago-summoned spirit, hovering a few moments away from reality. The young man also maintained two independent shields. A weaker and more obvious one, and a second, much more powerful and hidden in the shadow of the summoner's aura along with the spirit that created the shield. The retinue of three strong fighters and a dozen specific trifles was also nearby and ready to act: there was no more convenient moment to grab a stranger's magician as a consotion prize.

  Stepan, to be honest, almost wished that he had been attacked by these guys so that everything would be simple and clear again, and there would be no need to py complicated social comedy. How simple things are when the enemy can be simply and uncomplicatedly fucking killed. Well, first interrogate him, and then kill him, but to hell. However, if he was attacked, it would be after the treatment was over, and the suspects themselves were clearly not going to fight. It was felt in their movements and emotions. Stepan's thoughts were not read, at the moment, but the surface pns of Schirm had been considered in the morning and treachery was not there. If the shamaness, of course, would fulfill his promises. If he screwed up, then there were options, but what Stepan did not doubt was the ability to fulfill the System assignment. This poor girl he will treat to perfect condition, even if he has to kill all the others first, except for Meld, he is definitely normal. A bit of a moron, of course. He is annoying beyond measure, but normal, probably, just not for sure.

  The ritual passed, well, as it should have. No differences. Stepan pumped up his throat singing skill a little, but without any comments from the system, pyed with his neckce, shook it over the patient's body, and then the girl inhaled sharply, as if she were drowning, and opened her eyes, twitching like a paralytic. She had her mind back completely now, but her body still didn't obey her normally. Brain damage was a thing. Stepan could let her regain her reflexes on her own, but the System wouldn't count that as a full cure. So it would be necessary to pnt a couple of spirits in her and manually adjust the areas of the aura responsible for the connection of muscles and thoughts with reflexes. Nothing complicated against the background of his knowledge, but it would eat up half an hour of time. And to prevent the gifted magician from realizing that Stepan was demonstrating skills that were not at all student-like, a pair of invisible, even in the magical background, non-leeches had already been sucked to her temples, sucking out not magic or life, but thoughts, perception, and memory, even the very process of awareness. If he wanted to, she wouldn't notice even if he started cutting her right there, or, given the nature of these spirits, raping her in every possible way.

  “Easy, don't twitch, I'm treating you now not so you can get mangled again. Your captain, over there, just a little to the left, you're fine.” The shaman speaks indifferently and slightly irritated, showing exactly how he feels in general. “You've been unconscious for a long time, your body has become weaned from being guided by your mind, I'm re-establishing that connection now. You'll start cramping after a hundred heartbeats, so to make sure you don't break anything, I'm going to immobilize you, but you'll be able to talk, here, have some water.”

  Meld, red as a crab, immediately bent over Tahira, bringing the bowl of long-cooled potion to her lips. Greedily drinking some of it and spilling some of it on herself, which would have been dangerous if he had not insuted the air near her with a separate spirit, the heavy-breathing dy calmed down and began to wheeze something indistinctly, slowly recovering her voice too. Stepan did not pay much attention, as well as to the cheerful congratutions on her survival, and warm greetings from all her colleagues in the dangerous illegal game with customs and border services. But he paid attention to something else, at first raising his eyebrows in surprise, and then simply shrugging and calming down, because he was ready for something simir, albeit in a different setting.

  "Vih... Vihras..." Quietly hissed the patient already quite legible putting letters into words about three minutes ter, when Stepan started to restore her fine motor skills, not letting the girl even think about using the gift, or else she would disturb the spirits. "Vihras..."

  “Yeah, he's the one who spotted you, Tair, and actually saved you, heh.” One of his colleagues supported her, smiling cheerfully. “If it hadn't been for him yelling that you'd flopped, we'd all be sailing by. We'd have almost sailed by, you went by the stern, and you fucked up your legs, it was a miracle we had time to pour the potion in, and they found a mage here. Don't mind that he's small, he's as sharp as a fucking pike, and he knows his business.”

  "Vihras. He pushed me off the boat, asshole, fucking cocksucker. He hit me in the head with something and pushed me off, fucking bitch!" Stepan nodded respectfully at the purity of her speech and the consistency of her speech constructions. His systemic knowledge of the nguage and internal transtion were able to cope with these swear words, but not without difficulty; some of the terms did not seem to exist in the usual Earth dialects at all. "And before that, the fucking cocksucking catfucking whore-lover had spoken, ha-ha-ha, offered to stand for him, promised fucking knowledge and the opportunity to learn something from normal magicians."

  The words of Tahira, who had come to her senses, first caused silence, then a slight murmur, and then a very, very grim expression on the face of Schirm Goush, who may not have gotten his nickname for his love of bloodshed, but now he was ready to do just that, along with torture and slow feeding of the traitor to magical magical predatory catfish, preliminarily smeared with rot and rottenness, so that not especially predatory fish, preferring carrion, would eat human meat at all. Such is the traditional execution for rats and scavengers among river criminals along the entire Dantra, a sacred tradition, you might think. Stepan, who had managed to get into the heads of his “clients” during the night, lost all sympathy for them and almost begged them mentally to give him a reason, so he would fight back. Noble, bitch, smugglers in fact, of course, quite reasonably considered themselves better than pirates, raiders, or svers, but against the background of earthly standards and norms, Stepan would put them all in coffins and build a lead sarcophagus on top.

  The problem for both Schirm and his six men was that there were five of them, and they were armed only with ordinary weapons. They were wearing minimal or even no armor. They didn't take special amulets with no charge recovery option - but for obvious reasons, they don't carry iron at all, and some of the amulets are worn only before a fight - while a crowd of seven snouts, armed for battle, had already appeared near the hill. They also brought with them five powerful arguments in the form of light but powerful crossbows. The main one of them, probably the same Vihras, stood out with a particurly impudent face, a good protective amulet, better than Goush's, and a full-fledged one, which could be carried on his person without taking it off - more against physics, against magic much less helpful, but also working - as well as a cssic magic wand made of varnished wood, which had already been pulled out of the belt holster. Apparently, this cssic strikes with no less cssic fire in the form of a fire arrow with the ability to change intensity. Not a bad thing. It's useful, especially when trying to whack your own superiors.

  “Vihras-Vihras, I got you out of the shit. I brought you into the world, and here you are thanking me.” In spite of his confident and cheerfully condemning tone, Schirm's mood is simply grave and he already understands that he's going to die, but he has no right to show weakness in front of the people who are still loyal to him. “So what did the Schmalevs offer you? Was it worth it, eh?”

  Vihras spat contemptuously on the ground showing his attitude to his interlocutor's words, but apparently, he couldn't deny himself the opportunity to show off. Stepan, who was reading everyone around him, and who, thanks to a recent property, was not even dizzy from so many parallel dialogs and transmissions of images, could clearly see what this individual was breathing. And how much he hated his chief for the fact that he, such a bitch, “noble”, helped and saved him, and then all his life reminded him of it, reminded him, and, bitch, reminded him! Because he's just a bitch and all. And Vihras wants more. And now he's, like, a bitch himself because he kinda betrays. Cssic hatred for someone who showed even the slightest bit of better morals. The desire to kill the one so that the realization of his own lowliness wouldn't give him an annoying itch anymore. And also the thirst for money, power, and girls, including the still-paralyzed Tahira.

  “Well, first of all, it's not Shmalevy, it's Reed, but you must not give a shit. That's the end for you.” He's showing off, baring his teeth, giving a taste of strength and courage to those who came with him. They are already tied up, but it's better to draw a line once more. “Big search is going on, fuck, Rotten is out, Batrak is out with him, Yelnik can barely protect his ass now, or they'll fuck him. Reed's in the main stream now. He should be the helmsman, and you're in the way, bitch. You don't get it, do you? They're dividing the Dantra again, like ten winters ago, only this time, Goushik, they didn't give you a portion of earfish, yeah. Understand, cook? It's fucking over. We were supposed to be in Chalnaya, not here, but your ft whore had to be so resilient.”

  It seems that's why he tried to eliminate her first. Schirm understood, and Stepan was read from him. She could sense an ambush in her native cove. Her charms were there, and with time to prepare, on a familiar boat, the Reader of the Currents could reverse the outcome of the fight, or simply escape by speeding up the boat so they decided not to risk it. At first, they offered to participate, and when she refused, she was immediately hit over the head. They should have gotten the dead body, but apparently, the hit was weak. Stepan noted the girl's traumatic brain injury was strange, but he wrote it off as a very unlucky fall and a blow against the side of the ship. He should have listened to the agent's work and checked everything properly. But no, he decided not to stand out... He doesn't care, of course, but the fact of missing the picture is annoying. Next time he could miss something really important.

  Stepan did not listen to the bickering of this truly worthy company, preferring to finish his business. It would take about five minutes until the victim, who was swearing sluggishly at the traitor, would be completely back to normal, even her legs had already fused, but he would tell her not to walk much for another week for conspiracy's sake. But his luck ran out, and the next phrase was meant for his ears, and it was a characteristic one, with all the necessary markers.

  “So, Magik, let's go and stand aside, over there, then we'll deal with you and, hee-hee, we'll talk about what to charge you for pushing my oar across the fucking sail.” Well, you don't even need intuition to foresee the scenario in which the shaman would be taken as an additional trophy. “Don't be stupid, I'm not afraid of fire, but I'll roast your heels ter, the fire's already burning.”

  Stepan involuntarily gnced at the fire lit for warmth and then continued to finish his work. He would even fulfill this demand, let the bastards kill each other, and kill the survivors, and afterward, he would think how to disguise it all as “kind gentlemen, they did it all themselves, and I just happened to be alive”. From his side, this conflict was an example of sexual retions between an aspid and a tropical frog, and therefore he sincerely wished both sides success and the highest possible kill count. Except that he felt sorry for the healed one, and not even because she was a woman, and certainly not because she was innocent, but because he had treated her so much, and there was such a thing. And they would not kill her quickly, which could not help but infuriate Stepan, who did not like blood and all kinds of torture, violence, beatings, and all that.

  SpoilerT.N. There is a proverb The Frog fuck the Snake. It describes the situation when two equally bad powers argue or fight about something.

  [colpse]“No problem, just let me finish in a couple minutes and I'll stay and warm up by the fire.” He said peacefully and even a little submissively, but the bastard who had already tried on the crown of the king of waters did not like this attitude, which resulted in a sharp gesture behind the back of one of the crossbowmen. “But don't be in such a hurry, I'm not a refu..., you bitch! Why don't you all take care of yourselves!"

  The young man's conciliatory speeches were interrupted by a crossbow bolt that flew straight into his face. This one seemed to have been enchanted a little and badly, because the first shield, weak and more for show, was almost pierced. The air that had been condensed into a barrier, created by a feather woven into his hair, not the same one that had been originally used for such an effect, repelled the threat, though it shook, and then Stepan struck back. He was still trying to act within the framework of “just a talented apprentice”, so he couldn't call up Sprut and organize tentacle porn for the bad guys, otherwise he would have to leave no witnesses, except for Meld, whose memory would have to be cleaned.

  Instead, on the st sylble of his outraged shout, the crossbows of all the remaining crossbows snapped at once, rotting away. It was a trick he had long ago prepared. It was a perfect remedy against bows and other shooting junk, and it was all done by one small spirit with the right exotic property, rather than a bunch of separate calls of simpler ones, which would spoil each bowstring separately. Just rotted all the targets in the radius of the hill. Only no one but the enemy here had crossbows or anything else. Is that a bad thing? Good! Too bad, Vihras, a bad man, didn't share Stepan's opinion. He shouted something insulting, called the good guy Pann a bad word, and, transferring his wand, obviously given by his patrons, who had provoked this dispute between economic agents, to the maximum power mode, released not even an arrow of fire, but a full-fledged spit of fme in the direction of the shaman. And not just at him, but also at the unhealed Tahira, the bastard!

  My free meta-skill! He mentally shouted, csping his hands, physically piling on the patient, covering her with his protection, and calling out from the neckce of a specific small spirit, just for such situations and called on the basis of knowledge in the framework of combat calls. The spirit manifested in Reality but remained invisible to anyone without magical sight, but soon it became very distinguishable. The entity draws in fire magic, like smoke from a hookah, and then fshes very bright and at the same time not a blinding light. But the other fsh both blinded and stunned, and even maimed, if not killed. The spirit attuned to the source of the magic that directed the fme and sent the fme back to the sender with a little bit of the spirit's own power. If it was a spell performed by a mage, the aura would have been deformed and twisted a bit, but if he wasn't a complete ignoramus, he would have quickly gotten rid of the attack through the envoltive sembnce. But the spell was created by the wand, and it returned to the wand tearing to shit the product of very dubious quality and Vihras's arm just above the elbow which made Stepan smile a little bloodthirstily. Mentally, because aloud, when everyone blinked and began to perceive the world, he said something completely different:

  "Wow, it really worked!" And there was so much surprise in these words that you can't even say he lied because he was really surprised that the normal kind of wand did not have any protection against destabilization. "I can't believe it!"

  The rebellious part of the team did not care about the shaman's belief or disbelief, because Vihras opened his mouth like a fish, looking at the blood-spurting stump, as if he expected it to come back together and the numerous injuries, including a very severe burn on the right side of his body, to heal by magic. Oddly enough, they didn't heal, the stump didn't regrow and the wand didn't regenerate from splinters. Some kind of one continuous mess, not a successful revolt, rebellion, and change of the throne! But the leader was lucky, or vice versa, for his neighbor was killed instantly by a piece of the rod that had entered halfway through his skull. Another was just wounded, screaming that his leg had been blown off, though it was just a couple of splinters driven into the meat. The others were trying to figure out how the situation had shifted from a simple and uncomplicated sughter of the commanders, helpless against wands and crossbows, to such an outrage.

  Schirm didn't let them figure it out. With a cry so obscene that it would have been censored even if it had been dubbed by Cubic in Cube, he rushed to cut the traitors into the same bloody gulyash. Two he cut down without any resistance at all, then the rest of the allies pulled up, having come to their senses sufficiently, and there everything ended with only one wound, a scratch even, which was received by the very talker who praised Vihras as the savior of a drowning woman. There was only one individual who cleverly and deliberately ran around the general skirmish and tried to stab the shaman or take Tahira hostage, but Meld, who bravely shouted something unintelligible, jumped under the man's feet, restraining his movements and gave Stepan time to react. Meld got a boot in his nose for this feat, but there was no way to avenge his assistant because one of the “allied” guys appeared from behind the attacker and beat him to death with an axe. It was good that his brains weren't spttered, or his skull was split in two.

  SpoilerT.N. Cubic in Cube it's a popur Russian voiceover team. Many consider their voice acting to be canonical.

  [colpse]In the meantime, Schirm began to command, swearing and pulling a piece of rope over the arm of the sluggish Vihras, but not out of mercy. The smuggler wanted to know where the idea of the change of commander, the new amulet and wand, as well as the general outline of the upcoming big divisions between the gangs, had come from. Somehow it became clear that it would be better for the asshole to die right here, because now his death would not be easy, and neither would the questions that would have to be answered.

  "That's it, I'm done, please pay up," Stepan said, instantly silencing the others and looking at him. -"She is healthy and can probably even walk. But I'd advise you to take care of her arm and legs for a week, because the bones are fused, and they may crack again in the same pces. Uh, Tahira, can you say something?"

  Her father answered instead of Tahira, looking at the boy a little warily, but generally positively, even a bit gratefully. Tahira's gratefully positive look was much more pleasant, but only because she was still a very pretty and poorly dressed girl.

  “Listen, Pann, buddy, are you sure you're a, well, fucking healer?” Eloquently looking around the battlefield, Schirm looked at the shaman again and continued his thought. "I'm not making a charge, no-no, but somehow this is all... uh, sudden."

  "I'm not just a healer - I'm a shaman-healer." Expins the guy, kneading his hands and lower back. "Shamans are all, how can I put this delicately?"

  "Six months dancing naked around the fire, shaking their balls, not drinking anything hot, and eating bull cocks and hare shit every morning, but when they need to, they strike almost like normal mages, only then they dance again for six months. Have I never seen a shaman?" Instead of him, Tahira, who had taken a sitting position, finished her thought, gring angrily at everyone around her and trying to cover her body cd only in a short shirt. "What the fuck are you fucking doing, gring like idiots on a magistrate's seal?! Throw me my clothes, now! Or did you manage not to bring them with you?"

  While everyone was expressing strong emotions and handed Tahira her cloak, in which she wrapped herself and began to look angrily at those who had looked at her before, Stepan thought a little and asked himself. He couldn't help asking, because his professional subject was also affected, and his erudition could not give an answer.

  "Okay, I can understand naked dancing and no alcohol, these are frequent restrictions and requirements to the rituals of invocation, I can understand even bull genitalia, quite a strong symbol, for such a condition their contracts will be found, but why, for the sake of all the gods and spirits, someone to eat hare shit at all?" Of course, spirits have very exotic requests, but we are talking about shamans in general, as a stereotype, and those shades of spiritual images, that can be obtained from such a sweet treat, are practically useless. "There is no aspectual connection, no sympathetic window, or anything useful! What the hell is the joke, or is it some kind of joke that I do not understand?"

  Tahira looked at him with slight surprise, but then chuckled, suppressing her ughter at the very st moment, as the shaman's gaze was very eloquent. Coughing, she expined through the ughter of both herself, her “father-in-w” and the rest of their team:

  "It's a kind of strength replenishment, for men, to make the hook st longer." In response to his bulging eyes, she only shrugged her shoulders, saying, “I don't know anything, it's tradition. It's bullshit, I know, but the vilgers believe in it, even trade in potions sometimes. Maybe they feed the hares some herbs, but I don't know, am I fucking stupid to ask?"

  Ah, well, if it's a cultural tradition, Stepan washes his hands of it, his knowledge fortunately doesn't extend to such things.

  * * *

  In addition to the seven dead traitors, two other men who remained loyal to Goush had been killed when they noticed the suspicious actions of the enemy while they were assembling. Well, the crew of the Little Leshch, as the boat of Goush was called was almost halved, but they could sail, as it seemed even now, for they had gone to scout the ways and check the caches left for the winter with an overcrowded crew. However, they decided to stay a few days to bury their boys on the same hill where they had treated Tahira, and to think over their further actions. As Stepan suspected, it was also to let the bones of their gifted one heal properly, which even after regaining consciousness had to be carried back.

  Stepan was paid his coins for the treatment, even honestly offered to pay the combat coins as well, but the young man in a fit of bad temper, refused. Not out of nobility, but because he attacked only after they had already hit him. If it wasn't for Kirik's request and the System's assignment, he wouldn't have treated her, or would have done the minimum, just so she wouldn't die. Although, okay, he's overreacting here - he would have helped and pulled her out. He simply and succinctly “expined” to Schirm that if he had let him kill or abuse the girl he had just cured, his grandfather would have killed him with a shovel on his head from the other side of the world. They seemed to believe him, especially after listening to the rumors going around the vilge and probably began to consider Stepan's grandfather a very stern man, a man of iron, but not Felix.

  SpoilerT.N. Iron Felix it's the nickname of this person.

  [colpse]Meld, who had received the treatment for his broken and skewed nose from Stepan, now boasted and pontificated as if he had discovered his Kazakh roots and become the star of the whole vilge for an indefinite time. Kirik, on the one hand, was rubbing his hands together, because the sub-deckers had brought a lot of money to the vilge, but on the other hand, on the contrary, he wrinkled his nose in displeasure and forbade the girls to wander alone. Of course, he and the rest of the vilge had never seen much evil from Goush and his crew, but this crew with the captain at its head had never been here longer than one evening, and here they had been here for several days, and angry, and after the battle, and with losses, and all together. In general, Kirik slept vigintly and kept his boarding axe under his pillow, as well as his cleaver folded at the bottom of the chest in an oiled cloth.

  The shaman returned back to his cabin, looked a little at the ceiling, sighed about the bloodiness and cruelty of this world, and then took up his new meta-skill - “replenishment of life I”, which is a very nice complement to the “replenishment of reserve”, but was hardly more useful, albeit with a longer rollback. Once a month from the moment of obtaining the skill Stepan could replenish the missing life force literally instantaneously, even if he was almost dried up by some vampires or sucked by a lecherous demoness - at this moment half asleep young man was very surprised at how he even had such an idea, but habitually bmed the Autogoddess with her regur tasks - would be enough only consciousness to just wish to activate the skill. However, updating the scale of life force was a trifle, Stepan almost did not use those calls, where the spirits needed life with blood, because there were simpler ways, not so dangerous, and at the same time no less effective. And most of the blood lovers could be persuaded to use a little more pure magic. Comparing the Source and Constitution parameters, it was still more favorable.

  The trick is that this trick heals wounds, any wounds at all. At this stage, only physical wounds or those with a minimal magical component, do not help against poisons, curses, or other long-sting effects. But meta-skill levels will continue to rise and underestimate the possibility of instantly repairing a hole in his chest the size of his chest itself if you manage to apply the skill and keep enough self-control to remember him at such a moment... No, with his life, it would be impossible to underestimate such a lifeline. No matter how much Stepan tries to avoid conflicts, but they still find him, no effort is required. With such thoughts, remembering the world of dark and evil fantasy with kind words, Stepan met the sudden knock at the door.

  He was surprised that there was a suicide who wanted to disturb him again, but he looked through the door - with a ten in Sensitivity he could do that without having to switch completely to magical perception - and was even more surprised at what he saw behind the door. He thought for a few seconds about pretending to be dead or running away into the night, but he thought that was unworthy of his remarkable awesomeness, so he got up and went to open the door.

  “You've come to the fucking end of the world, shaman.” In a slightly annoyed voice, which, because of the noticeable hoarseness always seemed to be annoyed, Tahira said to his face. “What are you looking at? Are you going to let me warm my broken bones, or are you going to tell me to get the fuck out of here?”

  He would not have said such a thing, even if he had wanted to, because he was like that hare from the cartoon, a very polite boy, but the temptation was there. And the second temptation was the appearance of his guest, dressed only in light pants and a shirt under a cloak. The weather was certainly spring-like, but the breath of winter could still be felt, and the present evening was already turning to night. Judging by the Sensitivity she warmed herself with the most primitive magic, instinctive, reflexive, and ineffective to the extreme. The outflow of power, parasitic and useless, almost brought tears to his eyes. No, of course, there was a possibility that she was fine, and her nipples were showing through the thin and obviously “festive” shirt of white and red fabric because she was very happy to see him, but one had to be realistic.

  "Come in, I'll make you something hot to drink." He didn't find the girl, who was barely three or four years older than he was, so attractive, but he wasn't going to refuse her hints, and he wasn't going to forget to be careful. "Take off your shoes, make yourself at home and all that."

  Just don't forget you're a guest, Stepan added mentally.

  “It's nice here, I can feel the power, I can't even see it from the outside, but here, bitch, it's hot, whispered normally, not worse than in my Lyashc.” She would have smelled much more, but Stepan had warned his spirits not to show too much in the perception, she was a gifted one, and a trained one at that, not an ordinary girl. “Get the hot stuff right away the mood's right for a goblet of wine minimum, a total fucking mess. We've sailed, they call it, we've seen Dantra, we've felt the creeks, I've fucked it all with a boarding hook.”

  The young man thought for a while and pretended to bend down for the bottle, but in fact, he bought it directly from the System store. It was some kind of strengthening-healing tincture with a bunch of positive properties. Stepan nodded politely at the satisfied whistling of Tahira, who herself put a bottle with some liquid, apparently stronger than wine, on the table. There was no tension or falsity in her, and the spirits could detect none in her emotions, words, or surface thoughts. Their conversation and her remarks gave away only a certain kind of thoughts, mixed with gratitude for the treatment and the cover from the fmes, as well as a desire to get id “with someone quite handsome and washed more than once a year, and only after being caught in the rain”. Not to mention the fact that she wasn't going to give anyone on the ship, or else there would be only trouble, and Tahira had long outgrown her snotty teenage crush on her adoptive father.

  All of which Stepan read off of her with ease. The gifted one's aura was of little help against his methods, not in a pce of his partial power, filled with the shaman's will, and not after he had worked so intimately with her subtle body and aura. Therefore there was no chance of hiding her thoughts. That's why he hadn't killed her yet, as soon as he'd felt the slightest, lightest even, influence from her. A cssic witch's spell, but soft, not rough. Not even a suppression of will, but just an increase in attractiveness, so that touching her and to her was more pleasant, the smell was more arousing, and sex was more pleasurable. A kind of fusion of desires and feelings, without direct contact of auras, but working with him too, ter, when the bodies become, hehe, contact. And it works both ways. As Stepan thought, the girl who was used to taking what she wanted to perceive it as an analog of battle makeup, not as an insidious attempt to influence the will, because it was very hard to achieve some kind of submission, not a desire to fuck, in this way, at the initial stages.

  Why the fuck not? Thought Stepan in a fsh, as she told another funny story from her practice of sneaking contraband and scouting routes, leaning a little closer and lower.

  The kiss was one of those both sides were waiting for, especially the girl who was losing patience, heated by a couple of sips of a magic tincture, but it was no less harsh and even conflictual. Neither the girl who was used to being on top, nor Stepan, was going to cede the initiative, but on the side of the guy was an extra unit in Constitution, and on the side of Tahira only experience and nasty character. And also the gift, which she accelerated, it seems, not even realizing that her partner sees and realizes her actions. The trick was really subtle and weak, no wonder she didn't consider it something dangerous for her and capable of giving her away, but at the same time it was almost impossible to catch. Even if she'd dragged gifted people into the bed before there were hardly any individuals sensitive enough to notice her little trick.

  Which untied the hands of the shaman, who had long been tormented by curiosity about some of his tantric practices.

  "Haaaaah! Fuck, oh fuck, Pann, what the fuck are you, doing..... fuck!!!" The first orgasm hits her just from the tentative caresses, Stepan not holding back and not shying away from affecting her through the feedback of her own trick, which she would have torn apart by now, just not keeping control, but she can't. "Yes, yes, yes, yes, come on, more, more, daaaaaah!!!"

  Tahira was so ft-chested that on earth she wouldn't wear a bra with her A size, but her buttocks were not rge, but tightened by regur physical activity and movement, as well as moderate consumption of all unhealthy things and a normal diet. Dark hair cut short enough and tied back in a tiny ponytail, smooth skin, and clean teeth. Her gift helped to reveal and not lose the positive qualities of her initially not particurly outstanding by Earth standards, even if she did not try to maintain beauty. Her charm was more honest, without potions, alchemy, or rejuvenating procedures, and therefore more appealing.

  Stepan did not py fair. He started to stimute her subtle body, pying with her physical body: the lightest touches of his lips and fingers to her nipples in resonant contact with her aura literally drove Tahira crazy, making her cum and moan a second and then a third time. It could not be considered something natural, but she was unable to realize what had happened, while the guy was pushing the rest of the resistance, bringing the consciousness floating from pleasure into a stupor, gradually turning into a deep trance. And the fourth orgasm made the moaning girl moan more quietly and as if dumbfounded to give almost cssical ahegao, but without drooling and sticking out her tongue, though no, with tongue. After that, there were already more calm movements, which could be taken as a massage of the neck, arms, and absent tits, before the young man, who was also breathing heavily and could hardly resist the desire to pounce on his partner and fuck her until morning, stepped back, let her sit on the bed and calmly, evenmundanely asked.

  "I'll ask the questions, and you answer, okay?" Watching carefully for reactions, he finds no missteps in his actions, nodding satisfied.

  "Yeah, okay." There's no sleepiness, no rexation, not even a trace of resistance in her demeanor or words, just a dash of unnaturalness, an overly absent look, and a slightly frozen smile. "I will answer."

  "Then tell me, what pns do you and your commander have for me at all, are you up to something bad?" The question flowed into her ears and immediately went into her brain, and her brain still swimming in multiple orgasms produced an answer without pause or editing.

  “Nah, nothing pnned at all, or I don't know, Schirm doesn't tell me everything.” She even shrugs her shoulders, perplexed, not seeing the problem in her answers. “There's enough trouble already, and there's no telling what the big gatherings will get up to, and we'd like to keep our own. Another time, of course, we could try. Selling a gifted man isn't like stealing a girl off the beach, it's a fucking prize, we could try our luck and then turn you over to Ivy. But he wouldn't send me with a naked slit, he never did that, and I would have sent him to suck his dicks. I have respect...."

  At some point, Stepan asked her to speak without swearing, because it was painful to listen to her, and the further she went, the more she began to drift until even the transtion malfunctioned, so specific expressions and jargon were used. Judging by her answers, the shaman from the Upper Ladys was considered quite experienced and agile. It was worth mentioning such a one, but only in passing. Just that he is very young and already talented. In the times of the great search for any information about the outstanding gifted or at least unusual, and in general for everything unusual, it can pay well. They're looking for someone, they're looking hard. Tahira doesn't know who exactly, but they've shaken almost all of Dantra and its honest boatmen. And not just Dantra - all the Free Cities are shaking, too.

  It was her favorite trick, the one she used when she liked guys and didn't have time for courtship or lovey-dovey shit. That means, most of the time. Her grandmother had taught it while she was still alive and in her right mind. She was just going to put Stepan on his back, bring him to a state where he didn't want to resist, and then ride him for all he was worth. She wasn't lying about the fact that a girl on a ship couldn't get id. It will show her as affordable. and then it was only a matter of finding a new pce, gifted her or not. Well, if her spell had worked like a charm, and it often did, once even with a student of a respected magician, then she would persuade him in gratitude to work with her tongue a little, but first, she would wash herself. Pann had saved her life, after all, and making him lick up his own spshes was just pin piggish of her. But she still doubted that the young man would get that much of a kick out of it. He wasn't as stupid and narcissistic as that boy, and he was a couple of years older than him.

  Stepan realized two things during the interrogation. The first was that they did not wish him anything evil, while the second required a little adjustment in the thinking of the remaining witnesses, shifting the accents just a little. They had already successfully finalized everything necessary. They think that the shaman was waiting for a set-up, so he prepared for a fight, and the fight happened, but the wrong people set him up. He gave out everything he had saved up all winter or longer, shamans know how to do that, Schirm himself was a witness and so was Tahir. So they need to be convinced of what they believed in. Blur their perception a little, to be sure that the wand was of poor quality and barely broke with minimal help. The shaman almost fell down from fatigue after destroying the bowstrings and intercepting the fire blow.

  He was also a little ashamed that he had behaved so, well, ugly with a girl who had come to him with quite pure intentions. He was not too ashamed but still, a charm was a charm, and much more obvious than the Shera's aura of the fertility goddess Shera, so he was not going to tear his hair out. But still, he asked Tahira what he could do to her, what she really wanted. He expected to hear the standard answers about money, power, knowledge, and might, but he heard something else.

  “I want big tits.” Dreamily smiling and caressing the still naked nipples, which brought her, with the help of the earthman, so much pleasure, she said, not seeing how her “interlocutor” bulged his eyes. “All my life I've been ft as a ferry deck. It's infuriating. I always wanted to have tits, to be able to hold on to them, to shake them in someone's face, to show them the neckline, and they are already drooling stupid bulls. I even thought about alchemy, there is not expensive, so everyone will understand, they will ugh, they will say, sluts envied. I am envied! But even I dare to tell myself about it every once in a while, so I don't use alchemy. I'd used it, but a cheap one can hurt, and a quality one is expensive, and it's not easy to buy. But I want boobs. Big ones. Soft. Then every asshole will want me, and I still will not give, I will take and only the one I want...”.

  The monologue about the size of her breasts, about how powerful and strong girls deserve equally powerful tits, and about how this size determines advantages in life, was so expressive that Stepan even thought that she was about to fall out of a trance, but no, she calmed down. And the young man thought about the fact that he could fulfill her request. Not right away, not now, because it would be suspicious if she showed up in the morning with a melon-sized can of water. And there's no way he'd be able to pull it off so quickly and harmlessly. But taking blood samples from her, waiting a couple of months, and sending a special contract on the trail, that's doable. There are already suitable perfumes, there are plenty of those who work with the appearance in the block of knowledge about charmers, and there are a lot of boob enrgers there. Stepan hadn't called on them before, but since there was such a chance to use a gift from the Autogoddess with a pure heart and without harming anyone, why not? Of course, he realized that Tahira's sincere desire didn't mean she wouldn't freak out ter, looking for the person who'd given her the alchemy to grow into her upper nineties, but that was even better. He'd make harmless jokes too, just like she'd tried with him.

  System assignment (small): enrge the breasts of Tahira, adopted daughter of Schirm the Goush, by at least three sizes by sending a spirit of the desired sphere and aspects; the victim must not know or suspect your involvement in altering her body. It is permissible to use the gifts of Liarat si Merrinal, Lady of Gifts and Giver of Gifts, loyal servant of Innes Inney.

  Reward: one-fifth of the current level's experience scale; the gift of one random minor knowledge summons; a random material reward from the special collection of Liarat si Merrinal, Lady of Gifts and Gift-giver, loyal servant of Innes Inney.

  Damn, it's killed all the mood for jokes!

  The young man didn't need another stupid summons or an equally stupid gift from the bounty of a perverted System store, which he was tempted to call a System sex store. Another thing is the fifth part of the EXP scale, and not the rest, but from the whole level... and the assignment itself for once falls under the list of those things that can't even be called immoral, if only because the victim himself dreams of something simir, but can't afford it financially. On the other hand, who cares? In the sense, he will not be able to close the assignment, even if he does not refuse it, because of the same conspiracy. It's one thing to send a spirit six months ter, but it's quite another if it comes literally the next day. Then even a dumb person will begin to suspect some connection between a strange magician-shaman and the tightness in her shirt. Of course, it is possible to conduct the summoning ritual at once, but to set the start date at half a year, leaving the spirit to simply follow the victim all this time and not show up from the deep yers of the spheres. But it would hardly be taken into account as fulfillment of the task, and therefore, repeating the question Stepan had already asked himself - and what difference would it make?

  Stepan didn't think it mattered, so he didn't get angry, writing down a new assignment from himself in his system notebook, and then began to take prints from the aura of the still fondling Tahira. A small strand of hair, a drop of blood from the instantly healed wound on her shoulder, a part of the magical reserve in a special stone storage with a spirit inside that will not allow it to lose the “features” of the owner. And now the shaman could get his lover on the other side of the world, if some powerful magician, not lower than a master, did not begin to seriously hide and protect her. At this point, he decided that he had enough of torturing the girl, he could bring her back to consciousness and do exactly what she had come here to do, and he had let her in.

  Tahira woke up smoothly and without any problems, blinking a couple of times, taking her hands off her still-ft breasts, and pulling the half-undressed young man again, not paying attention to the minor discrepancies in their positions and some lost time. The new kiss is more usual, Stepan does not try to overload her consciousness, but much more actively undresses his partner, pulling off the rest of her clothes and ying her back on the bed, kissing, caressing, hugging and almost falling from the sharp jolt, with which she knocked his hands and fell on his back. He almost startled, responding with an attack to the attempted attack, but the river mage did not try to harm, only took her familiar stance, not letting her dominant side be shaken. Since Stepan remembered perfectly well how she, not so long ago, had first cum until she lost consciousness and will, and then sweetly answered all his questions, not even realizing her state, he let her take the initiative. But he smiled a little too meaningfully, which made the girl on top of him frown menacingly:

  " Why are you smiling?" She confirmed her question with the beginning movements of her hips and pelvis, sliding her crotch along his cock, without direct penetration, making him clench his teeth from the slightly unnatural pleasure that shot through his body. "Well, well, well, I'll make you scream now, little Pann, but you'll like it, don't worry."

  The weak compulsion that had been put into her, which should pass quickly and prevent her from swearing in Stepan's presence, had already paid for itself, and it was much more pleasant to listen to her. Her influence was no less pleasant, the same magical trick that intensified the sensations from the contact of their bodies, thanks to which he could hardly keep from spilling out right at that very moment. She understood it perfectly well and seemed to want to bring her actions to the logical end, forcing him to cum without penetration, but here the guy did not tolerate it and showed a counter-initiative. With a sharp movement, he grabbed Tahira by the waist, slightly lifting her up and immediately lowering her, but already thrusting into her with all his length, with incredible ease entering her wet and flowing womb. The girl growled, biting her lip, both out of annoyance that her game was broken, but also with a new round of passion.

  They merge in a single movement, forgetting about the world around them and everything that is in this world, there are only two of them, only an unprincipled battle of two passions, in which there must be a winner and a loser, in which no one wants to give up the primacy without a fight. In contrast to soft and pliable Shera, Tahira was sharp, sharp, and demanding to her partner and the process, she did not recognize measured and calm caresses and did not recognize the possibility of giving in to pleasure. There was only one option for her - to take everything she wanted, to be on top and the first, only like that. She rode like a rider, a surfer on a wave, rhythmically leading the party, her palms clutching Stepan's palms, her whole weight pressing her hands against the bed, not allowing him to change position.

  She wanted to make him finish first, but she couldn't, arching her back and piercing the skin of the other man's palms with her fingernails, drawing blood. She wouldn't have been able to, because Stepan had linked their auras and discharges together. Before she realized it, he was already throwing her off, flipping her onto her back and silencing her indignation with another kiss. Now the amplitude of the movements is behind him. Now he chooses a rhythm just as quick and sharp, and hissing wildcat Tahira clutches at his shoulders with her legs wrapped around his waist, herself pitching up to meet him. She does her best, but the shaman's lean and wiry body has one extra unit of corporeality to nip any physical advances in the bud, and a scratch on his shoulders and a little on his back is a small price to pay for the pleasure. Tahira, realizing that she can't - and doesn't much want to - move her lover by force, slyly and anticipatively grinds her teeth in a smile, turning to the gift.

  Pleasure shot through with a sharp fsh, passion for a couple of moments preparing to cloud the mind and turn into a beast possessed by carnal desire, but this effect Stepan dropped in passing. The secondary effect, provoking release, and subsequent rexation, he too reflected, but partially. He finished, pouring out into the pussy clenched around him with a new stream of semen, but only the effect on the consciousness he reflected on the creator of the charms, in witchcraft, he was much better than her. The brown-haired maiden who rolled her eyes moaned, rexing sharply and leaving the young man's scratched shoulders alone again. He, deciding not to lose the pace and not feeling guilty for the repulsed attack, turned zily and without fire indignant Tahira, who probably considered her charms to be broken and therefore turned on her, on her stomach, adjusting himself to the slightly swarthy buttocks. She had noticeably more volume in the back, just because there was volume at all, and Stepan immediately took hold of the hemispheres of her taut buttocks, slightly moving Tahira upward and entering her again without resistance.

  There is no roughness now, not even a sense of haste, he moves slowly and methodically, inevitably bringing another ecstasy to the smuggler's moaning again, bringing her to the peak of bliss. At times like this, he's almost ready to believe that gaining knowledge of tantric practices isn't completely useless. But only almost. Finally dazed or maybe just tired, Tahira no longer tried to take control, allowing him to bring the game to a finale, bringing both of their finishes together again. At this point, fatigue took its toll, and Stepan climbed off his partner, ying down beside her and letting her roll back onto her back.

  “It was nice, it was nice. And you acted like a reclusive old man who'd only seen girls in dirty pictures his whole life.” Yawning and pulling him into her arms, she summarizes, zily snuggling closer. “You say you're from the backwoods, huh? You must have a nice pce there, it's a pity I can't go there.

  “It's a normal pce, no worse than any other.” He nguidly defends the honor of his small mothernd, as if he really feels resentment for that vilge of Deep Ass. “And what's the matter, if you're from a back corner, you've only seen pictures? Girls, they're the same in every pce. uh. geographical pces. Ahem. Whatever. The point is that you can learn to get and bring pleasure in a big city, and on a remote farm if you have someone to learn with. All you need is not to think about yourself and try to make your partner feel good too, but mmmmmm!”

  Tahira, who had kissed his mouth shut, did not seem to want to enter into a philosophical debate, having instantly won a decisive victory in a way he did not want to resist. Stepan was only gd to see this, but deep down there was a splinter in his soul, realizing that he was still banally shut up, and he was gd. It seemed to be nothing, but still, you felt some discomfort below the back.... Oh, no, it was the pque of the belt Tahira had taken off.

  "Shut up, Pann, or I'll curse and push you off the bed, let's go to sleep." He wanted to resent the fact that this was his house and that she could only curse her idea of opposing him gift for gift, to argue that he should not be pushed out of bed at least because of the rules of hospitality, but he had no time to even open his mouth. His lover was already sniffing sweetly and was obviously having a pleasant dream.

  Why should the dreams be unpleasant, if he calls his house for those very calm and pleasant dreams. Though, it did not help him much. He even checked and strengthened his calls several times. What else to do, if the contact of the shaman with the higher spheres without consequences will not pass, as well as the reforging of the spiritual body. All sorts of visions, some come from the subconscious, and some are broken in human perception of images from the world of spirits. Such visions could even be used to see the future or to perform fortune-telling with a non-zero chance of success, but the system's knowledge also indicated such low efficiency of such attempts to interpret what he saw that Stepan, without proper talents, did not even try to move in this direction, developing in more promising aspects.

  The bonus property given by “ lecherous development III” came with a new image: right now it could give Stepan some material reward from the Autogoddess for fulfilling a special condition if he could bring himself and Tahira to another orgasm without waking the sleeper or even magically enhancing her sleep. Stepan, who was in a good and lyrical mood, only smiled at the thought, mentally sending the meta-skill to where it belonged, preferring not to look for the best where it was already good. Maybe if he and Tahira were on good and serious terms, he would have asked her permission to put her to sleep and fuck her in that state. I mean, how many fetishes does a shaman have? Except that their retionship was not so serious, the young man did not intend to take his partner against her will, and with the use of magic, and on a direct request he would try to throw her off the bed. They, after all, were not close enough and did not believe in each other enough for her to let the shaman put any effects on her, especially such, to put it mildly, specific ones.

  He shook his head enviously, looking at the contented and calm smile of the sleeping Tahira, who in her sleep seemed not only beautiful and desirable but also kind of sweet. He wouldn't say the tter, though, or she would have to correct her memory to avoid being hunted for her head and having her tongue cut off, if not his balls, then his tongue. Putting aside silly thoughts and nonsense, Stepan gave the st order to the spirits of the guards and fell asleep himself, closing his eyes and sinking into sleep, pressing his face against the top of the warm female body pressed against him. Okay, he was willing to admit it: for a moment like this, it was really worth the misunderstanding that his accidental and unnecessary run-in with a traitorous part of the smuggling crew had been.

  Sleep covered him with a bnket of the lightest silk, bringing more and more images. Images delightfully beautiful, images nightmarishly terrible, images absurdly stupid, images, images, images, images... Against the backdrop of the Death Star, attacked by torpedoes in the shape of Teletubbies, reality will indeed seem almost normal. Four Rat Musketeers fighting off Cat-Men Guardsmen with armored spiked slippers and newspapers rolled from solid steel sheets. An image of D'arth Ratman punching Atas, Poltos, and Arahis in the back to shouts of “You such a rat!” while the enemy cats run for the point of a ser pointer in the hands of a sinisterly snickering Mickey Mouse. In a scene from the third installment of Pirates of the Caribbean, only instead of Johnny Depp, Arkady Ukupnik took the pce of Sparrow (the captain and Jack, of course). A deep dark dungeon, where an infinitely powerful ghost howled and wailed, unable to leave the dungeon, but very much wanting to. He howls, screams, gnashes chains, and tears pieces of cloth from a heavy ghostly robe, promising to calcute, find, and torture someone in the torture room, using the IP method.

  SpoilerT.N. Sng's meaning of "rat" it's a person stealing from comrades.

  [colpse]There was a scene with Tahira, dressed in a familiar scarlet-and-white shirt, almost bursting on her very rge breasts. She was yelling and threatening sweating and, apparently, shitting with the fear man selling melons, demanding that he return everything to the way it was. And he begged not to kill, trying to prove that he was just luring customers, saying that a good melon would make tits grow, he didn't know that, his melons were just ordinary melons, only tasty and juicy, and if they could do that, he would sell them for much more. Tahira didn't believe it and promised to feed him alive to the bottom catfish if he didn't start talking if he didn't give up those who had pnted the potion-filled melon that made her tits the size of a melon, or she won't hold back and pay the harbor master for his blood ter.

  In another scene, a vaguely familiar long-eared man, seemingly of elven appearance, but with a face and wrinkles, like a fifty-year-old worker, who was tired of continuous shifts at the factory, is trashing the more familiar-looking elves on the subject of who let the best seductress of the all-high honorable Gradianna to such an important and carefully guarded project. And who delivered to this seductress very bizarrely distorted information on behalf of the most honorable Gradianna? Which in fact no application of influences of the second and third degree with the subsequent binding to respectful lust and marvelous adoration within the standards of work against the object was authorized. And what demons of all vices taken together, selected and trained by them keepers so bad that they got under the influence of a specialist. Was it because someone had given her all the necessary information and keys to protect their wards? At that moment the perception-image of the elf-old man fshed, and he appeared dressed in leather underpants and harness, pying with a whip in front of the faces of the pale elves, telling them that they were not just boys from the neighbor's yard, and they would not get off with three hundred florens for a FAULT.

  Again an image, a new dream, only now Stepan sees himself in it, talking about something with some obviously important and very beautiful dy, but, for some reason, all the attention in the dream is drawn not to her and her appearance, but to two material anchors. Fine work gloves up to the elbows, or rather fingers of one of the hands, on which the glove is put, which rhythmically knock on the wooden surface of the table. And to some strange device, reminiscent of Newton's pendulum, inaudible, but for some reason, palpably beating in time with the rhythm of the fingers. This rhythm is so intrusive that one wants to get rid of it somehow, but the conversation is important, he must speak and answer, agree and remember, one cannot hide, one cannot leave, one cannot remember, one cannot forget. But you can hide, hide from the sound and the knocking, from the pendulum and the fingers, duck under the heavy table, hide under the dark blue dress, put your face between the smooth and inviting thighs, the soft and tender thighs, nestle against the wet pussy.. And the pendulum will be silent, and the tapping of fingers will disappear as the palm of his hand rests on the back of her head, leaving only words to be listened to, forgotten, memorized, and done...

  Stepan woke up with a wild boner, caused, no other way, by the presence of a naked woman nestled next to him, who brazenly and cynically almost climbed on top of him in his sleep, burying him under her, fortunately, modest weight. The images of the dream drifted away from his consciousness, leaving only bits and pieces, broken and fragmented, his memory unable to hold the visions that were not meant for the physical brain. For a moment Stepan almost decided to leave the body and try to hold a few more memories in his mind, if only he had dreamed something important, some warning about the future impending danger, but this desire was not formed. Stepan checked the spirits, which closely followed the sleeping mistress, reporting that she did not make sorcery, did not wake up, did not arrange mean things, and in general, everything was normal. A quick check of his beloved self for outside influences with the help of one more spirit, as well as a couple of guarding repcements, which he called directly from his left bracelet, showed only the remnants of love charms that had not really worked, which were probably the reason for the morning excitement and night dreams that took a piquant shape.

  Concentrating, he tries to distinguish the important images, but it does not work very well: a sword clutched in a rat's paw, a sea surface, on which sailboats armed with cannons are sailing, expensive cloth of dark blue color, a counter with melons, a heavy wooden table, a crowd of depressed elves with their heads down with the look of schoolchildren who have done something wrong.... that's about it. How to put together a coherent picture? Maybe, when there will be time, to bind over his bed the strongest possible spirit, which will memorize dreams and allow them ter to see them better? Not everything will be saved there, too, because the resonating lens is too thin, where the shaman's mind serves as a lens, but still at least something. Stepan would think about it ter, but now it was important to be able to get out of the ominous captivity unnoticed, or even to persuade Tahira to continue the banquet.

  Somehow Stepan had no doubt that she would gdly agree.

  * * *

  Little Leshch sailed down the Dantra, leaving behind an empty supply of alcohol, a couple of broken faces of the vilge men, a good profit, and luring one of the young men to join his crew. He had thought about it before and talked about it with his parents, but until now they didn't need this poorly trained fisherman. But here the shortage of borers affected them, and he got into, as it seemed to him, a better life. Stepan, while he was ruling a little in someone else's memory the impressions of the battle on the now grave mound, looked at the thoughts of Schirm the Goush and found no intention to quickly knock the newcomer on the head and then sell him. He really needed men.

  Again, as Kirik said, smugglers were neither pirates nor sve traders, but Stepan, who had seen through them, was still as far from being imbued with the river thieves' romance as possible. Well, except for Tahira. She came to visit a couple of times afterward, which obviously caused some gossip among the vilgers, but not to the extent that they were both gifted and could afford to ignore customs and traditions. In passing, he treated the girl's pancreas problems, which could come out after five to seven years, also cleared the auric nodes, a little clogged from improper methods of development and close binding to the ship, kissed her goodbye, listened to the wish not to die, wished her all the best in return and just did not wave a handkerchief after her.

  When they sailed away and Kirik wiped the sweat off his forehead, Stepan wandered quietly to his secret pce, where he took up the still-hanging quest from the Autogoddess, which he had neither rejected nor refused. Yes, he still didn't give a shit about the whole reward, except for the experience, but here and just curiosity was present: how exactly the assignment will or won't count, how freely the System and Milf allow creative bending of these assignments? The topic is without a joke an interesting one, it's worth a bit of work for the sake of it. Stepan had no trouble summoning the right entity, which almost caressed him, and was ready to serve him in every possible way, even though it was quite a strong spirit. Blood, hair, a very high-quality auric impression of the target, a lot of details - especially Stepan tried to keep it healthy and out of harm's way.

  First of all, strengthening the muscles of the back and spine in general will properly match the grown forms, so as not to spoil either the posture or the chest itself to prevent sagging after five to ten years. Secondly, of course, the mechanics of mass building rely on the nutrition of abundant and good quality. If Tahira will not be able to eat enough the process will be temporarily suspended until she can eat. Well, appetite, while the growth is going on, will grow only in this way, and at the same time, the gastrointestinal tract will be strengthened and will become more stable for the time of “growth” and afterward. Thirdly, the term of activation of the gift from Stepan will come in six and a half months from the day of the contract, not at the same moment. One could only hope that she wouldn't die by then, but if Goush's thoughts were to be believed, they, who had repulsed a daring attempt to raid their part of the river, had a pretty good chance of finding a new patron or even negotiating with the very one who had bribed the rebellious element.

  The system, when he completed the ritual and finished deactivating the totemic feeding and opening the call circles, for a few seconds seemed to think and freeze, but, to his surprise - not pleasant, though not disappointing, just to his surprise - still gave the appropriate image, crediting the completion of the assignment.

  Received: “Contract with elder spirit: Vishpley-Schwalstprachtmatt”.

  The acquired talent is added to the overall Pyer Status.

  A new contract, a new portion of rolling his eyes to the sky, and a new not very useful load, which, however, did not pull his back, and therefore did not bother him... as it seemed at first. But the closer Stepan looked at the gift, the harder and harder it made his jaw drop. A strong entity, probably the strongest he'd ever received from the Autogoddess, and almost the strongest he'd ever come in contact with. That dark naturalist, the creator of the beacon leaf, was certainly stronger, but not that stunningly so. The spirit with the unpronounceable name, whose images could not even be formalized into words, was close to the edge of the next step after the elders. Exotus, a sphere of hardness and stone. Support for the aspects of storage and hearth, but this was no mere guardian, no.

  One summons a year, but each of the summons is a whole year long, so by regurly renewing the summons the spirit could be kept eternally active. The amazing imperceptibility of its effects would make the Sleepwalker weep, and the Joy of the Waves, ask to be his disciple if he thought within human limits. The entity would be summoned in a building of some kind, preferably at least a mansion, not just a hut, with stone walls and many rooms in which its power would operate. The essence of the trick is that this being puts its will in the space of the room, house, mansion, even a pace or a fortress (the st two variants are the most ideal), hiding in the voice and imprints of stones so completely that neither the reading of streams, nor true vision, nor spiritual perception will show anything - that is why it is preferable to settle the spirit in old rooms with history, that it will hide in this history and blur its existence.

  And then Stepan, as an ordering contractor, gets the right to target any woman who happens to be within the same walls - if he himself considers her “fuckable”, the Autogoddess could not miss this point, he will have to emphasize this fact in the images of the order, too - and then this woman begins to consider it an absolute norm to agree to any sexual requests from the shaman, as long as they take pce within the walls of the house. Moreover, the longer she is exposed to it, the more certain effects take hold, a whole host of them, at Stepan's choice. It is possible to increase tits and ass, to make lips plumper, to increase the sensitivity of erogenous zones and create new ones, to make the character more malleable, to reduce ambition or add passion, to make more absent-minded or even stupid, to insert desire, thought, to reshape memory, to add a new bed preference or to insert a two-stage activator... The longer the victim stays in the assigned territory, the more explicit effects can be conducted, and the faster new ones are imposed or old ones are removed. Also, as soon as the victim leaves the pce of stay, all the oddities and out-of-the-norm memories will be sealed in the depths of consciousness and there's no way in hell it will be possible to find traces of the effect without a really deep scan.

  Even new shapes and other obvious changes, like a change of hair color or eyes, will seem to be either the former so always or she will remember how she came up with the idea to make these changes, long wanted and in general everything is fine. However, this is only the victim herself, while the rest of her acquaintances may suspect that the transformation of evil and smart bitch into a meek and silly doll with tits the size of watermelons - it is clearly not she so decided to change the image. Stepan, having checked the system's help and his understanding of the contract, recognized that even a master of combat magic (spherical and in a vacuum) could be treated with such bullshit without her noticing. Magistress can also be treated, the chances are there, but there you need luck or additional influence of other contracts, while with a master should, on the contrary, very much more bad luck to happen to her to at least suspect something wrong.

  It would seem to be just another useless and corrupted to the extreme crap, which will be used only in very rare conditions, the rest of the time hanging as an eternal reminder of why Stepan “loves” The-One-That-Milf. If Stepan finds a fortress where he can make a permanent base, he will definitely activate this spirit. Essence, among other things, can not only provide male power living in his domain-control shaman, as well as those to whom the male power applies. It can improve health, restore youth or even roll back age, fix old scars or even cure auric distortion, or even remove a curse, and at a level where not every elder spirit or master of magic can cope! The longer Stepan double-checked all these factors, the paler he became and the more he felt his worldview crumbling.

  Autogoddess!

  Gift!

  Useful!

  Summon!

  Of course, you can try to reassure yourself that a big role was pyed by the power of the spirit, which was cool enough to be extremely flexible even in the conditions of the contract, which is why it is so useful. But the same Fan is also very flexible and has a lot of secondary specialties, as well as Joy of the Waves, but their contracts are just as typical for Autogoddess. It's not that it's some kind of bug in that version of the system she's remade for herself, or Stepan was lucky, or it's just that Mistress Fortune is in a great mood today and kissed him with a French kiss. It is useless to guess, you can just be happy about the sudden addition in useful contracts and forgive Milf one hundred thousandths of one percent of her tricks.

  He hadn't looked at her material gift yet, though. There, lying on the ground was another expensive box, only now it was not a case with stockings, but a small box made of material simir to ivory. Looking inside, Stepan expected to see some particurly powerful magical cmps or plugs, but it was just a bracelet. Fortunately for his mind. It was small, graceful, made of some kind of bck bronze, and yet completely ordinary. Attempts to feel the nature of the jewelry showed only a protective amulet against curses, not bad, in the high price segment, but the same armored stockings protected much better, even without taking into account their “hidden specialization”. The magical gift failed, but the system reference opened his eyes, making those eyes twitch alternately in a fit of nervous tics.

  This bracelet, if it is tuned to the victim's aura or simply put to that victim, or even just close to a random beauty, caused an instinctive desire to put it on and forget about it. At the same time, the bracelet itself changed appearance and adjusted to what is already worn on the victim, necessarily a woman, of course, necessarily beautiful by the standards of the owner of the bracelet - that is, by Stepan's standards - and also automatically did not allow to remember about itself. The victim would wear the toy without ever taking it off or noticing its presence, without remembering where the bracelet came from and when she put it on. The others, on the contrary, will not notice this bracelet on the victim's body, even if they should have been able to keep track of such trifles: the jewelry merges with the info-field of the world becomes so relevant and normal that even a very tenacious mind will not perceive its sudden appearance.

  What was the main feature of this thing, besides its stealth and insidious binding to the victim? Oh, there was a smooth transition from “just” disguise tricks at the crossroads of witchcraft, mentalism, and twisted cirvoyance, to a very advanced mixture of spiritualism, necromancy, and mysticism, with some additions of the very basics of soul magic. Inside the bracelet were stored casts, not so much of personality and memory, but of the experience, skills, and reflexes, of several very advanced female specialists. Obviously, their specialization was not difficult to guess - seduction, corruption, imperceptible influence on consciousness, brainwashing, and work with attachments, not only with magical support but almost without it at all, on pure psychology and masterly reading of aura and emotions of the target, at the expense of this reading, selecting perfectly calibrated impact.

  Give this toy to yesterday's pretty peasant girl, she has every chance to take over a small town. Put the bracelet on the hand of a sve in the harem of some sheikh, the harem will change its mistress, or even the sheikh himself. Hand the artifact to a thief at the market, and the Night Guild will change its head, and if not, the old one will definitely change his life priorities. It would seem - here it is, here it is, finally happened the split of the world, a gift from the Autogoddess, which can and should be used with a normal, understandable, and effective purpose. To find a helper, with whom you will take the strongest vows - you can brainwash beforehand, but this is still not Stepan's method - to give her a toy and then use her services, without interfering with her personal and not-so-personal life. As, it all just seemed, although, no doubt, such a thing would be quite possible, but the bracelet had some other functions.

  The victim-carrier of other people's casts not only acquired skills and, in case of the absence of a gift, awakened the rudiments of a gift, which, little by little, could make her a full-fledged gifted person in a year or two. No, the fucked up thing is that the Autogoddess doesn't know what to do. Her jokes aren't funny, and she has a conscience only in the foul sense of the word. The victim not only does not realize the bracelet on herself, but she also does not realize the unusualness of the newly appeared skills - and if she is informed in advance, so unnoticeably for herself will forget - taking them for granted and as instinctively uses these skills. Roughly speaking, no vows will not prevent a theoretically “ally” from trying to bewitch an “ally” first of all. Because it will not be perceived as a viotion of the oath, as you do not prescribe the oath - at most, you will achieve that the victim immediately dropped dead, if you make the oath extremely rigid and tied not to the perception of the sworn, and on the condition of subtype “if - then”. Any attempt to remind about where the victim got his new passions and skills causes an instinctive desire to forget about it, and also to make the one who told about it forget too.

  Stepan tortured the help for quite a long time, already knowing what he would find there, but wanting to get confirmation of his specutions and so found, not surprised at all. The strongest reaction and uncontrolble desire to fuck the target in the head and physically in the victim of the bracelet will be provoked by the one to whom this bracelet is attached. That is, the isekai himself, great and terribly naive, if he dared to use this toy, falling for the trick of Huge Milf. Nothing dangerous, but very diverse and with a lot of perversions, which still and periodically will change with the tastes of the owner of the bracelet, which bracelet finally possessed. To be fair, Stepan was not even particurly offended and certainly not upset. He would have stopped sleeping and tossed and turned at night if he hadn't discovered the prepared trap because he couldn't believe it was missing.

  Carefully closing the box at the same time suppressing the desire to go to Dantra and throw the gift into the depths of the river, he went back into the house, either to sleep or to do nothing. He did not throw his gift into the river solely because knowing the w of universal meanness, the jewelry would have floated up and fallen into someone's hands, and Stepan would have met that someone. No, no, let it be better this Great Gift, capable of making an expert of extra-css erotic hypnosis from a market merchant, from a vilge herbalist master to create love potions, from a weak magician experienced charms, and from the ordinary guard Eugenia Bond on erotic thrust, lies under the bed of the shaman, along with mining saucer, uber-stocking, and common sense, which from the ongoing bedm also hid under the bed.

  But he couldn't get rid of the annoying thought that at this rate, the value of his under-bed space would become comparable to the treasury of a major free city.

  * * *

  The snowdrifts were gradually disappearing, and even though it would be at least a week before they disappeared completely - the winter had piled up a lot of snowdrifts, and the warming of the first days of spring had receded a little, bringing back the slightly minus temperature - Stepan was somehow hesitant to wait a little longer, as well as to take advantage of the vilge hospitality. Kirik didn't hint at anything, but the young man realized that if he didn't decide to leave now, he wouldn't be able to leave ter either, there would always be some other tasks, ideas, thoughts, and theories that should be checked right now. To strengthen his clearing, to summon several more spirits to a permanent contract, to work on summoning a full-fledged senior, which, in theory, Stepan could already do, to make a couple more spiritual journeys, to search for information in the dreams of the inhabitants of the nearest town, paving the same path to it as once to Fantrel - there was a lot to think of, successfully and even useful. But the road of adventure was calling, and the desire for a change of scenery.

  And so Stepan, who had completed the st touches in disguising the clearing, who had finally finished the yout of the “usual” call point of a “simple talented apprentice (tm)”, resolutely began to prepare for departure. He even honestly tried to organize another exit from the body, this time just for a day or two, but even here he failed. First, he couldn't summon his old acquaintance Butterfly Fugitive for a long time, only wasting time and reagents on the ritual. Apparently, the spirit was in dead-undead form, already in a contractual bind with someone else. Then he nearly thwarted the second summoning of another spirit, simir and no less functional, only with a different nature: he deliberately acted without overpaying and even with a little less expenditure than was considered necessary, trying to sell his decision with the echo-enhanced mark of the spheres. He succeeded, but the spirit nearly snapped, at the st moment picking the right combination of images to please him. Unlike the Fugitive, this spirit lived in a small amulet resembling a petrified fern leaf, which was the same thing, only very magical. The entity was pnted in the body right at the moment the escape began, dying-reincarnating the moment the spirit's host in the body returned. The efficiency and reliability were the same, but the convenience wasn't the same. With the Fugitive, it was much easier.

  Having finalized the preparatory milestones, Stepan received another task, small and not complicated but challenging and time-consuming. Work with sting blessings for a good harvest. It's not to hang a curse on the whole vilge, this he would gdly do himself, and for a random property so much more. Experience for the assignment was spared. Increasing affinity with the spheres of life and fertility was not so valuable, but the freely obtained property still overpowered any inconvenience. Until the st Stepan was afraid that the task would not count: in order to fit into a very tight time frame, the shaman began not to prepare the territorial impact himself, but to emphasize the work already done by Shera. He strengthened the already quite strong divine blessing even more noticeably, added to it the properties of protection against insects, pests, diseases, rot, and weeds, and even wove into all this the call of two strong spirits, which he persuaded for ten years and two days invisibly sleep on the pce where in the spiritual world reflected in the fields of farmers. And, while they slept, those working in those fields would suffer fewer injuries, sprains, sunstrokes, or burns, and it would become more difficult for them to injure themselves unluckily with a crooked blow of a trowel or to exhaust themselves from the terribly exhausting bor.

  The System, much to Stepan's delight counted the result and even gave the property as a reward. To be fair, the reward was not directly delightful, and, to be quite frank, it was on the lower end of usefulness. Though, the shaman was happy about that. Especially since he could still use the “small spiritual-energy protection” considering his hiking life and forced overnight stays under the nearest tree. No, this property, whose ingrowth into the aura was accompanied by the sensation of many hot and cold tongues licking the aura, did not give increased resistance to damage or strengthen shields against attacks. It was exactly the kind of protection that kept you from getting burned by boiling water, catching a cold in the rain, freezing in snowfall, or accidentally cutting your hand with the sharp thorns of a rosebush. A kind of protection from household injuries and road trifles. As a bonus - increased affinity with quite a few spheres, especially those dedicated to elements and elements, but against the background of those properties that are now on the list of desirable to acquire, it was really pale. On the other hand, it strengthened some of the other properties, including tags of all types, and the spiritual form became a bit more stable, as well as the aura in general.

  And so, having finished another quest, having looked over his possessions, and also having poked the toe of his boot into the rapidly shrinking snow drift, Stepan realized that it was time to leave. Otherwise, he could seriously settle down in these Lyady, choose one of the maidens to marry, and then turn into a local wizard. And for long, long years, disguised his abilities as gradual progress, spending all his time in the woods, occasionally going out to the inn or the house of... It wasn't even the prospect itself that frightened the Earthman, but the fact that it was beginning to seem not so bad. Meld also calmed down and began to become more and more sedate: if at the beginning of their acquaintance, the rascal had been a devil, and Stepan was sure that he was from the vilge at the first opportunity, now the almost married boy had become a young man. And all he had to do was to put ftulence once on one swindler and all his problems were solved at once. As they would say on Earth: the solution of the main pro/b/lem of the conflict at the highest level.

  No, the boy hadn't stopped being interested in all sorts of things, and he clearly had a good chance of occupying a niche as a local herbalist but his soul was becoming more and more attached to the pce and people that had finally accepted him. And when Stepan saw all this, he didn't get upset. He didn't grieve over his unformed pns to take the boy as a real apprentice, using his gifting, no. He just saw that he could repeat his fate if he stayed in Lyadya too long. Comfort binds and constrains, not even so much comfort, which the young man used to earthly standards cked, but comfortable surroundings. The shaman liked it here, he was respected, valued, and not pestered, not looking for a way to spoil his life or put him under problems, but simply accepted a new element of reality. Of course, in many ways, it was Kirik's merit, as the smartest of the smartest almost not teeth-grindingly admonished, because there was enough insolence and some unhealthy self-confidence in people in both worlds known to Stepan. Especially memorable was one granny, urging her eldest son to go to one of the distant settlements a week's journey away, to a witch living there, in order to buy a spell potion and marry off her granddaughter to a visiting magician!

  The only thing that saved the old woman from the already psychologically traumatized young man was the fact that she was really old and therefore a bit senile. Stepan's conscience allowed him to do bad things to old people, but it was not good to offend those who were already mentally distressed. But it was too much to kill for words and intentions, well, by Stepan's standards, not in general. But, bitch, to try to bewitch a very competent magician to a not-too-beautiful girl, counting on the fact that a cheap potion of a weak vilge witch will be able to get him through, and then believe that the magician will swallow such shit, even if the first stage work? The young man couldn't decide whether to be angry, ugh, or cry. Fortunately, the man was a mama's boy, but he was smart and cowardly, and he listened to Meld's stories about the fight on the hill and didn't want to risk it.

  "Because you, old woman, have seen and lived, and I am still young!" He said, closing the subject and going to the inn to drink a mug of booze.

  Involuntarily Stepan thanked the talkative brat - only mentally - for the way he had successfully cooled his head and ruined someone else's matrimonial pns. However, the young man funting his quickly healed but not completely disappeared bruise on his face like a battle order until it was completely dissolved, got his moment of undying glory, and used it to the full. And in general, the guy remained without overheads and in chocote. The calls and amulets on his house are worth it. And this is despite the fact that no one but him and his descendants will be able to live here, it will feel uncomfortable and the further away, the more uncomfortable. Amulets of health, watchful spirit, which Meld knows how to feed with primitive offerings, strengthening the roof and general insution, blessing of the well for disinfection, influence on the nd to fertility. A city dweller would have gdly agreed to live in such a house, even though he was reduced in status. But some of the influences had to be removed or disguised as other influences, so as not to “over-salt” them, or Meld would have gotten a stronghold tied to him that any other full-fledged adept with a diploma would envy with bck envy.

  These tasks and thoughts occupied about a tenth of Stepan's headache. Most of the questions were about the luggage he would want to take with him: some of the totems, some of the materials, some of the valuables would have to be left behind anyway, everything could not be carried on his hands. Stepan was ready to leave some things behind, already being able to make a much better tool, some of the totems could be deactivated freely and without remorse, and the spirits could be disbanded from there, giving them even small thank-you contributions out of generosity, some of them he would try to pull directly from the clearing, using the familiar method of transferring to the spiritual reflection. But some things could not be thrown just because - especially the gifts of the Autogoddess, which for this purpose are too cool, dangerous, and pathetic after all. If not to use it, then to try to understand the methodology of creation to make something of their own, simpler, but normal, was quite a pn of action. The same protection and the effector of mass blessing, woven into the etheric material of the combat stockings... If he could transfer such a structure to a knitted cap, even one with pom-poms, he would be gd.

  “So, I take it that you, honorable Pann, have managed to make yourself some magic trinkets that you can't sell, can't keep, and can't even throw away? And you don't want to stay in our Lyady, because the big world is calling?” Kirik, to his credit, did not try to beg Stepan tearfully to stay in his vilge, and there was no point because Stepan did not help anyone and interfered in vilge life only to the minimum. “So don't drive the horses to the watering hole at the wrong time, and get on the boat. I know reliable riverboats, if not to Dantmark, then to Kvar-Imaltom, Roartrak, or Kliuchevoye, and they'll take you there for cheap. Soon, there will be the trappers will be rafted down the river skins and other gifts of our forests, and my acquaintances will be there too. I'll put in a word. I won't promise a discount, that's true, but they'll take you on board. No, don't think anything, I'm not praising myself, it's just that on a voyage, and even with cargo, no one will pick up a random passenger.”

  "In general, I am satisfied with this approach, Kirik, and I don't mind paying for it, whether it's a favor or silver," Stepan said at once, thoughtfully thinking over the kind of rituals he would use to protect his luggage from prying fingers. "How much will it cost me, and what percentage will you get as a middleman?"

  "You, this, honorable, let's not offend me, with your intermediation, yes." Kirik only shook his head, refusing quite sincerely from possible freebies. "If you can get me drunk at the inn today, and once more before we leave, we're even."

  The further conversation showed that such a passenger seat with a minimum of comfort and the possibility to add his luggage to the cargo would not cost much even for an ordinary inhabitant of this world, not to mention Stepan, who could simply materialize the proper amount of coins at the expense of the system store. Having scratched his head and agreed on the price, the young man began to wait for the necessary boat, which was about to take pce in a few days. There were already some ships on the river, but they were not those captains and crews for whose honesty and integrity Kirik was ready to vouch before Pann. The shaman did not have time to get bored, because he had enough worries, and if not worries, then ways of training. Since the clearing had already been put into sleep mode, and it was risky to wander the spirit world without it, but not suicidal, Stepan started practicing the exercise of impnting a strong and dangerous entity in himself.

  The young man already had a few specific one-time or reusable contracts with spirits that emphasized this direction of interaction, and all he had to do was to train, train, and train again. In percentage terms, this approach is most often practiced with animal spirits, for which the appearance and sphere of the beast prevail and are basic. There is even a whole list of practices that allows one to turn oneself into a controlled werewolf, shifting into a meat-cutting machine and back again even to an ungifted person. However, the gift will still be in pce, and such practices also develop it, especially the corporeality that prevails in such a css. Stepan did not intend to follow this path, which was very specific, and closed some of the roads of others. So for the next five days, he simply and uncomplicatedly pnted the essence in himself and learned to walk, run, attack, and interact with the world around him in this state.

  He tried to instill in himself full-fledged spirit-beasts, from which even the body morphed, acquiring frankly sinister features, cws, and fangs, only that Stepan deliberately did not sprout fur, even forbade it to grow, if it was part of the natural partial transformation. His erudition suggested, among other things, such trifles as the problem of fur, which in the reverse transformation may not disappear, being not only a very pesky thing but also a ready envolt for a curse, no worse than an ordinary strand of hair, left unknown where. I also worked with a spirit without a distinct shape or sphere, which even allowed it to become completely ghostly, to seep into door and floor - no dirty connotations - crevices, and to make short bursts through the spirit world, a kind of short-range teleportation-not-teleportation. In training exercises it worked well, the spirit behaved quite obediently, the skills allowed him to maintain his body and control the entity, and even direct other spirits by calls, thanks to the plurality of awareness. But such techniques could be fully tested only in battle or in very risky rituals, for which they were created, and Stepan did not like and did not want to take risks.

  Some spirits made strange demands when signing a contract, like the need to experience a hangover through a mediator in the form of a shaman's body. He signed the contract, because the possibility of not getting intoxicated and remembering everything, even when drunk on the fiercest booze, was worth several hours of agony... which could not be removed by magic or weakened by meditation. The technique, by the way, is from the section of agency work, and there were hundreds and hundreds of variations of contract or witchcraft practices that could help not to get drunk or adequately remember and perceive information despite intoxication. But for every type of subjugated spirit willing to enjoy a hangover in exchange for information and sobriety, there were many purely martial invocations or simply risky tricks in the course of which too easily things can go wrong. Though, of course, some things were simply hirious and drove him into the blue screen. A spirit pnted in the loins and moving into the mistress, or even just a living or not so living creature, or even not especially fresh corpse, during the eruption, turning the victim into a perfect puppet, partially preserving reflexes, memory, and personality.... a very conceptual approach, in the spirit not even of porn, but of some horror movies.

  In addition to such important and necessary training, Stepan finally invested a talent point, although the pause for thought took much longer than expected. Soon the twenty-second could be closed, and he had only decided to invest what he had received for the twenty-first. In Stepan's defense, it was worth saying that a rge part of his work recently did not require any new improvements in status, and it was becoming more and more difficult to decide with each level. There were so many free directions. This time the free point was invested mirroring the previous one, which was given for css rank upgrades. Only instead of dialog, it increased the practice of shamanism. Still, the basis of shamanism as such is his, Stepan's, bread. The “call practice of master level” expectedly put a serious strain on his brain, forcing him to spend at least seven hours in cognitive meditation, with a break to drink water and go to the wind. Being the key basis of the css, the talent synergized with absolutely any direction of development, which was why it showed such a bright load on the shaman's brain and mental body.

  First of all, of course, it enriched the set of all sorts of ways of invocation and summoning, different variants of ritual and payment, and, importantly, among them those intended to communicate strictly with senior spirits. Not ways to mimic the desired effects or enhance a weaker version of the summoning by marking the aura and spirit, but exactly the original perfectly matched methods of working with senior entities. The breakthrough to the mastery rank turned out to be no less of an amplification than the same breakthrough, only with dialog. New approaches, methods of mass or very specialized summoning, multi-stage calls, ways to properly sort out the spirits coming to the unformed free calls, strengthening protective barriers and ritual drawing, creating multi-stage defenses or deceptive defenses, which will lure an aggressive spirit with deceptive weakness, convincing him to attack, so that then the attacker can be taken by the energy balls and induce much stronger cooperation.

  Huge potential in the calls of the corresponding direction of knowledge - charmers and suggestors, fighters and concealers, cursers and healers, different spheres, different aspects, reliance on different elements of calls. Approaches to working through totems or connection with the source, power over the area of high spheres or mystical practices of connection with the controlled territory, the mechanics of using new knowledge in combat or agency work. Hundreds of ways to combine the conditions of summons so that the spirit of one specialty does things that are not entirely peculiar to it, at the expense of a shifting type of chanting - a way to make the same “love and passion” act as if not full-fledged combatants, at least combat support. Ineffective and, by and rge, unnecessary, but the very fact of being able to pull this off in defiance of Milf will improve his mood to near-cosmic proportions.

  Deepening of contractual practice and interaction, weaving this practice into a ready-made summons, when the spirit who appeared at the call concludes a contract already on the fact of appearance. Ways to make such deals as honesty just maximally accelerated, and vice versa, to give one thing for another and change the contractual terms at the st moment. Work with dreams and in dreams, ways that allow, after a certain preparation, to call the necessary spirits without waking up, or to realize themselves in a dream to the extent sufficient to conduct such a call at all. Out-of-body work with reliance on preparation or without anything, with pure spirit, helping himself only with what he managed to take with him on the journey, as well as ways to quickly figure out the call of the necessary and not called spirit in advance in such a state. Optionally added precautionary methods to prevent being devoured by his summoner as soon as he sees a vulnerable shaman without the cover of a full ritual and closed barriers. Symbolic ritual battles right in the spirit world customized for entities that will not contract until you defeat them or at least show worthy resistance, confirming your worthiness and dignity.

  Images, images, images...

  It was only after he had finished assimiting the talent, cleaned himself up, and dived headfirst into a barrel of cold water that Stepan allowed himself to pass out in the bed of an almost stranger - not forgetting to clean the house of traces of his auric presence as thoroughly as possible - forgetting himself in his sleep. His training with his spiritual neighbors, augmented by images from his talent enhancement, made his dreams exceptionally stupid. Especially remembered was some adept of witchcraft, armed with a dozen clubs and mentioning Oleg, as well as Stepan's unforgettable namesake. Oh, the namesake burst into Stepan's dreams with all his mass accelerated by physics, which seemed to have shrunk a little, just a little. Waving two glowing scarlet bdes quite professionally - one long, the other shorter, a kind of daga, all in the tradition of the best fencing schools - the earthling, a little more trim, but still fat and pimply, was chopping apart the demonic cultists who were attacking him, humming a song about how he was a retro-Padin, and he would overpower them all alone. The main demoness, demonically insidious and evil but at the same time demonically beautiful, for some reason, not inspired by the prospect, desperately shoots combat magic on an infernal basis in fatty jumping as an impossibly fast flea. The smile on the face of Stepan the Alternate finishing the second verse of Stepan's song became more and more vicious, and the demoness's panic became more and more obvious.

  The awakened shaman meditated for a while, trying to catch the remnants of the remarkably clear vision-dream, at the same time looking at the remnants of the images in the special dream catcher.

  A moment ter, as if they had been waiting for it, the spirits sent to guard the wharf sent an image of a boat, quite rge, not smaller, even noticeably rger than Little Lech.

  It was time for Stepan to leave such a hospitable pce.

  Can't say that without regrets.

  * * *

  The captain of the Bead - in honor of the long-dead songbird of the captain's favorite wife - was a man of medium height and build with a Nordic weathered face, only without a beard and Viking pigtails. His name was Bastius, and he was well acquainted with Kirik, for Kirik had sailed on his Businka for almost eight years. The merchant captain had not forgotten about the former guard who had become the headman of his native vilge. He regurly used Upper Lyady as a pce to stop, buy some perishable provisions, and rest for the sailors. Considering the fact that three men of the ship's crew were from the same vilge the retionship was very strong.

  The small but good-quality berth, of course, could hardly serve a very rge boat. There was no serious rigging or hull work to be done, but it was still a good pce to be. And also here one could not be afraid that the robbers or pirates, allied to the vilgers, who ransack the vilge or are vilgers and are there at all, when they do not rob, would decide to take the guards and the merchant to the knives. Still, the goods were not super-valuable, but only comparatively: ordinary, not elite furs - there were elite furs, too, but not much, if you start buying more, they will tear off the sail to the very stern - deer antlers, some insignificant amount of amber, not the most expensive and long-stored herbs and roots. Bastius Float, nicknamed so for the fact that three times in his youth during three different battles he was kicked overboard, but he never drowned, held his piece tightly. He paid all the taxes to the guild, did not engage in dubious bullshit, and therefore prospered. If you don't count small smuggling, as Stepan realized from the images of the spirits' untold words.

  “A gifted man on board is always a good thing, if only for the cost of recharging amulets if you can't do anything. But you, according to Kirik, are not inept, and he's not very generous with praise, especially undeserved. You'll have the role of healer.” He spoke when Kirik left them both at a table in the inn, where they had already served roast goose with small and sour apples, taken straight from the gcier. “Honestly, if he hadn't guaranteed you, I wouldn't have taken you. Nobody takes passengers in the middle of a journey, except river caravans, when there are only a dozen ships and guards for a small army. The wavecutters like to arrange all sorts of nasty surprises because they don't keep normal ships. They always have less storage and shields, and even if the magicians are strong, they don't need a fair fight. To pour poison into the common cauldron, damage the ship's charms or just leave a beacon, so as not to miss a prey - it's all for them.”

  "And Kirik's words convinced you?" The young man, eating one of the legs of a bird that had fallen in the name of gluttony, allowed himself to be interested. "Or the fact that I've lived here all winter?"

  “Well, more like the first, he's always had a sense for people, like a pike for blood, but not without the second.” The interlocutor, who himself did not forget about food, answered eagerly, but his gaze was attentive and did not correspond to the rexed general appearance. “If I bring nuggeted gold and silver, pure amber, sables, or even magical beasts' skins, then yes, they think up more than that, vultures. When they took Dabrik the Barrel they were not zy to send him the fry a year and a half in advance. They knew that once in three years he made a big trip almost to the mouth of the river, by a miracle they managed with little blood, and hired in Morgrave a team of adventurers with a master of magic. But still, so many good men were buried by the shore. It's only for the sake of my merchandise to weave such intrigues as to wrap seaweed around an oar, and there's no need for it. I'm not worth it. That's why I agree.”

  The young man was impressed by the extent of the conspiracies that were going on among the river traders and did not hesitate to ask questions, because his legend about a savage boy who ran away from a strict teacher and his family had already been “in confidence” retold by Kirik to his captain. To be fair, he had scanned this man by all avaible and unnoticeable means, quickly bypassing the work of very mediocre amulets without finding anything bloody or mean. The idea to try to recruit a useful healer and not only permanently, in the depths of the merchant's soul fshed, his magician was more on the currents and tailwind specialist and could cure only from life. He thought about it, but not too seriously, not the fact that the adventure-seeking young man would even agree, and two mages are expensive to keep, especially if the healer - these rates are so ungodly that it's easier to make do with potions and amulets, which will give to st to the city, as well as to guard against serious injuries.

  Bead's crew, together with the captain, amounted to thirty-two people, or rather, thirty people exactly, one quarter-orc and one halfling half-breed, of whom only eight were pure guards without the duties of sailors and yet professional warriors. In case of conflict, of course, all of them armed themselves and fought back, but only the guards carried armor and weapons without taking them off, except for sleeping in shifts, and in battle they were the first to defend the ship. The effectiveness of an ordinary sailor and a pro-fighter, who has devoted his life to battles and training, is still very different. It's not because the sailors are lousy at fighting, they're a tough and skillful crowd. The position of such a guard, in fact, is not so hard and often happens so that you do not have to take the weapon out of the sheaths, but you can't do it without guards. All eight men in the crew were under contract with the captain personally, and they received payment for each voyage only from him personally, so they had to protect their employer. It wasn't a very good insurance against a dishonest bastard, but the fact that they had been working together for years and knew each other well pyed a role.

  The eight were armed with short spear-darts, small shields, a cleaver or hatchet, a dagger, and a simple protective amulet, a normal one, worn all the time, not one worn only for combat because of the ck of charge replenishment. Schirm, who had long ago left for his own affairs, also had such amulets, though worse, but they were in the chest of the captain, who apparently had never trusted his men completely, and the rebels had not been able to break into that chest. In addition to the eight, who allowed themselves only a gss of wine, while the whole crew was resting, the captain, his bosun-magician, and assistant were protected, and at the same time the nephew, who buried his son, - and who had only spawned daughters not particurly willing to meddle in men's affairs, - the man pnned to transfer the case. It was not God knows what kind of power, but taking into account the fact that the captain's goods belonged to the lowest bar of the upper price segment, as well as payment of all legal taxes and “illegal taxes”, it was enough to survive.

  “No, Pann, having a medallion with the seal of someone from the Night Guild certainly cools some heads. But in reality, it just slightly reduces the risks of being hunted down on purpose.” In the captain's words stale and tired not even angry, just a burning resentment at something that can't be changed, but still annoying. “If Wavebreaker sees an opportunity to gnaw into someone's underbelly with impunity, he won't miss the chance, and whether or not the medallion was there, they'll ask about it ter. Even if there will be a witness, then try to prove it, and if you prove it, you will get the heads of “not looking” at most, but certainly not a refund of goods. To return the money, honorably and in line with the loss, at least with the purchase price, and not with an increase in profit ... No, Pann, I don't like that kind of talk - such talk starts only where there are rivers of gold and banks of silver. And not just no one's silver."

  “Like shipments under the auspices of the aristocracy or orders from powerful gifted individuals for rare reagents?” The young man crified the obvious, remembering in passing the almost forgotten accidental barrel, the contents of which had nearly killed the entire vilge, and the fate of which had been taken care of by the guys from all sorts of important services. “Or, through third hands belonging to the very patrons of certain pirate gangs?”

  “It's not for nothing that Kirik praised your grandfather, it's obvious that you're hooked on the move.” Bastius nodded approvingly, wrinkling his face at the particurly sour apple. “Yes, that's exactly the kind of decision one makes, almost always. Even if it's a loud and ugly scandal, when it's not too noble, but it's dirty. Bckness of any kind, reted to magic, or even demon worship.... though with the tter they don't return the money, they hang all the filth of the shoreline as a warning.”

  Stepan was tempted to ask about the retionship of the locals with demons, but he had enough sense not to ask because his personal erudition was limited only by some ways of recognizing and counteracting this type of opponents, as well as very convincing arguments “not to get involved, or it would be worse than just death”. His question about what kind of retionship here is not with worship but with cssical demonology will become, to put it mildly, suspicious and even dangerous for Stepan. After that, respectively, for Captain Bastia who began to suspect different things.

  “All right, young magician, I've been sitting up too long. Tomorrow at noon, so that the team can get some sleep, we'll leave here, but I advise you to bring your things in advance because I know how people remember at the st moment that they forgot their grandmother's favorite night pot.” Standing up from the table, leaning his arms heavily to his sides and breathing heavily from the dense dinner, he began to say goodbye until the next meeting. “Put up a magical lock, of course. I know you magicians and I know my own, even if they don't steal anything, they might just try to dig through it. But, I warn you at once that the protection is not dangerous for the ship and the crew. Nothing killing or maiming, things happen, they may just accidentally touch yours, and if not, I'll cut off the thief's fingers myself. And no fire, or you'll swim further, rowing with your hands, no offense. That'll be all, see you tomorrow, Pann.”

  “Well, they are understandable demands, I approve and understand them, and I don't want to swim to the shore, the water is still cold.” They shook hands in the local manner and said goodbye, satisfied with each other in principle. “See you tomorrow, Bastia.”

  The next morning, standing next to Cherl the ship's magician yawning moodily on the stern, where there was the free pce and quiet pce, Stepan looked at the gradually receding pier of the Upper Lady and Meld with Kirik waving to him. Both of them had received farewell amulets from him, “good luck symbols” with a weak shield, as Stepan had told them. In fact, the shield wasn't exactly weak, combining a mild deflection of physical and magical blows and hard barriers against directed and undirected blows, as well as the ability to knock out the aim of homing spells. In addition to the above, Stepan added a health function, life support, curse absorption, activation of body enhancement and reaction in case of mortal danger, self-charging, and protection from theft along with binding to the owner. Still, both of them had done a lot for him. There are no ways to see the real properties of these bracelets in Upper Lyady. The second totem-guardian completed this attraction of hearsay and unprecedented generosity, simir to the wedding gift, but personally in Kirik's hands. He thanked sincerely and just as sincerely shoved in his hands a very good dagger with an ivory hilt, a trophy from his youth, and a memory of the river pirate who had nearly cut him in the belly with that very knife. From the look in Kirik's eyes, the young man realized that the thing was really expensive and memorable, but if he tried not to take it, he would offend the headman to death.

  He took it, of course, though he checked it ter for any surprises, and then hung it on his belt instead of his own dagger, which was also good and high-quality, but still worse at least because of the ck of a bonus of plus twenty units to stylishness. They drank te that night, but not too much, and Kirik also gave some advice on how to behave in the big world.

  And so they set sail. It means - that's it. Another page in the life of an earthling-crosser has been turned and now he is free again. A little sad, but still he is intoxicated by this aroma... No, not the river and the reeds, and not the coming adventures - may all gods, including the Mighty Milf, forbid him to find those adventures again! - but change, new events, new ndscapes, and new discoveries. Stepan will gdly settle down, and build himself a new gde-fortress, but first, he needs to provide himself with a sufficient level of comfort, which an ordinary vilge can not give him. If you live in the world of magic and sorcery, being able to do all sorts of anti-scientific and very magical things, you should make your life so that it would be pleasant to live it.

  It's the kind of thing you can put up with on the river.

  But not the snoring of the sailors, no, not it.

  "Well, well, well. Where were my sound absorber contracts?"

  Stepan wanted very much to believe that it was the suppression of snoring and the eradication of the odor from the mass of sweating bodies that would be the most terrible ordeal of the journey. After all, it was really a routine trade rafting on the river, though not safe, though full of risk, but Bastius had already sailed like this a hundred times and was alive. After all, would something start to go critically wrong, especially for Stepan's visit? He wasn't in the anime and certainly wasn't the Chosen One the Autogoddess was looking for, so let him be lucky, eh?

  He'll be lucky, right?

  At the very least, he's a full-fledged Senior Shaman by the standards of the System. Any typical enemy that a ship like Bead and her crew would have to fear, he would be able to wipe out, if not wipe out, then he could certainly run away.

  After all, he just needs to reach any major town, it's not like he's ordered the twelve feats of Hercules!

  What could possibly go wrong?

  * * *

  THE STATUS OF STEPAN "NORMAL" AT THE END OF CHAPTER FOURTEENTH

  Name: Stepan

  Level: 21

  Css: Senior Shaman

  Characteristics: (free: 0)

  Talents (free): 0

  Constitution: 2

  Sensitivity: 11

  Power: 6

  Control: 5

  Source: 5

  Spirit: 13

  Resistance: 1

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

  Minor knowledge: contract with an elder spirit: Sleepwalker (GIFT); contract with the elder spirits: The Shroud of Touch and the Creator of Decisions (GIFT); a contract with a strong spirit: The Eater of Diseases; defense by distortion of the anteroom of the spheres; contract with a strong spirit: Cheesh'sh'shuya; contract with a strong spirit: Jolly Milker; contract with a strong spirit: Sneaking Glow; contract with a senior spirit: Joy of the Waves; contract with a senior spirit: Vishpli-Schwalstprachtmatt;

  Obtained properties: blessings of health and long life; toughness of spirit; resilience of subtle bodies; small mark of spiritual spheres: spiritual shroud of higher auric concealment (GIFT); flexible transformation of the spiritual body; marking of fallen leaves and bck roots; a tantric spiritual hearth; recognition of creators of passions and weavers of feelings (GIFT); heritage in blood and spirit (GIFT); patchwork spiritual echo (GIFT); plurality of spiritual awareness; small spiritual and energetic protection

  System modifiers: peaceful development III; issuance of system assignments III; lecherous development III; access to system purchases III; small system endowment of characteristics; temporal awareness III; reserve renewal II; replenishment of life I

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

  * * *

  _RIP_